1997 SHIMANTO RIVER SPHERES, Higashitsuno Village, Kochi Prefecture, Shikoku Island, Japan.   Organised by Syunpachi Hata in collaboration with Higashitsuno Village Council, funded by private sources and with assistance from the British Council. I worked for two weeks in a deep river gorge on the headwaters of the Shimanto River. A short stretch of old track had been built into the gorge, but had been abandoned after a tunnel had been blasted through the mountain, and the wooden bridges had collapsed. In this very beautiful, mysterious place, perched 50m above a cascade of waterfalls and with another 50m of rock overhang above, I made five spheres decreasing in size from 2m diameter to 0.5m. I was helped in this by an enthusiastic group of local villagers. The works were solid, open, solid, open, solid; the largest was made from split bamboo and filled with yellow ginko leaves; the remaining closed spheres were made from bamboo and vine filled with cedar moss. The open spheres were made from woven split bamboo and vine. The spheres contained tree seeds so that in time, as they began to break down, the seedlings would take root and grow.