Q-1. Congratulations for catalogue raisonné that Phaidon has published about you and your work. Reading and enjoying it, I would say ‘oh, the guy from Hirosaki made it and made quite well. What it means to you?
A. Dr. Yeewan Koon, who wrote the text of this book, asked me so many questions that I really almost cried. This type of interview occurred several times in Hong Kong as well as in Japan. She also visited the north country town that I grew up in to experience the unique regional culture there, as well as the small northern communities that I have been visiting often in recent years to interview people there. Through extensive research and interviews, what she drew out was a precise answer to the question of how my sensibility was formed. I do not know what kind of meaning this book will have for readers. Some people may enthusiastically read the text over and over again while looking at the plates, and others might find that this impressively designed book makes for good décor on a shelf. Regardless of others’ reactions, for me, I feel that Dr. Koon’s text truly opened my eyes to “how my sensibility was formed” and “how my body of work has evolved.”
Q-2. I see you as a portrait painter in the tradition of Velázquez, Van Gogh, Warhol. Call me an idiot if you want or maybe this idea is Eurocentric but it is my perception about (part) of your work. Do you feel as a portrait painter in this tradition?
A. I never thought about this! However, I do think that I have always strived to paint self-portraits of my inner self. If I were to relate to a modern artist, I think about Giacometti. The way he worked philosophically, I have worked as my sensibility led me.
Q-3. I spoke the other day with a quite renowned artist in Spain, Lita Cabellut. She lives and works in Holland. She told me about her fears: success, making a big head of it, keeping humble to keep creating good inspiring stuff. How do you deal with success and which are your most terrible creative fears (if you have any)?
A. I did not become an artist because I wanted to. I never went knocking on gallery doors with a portfolio in my arms, as many aspiring young artists do. And even looking back at my student days, it was a moratorium during which I spent my days thinking about how wonderful it would be if this life of freedom could continue forever. At my school exhibition, I received a show offer from a gallerist, and as I continued to show, I received more and more offers from other countries. At some point, other people started to call me an “artist.” I do not have any deep relationships with people in the art category. Even now, the people that I talk to and laugh with the most are my friends from when I was a nobody. I am not hanging out with the movie star I met the other day or famous musicians. In the 90s when I worked part-time at a Japanese restaurant in Germany, I met other people from Japan’s northern country who have nothing to do with the world of art. Nowadays they have also returned to Japan, and I visit their hometowns to see them. My other good friends are indie musicians. I’m really not a humble person, and when I hang out with friends, I still have a rioting good time. I have very few art friends, and even when I have an opportunity to meet a celebrity, I have no interest in taking a picture and putting it on social media. Also, I have begun to realize that the object of my life is not to create or exhibit art. Several years ago, I visited a coal mine that my maternal grandfather worked in during the Japanese occupation of Sakhalin, which is now part of Russia. In the resource-rich country of Russia, when I stepped foot into the long abandoned ruins of that mine, I was surprised to feel that I had lived my whole life up to that point for this very moment. Going to art school, exhibiting in all kinds of places as an artist -- all of this felt like the roundabout road to my meeting with those ruins.
Q-4. Some years ago, you were quite fast starting and finishing a painting? Now I think you take more time? How is that? Is it about a feud between instinct and thinking?
A. Around the 90s, I created at a furious pace, spitting out work day after day. But after 2010, and experiencing the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, other things became more important than creating work, such as enjoying daily life away from the art scene, traveling, and visiting small communities in regional areas. Since then, my production pace has slowed down quite a bit and I’ve decreased my output. I also decreased the number of galleries I work with, and currently only have two. I try to only follow the will to paint.
Q-5. How do you choose a certain colour for a specific painting? Is the use of colour and its evolution something that defines you?
A. I think that recently, it’s the things around me, the things I see that determine the colors. For example, the ambiguous colors of nature that’s unique to spring as winter departs; the intense sunlight and intense squalls of summertime; the changing colors of the leaves in autumn -- all kinds of things in my environment influence my color sense. By the way, my favorite color is white. This may be because I grew up in snow country. My ability to sense what cannot be physically seen may come from my childhood days, when I endlessly enjoyed gazing out the window at the snowy landscape, imagining the invisible objects and colors hidden beneath the white snow.
Q-6. In the, let’s say 20 last years, we have witnessed a very powerful and engaging women’s movement throughout the World: Pussy Riot, Femen, #Metoo (of course) and a long etcetera in all the World. I think of you ‘big-headed girls’ paintings, each of them, as a sort of feminist manifesto. Maybe it is not your intention at all, but do you see it that way?
A. Perhaps. For example, when Ms. Greta Thunberg appeared in the world, I thought, have I been painting this person all along? This person I had never seen before now?
Q-7. What artists, musucians, cinema directors, alive or dead, would you like to encounter for, I don’t know, a coffee, a couple of beers, A rock concert?
A. For example, with a musician I greatly admire like Neil Young, I think it’s better to just see him onstage. Who I would want to meet would be people in the very deepest parts of my memory. The older neighborhood girl who treated me with kindness, or that young person I met while traveling whose name I don’t even know – these are the people I would dearly love to see again if I had a time machine. And this isn’t limited to people. It may also be landscapes that I saw as a child.
Q-8. Music was always like gasoline to propel your creative fire, but once the piece of art is done, is there any music left or the painting becomes silent waiting for the viewer to add his/her own soundtrack?
A. When I’m absorbed in my work, sometimes the record or CD finishes playing and my studio falls silent without me even noticing. Music is one detonator that triggers my creativity, but I feel like it’s not something that remains forever. I think that the music I hear when I step away from creating is the music I truly love.
Q-9. Today, while preparing the questions, I was listening to songs by Public Opinion Afro Orchestra or Mistery Jets… what’s in your mind these days, musically speaking?
A. Today I was listening to Better Oblivion Community Center and Hurray for the Riff Raff, also, Camper Van Beethoven and the like. (I used to love the Spanish New Wave band from the 80s, Radio Futura!)
Q-10. I travelled to Tohoku and the Fukushima area some time ago and I could still sea the mental scars of the tsunami in the people and the physical damage in the landscape. How did it change you as a person, as an artist?
A. Experiencing the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 opened my eyes to the history and region of my hometown, which I had disregarded up until then. I live 100km from the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. The coastal area from my current home to where I was born at the northern tip of Honshu was greatly damaged by the tsunami. For a long while I had no desire to create, and looking sideways at artists who were actively creating earthquake themed works, I was filled with sadness. I returned to my hometown, and together with my mother who lives alone, we went through storage to find things to donate to victims and loaded up the car to deliver them directly. Up until then, I hadn’t given any thought to these regional areas that have nothing to do with the art scene, nor my own hometown. But now, they became incredibly dear to me. After this, I asked my mother about our family history and my ancestors, and it led me to traveling to Sakhalin, where my maternal grandfather worked during the Japanese occupation. And then, in Sakhalin which used to be disputed territory between Russia and Japan, I met ethnic minority people who had been at the mercy of the tides of history. This led me to traveling to the southern island of “Taiwan,” occupied of old by the Dutch, the Qing Dynasty, and Japan, and to meet the indigenous people of the mountain regions there. Like the words that modern painter Paul Gauguin referenced in his title, “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” (Thomas Carlyle, “Sartor Resartus”), the newest awakening for me has been to look at my roots and to explore the events that made me who I am. I believe this will lead me to a new rebirth.
Q-11. (Have I earned an extra ball)? If so, please, tell me if you are going through confinement and how is it going?
A. I live in a highland pasture where I can see the mountains close by. I go to the nearby forests and mountains on a daily basis, but I rarely go into town where there are a lot of people, so I’m used to not going out. I go to Tokyo when I have business there but it’s not because I want to. The recent self-isolation order excuses me from having to go into town so I enjoy this. However, not being able to travel to my hometown for my mother’s 88th birthday party (88 years old is considered a very auspicious age in Japan), is something that makes me sad.
Translation by Chisato Uno