For the longest time, my inner dictionary of prosaic Japanese simply tagged the word kanashii with "sad." But no more. In classical Japanese, I have discovered, kanashii has the dual meaning of both sorrow and tenderness, and can be written with the Chinese characters for either sadness or love.

It is the lost nuances of the word that Yuumi Domoto, 43, alludes to with her most recent series of oil paintings, titled "Kanashi." More than two dozen of the canvases, which set simple black line drawings against colorful abstract backgrounds, are now showing at three different Tokyo art spaces.

The prestigious Gallery Koyanagi on the Ginza has 21 small- to medium-size "Kanashi" works, and their sister gallery, the Koyanagi Viewing Room in Shinkawa, in Tokyo's Chuo Ward, has five larger paintings from the same series. Finally, the Paris-born, Tokyo-based Domoto is showing three more "Kanashi" paintings as part of her participation in the annual Tsubaki-kai show at Shiseido Gallery. (Also at the Tsubaki-kai 2004 are Yasue Kodama, Toeko Tatsuno, Mitsuko Miwa, Naoaki Yamamoto, Noe Aoki, Rury Iwata and Wakiro Sumi.)