At some point in time, we Japanese people began to expectantly anticipate the announcement that cherry blossoms are blooming. Since undergoing the influence of the national culture of the Heian period (794-1185), cherry blossoms seem to have come to occupy such a special position that they have become synonymous with flowers in general. Japanese people dearly love cherry blossoms. For more than a decade, I have been photographing cherry blossoms from my own perspective, being tossed at the mercy of their transience and grace. Rather than hear the news of the cherry blossoms flowering, I prefer to know when they will begin to fall. It is a once-a-year opportunity. I am intrigued by the fate of these flowers, which bloom proudly and gorgeously and then scatter fleetingly. Then, seven years ago, by chance, I encountered a place 1,000 meters above sea level over which two 150-year-old mountain cherry trees towered like the masters of the land, and I decided immediately to move there. It happened so suddenly that I can only believe that I was called. Since I began living with these huge cherry trees, I have become even more attentive to their rapid transformations. I would like everyone to witness these secret states of being which the cherry blossoms allow us to observe through the lens. —— Photographer Yuriko Takagi