“With the limitlessness of our great, far-reaching, expansive cosmos, no matter how many microscopes one buys we will never stop having fun looking through them.”

If you climb the stairs to the observation deck, you can look over the fields where Kumagusu once did his research: Tanabe Bay and Kashima Island, and beyond that, the town of Tanabe where he lived. And even further beyond that, the mountains of Kumano.

The “kuma” portion of Kumagusu’s name, which comes from the name of the Kumano region, can have an additional meaning besides “bear”, and that is “nooks” or “shadows”, the dark places between things. Just like the meaning suggests, Kumagusu’s once fiery bright eyes continue to gaze upon a muggy, dark, shadowy world. From his early twenties, he turned his attention towards not bright, flowering plants, but to mushrooms, slime molds, moss, ferns, algae and other cryptogams. Unlike simple flowering plants, cryptogams don’t show us their parts so freely. The secrets of all things in nature are not so easily seen.

Kumagusu strove to find the boundaries between things. The east and the west. Animals and plants. Men and women. Life and death. Self and the world. Dreams and reality. In the places where the utmost limits of both sides are intertwined and mixed together is where you will find the secrets of the universe.

Now, looking at the world through Kumagusu’s eyes, you may realize that things look a little bit different. Kumagusu’s method of searching has only just begun.