Shiga Prefecture, the photographer's home and the main subject of this book, is also the setting of the famous Noh play Semimaru. The photographs, taken while the sound of Semimaru's biwa haunts Atsushi Fujiwara's mind, are his most personal work to date, with the world and philosophy of the Noh play always present in the background. In the afterword Naoto Ohsumi writes of being struck by the sensitivity and sincerity of Fujiwara's regard for his subjects, an intense focus and potent restraint, and of an exceedingly intellectual, almost ethnological stance alongside an emotional treatment of a place that is both loved and hated; these two contrasting positions stand out more distinctly than in the earlier work, in individual photographs as well as in the editing of the volume.