The following information was submitted February 2006 by Norman Davies, art scholar and book dealer from Torrance, California. His source is the book Hiro Yamagata Earthly Paradise, by Edward Leffingwell.


At the age of nineteen he left his home in Malbara, Japan near Kyoto, and began his travels. First he went to Tokyo where he stayed for five years and assisted a professor and worked in advertising as an illustrator for Coca Cola and Automotive companies. Then he went to Milan, and at age 24, arrived in Paris in 1972. There he met many writers and musicians that had some influence on his work, and he was introduced to the French Poet Jacques Prevert, whose influence took s...