The Day the Sunshine Man Came,
the Haze Vanished

Happy, but not quite satisfied

For more than two months, I lived under a white sky. Then a friend twelve years my senior arrived from Japan. The moment he arrived, the haze vanished. He worked under blue skies, took photographs, and flew back to Japan. Since he left, it has stayed sunny. I am happy. I am. And yet, somehow, I am not satisfied.

Shinya Takei, Managing Partner, GASPARD & CO.31 October 2026

White clouds billowing in a blue sky, with a sailing ship’s masts beyond the trees — The sky after the haze. Clouds look like clouds again. That alone brings a tear to the eye.

Two grey months

This year’s haze went on and on. It began in Sarawak on Borneo in early August and spread to the Malay Peninsula by the end of the month. Smoke from Indonesian forest fires and land burning rode the southwest monsoon over again and again. On 30 August, the Prime Minister’s National Day address was moved from an open-air square to an indoor venue because of the smoke. Even the nation’s birthday was sent indoors by the haze.

Into October, the sky stayed white. On the morning of 23 October, a station near Klang recorded an Air Pollutant Index of 162, firmly “unhealthy”. Masks became part of our faces, laundry dried indoors, and the air purifier worked harder than anyone in the family. When I wrote about haze in No. 4, I never imagined it would last into autumn.

The sunshine man lands

Then a friend arrived from Japan. He is twelve years older than me, but we share a surprising amount: world travel, gadgets, Leicas, photography and business. It was a short stay, part work and part photography. On 26 October, he reached my town.

The moment he arrived, the haze vanished. Not a figure of speech. Strictly speaking, the sky had begun to pale the day before, as if it sensed him coming. And on the morning of the 27th, every station around Kuala Lumpur left the “unhealthy” band, and some went back to “good”. A sky that had been white the week before was blue, as if repainted.

Kuala Lumpur’s air. After nearly two months loitering in the “unhealthy” band, the line dropped like a stone as the sunshine man arrived.

Sunlit café interior with blue sky and white clouds beyond tall windows — My usual café. Through the window, clouds have shapes again. Even the shadows on the floor are sharp.

He worked under that blue sky, took photographs, ate well, and flew back to Japan. The Malaysia in his Leica must look like this all year round.

Dappled sunlight on a concrete wall and the glass entrance of a café — Even the leaves cast proper shadows. In haze season, shadows were blurred too.

Speaking as a photographer, the essence of photography on the equator is contrast. At three degrees north, the sun in Kuala Lumpur beats down almost from directly overhead. Where the light falls, it nearly blows out to white; right beside it lies a shadow as deep as spilled ink. That gap between light and shadow is the flavour of equatorial photography.

Haze strips that flavour away completely. Smoke scatters the light, blurs the edges of shadows and turns the world into a single flat sheet of grey. For two months, shadows disappeared from my photographs. To a photographer, a sky without shadows is like food without salt.

The sunshine man gave my photographs their shadows back. For that, at least, I am honestly grateful.

And since he left, it has stayed sunny.

Happy, but not satisfied

Happy, of course. Blue sky for the first time in two months. And yet something does not sit right.

After a while I worked out why. I wanted him to breathe a little smoke. To see that white sky, if only for a day. People call those they have suffered with their companions. Someone who has not shared the hardship, however kindred a spirit, looks somehow like a tourist going home with nothing but stories. Petty of me, towards a friend twelve years my senior.

In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy spends decades in prison for a crime he did not commit, then crawls through 500 yards of sewer pipe to stand in the rain of freedom. My friend, by contrast, walked out of the arrivals gate and into blue sky. Anyone who had crawled through the pipe would have something to say about that. I had spent over two months in the prison of haze.

The reveal

Of course, I know who the real sunshine man is. According to the Malaysian Meteorological Department, the northeast monsoon began on 27 October. It is the season when the wind blows from the South China Sea and keeps Indonesian smoke away from Malaysia. The clear spell is expected to last until around July next year.

He reached my town on 26 October. The northeast monsoon began the next day. In other words, he arrived on the eve of the monsoon change, as if he had timed it. Scientifically, the sunshine man is the monsoon. But arriving a day early is very much what a sunshine man would do.

Even so, I will call him the sunshine man. It may be rude to a friend twelve years older, but it makes a better story. And when the haze returns next summer, I will have an excuse to invite him back. This time, I plan to switch off the air purifier a week before he lands.

A morning sky with feathery white clouds, the rising sun and a distant plane — Morning sky. The small plane at top left is probably not the sunshine man’s flight. He has already gone home.

Gaspard Redemption

I have, in fact, a personal memory of The Shawshank Redemption.

There was a time when the business simply would not work and I could see no way out. Back then, the man from our venture capital investor, who also sat on our board as an outside director, said quietly one day: “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” It is a line from that film, he said, and explained nothing more.

It felt like an order to watch it, so I did that weekend. To be honest, it did not fill me with hope straight away, and I lacked Andy’s patience to chip through a wall for years with a little rock hammer. Yet in the end, I slowly broke free of my captivity, and the business, for reasons I still do not understand, got on track. The line never left the back of my mind.

He now holds one of the most important posts in Japan. I have never asked him how much that remark mattered. He would probably say, “Did I say that?” Perhaps that is what a good outside director is like.

In the film, Andy writes to his friend Red: hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

For those of us living under a hazy sky, hope means the northeast monsoon. And, now and then, an unsuspecting sunshine man from Japan.

Next time you visit, I would be most grateful if you came at the height of the haze. Half a day will do. Let us cough together under the white sky. After that, we can wait for blue sky together. That, I suspect, is what a friendship twelve years apart is like.