Wishing Takashi Amano a happy birthday in heaven today.
July 18, 1954 he would have been 70 today.At times like this, I like to reminisce and share nice thoughts and memories we have. I thought sharing my experiences with Amano and ADA would be interesting to some of you. At the very least, I'm passing down some oral history from our hobby.
From a my, US perspective of the hobby, I remember what it was like in the 1990s. The Internet was essentially bulletin boards. You could only access the Internet via dial-up and through one of the large Internet access companies like Compuserve. The Aquatic Gardeners Association had recently been reorganized and most of what you knew about growing plants came from magazines, the Aquatic Plant Digest or The Optimum Aquarium book by Dupla GmbH.
Everything changed when ADA published its first aquascaping book, Nature Aquarium World. Imagine that you have never seen an aquascape and the Internet that you know today doesn't exist. You get ahold of this book and open to the first pages where the most beautiful aquariums you have ever seen are in full-color two page spread. It was truly life changing for many of us back then. Amano was in a league of his own and years ahead of any of us in terms of plant health and aquascaping.
Back then, ADA has an English-speaking representative, Mihir Sapro. He was very nice and interested in connecting with American hobbyists. He arranged a very brief interview for me with Amano that I posted on Compuserve and today, unfortunately, is lost somewhere in the deep corners of the Internet. I then negotiated with them to allow me to import ADA products and in the late 1990s, I became their first US importer. It was exciting times.
Amano created the concept of the "nature aquarium". The idea is an aquarium that captures the essence of nature and that creates in the viewer the same sense of being in the presence of Mother Nature. He accomplished that beautifully.
Amano was always very passionate about expanding the hobby globally and he invited many delegates from different countries to the ADA headquarters to host an aquatic plant congress. Our friends from Aquarium Design Group were in attendance, I believe. Unfortunately, I didn't get an invite.
Then ADA created the IAPLC and the rest is history.
I hope that history remembers Takashi Amano as truly one of the greats of our hobby. Someone who's love of nature transformed the lives of many and who's skills and abilities remain, to this day, remarkable.
Thank you, Amano-san, for everything!