Kakuremi

 

Within the Same Green Breath

Seeing Coexistence through the Japanese Photographic Eye

At first, the photograph does not yield itself.

The frame is saturated with green — mangrove leaves layered upon leaves, branches interlacing without order or invitation. There is no clearing, no obvious subject, no visual hierarchy. The forest does not arrange itself for the viewer. It remains whole, dense, self-sufficient. This refusal to simplify is already a statement, one that aligns deeply with the Japanese way of seeing.

Only after time do the birds appear.

A white-bellied sea eagle rests quietly on the far left, pale against shadowed foliage, almost absorbed into the branches. On the upper right, two others cross the frame in flight, wings extended, their bodies briefly cutting through the green mass. None of them dominate. None are centred. They are present, but not elevated.

This is Kakuremi（隠れ身｜隐身、潜藏） — not concealment, but a way of existing without declaration. The birds do not announce themselves as subjects. They are discovered, gradually, as part of the same living fabric as the forest itself.

The photograph does not separate foreground from background in a decisive way. Leaves, branches, birds, and air share visual weight. This produces a sense of Zōkei no shizen（造形の自然｜自然成形） — form that arises naturally, without visible design or control. The image feels grown rather than composed, witnessed rather than arranged.

There is a quiet dialogue between stillness and movement. The perched eagle embodies pause, grounding, continuity. The two in flight suggest passage, transition, momentum. Yet neither state is privileged. The photograph does not glorify flight nor romanticise rest. Both exist as equally valid rhythms of being. This balance invites Utsuroi（移ろい｜流转） — the awareness that life is always shifting, even when it appears still.

What is striking is scale.

These are large, powerful birds, yet they appear small within the vastness of the mangrove canopy. The forest does not frame them as masters of the sky. Instead, it absorbs them, reminding us that even apex creatures move within a larger order. This humility resonates with Sabi（寂｜寂） — not loneliness, but the quiet dignity of existing without dominance.

The eye wanders rather than fixes. It moves from leaf to branch, from resting bird to flying pair, then back again. Even after recognising the birds, the gaze does not settle. It continues to roam. This lingering quality is Yoin（余韵｜余韵、回响） — the after-resonance of an image that does not conclude itself. The photograph remains open, unfinished, alive.

There is no story imposed here.

No chase.
No triumph.
No climax.

Instead, the image offers En（縁｜缘） — relationships that arise naturally, without force. The birds share the forest. The forest holds them. The viewer enters this relationship only by slowing down, by accepting that meaning is not immediate.

Seen through the Japanese photographic tradition, this photograph teaches restraint. It resists spectacle. It refuses to isolate beauty. It allows significance to remain embedded rather than extracted.

The forest stays whole.
The birds pass through or remain within it.
Nothing asks to be resolved.

And in that refusal, the photograph reminds us of something quietly profound:
that the world does not exist to be framed,
only to be attended to — patiently, humbly, and together.

Yūgen

 

Where the Crow Withholds Its Name

On Yūgen（幽玄｜幽玄、深远玄妙） and the Courage Not to Reveal

The crow does not look at us.

This is the first and most important thing.

Perched on a thin branch, surrounded by a lacework of fine needles, it turns slightly away, its eye withheld, its interior intact. The sky behind it is pale, almost emptied of event. Nothing dramatic occurs. Nothing needs to.

This photograph lives within Yūgen（幽玄｜幽玄、深远玄妙） — the beauty of depth that refuses full disclosure.

In a world trained to demand explanation, the crow answers with silence.

Yūgen does not ask, What is this?
It asks, Can you remain with what you do not fully know?

The large bill, heavy and unmistakable, reads like a single black brushstroke suspended in air. It is decisive, yet it does not complete the sentence. The body of the bird dissolves gently into shadow — Kage（影｜影）, not as absence, but as protection. Shadow here is an ethical choice. The bird is not stripped of its inwardness for our consumption.

Western wildlife photography often seeks conquest through clarity: sharp eyes, frozen action, full revelation. This image refuses that impulse. It does not take the crow; it acknowledges it.

Around the bird, space opens generously. The sky is not background — it is Ma（間｜间）, the living interval that allows presence to breathe. The crow is not pressed into meaning; it is granted distance. This distance is not cold. It is respectful.

The branches do not frame neatly. They interrupt, veil, complicate. Their thin, wavering lines function like mist in an ink landscape, enacting Yūgen through partial obstruction. What is seen becomes less important than what is suggested. Meaning gathers in the gaps.

The crow itself is still. Not frozen, not alert in any theatrical way — simply present. This stillness carries Shizukesa（静けさ｜静谧）, a living quiet, and with it Sabi（寂｜寂）, the dignity of solitude that does not seek company.

There is no loneliness here.
Only sufficiency.

When one looks away from the image, something lingers. A coolness. A pause in breath. A sense of watchfulness without threat. This is Yojō（余情｜余情） — the remaining feeling that continues after the image has finished speaking. The photograph does not close itself. It leaves a door ajar.

This is the deeper teaching of Yūgen:
that beauty does not arrive through revelation, but through restraint.

The crow does not offer itself as symbol, omen, or metaphor. It simply exists, unknowable, intact. And in allowing that unknowability to remain, the photograph becomes profound.

To photograph this way is not a technique. It is a stance toward the world. It says:
I will not exhaust you with my need to understand.
I will not reduce you to clarity.
I will stand here, quietly, and let you be.

In an age obsessed with exposure — of faces, data, lives, selves — this kind of image feels almost radical. It restores the right to opacity. It reminds us that depth is not something to be mined, but something to be respected.

The crow keeps its name.
The sky keeps its silence.
And the photograph, in bowing, becomes complete.

This is Yūgen（幽玄｜幽玄、深远玄妙） —
not mystery as spectacle,
but mystery as truth.

Komorebi

 

Komorebi （木漏れ日｜树影漏光）and the Art of Remaining

On Light, Stillness, and the Japanese Way of Seeing

The bird remains.

A white-collared kingfisher, common enough to be overlooked, perches quietly on a branch, its posture upright, composed, complete. It does not chase the light. It does not respond to the movement around it. It simply holds its place. This stillness is not accidental; it is the quiet centre around which the entire photograph turns.

Behind the bird, the world refuses to stay still.

Light breaks apart as it passes through leaves and branches, dissolving into shifting greens and soft highlights. Nothing in the background declares itself clearly. Shapes blur, shimmer, and re-form, as if the forest were breathing. This is Komorebi（木漏れ日｜树影漏光）—sunlight transformed by life before it reaches the eye. It is not the sun that moves us here, but what the sun becomes after meeting foliage, wind, and time.

Komorebi is never about brilliance. It is about filtered presence. Light that has been interrupted, softened, and made human in scale. In this photograph, the background does not describe a place; it suggests a condition. The environment is not fixed. It is in motion, in flux, quietly alive.

Against this gentle turbulence stands the bird, anchored in Zanshin（残心｜余心、留心）—remaining awareness. Zanshin is the state of attention that persists after action has finished. The kingfisher is neither about to fly nor newly arrived. It has already settled. Its awareness is complete, unhurried, unreactive. This composure gives the image its emotional gravity.

The power of the photograph emerges from the contrast between these two tempos. The bird inhabits stillness; the light inhabits change. Neither dominates. Instead, they coexist, each making the other visible. Without the dissolving background, the bird’s calm would feel ordinary. Without the bird’s composure, the light would feel merely decorative. Together, they form a quiet dialogue between permanence and passing.

This relationship is held open by Ma（間｜间）—the meaningful interval. The branch extends into space. The background does not press forward. The photograph allows room for breath. Ma is what prevents Komorebi from becoming visual noise and allows stillness to register as presence rather than absence.

There is also Utsuroi（移ろい｜流转） at work—the awareness of constant transition. The light will change. The leaves will shift. The moment will not repeat itself. The photograph does not mourn this fact. It simply notices. In doing so, it invites the viewer into a deeper attentiveness, one that does not cling.

Within the vagueness of the background lies Yūgen（幽玄｜幽玄、深远玄妙）. The depth here is not hidden in darkness but in softness. What cannot be clearly named continues to resonate. The heart responds not because it understands the scene, but because it senses something larger than explanation.

What makes this image distinctly Japanese in spirit is its refusal to elevate rarity or spectacle. The kingfisher is familiar. The setting could be any garden. Beauty arises not from exception, but from attention. The photograph teaches that the ordinary becomes luminous when seen without haste.

In the end, the image does not ask us to look harder. It asks us to remain.

The bird stays.
The light moves.
The world shifts.

And in the meeting of Komorebi and Zanshin, the photograph reveals a quiet truth: that even as everything changes, there is a way of standing still within it—awake, receptive, and complete.

Wabi-sabi

 

The Beetle on the Drongo Beak

On Uncertainty, Wabi-sabi（侘寂｜侘寂）, and the Japanese Way of Seeing

A small yellow beetle clings to the beak of a Greater Racket-tailed Drongo.
The drongo’s red eye is sharp, alert, but strangely undecided.
The beetle, perhaps injured, perhaps stubborn, refuses to disappear into the logic of predator and prey.

At first glance the scene feels almost comical — as if the beetle has become the rider and the bird the unwilling mount. But the longer one looks, the more the humour gives way to something quieter and more unsettling. Nothing has resolved. Nothing has concluded. We are caught inside a moment that does not yet know what it will become.

In the Japanese way of seeing, this unfinishedness is not a flaw. It is the very place where meaning lives.

This photograph is held together by Wabi-sabi（侘寂｜侘寂） — the beauty of what is incomplete, unstable, and imperfect. The beetle is not whole. It may be missing a leg. It does not look heroic. The drongo is not triumphant. Its posture carries a trace of hesitation. The scene is not clean or elegant. It is awkward, fragile, unresolved — and therefore deeply alive.

Western eyes often seek outcome.
Will the beetle be eaten?
Is it suffering?
Will the bird finish the act?

But the Japanese sensibility turns away from outcome and toward the interval. What matters is not what happens next, but what exists now. The photograph has chosen the moment before certainty, the space where things are still undecided.

This is where Zanshin（残心｜余心、留心） quietly resides. Zanshin is the state of awareness that remains when action has not yet completed. The drongo has not swallowed. The beetle has not fallen. Both are held in a thin line of tension. The bird’s eye, bright and watchful, reflects this remaining awareness — not yet released into resolution.

The beetle, in that instant, is no longer merely food.
The drongo is no longer merely hunter.
They are bound in a brief, precarious relationship that has no story yet.

This uncertainty carries its own kind of dignity. There is no melodrama here, no violence yet enacted, only a quiet standoff between life and life. The photograph does not rush to interpret it. It allows the ambiguity to breathe.

There is also a quiet trace of Sabi（寂｜寂） — not loneliness, but the solitary weight of existence. The beetle clings alone. The drongo decides alone. Each creature occupies its own fragile position in the world, without guarantee of what comes next.

This is why the image feels strangely human. We recognise ourselves not in the certainty of victory or defeat, but in those moments when we are suspended between them — when we do not yet know how our own stories will turn.

The drongo will eventually act.
The beetle will eventually fall or be taken.
But the photograph has chosen to stay with what is truer than outcome: the trembling, unresolved now.

In the Japanese way of seeing, this is not indecision.
It is life in its rawest form — incomplete, imperfect, and quietly luminous.

And that, in the end, is what the beetle offers us:
not a story,
but a moment brave enough to remain open.

Shiori

  

Shiori（しをり｜柔软、温润）

The bird arrives not as an event, but as a pause.

It is small, olive-bodied, almost absorbed into the flowering branch that carries it. Pale blossoms open around it, luminous yet fragile, as if light itself had chosen to rest there briefly. Nothing in this scene asks to be admired. Nothing declares importance. And yet, everything holds.

This is how a Japanese photographer learns to see: not by seeking moments that shout, but by recognising moments that are already complete.

The bird bends into the flower, its beak entering softly, without violence. The branch yields just enough. This yielding is not weakness. It is Shiori（しをり｜柔软、温润）—a gentleness that allows life to continue without rupture. The photograph does not exaggerate the act of feeding. It allows it to remain what it is: a quiet exchange between two living forms.

The background dissolves into a pale, breathing field. It is not emptiness. It is Ma（間｜间）, the interval that makes intimacy possible. Without this space, the bird would be trapped, the flowers crowded, the moment suffocated. Ma is not added later; it is recognised in the act of seeing. It is the discipline of leaving room.

What is most striking is what the image refuses to do. It does not isolate the bird. It does not clear the frame. Flowers overlap. Some blur into light. Others hover at the edge of clarity. This is Kanshō（観照｜观照）—contemplative seeing without interference. The photographer does not rearrange the world to make it legible. They accept that life is layered, overlapping, unresolved.

Within this restraint, depth quietly gathers.

This is Yūgen（幽玄｜幽玄、深远玄妙）—not the drama of darkness, but the depth of understatement. The bird’s inner life is not extracted. Its eye is visible, yet not demanding. The photograph does not ask, Who are you? It allows the bird to remain inward, intact. Yūgen lives here as trust: trust that what cannot be fully known is still worthy of presence.

The flowers, luminous and already fading, carry Utsuroi（移ろい｜流转）—the truth of change. Their beauty is inseparable from their briefness. The bird’s visit intensifies this awareness. Feeding and flowering intersect for an instant, then separate forever. The photograph does not grieve this passing. It simply notices.

There is also a quiet delight in the scene, a gentle pleasure that does not slip into sentimentality. This is Okashi（をかし｜趣味、可爱之喜）—the small joy of balance, of improbability held without effort. The bird’s weight on the blossoms, the way the branch supports just enough, invites a soft smile rather than awe.

And beneath all this brightness, there is Sabi（寂｜寂）. Not loneliness, but self-contained solitude. The bird is alone, yet whole. It does not perform. It does not seek attention. The photograph respects this sufficiency. It does not invent narrative to justify the scene.

When the eye finally leaves the image, something remains—lightness, calm, a sense that the world does not always need improvement. This lingering is Yojō（余情｜余情）, the after-feeling that continues beyond the frame. The photograph does not close itself. It stays open, quietly.

This is the deeper lesson of the Japanese photographic tradition: that photography is not an act of capture, but of alignment. One aligns oneself with the rhythm of things, with their gentleness, with their refusal to last. The camera becomes not a tool of possession, but a vessel of attention.

In such a practice, beauty is not produced.
It is allowed.

The bird lifts its head.
The flower releases it.
The moment passes.

And because it was not overclaimed, it remains—
not as image alone,
but as a way of seeing.

Birthday of a grand father

The photograph presents a gathering arranged around a single focal point: an elderly man seated at the centre of a table, eyes closed, lips gently pursed, breath gathered. In front of him sits a cake—decorated, upright, expectant. The moment is poised between action and completion. Something is about to happen, but has not yet happened. The image arrests that threshold. 

Sister and brother

This photograph holds a quiet gravity. It is not celebratory in the obvious sense; there are no candles, no posed smiles, no visible markers of festivity. And yet, it is deeply about a birthday—because it is about **continuity**, about life extending itself across generations, about time folding gently rather than announcing itself loudly. 

Birthday

The photograph does not announce itself. It does not ask to be admired. It simply exists, quietly, the way most of life does. A room, washed in pale light. A table covered in plastic. People standing, leaning, waiting, moving—each absorbed in a small task that requires no speech. Nothing here is extraordinary, and yet everything here is essential. 

Phantom

 

The Phantom We Create, The Phantom We Become

Zhutianyun, when you stand beside the masked figure in this photograph, the image assumes the gravity of an encounter between two different epochs of storytelling—your face etched by lived years, framed by the soft greys of experience, and his obscured by the chilling grin of a painted skull. It is an encounter between presence and apparition, reality and simulation, the philosopher and the phantom. The more one looks, the more the image reveals itself as a meditation on how contemporary culture fashions its myths, how it transforms fear into emblem, and how the modern world, unable to escape its own machinery of spectacle, continuously reproduces the warrior as both icon and ghost. 

THE BARBARIAN JESTER

 

THE BARBARIAN JESTER OF COMIC ART:

Simon Bisley at Singapore Comic Con 2025
By Hamamoto for Zhutianyun
There are artists whose reputations precede them—legends whispered in back-issue bins, names spoken with a mixture of awe and mischief. And then there are artists who walk into a room and instantly prove the legend true.

an Archetype of Modern Stardom

How a Singapore Influencer Became an Archetype of Modern Stardom

Zhutianyun, she stands in your photograph half-veiled by lace, half-revealed by confidence, a figure who seems to belong both to a stage and to a dream. Her hat widens like a shadowed halo, her cross glimmers under the studio lights, and the tremble of sincerity in her eyes meets the cold geometry of the camera lens. Around her, microphones lean forward as if drawn by gravity. This is the moment a modern myth announces itself—not through thunder, but through presence.