By Yumiko izu
September 7, 2025
Kotonoha is an ancient and poetic Japanese term that refers to words—not merely as units of speech, but as leaves born from the heart. Just as leaves connect a tree to the outside world, kotonoha are the tender tips of emotion or thought, grown from within and reaching gently outward.
In this series, I explore the moment a word begins to take shape—or the moment it gently dissolves, like a leaf loosening into the wind. It is a meditation on what lies just before or after language: a resonance, a trace, a breath that remains.
These photographs echo fragments of feeling and memory that rise without name—moments when we pause and sense something just beneath the surface. They are silent vessels that refrain from telling, yet gently ripple through the viewer’s inner world.
In Japanese aesthetics, there is reverence not for what is fully said, but for what is seen, felt, and received. It is the unspoken space that gives silence its depth. A gaze that does not seek to hold what is passing, but quietly sees it off.
Guided by this sensibility, I attempt to trace the outlines of feelings that might vanish at a touch. Photography, too, simply exists—quiet and still— and in that stillness, unspoken words begin to rise like leaves on the breeze.
I hope these images gently reach the seeds of memory and emotion within the viewer, and that somewhere, a new kotonoha may begin to unfold.