This work was among those that were shown in Kusama’s first solo exhibition. The year was 1952, the place the Matsumoto Municipal No. 1 Community Center, and the period two days. Until the year before she made this work, Kusama had studied Nihon-ga (Japanese-style painting) techniques, but here she made use of oil paint. The support medium is a burlap sack. Born and raised in a well-established family who ran a seed business, we can imagine that this was a familiar material to her. An essay that Kusama published in a local pamphlet called Shinshu orai (Shinshu Miscellany) seems to convey the artist’s strong will: “In any given era, culture is a new product of the times. It demands that an artist breathe the air of the whole world, to create something that represents a new generation. A painter’s mission is to create a future from the present. She should correctly critique the past and comprehend the present.”