Eggs are such a food staple we often forget that an egg marks the first stage in the life of a chicken. With the arrival of spring, a life hard at work growing inside a fragile shell, closed off from the outside world, breaks out and emerges to take its first breath of earthly air. This bursting forth echoes our notions of the emergence of spring after the long dark of winter. It has clear parallels to the new that emerges when change so compels, overcoming the conventional, as with kara-wo-yaburu, which means to break out of one’s shell and to make a fresh start.

Freed from its narrow confines, the breath of new life takes to the air in high spirits, sallies forth on spring’s first boisterous breeze, and stretches exultant wings. The moment inspires life in all its myriad forms to birth and bloom.

Egg whites whipped into a delicate meringue—the transformation suggests the lion’s regal robes, a poodle’s pompadour, the stir of spirits on the arrival of spring. The work expresses this feeling of being drawn outside and the exhilaration of encounters with new things and things in new forms.

As daily we eat our eggs, may we daily mind the durable and infinitesimal egg of joy in our hearts.

Art director: Yasuko Sato