When I started painting 3

This is Takuma Tanaka's Art Samurai Training Series.

When I was staying at a guesthouse in New York and going back and forth between Japan and New York, I met a rather cocky student named M. from Kyoto University. He told me that I was lacking in the logic and basic ideas of art.

Sure, I had learned how to draw, but I didn't have any knowledge of the logic of art or other fields of art. For example, architecture, photography and things that went beyond those, like gardens.

So I enrolled in Yotsuya Art Studium, an experimental art school in Yotsuya that was funded by Kinki University and was established at the time. It was an experimental school, famous for its cutting-edge instructors and experimental approach.

The chief director of the school was Kenjiro Okazaki, and I took his seminar and some classes. When I told Mr. Okazaki that I studied the law in Waseda University and studing for the bar exam, he asked me if I had learned basic law. In this way, we explored the basics, which is one of the characteristics of this school, and there were graduates from overseas art universities and foreign students who studied at japanese Art University.

The first fieldwork was to dismantle Rikugien. We all went to a garden called Rikugien in Tokyo and were given five pieces of paper. The assignment was to take apart Rikugien and show the whole picture. I was puzzled by this. To be continued.