Listening to the Wind in the Bamboo Grove 

The man depicted lying on the bank of the stream is the artist himself, Kishida Ryusei. According to the note on the far left, the location is Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, and the month is March. It would seem he is enjoying the early spring, listening to the sound of bamboo swaying in the breeze. Ryusei was originally an oil painter. However, from around 1920 on, he became interested in old Chinese and Japanese painting, and he began using traditional materials such as ink. Ryusei found it interesting that oriental paintings looked different to European ones, and that they were apparently free to distort shapes and colors. Thus in this work the stream that flows to the back does not disappear on the horizon, but instead rises steadily toward the top of the image. This is the result of Ryusei using oriental perspective, which was different to European.
(KURAYA Mika)