【Kawataya Village with Safflowers, Okegawa City】 July 2001  
                        Oil Painting　 １５F　65.2×53.0cm     Lakhan
In Edo Age of Japan, since about 400 years ago till 100 years ago, there used to be Nakasendo-Road, one of the main five roads lead through Edo (former Tokyo) to Kyoto inside the mountain area of the iland. It starts Edo and goes through Musashino to enter mountain area. Okegawa City is located along that road and used to be one of the main post town for the travelers and also prospered as local distribution center of safflowers. Recently they resumed to grow safflowers provablly for sight seeing purpose as a symbol flower of the city. Kawataya village is one of the main site growing safflower in large field and local event for safflower is held through June to July. At the end of June, we can see blossoms of safflowers over the field there and I looked for some suitable angle to draw that blossoms to find a place where the blossoms of safflower could be seen over through an alley between old traditional residences with big oak trees. It was already in rainy season, however, in rainy season in 2001, it was rather short of rains with high temperature and it became suny in the morning on the day I took the painting tools to that place and took to painting around 9 o'clock but the temperature soon seemed to attain over 30 ℃ being so hot. Fortunately women of habitat there were so kind as one brought me a hat to shut out the strong sunshine and soon after another young one gave me a cup of cold water. That day I ended painting on 2 o'clock in the afternoon and completed it on July 15. 

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