＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
<Added 10/12/2023> Kaoru Mitsumune wins the Pre-Bato Watercolor 2023 Autumn Title Match for the third consecutive year!!!
Kaoru Mitsumune, 10th Dan Meijin, has done it again.
Congratulations on your third consecutive victory. This brings your total to four wins.
It is a watercolor painting with a motif of a food court, “Free large bowl of rice”. It is truly a “professional-looking”.
Nomura’s evaluation was, “What’s good about it? They’re all good. The expressions are all different. There are all kinds of faces. It’s magnificent. I think the sense of liveliness is also very well done. You can almost feel the sounds and smells floating around. This is really well drawn.”
Composition 30
Accuracy 30
Characteristics 30
Vibrancy 9
Total 99 points
Although her work tied with the second place winner, Mai Tsujimoto, with 99 points, the deciding factor for her winning entry was “the arm drawn in the right corner,” according to the teacher.
The arm was deliberately drawn there to avoid showing the floor, and it is a small device to fill in the wasted space that is inevitably created in the composition.
Moreover, the artist’s skill in drawing only the arms to make them recognizable as female was highly praised, with no unnaturalness.
So, Kaoru Mitsumune is the winner of the Autumn 2023 Watercolor Painting Competition.
<Added on 5/5/2023> Kaoru Mitsumune wins the Pre-Bato Watercolor 2023 Spring Title for the second consecutive year!
In this fiercely contested genre, which has never been won consecutively in the past nine editions, Kaoru Mitsumune, who won the previous tournament, became the first ever winner to win the championship consecutively.
The common theme was “Spring Sightseeing Spots Accessible by Conventional Train.” Each participant was assigned a different sightseeing spot, and each went to the site and worked out the composition of his or her own work.
Mitsumune’s subject was the “swing overlooking the sea” at ACAO FOREST (Atami City, Shizuoka Prefecture), which is located on the JR Tokaido Line.
Mitsumune, who visited the site and exclaimed, “The view is even more spectacular than I thought it would be!
Mitsumune was so impressed that she drew it directly in her sketchbook.
<Added 14/10/2022> Kaoru Mitsumune wins the Pre-Bato Watercolor Painting 2022 Autumn Title Tournament!
“Wow…that’s amazing…you’re really good. You’re number one in overall ability,” Nomura-sensei praised her.
The vibrant splashes of nature are depicted dynamically, focusing perfectly on the sense of motion and speed.
Furthermore, the clever use of vertical composition is used to maximize the sense of dynamism in the lower two-thirds of the painting, while the upper third depicts a still landscape, clearly creating a contrast between stillness and movement.
Composition: 30 points
Landscape description: 30 points
Light and shade: 30 points
Sense of speed: 10 points
Total: 100 points
This is Kaoru Mitsumune’s second victory in the watercolor painting competition.
<Update: 1/12/2023> Kaoru Mitsumune won Pre-Battle’s “Spray Art” with a perfect score!
Kaoru Mitsumune won the “Spray Art” competition to promote “Ikaho Onsen” in Gunma Prefecture again with a perfect score.
Kaoru Mitsumune won the “7th Spray Art Contest” (Winter 2023) for the third time.
KAZZROCK-sensei: “That’s a great drawing. The first thing I want to show is Gunma-chan reading a book. It’s also interesting that she then brings in Takeshita Yumeji’s signature pattern. The coloring is beautiful, with no outlines.”
The solid areas and areas with gradations are drawn differently, which adds to the variety.
He also commented that the letters were deliberately drawn freehand, which creates a good balance by contrasting with the detailed overall image.
And above all, the attention to color so as not to disrupt the cityscape was highly praised, earning him a perfect score and no complaints.
<Added on 3/31/2022> Kaoru Mitsumune won first place with a perfect score at the “Pre-Bato Blackboard Art 2022 Spring” competition, marking her second consecutive victory!
Mayumi Kono’s evaluation was that “The outlines are blurred, creating a fantastical piece,” “Even though cool colors are used in the shadows, a sense of warmth remains,” and “The rough texture of the chalk gives it a good expression.”
<Added 2022/2/2> Kaoru Mitsumune’s solo exhibition “SEMITOPIA” will be held in April!
Kaoru Mitsumune, who has demonstrated her unique and outstanding talent in the Pre-Bato “Watercolor Painting” section, will be holding her solo exhibition “SEMITOPIA” from April 2nd (Sat) to April 24th (Sun) at Ginza Vanilla Gallery (2nd basement floor, Tonari Building, 7-10-7 Ginza 8-chome, Chuo-ku, Tokyo).
Admission requires prior reservation online. [Tickets will be on sale from 12pm on March 26th on the gallery website]
Regarding her solo exhibition “SEMITOPIA,” Kaoru Mitsumune said the following:
Cicadas have always been a symbol of strength and divinity to me.
I created “Cicadas of Eden,” the main visual for this exhibition, out of a long-held desire to be protected by a large cicada.
For me, who had previously only produced monochrome paintings with a single ballpoint pen, painting with color was a new challenge, and a large oil painting is the best example of this.
As someone who had never studied painting, working with various art materials was like an experiment I was groping around on my own, and it was stimulating every day.
Furthermore, the increased variety of art materials has made it possible for me to expand my ideas from the single subject of “cicadas” and create more works.
<Added 10/21/2021> Kaoru Mitsumune has been promoted two ranks to Master 5th Dan in the Pre-Battle “Watercolor Painting” Assessment SP!
It was highly praised by Shigeaki Nomura as her “greatest work to date.”
It certainly does have incredible power of description.
<Added on 9/30/2021> Kaoru Mitsumune received a perfect score and placed 5th in Pre-Battle’s “Autumn Watercolor Painting Competition 2021”
This time it was a high-level competition, with five people achieving full marks, so the winner was decided by the difference in “additional points (1-5 points).”
Kaoru Mitsumune’s “Strong and Light” was based on the theme of horse racing. She must have been very upset about losing the competition because She muttered “5th place… 5th place… 5th place…” eight times in a daze, but looking at the other works that received perfect scores, I think that this time it was inevitable.
The winner was Nobuyuki Tsuchiya of the comic duo Naitsu, who received 5 points for his “Superb Taste（Umasa Daienjo）”. The theme was “Ramen restaurants with long lines.
By the way, the second place went to Mai Tsujimoto’s “Sora,” which is themed around skateboarding.
The fourth place winner, Anmika’s “Ryuen,” which was themed around a knife craftsman, was also quite impressive.
<Added on 2021/7/22> Kaoru Mitsumune wins perfect score in Pre-Battle’s “Spray Art” contest
This time, at the invitation of the mayor of Tomisato City, Chiba Prefecture, the competition was held to compete in spray art with the themes of watermelon and horse (thoroughbred), which are symbols of Tomisato City. Kaoru Mitsumune’s work, “Tomisato Watermelon Horse,” won first place with a perfect score.
The spray art was highly praised for successfully incorporating the elements of both watermelon and horse, making it into a cute mascot character for Tomisato City.
<Added 2021/3/25> Kaoru Mitsumune was promoted to a scholarship student after getting a perfect score in Pre-Battle’s “Blackboard Art”!
Kaoru Mitsumune’s chalkboard art piece, “Before Dawn,” took 28 hours to complete. Her many talents have blossomed once again!
<Added 2020/9/24> Congratulations to Mitsumune Kaoru for winning Pre-Battle’s “Autumn Watercolor Painting Contest”!
Former AKB member Kaoru Mitsumune won her first title match with a perfect score of 100 points, drawing a beautiful Kirin statue at Nihonbashi in her first title match. Kaoru Mitsumune’s superb drawing skills can be summed up in one word: “breathtaking.”
<Added 2020/8/27> Congratulations to Kaoru Mitsumune on being promoted to Meijin 1st Dan in Pre-Battle watercolor painting!
Former AKB member Kaoru Mitsumune appeared on Pre-Battle for the first time in three years and was promoted to Master 1st Dan in watercolor painting.
Congratulations! She is a very talented person, so we look forward to her continued success.
News has come in that former AKB member Kaoru Mitsumune, who had been on hiatus due to mental and physical problems, has updated her Twitter page for the first time in almost a year.
https://twitter.com/mtmnkor/status/1037153806495055872
Regarding the future, she said, “I intend to take part in exhibitions and other activities myself,” and will consider whether to continue with her entertainment career in consultation with her agency.
She also announced that she will be holding a solo exhibition of her ballpoint pen drawings from January next year. Poster images and other images have been released.
I think the majority of fans of AKB and Nogizaka 46 are young men, but there are also some middle-aged otaku among them.
However, I’m just an ordinary man from the baby boomer generation, so I don’t know much about them.
However, I first learned of her existence when I was watching the TV program “Pre-Bato,” hosted by Masatoshi Hamada, and saw her demonstrate her expert talent for painting in the watercolor painting section.
Kaoru Mitsumune’s paintings are so far removed from those of an amateur that you would think she must have graduated from an art university.
You can get that feeling by looking at her sense of color, perspective, and composition.
However, her talent for painting and watercolors is entirely self-taught. Was she born with a natural talent for art?
She has also won first place in the “Ceramics” category of the same Pre-Battle competition in the past.
I look forward to seeing her future success in both watercolor painting and ceramics.
In September 2017, she confessed that “I have suffered from eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive symptoms since my teens, and I am repeatedly in a state where I cannot live my life as I please without being temporarily restrained,” which was interfering with her activities, and she went on hiatus in October of the same year.
Although she joined AKB in December 2011, she had been absent from the group since October 2012.
It was only through this news that I learned the circumstances behind her leaving AKB and that she was suffering from physical and mental illness.
In such a situation, I think it is very good to take a moment to reflect on herself and engage in “artistic activities” such as painting or pottery, which she love. I sympathize with her because I think that the entertainment world, which may seem glamorous at first glance, is very busy and the worries are not easy to come by.
I have high hopes for her future “artistic activities” (not “entertainment activities”).