Q-1. How would you define your oeuvre?
A. Something that was formed by influences from childhood memories, recurring feelings, and music subculture; outside of the context of art history or art criticism. Then was expressed in a form that the world categorizes as art (particularly drawing). For myself, it feels like a diary.
Q-2. In your book, some works were not meant to be published. What made you change your mind and publish them?
A. Maybe because I’ve started to experience daily that there are people out there who want and care for my work even more than I do, regardless of whether I like it or not. Also, on the opposite end from people who look at my work superficially or buy it as a financial investment, there is my pure audience, and I thought that through this book, they would be able to understand who I am as a human being beyond just my work. In fact, Yeewan Koon not only conducted many lengthy interviews; she also visited the place where I grew up and the small communities in the north country of Japan, and she truly understood how my artist sensibility came to be formed.
Q-3. In your artworks, you sometimes represent real people: Greta Thunberg, Ramones... What makes you choose a particular person?
A. When I learned of Ms. Greta, I felt that I had always been trying to create a portrait of a girl like her, even before I knew of her. No, in fact, even before she was born. It somehow just made sense. The doodle-like drawing of a girl that looks like Greta in the book is less a portrait of her, and more a portrait of all young people who are like her in the world. As for the Ramones, I think I was listening to their music and my desire to pay respect to them as a fan is what led me to create those pieces.
Q-4. Which is the role that music plays in your creative process?
A. It’s not just in my creative process; music is something that has always been by my side in my everyday life. It’s the same with literature and film. It’s not that they are necessary to my creative process, but rather necessary to who I am as a person, before an artist.
Q-5. You are a socially committed artist. Do you think COVID-19 will inspire you in your future works?
A. Seeing the reactions of people all over the world to COVID-19 now, and seeing how they reacted to the Great Plague or the Spanish Flu in the past, is verifying how humanity confronts these pandemics; not so much from a medical standpoint but from a human standpoint. I am hopeful that I can incorporate something deep into my work from this, though not with specifically a COVID-19 theme, but as humanity, or as an individual human being.
Q-6. Drawings, sculptures, photography... Would you like to add something else to your artwork’s list?
A. I loved to doodle since I was a child, and I would draw like it was a picture diary. Sometimes I would add short sentences to the drawings, and at other times I would write just text by itself, like little stories or poems. I’ve been doing photography since my early teens, and I was in my 20s when I really started with paintings (tableaus) and sculpture. Regardless of whether or not they are at the level of being called “artwork,” I think that I would like to organize all of the poetry I’ve written and publish them.
Translation by Chisato Uno