Letters to My Teacher and Painting Excursions

A physicist crosses an Alpine glacier with stockings pulled over his shoes, watches children perform a Christmas pageant in Göttingen, and climbs the wind-beaten towers of Notre-Dame. In these letters from Europe, Terada Torahiko notices the everyday details that grand accounts of travel often overlook.

His eye is equally alert close to home. Taking up oil painting while recovering from illness, he travels through the fields and developing outskirts of Tokyo in search of subjects. Autumn light transforms railway yards, abandoned factories, and modest farmhouses into pictures of unexpected beauty.

Yet a picture never quite shuts out the world beneath it. A waiting schoolboy, a laborer’s conversation, or a mother working until dusk turns visual pleasure toward sympathy, criticism, and reflection on the ties between knowledge and experience.