There's a faint scent of incense as you crawl through a knee-high door into a pebble-filled corridor that leads into a white igloo-like space, just big enough to fit three people. "This is my meditation room," says Akiyoshi Taniguchi, the curator who is introducing Kurenboh, a tiny modern gallery located in Kuramae in Tokyo's Taito Ward.
"Meditation room" is an unusual way to describe a gallery that has exhibited the works of leading photographers such as Yuki Onodera, Naoya Hatakeyama and William Eggleston. But then Taniguchi himself is an unusual kind of curator — he is also a Buddhist priest.
Taniguchi trained as a monk when younger and in 1988 became the head priest of the Buddhist temple Chohouin, which was founded during the Muromachi Period (1336-1573) by his ancestors.