On my way home from a journey through Nagano and Niigata, I stopped at Hakusan Hime Shrine. I had climbed Mount Hakusan two years earlier, and since then I had felt naturally drawn to places connected with Hakusan.

What struck me most was the clear, refreshing atmosphere shaped by water. Beside a small stream, I connected the Bamboo device to plants and recorded the sounds emerging there.

For several years, I had imagined building a field archive of Plant Music from the places I visit through music. This recording became one of the first steps in turning that idea into an ongoing sound library.

After recording three different plant-generated sounds, I layered them with the sound of the stream. It immediately felt as if water and Plant Music belonged together. I also played one recorded plant sound through a speaker while recording another plant nearby. Different plants, yet they formed a surprisingly beautiful harmony.

The scene became a small sound installation. Around three groups of passersby stopped to ask what I was doing. For all of them, it was their first encounter with Plant Music — and several simply said, “That sounds beautiful.”