When Basho visited Kisakata in Akita, the islands would cast green shadows on the sea. Two hundred years ago, however, an upheaval of the ocean floor by earthquake changed all that, and we can no longer see the cool, refreshing scene of waves flowing around the legs of cranes as described in Basho's haiku. Michael Yamashita, photographing the deep green shadows of pine trees seen in paddy fields as if they were the shadows of islands cast on the sea, might have felt the uncertainties of life.