關於 how do you say cat in german ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

認養代替購買 #banbreeding

The shelter manager's letter:

"I am posting this (and it is long) because I think our society needs a huge wake-up call.

As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all - a view from the inside, if you will.

Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don't even know - that puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it's not a cute little puppy anymore.

How would you feel if you knew that there's about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at - purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are "owner surrenders" or "strays" that come into my shelter are purebred dogs.

No shortage of excuses
The most common excuses I hear are:

We are moving and we can't take our dog (or cat).
Really? Where are you moving to that doesn't allow pets?

The dog got bigger than we thought it would.
How big did you think a German Shepherd would get?

We don't have time for her.
Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs!

She's tearing up our yard.
How about bringing her inside, making her a part of your family?

They always tell me:
We just don't want to have to stress about finding a place for her. We know she'll get adopted - she's a good dog. Odds are your pet won't get adopted, and how stressful do you think being in a shelter is?

Well, let me tell you. Dead pet walking!

Your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off, sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn't full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy.
If it sniffles, it dies.

Your pet will be confined to a small run / kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it.
If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers that day to take him / her for a walk. If I don't, your pet won't get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose.
If your dog is big, black or any of the "bully" breeds (pit bull, rottweiler, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don't get adopted.
If your dog doesn't get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed.

If the shelter isn't full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed, it may get a stay of execution, though not for long. Most pets get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment.
If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles, chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don't have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment.

The grim reaper
Here's a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being "put-down".
First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk - happy, wagging their tails. That is, until they get to "The Room".

Every one of them freaks out and puts on the breaks when we get to the door. It must smell like death, or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there. It's strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs (depending on their size and how freaked out they are). A euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the "pink stuff". Hopefully your pet doesn't panic from being restrained and jerk it's leg. I've seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood, and been deafened by the yelps and screams.

They all don't just "go to sleep" - sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves.
When it all ends, your pet's corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back, with all of the other animals that were killed, waiting to be picked up like garbage.

What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You'll never know, and it probably won't even cross your mind. It was just an animal, and you can always buy another one, right?

Liberty, freedom and justice for all
I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can't get the pictures out of your head. I do everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists and I hate that it will always be there unless people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter.

Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.
My point to all of this is DON'T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!

Hate me if you want to - the truth hurts and reality is what it is.
I just hope I maybe changed one person's mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say "I saw this thing on Facebook and it made me want to adopt".
That would make it all worth it."

Author unknown

真 相 ～總是讓人心痛，但卻是不爭的事實！

Truth is available only to those who have the courage to question.

Whatever they have been taught .

只希望能夠改變一個人，不要再繁殖自家狗、不要再帶心愛的寵物去收容所，不要再購買貓狗了。

希望有人會走進收容所說：「我在網路上看到牠，希望可以讓我領養這一隻動物」。

收 容 所 管 理 員 的 一 封 信 :
中 文 版 ..................


「跟大家分享以下故事，這社會需要一記當頭棒喝。」

我是流浪動物收容所的管理員，希望分享自身經驗能讓大家更瞭解收所容內的情形。

或許有一天，當你看著這些傷心、失落、疑惑的眼神時，你會對「繁殖及販售寵物給你不認識的人」這件事有所改觀 – 那隻剛從你手中售出的小狗，當牠不再是隻可愛的小狗時，很有可能淪落到我工作的收容所。

你知道嗎？ 不管是不是純種狗，90%被帶進收容所裡的狗，沒有機會再走出來。 而這些「被主人遺棄」或「流浪」的狗，有50%正是所謂的純種狗。

棄養理由百種，我最常聽到的理由是 :

我們要搬家了，不能帶我們的狗(或貓)一起走。

真的呀？你們要搬去的地方不准養寵物？

這隻狗長得比我們預期的還要大。

不然你認為德國狼犬可以長多大呢？

我們沒有時間照顧牠。

真的嗎？我每天工作10-12小時，但我還是有時間照顧我的六隻狗耶！

家裡的院子被狗弄得一團亂。

那麼為何不讓狗進屋子裡，讓牠成為你家庭的一員呢？

通常，這些飼主的說詞是 : 我只是不想承受要幫狗找個新家的壓力，我相信牠會被認養的 - 牠是隻很棒的狗。

奇怪的是，你的寵物會被認養，那你覺得待在收容所裡所承受的壓力是什麼呢？

好，讓我告訴你。 行屍走肉的生活。

從你將寵物留在收容所的那一刻起，牠有72小時的時間可以找新家。若是收容所還沒滿，而你的狗仍然非常健康的情況下，牠有可能可以活得久一點。

要是牠流鼻水，牠就死定了。

你的寵物會跟其他25隻左右不斷吠叫、哭嚎的動物關在一間小小的狗舍裡。 牠要在吃飯睡覺的地方排泄。 牠會很沮喪、不斷哭喊著遺棄牠的家人。

如果你的寵物很幸運，那天剛好有足夠的義工或人手可以帶牠去散散步。 如果沒有，那牠可得到的照顧只有一碗從狗舍門下塞進去的狗糧，跟清洗排泄物的強力水柱。

如果你的狗是大型犬、黑色犬或任何一種鬥犬品種(比特犬、羅威納、獒犬等)，從你帶牠走進收容所大門的那一刻，就等於宣判了牠的死刑。這些品種的狗不會被認養。

如果你的狗在72小時內沒有被認養，再加上收容所太滿，他就會被撲殺。

如果收容所沒有太滿，而你的狗剛好是有人會要的品種，可能可以多留個幾天才會被處死，但是也不會留太久。 大部分的寵物在大約在一個星期之後就會對他們的『窩』表現出保護地盤的姿態，一旦有這種行為，就會被拖去處理掉。

就算是最乖的狗，在這樣的環境下，最後也只有同樣的命運。 就算你的寵物幸運的過了重重難關，卻有可能最後染上犬舍咳或是上呼吸道感染，結果還是一樣被撲殺，因為收容所沒有多餘的錢可以支付這筆醫療費用。

************ 死 　神 *************

大部分的人都沒有看過一隻身體還很健康，卻非常驚恐的動物被安樂死的情況。

首先，你的寵物會被鏈上鏈子，從籠子裡被牽出來。他們看起來都是一副以為可以去散步的模樣 – 開心的搖著尾巴。 一直到他們走到『那個房間』為止。

只要一走到門口，每隻動物都會開始嚇個半死，然後抵死不肯再往前走。 那氣味聞起來一定就是死亡的味道，或者他們可以感覺到還在那個房間裡徘徊不去、悲傷的靈魂。

真的很奇怪，可是每一隻都是這樣。 你的狗或貓會被一或兩位的獸醫助理壓著(取決於他們的體型跟驚恐程度)。

安樂死的技術人員或獸醫接著就開始進行工作。 他們會從前腳找出一條血管，然後開始注射那支有『粉紅色液體』的要命針劑。

希望你的寵物不會因為被壓著而驚恐不定，或是因此而扭傷他自己的腳。 我曾經看過針劑從腿上被狠狠扯下，上頭佈滿了鮮血，然後被驚叫哀號聲弄聾了耳朵。

他們都不是『去睡覺』而已 – 有的時候他們會抽搐一陣子，喘著大氣，然後大小便失禁。 最後的結果就是，你的寵物的屍體會像生火的木頭一樣被疊在後面的一個大型冷凍庫裡，跟著其他也被殺掉的動物一起，等著被像垃圾一樣處理。

接下來呢？火化？載去垃圾場？加工處理成寵物食品？你不會知道，更有可能的是你連想都沒有想過。這只不過就是一隻動物，你總是可以用錢來買另外一隻，對不對？

******* 自　主、自　由　及　正　義 *******

我希望讀到這裡的人，都已經哭紅了雙眼，而且沒有辦法把整個畫面從腦海中刪除 – 就像我每天下班做的一樣。

我痛恨我的工作。 我痛恨為什麼有這樣的工作存在，更恨這個工作可能永遠都會在 – 除非大家開始改變，並且意識到他們影響到的是生命，而不僅僅是丟在收容所裡的寵物而已。

每年有九百萬到一千一百萬隻的動物死在收容所裡，只有你可以讓它停止。

我盡我所能的去拯救每條我能搶救的生命，但是援救所裡的動物永遠都是滿的。

每天都有更多的動物被送進來，遠比被帶回家領養的還要多更多。 我要說的重點是，「收容所裡還有寵物等著被處死，請不要繁殖或購買」。

你要恨我的話就請便 – 真相總是讓人心痛，但卻是不爭的事實。

我只希望我能夠改變一個想繁殖自家狗的人、帶他們心愛的寵物去收容所，或是買狗的想法。 我希望有人會走進我的收容所跟我說「我在網路上看到牠，讓我想要領養動物」。

這樣，一切就都值得了。


作者不詳

請分享這篇文章，讓大眾能有更多認知～謝謝您。

------------------------------------------------

The Truth about Animal Shelters


"I am posting this (and it is long) because I think our society needs a huge wake-up call.

As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all - a view from the inside, if you will.

Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don't even know - that puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it's not a cute little puppy anymore.

How would you feel if you knew that there's about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at - purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are "owner surrenders" or "strays" that come into my shelter are purebred dogs.

No shortage of excuses

The most common excuses I hear are:
We are moving and we can't take our dog (or cat).
Really? Where are you moving to that doesn't allow pets?

The dog got bigger than we thought it would.

How big did you think a German Shepherd would get?
We don't have time for her.

Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs!
She's tearing up our yard.

How about bringing her inside, making her a part of your family?

They always tell me: We just don't want to have to stress about finding a place for her. We know she'll get adopted - she's a good dog. Odds are your pet won't get adopted, and how stressful do you think being in a shelter is?

Well, let me tell you. Dead pet walking!
Your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off, sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn't full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy.
If it sniffles, it dies.

Your pet will be confined to a small run / kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it.

If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers that day to take him / her for a walk. If I don't, your pet won't get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose.

If your dog is big, black or any of the "bully" breeds (pit bull, rottweiler, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don't get adopted.

If your dog doesn't get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed.

If the shelter isn't full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed, it may get a stay of execution, though not for long. Most pets get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment.

If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles, chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don't have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment.

The grim reaper

Here's a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being "put-down".

First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk - happy, wagging their tails. That is, until they get to "The Room".

Every one of them freaks out and puts on the breaks when we get to the door. It must smell like death, or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there. It's strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs (depending on their size and how freaked out they are). A euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the "pink stuff". Hopefully your pet doesn't panic from being restrained and jerk it's leg. I've seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood, and been deafened by the yelps and screams.

They all don't just "go to sleep" - sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves.

When it all ends, your pet's corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back, with all of the other animals that were killed, waiting to be picked up like garbage.

What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You'll never know, and it probably won't even cross your mind. It was just an animal, and you can always buy another one, right?

Liberty, freedom and justice for all

I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can't get the pictures out of your head. I do everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists and I hate that it will always be there unless people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter.

Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.

My point to all of this is DON'T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!

Hate me if you want to - the truth hurts and reality is what it is.

I just hope I maybe changed one person's mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say "I saw this thing on craigslist and it made me want to adopt".

That would make it all worth it."
Author unknown



Animal Cruelty Exposed
SPAY/NEUTHER! SHARE THE MESSAGE !
http://www.facebook.com/…/Animal-Cruelty-Ex…/363725540304160


［德 國 為 什 麼 沒 有 流 浪 狗 ?］
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=370015389728145&set=t.100001590626534&type=3&theater

[ 動 物 先 進 國 荷 蘭 的 know-how ]
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=495082563888093&set=a.406577019405315.95681.100001590626534&type=3&theater

動物～相關資訊與知識
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/…

狗狗～健康元氣料理～https://www.facebook.com/media/set/…

動保One
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/…

動保 Two
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/…

動保Three
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/…

只要可以將一個「領養、不棄養」的觀念有效地散佈出去，就有改變這個社會的一小部分的可能性。
------這一小部分，會是一大部分的開始。
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/…

捍衛 “ 生命權 ”_ 控管 “ 生育權 ”
無知是一把殺於無形的屠刀
良知卻能挽救無數寶貴生命
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/…

「愛　錢　？　還　是　愛　狗　？」
販賣生命～根本就是把狗當生產機器！
http://www.appledaily.com.tw/…/article/life/20130313/170384/

根據農委會98年調查數據推估，保守估算，每年約有50萬隻幼幼因飼主無力飼養而被丟，連狗媽媽一起丟。
請支持 [ 管 制 不 負 責 任 飼 主 的 修 法 ]。
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php…

Nobody’s Fool　　( January 2011 )

Yoshitomo Nara

Do people look to my childhood for sources of my imagery? Back then, the snow-covered fields of the north were about as far away as you could get from the rapid economic growth happening elsewhere. Both my parents worked and my brothers were much older, so the only one home to greet me when I got back from elementary school was a stray cat we’d taken in. Even so, this was the center of my world. In my lonely room, I would twist the radio dial to the American military base station and out blasted rock and roll music. One of history’s first man-made satellites revolved around me up in the night sky. There I was, in touch with the stars and radio waves.

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision how a lonely childhood in such surroundings might give rise to the sensibility in my work. In fact, I also used to believe in this connection. I would close my eyes and conjure childhood scenes, letting my imagination amplify them like the music coming from my speakers.

But now, past the age of fifty and more cool-headed, I’ve begun to wonder how big a role childhood plays in making us who we are as adults. Looking through reproductions of the countless works I’ve made between my late twenties and now, I get the feeling that childhood experiences were merely a catalyst. My art derives less from the self-centered instincts of childhood than from the day-to-day sensory experiences of an adult who has left this realm behind. And, ultimately, taking the big steps pales in importance to the daily need to keep on walking.

While I was in high school, before I had anything to do with art, I worked part-time in a rock café. There I became friends with a graduate student of mathematics who one day started telling me, in layman’s terms, about his major in topology. His explanation made the subject seem less like a branch of mathematics than some fascinating organic philosophy. My understanding is that topology offers you a way to discover the underlying sameness of countless, seemingly disparate, forms. Conversely, it explains why many people, when confronted with apparently identical things, will accept a fake as the genuine article. I later went on to study art, live in Germany, and travel around the world, and the broader perspective I’ve gained has shown me that topology has long been a subtext of my thinking. The more we add complexity, the more we obscure what is truly valuable. Perhaps the reason I began, in the mid-90s, trying to make paintings as simple as possible stems from that introduction to topology gained in my youth.

As a kid listening to U.S. armed-forces radio, I had no idea what the lyrics meant, but I loved the melody and rhythm of the music. In junior high school, my friends and I were already discussing rock and roll like credible music critics, and by the time I started high school, I was hanging out in rock coffee shops and going to live shows. We may have been a small group of social outcasts, but the older kids, who smoked cigarettes and drank, talked to us all night long about movies they’d seen or books they’d read. If the nighttime student quarter had been the school, I’m sure I would have been a straight-A student.

In the 80s, I left my hometown to attend art school, where I was anything but an honors student. There, a model student was one who brought a researcher’s focus to the work at hand. Your bookshelves were stacked with catalogues and reference materials. When you weren’t working away in your studio, you were meeting with like-minded classmates to discuss art past and present, including your own. You were hoping to set new trends in motion. Wholly lacking any grand ambition, I fell well short of this model, with most of my paintings done to satisfy class assignments. I was, however, filling every one of my notebooks, sketchbooks, and scraps of wrapping paper with crazy, graffiti-like drawings.

Looking back on my younger days—Where did where all that sparkling energy go? I used the money from part-time jobs to buy record albums instead of art supplies and catalogues. I went to movies and concerts, hung out with my girlfriend, did funky drawings on paper, and made midnight raids on friends whose boarding-room lights still happened to be on. I spent the passions of my student days outside the school studio. This is not to say I wasn’t envious of the kids who earned the teachers’ praise or who debuted their talents in early exhibitions. Maybe envy is the wrong word. I guess I had the feeling that we were living in separate worlds. Like puffs of cigarette smoke or the rock songs from my speaker, my adolescent energies all vanished in the sky.

Being outside the city and surrounded by rice fields, my art school had no art scene to speak of—I imagined the art world existing in some unknown dimension, like that of TV or the movies. At the time, art could only be discussed in a Western context, and, therefore, seemed unreal. But just as every country kid dreams of life in the big city, this shaky art-school student had visions of the dazzling, far-off realm of contemporary art. Along with this yearning was an equally strong belief that I didn’t deserve admittance to such a world. A typical provincial underachiever!

I did, however, love to draw every day and the scrawled sketches, never shown to anybody, started piling up. Like journal entries reflecting the events of each day, they sometimes intersected memories from the past. My little everyday world became a trigger for the imagination, and I learned to develop and capture the imagery that arose. I was, however, still a long way off from being able to translate those countless images from paper to canvas.

Visions come to us through daydreams and fantasies. Our emotional reaction towards these images makes them real. Listening to my record collection gave me a similar experience. Before the Internet, the precious little information that did exist was to be found in the two or three music magazines available. Most of my records were imported—no liner notes or lyric sheets in Japanese. No matter how much I liked the music, living in a non-English speaking world sadly meant limited access to the meaning of the lyrics. The music came from a land of societal, religious, and subcultural sensibilities apart from my own, where people moved their bodies to it in a different rhythm. But that didn’t stop me from loving it. I never got tired of poring over every inch of the record jackets on my 12-inch vinyl LPs. I took the sounds and verses into my body. Amidst today’s superabundance of information, choosing music is about how best to single out the right album. For me, it was about making the most use of scant information to sharpen my sensibilities, imagination, and conviction. It might be one verse, melody, guitar riff, rhythmic drum beat or bass line, or record jacket that would inspire me and conjure up fresh imagery. Then, with pencil in hand, I would draw these images on paper, one after the other. Beyond good or bad, the pictures had a will of their own, inhabiting the torn pages with freedom and friendliness.

By the time I graduated from university, my painting began to approach the independence of my drawing. As a means for me to represent a world that was mine and mine alone, the paintings may not have been as nimble as the drawings, but I did them without any preliminary sketching. Prizing feelings that arose as I worked, I just kept painting and over-painting until I gained a certain freedom and the sense, though vague at the time, that I had established a singular way of putting images onto canvas. Yet, I hadn’t reached the point where I could declare that I would paint for the rest of my life.

After receiving my undergraduate degree, I entered the graduate school of my university and got a part-time job teaching at an art yobiko—a prep school for students seeking entrance to an art college. As an instructor, training students how to look at and compose things artistically, meant that I also had to learn how to verbalize my thoughts and feelings. This significant growth experience not only allowed me to take stock of my life at the time, but also provided a refreshing opportunity to connect with teenage hearts and minds.

And idealism! Talking to groups of art students, I naturally found myself describing the ideals of an artist. A painful experience for me—I still had no sense of myself as an artist. The more the students showed their affection for me, the more I felt like a failed artist masquerading as a sensei (teacher). After completing my graduate studies, I kept working as a yobiko instructor. And in telling students about the path to becoming an artist, I began to realize that I was still a student myself, with many things yet to learn. I felt that I needed to become a true art student. I decided to study in Germany. The day I left the city where I had long lived, many of my students appeared on the platform to see me off.

Life as a student in Germany was a happy time. I originally intended to go to London, but for economic reasons chose a tuition-free, and, fortunately, academism-free German school. Personal approaches coexisted with conceptual ones, and students tried out a wide range of modes of expression. Technically speaking, we were all students, but each of us brought a creator’s spirit to the fore. The strong wills and opinions of the local students, though, were well in place before they became artists thanks to the German system of early education. As a reticent foreign student from a far-off land, I must have seemed like a mute child. I decided that I would try to make myself understood not through words, but through having people look at my pictures. When winter came and leaden clouds filled the skies, I found myself slipping back to the winters of my childhood. Forgoing attempts to speak in an unknown language, I redoubled my efforts to express myself through visions of my private world. Thinking rather than talking, then illustrating this thought process in drawings and, finally, realizing it in a painting. Instead of defeating you in an argument, I wanted to invite you inside me. Here I was, in a most unexpected place, rediscovering a value that I thought I had lost—I felt that I had finally gained the ability to learn and think, that I had become a student in the truest sense of the word.

But I still wasn’t your typical honors student. My paintings clearly didn’t look like contemporary art, and nobody would say my images fit in the context of European painting. They did, however, catch the gaze of dealers who, with their antennae out for young artists, saw my paintings as new objects that belonged less to the singular world of art and more to the realm of everyday life. Several were impressed by the freshness of my art, and before I knew it, I was invited to hold exhibitions in established galleries—a big step into a wider world.

The six years that I spent in Germany after completing my studies and before returning to Japan were golden days, both for me and my work. Every day and every night, I worked tirelessly to fix onto canvas all the visions that welled up in my head. My living space/studio was in a dreary, concrete former factory building on the outskirts of Cologne. It was the center of my world. Late at night, my surroundings were enveloped in darkness, but my studio was brightly lit. The songs of folk poets flowed out of my speakers. In that place, standing in front of the canvas sometimes felt like traveling on a solitary voyage in outer space—a lonely little spacecraft floating in the darkness of the void. My spaceship could go anywhere in this fantasy while I was painting, even to the edge of the universe.

Suddenly one day, I was flung outside—my spaceship was to be scrapped. My little vehicle turned back into an old concrete building, one that was slated for destruction because it was falling apart. Having lost the spaceship that had accompanied me on my lonely travels, and lacking the energy to look for a new studio, I immediately decided that I might as well go back to my homeland. It was painful and sad to leave the country where I had lived for twelve years and the handful of people I could call friends. But I had lost my ship. The only place I thought to land was my mother country, where long ago those teenagers had waved me goodbye and, in retrospect, whose letters to me while I was in Germany were a valuable source of fuel.

After my long space flight, I returned to Japan with the strange sense of having made a full orbit around the planet. The new studio was a little warehouse on the outskirts of Tokyo, in an area dotted with rice fields and small factories. When the wind blew, swirls of dust slipped in through the cracks, and water leaked down the walls in heavy rains. In my dilapidated warehouse, only one sheet of corrugated metal separated me from the summer heat and winter cold. Despite the funky environment, I was somehow able to keep in midnight contact with the cosmos—the beings I had drawn and painted in Germany began to mature. The emotional quality of the earlier work gave way to a new sense of composure. I worked at refining the former impulsiveness of the drawings and the monochromatic, almost reverent, backgrounds of the paintings. In my pursuit of fresh imagery, I switched from idle experimentation to a more workmanlike approach towards capturing what I saw beyond the canvas.

Children and animals—what simple motifs! Appearing on neat canvases or in ephemeral drawings, these figures are easy on the viewers’ eyes. Occasionally, they shake off my intentions and leap to the feet of their audience, never to return. Because my motifs are accessible, they are often only understood on a superficial level. Sometimes art that results from a long process of development receives only shallow general acceptance, and those who should be interpreting it fail to do so, either through a lack of knowledge or insufficient powers of expression. Take, for example, the music of a specific era. People who lived during this era will naturally appreciate the music that was then popular. Few of these listeners, however, will know, let alone value, the music produced by minor labels, by introspective musicians working under the radar, because it’s music that’s made in answer to an individual’s desire, not the desires of the times. In this way, people who say that “Nara loves rock,” or “Nara loves punk” should see my album collection. Of four thousand records there are probably fewer than fifty punk albums. I do have a lot of 60s and 70s rock and roll, but most of my music is from little labels that never saw commercial success—traditional roots music by black musicians and white musicians, and contemplative folk. The spirit of any era gives birth to trends and fashions as well as their opposite: countless introspective individual worlds. A simultaneous embrace of both has cultivated my sensibility and way of thinking. My artwork is merely the tip of the iceberg that is my self. But if you analyzed the DNA from this tip, you would probably discover a new way of looking at my art. My viewers become a true audience when they take what I’ve made and make it their own. That’s the moment the works gain their freedom, even from their maker.

After contemplative folk singers taught me about deep empathy, the punk rockers schooled me in explosive expression.

I was born on this star, and I’m still breathing. Since childhood, I’ve been a jumble of things learned and experienced and memories that can’t be forgotten. Their involuntary locomotion is my inspiration. I don’t express in words the contents of my work. I’ll only tell you my history. The countless stories living inside my work would become mere fabrications the moment I put them into words. Instead, I use my pencil to turn them into pictures. Standing before the dark abyss, here’s hoping my spaceship launches safely tonight….