Reading the preface to Manyo Luster, one sentence lingered in my mind:

“The Man'yōshū is new.”

Soon afterward, I returned to Zhou Hao's 2006 oil painting, where a moon-like form appears to float.
I began to ask myself:
What is the luster of Zhou Hao's work?
That question became the starting point for this exhibition.

Excerpt from the Preface to Manyo Luster

The oldest words written down in Japan are new. Even after thirteen hundred years, they remain so fresh that they seem to have been written only yesterday.

The capital at Nara,
beautiful in blue earth,
flourishes now
like the luster
of the flowers in bloom.

The luster of the Man’yōshū comes through in English as well. In English, the Man’yōshū takes on another aspect: that of perhaps the greatest single collection of lyric poetry handed down to us from the ancient world.

The Man’yōshū is new.

Source: Manyo Luster.
English Translation by Levy Hideo
Modern Japanese Translation and Original Text by NAKANISHI Susumu
Photography by INOUE Hiromichi
Art Direction by TAKAOKA Kazuya