One of my favorite painters is Nui Sano. Her work exhibits a deep affection for the color blue, and the unique shade of blue she uses has even been referred to as "nuit blue."¹ The photo below shows a stained-glass window² inside the Hirosaki Civic Center in Aomori Prefecture (designed by Kunio Maekawa). It was created in 2014 to commemorate the center’s 50th anniversary, based on an original drawing by Sano.

When I think of blue-themed artworks, another artist who comes to mind is nakaban. I had the privilege of collaborating with him, for which I remain deeply grateful. Our partnership began when I asked him to help convey the academic field of bioethics, which explores perspectives on life, technology, and history, through media beyond academic papers, textbooks, and specialist literature. This led to the publication of the picture book Torata’s Apple (Illustrated by nakaban, planned by Jusaku Minari, and published by Iwanami Shoten, 2023). While the book centers on the theme of apples, I invite readers to freely imagine its connections to everyday commerce, the lineage of species, and symbolic representations of life, wisdom, and gravity.

Incidentally, 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the term mingei (folk craft), and commemorative exhibitions are being held across Japan. Mingei emphasizes the beauty and joy found in everyday objects and daily life. In this sense, I feel it resonates deeply with bioethics, which also considers how we live our lives. To me, bioethics is an inquiry into desirable values—and those worth revisiting—through the lens of life and death, daily living, society, and nature. This concept is not confined to specialized knowledge or experience; it can also be found in how we respond to scarcity or abundance, or how we behave when time is limited or plentiful.

What I aim for now is a form of bioethical reflection and practice that transcends the boundaries between specialized and everyday knowledge, perhaps called ringei, a coined term combining ethics (rin) and art/craft (gei ) to represent the fusion of ethics and art.

To further this connection, last year we organized a workshop at CiRA titled "Let’s Imagine Cells!"³ for elementary and junior high school students. This year, a video on bioethics produced by the Nippon Design Center, Inc. will be exhibited at the Kichikichi Information Hub in Kizugawa City, Kyoto Prefecture, until the end of June. It will also be shown during the Kizugawa Art 2025 event from late September to early October. I highly recommend you stop by to check it out if you are in the area.

Artwork Blue Time
(Original drawing by Nui Sano, planned by the Japan Traffic Culture Association)

1. Written by Jusaku Minari

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   Associate Professor, Uehiro Research Division for iPS Cell Ethics
   
   

1. Written by Jusaku Minari

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   Associate Professor, Uehiro Research Division for iPS Cell Ethics