Yoshinaga Kotaku

Born in 1979. Graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Kyushu Sangyo University. Living in Fukuoka. Began working as a writer at the age of 18, and has worked as an illustrator for various media in Japan and overseas. The first picture book I worked on, "Lunch Bancho" (Kougakusha) became popular and became a series. Other works include "Series with Youkai Gama" (Akane Shobo), "Bokudatte Ultraman Series" (Kodansha) and "Waokokko" (Shogakukan). In parallel with the announcement of the work, "Storytelling & Live Painting" is being held in various parts of Japan.

A powerful color scheme and touch that draws the viewer into the world of the painting. A world view that the author has found for the first time in Japan, unimaginable from his work as a popular picture book author. The painting depicts this bank and the other bank of the Sanzu River, which represents the boundary between life and death. This world means the human world filled with hardships, and the other world means the world after death freed from greed and worldly desires. Those who look like humans but are not human, who cannot be recognized as spirits or youkai, are straying from the flow of the Sanzu River and accumulating near the shores of this bank. This is because when the eyes of the corpse of a deer drowning in the river, which the writer praised for its divine beauty, not only the living gaze upon the world of death, but also the dead gaze back upon this world. I got the idea from what I felt. At the same time as depicting the series of life and death, it also enshrines the joy of living day by day, showing that there are paintings as prayers for death.