Hideo Furuta was born in Hiroshima in 1949, a mere four years after the city had been the first in the world to be targeted by a nuclear bomb at the end of the Second World War. He studied art and philosophy there, then later in Tokyo, before moving to Chile in 1984. It wasn't until 1985 when he came to Britain and in 1994 he contributed this stone-based work to the Grizedale Sculpture scene. It was a very subtle sculpture, to the point where you could almost walk past it, not knowing it was there (as I did in 1994 it would seem - the above photo is from the Grizedale Archive). The idea was of a ruined temple, with 'windows' carved into the rock face. Furuta said of 'Temple Of The Forest':

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"I have learned that successful sculptures in the forest are those which have revealed the secret of the forest. In my case I concentrated to bring up quartz lines shown up on the surface of the carved form."

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Hideo Furuta died in November 2007. By that time he had become a familiar and much-loved figure in Creetown, near Galloway in Scotland. One of his final projects was to remodel the town's Adamson Square, a project which Furuta saw as his gift to the town that had been so welcoming to him and his family. The Scotsman was moved to write in an obituary:

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"Hideo Furuta was a remarkable man and an outstanding sculptor. No-one who knew him will soon forget his striking figure, lean and wiry with wild hair and beard, often dressed, no matter what the context, as though he had just emerged from the quarry where he regularly worked, hewing stone, all the hours of daylight, winter and summer.

If he did look wild, as soon as you spoke to him you felt his infectious warmth and charm. As you got to know him, you learned to respect his transparent integrity and deep seriousness, but to understand, too, how that was always tempered by his humour and his generosity."