Although yuriko was born and raised in Japan, her heart now belongs to India. During the last 12 years, she has performed the miracle of completely transforming her-self to fit into the indian environment, learning Hindi and assimilating herself in new cultural climate. She expresses herself in a refined tone in Hindi displaying an impressive grasp of the language. She has been actively participating in various group exhibitions and are camps, and gained an enviable popularity in the art circles.

Yuriko titled her last exhibition 'musafir'. The term which ordinarily would mean a traveler who is always on the move. but in a deeper sense, it implies much more. I am reminded of an Urdu couplet by the great poet Iqbal. He said:

'Dhoondta phirta hun main Iqbal apne ap ko
Ap hi goya musafir ap hi manzil hun main'

It would mean somewhat like this:

"Oh Iqbal, I have always been wandering, seeking my inner self. 
As if I am myself the voyager and the destination.'

Yuriko, perhaps, in similar spirit has undertaken a journey within. it seems to have provided her unique experiences of identifying with the creative Indian mind, and and the artistic and aesthetic concepts relating to the mysteries of life and the universe created during the course of centuries. Yuriko, in her 12 years of creative quest  in India, has established a unique affinity with the soul of India. 

the frequent references in her works, to Indian philosophy and myth, would have been impossible without a deep appreciation of the traditional Indian concepts, a delight in their painted form and beauty of colour, and their appeal both in the decorative sense and to the aesthetic emotion.

According to Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian Savant, 'all Indian art is a throwing out of a certain profound self -  vision formed by a going within to find out the secret significance of form and appearance, a discovery of the subject in one's deeper self, the giving of soul-form to that vision and remolding of the material and natural shape to express the psychic truth of it with the greatest possible purity and power of outline and greatest possible concentrated rhythmic unity of significance in all the parts of an individual artistic whole.'

In Yuriko's work, as it were, her self seems to have moved out into a spiritually sensuous joy of beautiful shapes and the coloured radiance of existence. Wherever there is an idealized imaginative realism, it seems that she has filled the outside with the subtler inner seeing, This is amply exemplified in her present series of works entitled 'Pancha Tattva' wherein she significantly has moved towards diagrammatic symbolism.

There is a sensuous appeal but it is refined into an element of the richness of psychic grace and beauty to express 'bhava' -a deeper spiritual on psychic feeling. the use of natural forms in intended to evoke by the form an idea - a truth of the spirit which starts from it as a suggestion and returns to it for support. It is a kind of merging of the experience of the outer look and inner vision in an endeavour to reveal the truth. The forms, Lines, and colours sought by her possess a psychic quality envisioned by the artist during her voyage of discovery - an intuition of the moment of the soul.

Unlike her rerlier works wherein she sensitively applied the law of significant line and the suppression of distracting detail to human and animal forms, buildings, trees, objects, the inspired harmony of abstract conceptual expression is evident in the present works. Her deep interest is revealed in interpreting in a spiritual sense, the profound meaning infused in the diagrammatic images. 

In her oeuvre of 12 years, Yuriko has opened her eyes to herself to discover the self and relate it to the universe. 

P. N. Mago