I've always felt that music is about the beauty of nature, turned into sound, and a lot of my music is about the natural world. Some of my instrumental music has nature titles like April Whirlwind, Pastorale, and Summer Solstice. Most of the vocal music I've written uses poems about beauty in nature also.

I composed a Snowy Evening in 1973, when I was in high school. To me, snow is very special and magical. The world seems changed when covered by a blanket of snow. When Yukiko Ishida asked me to write a new song to premiere at Suntory Hall, I remembered how beautifully she sings Snowy Evening, so I wanted to write a new song about snow, which is also the meaning of the name Yuki. I wrote the poetry myself to express the many beautiful images of snow as a magical kind of nature. I wrote the poem in English, then had it translated into Japanese, and then I composed the music for the Japanese version of the poem.