During the 60s and 70s Yoshida had largely been painting on paper, working, on a small scale, in a recognisably abstract expressionist style. From the early 80s he devoted himself to ever larger works in oil on canvas, which incorporated gold, silver and platinum leaf sections that derive entirely from the Japanese tradition. With his unique title now firmly established as 命 - Inochi (La Vie or Life), these larger canvases became increasingly cosmic and mystical, often seeming, in the fine formulation of Lawrence Smith, former Keeper of Japanese Prints at the British Museum, ‘to be portraits of the created universe itself.’