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In the late 2000s, Tanaami drew inspiration from a Chinese folk tale known in Japan as Kochuten. Based on the Book of the Later Han, it describes an elderly medicine seller, who is also an immortal sage (xian in Chinese, sennin in Japanese), leaping into a gourd-shaped vessel at night and discovering an incredibly majestic palace of immortals. The story is a parable conveying the importance of cultivating and deepening one’s own unique realm even while living in the mundane world. Tanaami envisioned the vessel in the story as a conduit between this world and the next. His paintings bring together auspicious motifs such as goldfish, peaches, and monkeys—referencing folk prints celebrating the Chinese New Year—with fantastical creatures in a radiant space, representing his conception of a utopian paradise.