April 2019 issue
FROM THE BOMB SHELTER
This painting is based on a staged photo of the moment right after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The model was a bomb survivor herself, and I thought there was some kind of truth there.
May 2019 issue
THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS
The late Woody Guthrie sang many protest songs. This painting comes from the phrase written on his guitar.
June 2019 issue
HOME
This work is based on a ballpoint pen drawing I did while watching a documentary on the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
July 2019 issue
STOP THE BOMBS
Now, even in this very moment, there is a bomb exploding somewhere in the world. But there must also be new life coming into the world in that moment too. “STOP THE BOMBS!” I feel this from the bottom of my heart.
August 2019 issue
NO WAR
People who grow up in a time without war, including myself, only know of war through the media. Still, we can appreciate the happiness of living in a world without war and be grateful.
September 2019 issue
PEACE GIRL
Why does girl, standing on top of perhaps the most infamous dictator of the 20th century, look a little mean? The more I think about the nature of peace, the more complicated it seems to be.
October 2019 issue
SWEET HOME GATE
The child is returning from a fun field trip. The school trip was fun, but home is still her favorite place to return to. Even when she grows up and moves away, I hope she still has that same feeling whenever she sees her home again.
November 2019 issue
Alone in the Wind
“The answer is blowin’ in the wind” — 21-year-old Bob Dylan sang about war and peace, human rights and freedom. Looking around at the world and society now, nearly 60 years later, the lyrics of “Blowin’ in the Wind” still speak to us, their power unfaded by time. The figure in the painting stands, confronting a sense of powerlessness, feeling that they are also just blowin’ in the wind.
December 2019 issue
NO NO NO
A long time ago, they said I was going through a rebellious phase, but even now as a full-grown adult, I still feel like I’m rebelling against something. I want to scream at the top of my lungs against the injustice in the world. There are times I want to cry over how helpless I feel. Yet there is definitely something in my heart that gives me the strength to shout “NO.”
January 2020 issue
Girl Left Behind the Night
For over 10 years now, I’ve been creating paintings composed like ID photos. When I’m working with pencil and paper, I draw all kinds of things freely, but when working with paint on canvas, it’s always a frontal face. A frontal face staring out at us doesn’t offer the wide variety of possible compositions that full-length portraits do, and to be honest, it’s difficult to continue painting these as a series. But I keep at it, like some kind of training. I don’t even know why myself, but I think that I’m in training. (But training for what?)
February 2020 issue
Peace of Mind
If you close your eyes quietly, you look peaceful. To be honest, I think it’s a little easier to paint a face with the eyes closed than with them open. I think this is because the quiet peacefulness of closed eyes is similar to my mental state when I’m creating. In my case, when my eyes are open, I see too much and can’t see with the eyes of my heart.
March 2020 issue
In the Box
About 20 years ago, I often used to create paintings of children in boxes. At the time, I lived in Germany and had just graduated from art school in that faraway land. It might have been an expression of how difficult it was for me to move about in a foreign country. That said, why the box again? I don’t know, but I let my brush move mindlessly and the painting ended up like this. One hand seems to be pointing at something, but unfortunately, I don’t know what it is now.
April 2020 issue
Invisible Vision
What I want to express hasn’t changed over the years, but sometimes the way I paint undergoes a sudden change. The beginning of this change is like a hint, and sometimes it leads to an answer of sorts, but at other times, it’s just a hint. This painting is probably a hint towards the next work, but I feel like the answer is far away…
May 2020 issue
TOMORROW'S FAR AWAY
A phrase that suddenly comes to me is often something I heard in a song somewhere, sometime. First, I’ll have an image in mind and when I start to paint it, words that I encountered in my past will come to me. Sometimes it’s the opposite, but the words stockpiled in my head and heart come to me, as if to accompany my painting. A faraway tomorrow must be a bright, shining tomorrow. No matter how far away that place is, as long as you keep walking towards it, you’ll get there.
June 2020 issue
Little Thinker in Silence
Looking back, I realize I’ve been making ceramic works for over 10 years now. I first learned to use a potter’s wheel and made pots and tableware to understand the characteristics of clay. Eventually I started to create figurative objects and continue to this day, but at a certain point, I stopped using glazes to coat the ceramic. By applying a glaze and firing, the work undergoes a shocking transformation, and I’ve come to reject relying on this power of coincidence. I was drawn to the primordial power of ancient pots and clay figurines created before the discovery of glazing, so I started completing my pieces in what would be called a bisque state. This life-size head was created in the early days of this. There was no dramatic change from before it was fired and after. I titled this head Little Thinker in Silence.
July 2020 issue
Little Thinker in the Garden
I created this ceramic piece, Little Thinker in the Garden, during the same period as last month’s Little Thinker in Silence. Thinking for a long time surrounded by plants, I felt like new shoots were growing out from the top of my head, like a plant. Maybe plants do their thinking with their roots too, not just aboveground, so I would like to make this again in another form. So, what kind of form would that be? (lol)
August 2020 issue
Girl with Drum Sticks
I help out at a small music and art festival held in a Hokkaido forest at the end of summer. We buy tents and other things for renting out, and end up with cardboard boxes to dispose of, but I don’t just put them into recycling. I break down the boxes, cut and connect the pieces, and paint on them. I painted a music-loving child coming to the festival. The child in this painting is bigger than me! (lol)
September 2020 issue
Girl with Guitar
Girl with Guitarforms a pair with Girl with Drum Sticks from last month’s cover. I saved the colors I used, and I think I was aiming for a simple kind of energy, like the kind of power of drawing with pencils or pens in one go. I always try things without thinking too much about it, and sometimes I’ll look for a reason after it’s finished, but a good one doesn’t come to mind. But the painting says, “I don’t need a reason!” (Let’s just say that it does… lol)
October 2020 issue
Light Haze Days / Study
This painting turned out differently than usual somehow… I mean, I wasn’t trying to do something new, but the anxiety born in my heart due to the global pandemic may have come through somehow. Completion wasn’t the goal or answer; I was conscious of the unfinished state as I put my brushes down. The color placement and brushstrokes feel like modern painting from an age ago. The title is Light Haze Daysbut I later added Study.
November 2020 issue
Through the Break in the Rain
The rainy season was unusually long this year. I was having trouble finishing the painting I was working on and agonizing over it, when one day, the rain stopped and sunlight came through a gap in the clouds, and the painting was suddenly completed. For me, this piece is at once both my usual painting and also something that feels different; maybe this is because of that single moment of sunshine that guided me. My skills must have a general average, but my feelings are always influenced by chance.
December 2020 issue
Empty-Handed (Japanese title: Toshukuken)
The opposite of empty-handed (Toshukuken) is fully armed. Toshukuken is basically fighting with bare hands, holding nothing. At first glance, this phrase may seem like it came from China, but in fact, it turns out to be Japanese. A Chinese person said to me, “We call that Sekishukuken.” I looked it up, and Sekishukuken is when you fight empty-handed by choice, and Toshukuken is when you have no people or weapons to rely on, but you accept that situation and fight empty-handed. But for me, either phrase is fine. The important thing is to make a choice and go for broke!
January 2021 issue
Banging the Drum
“banging the drum” is a song by the bloodthirsty butchers, and is part of their 2005 album of the same title. Of course, I love this song. “Screaming and attract / Gazing at the world / Flip it upside down but nothing changes / Looking at a strange thing / Events unfolding rapidly / Dazzling me with dizziness / Burn it into my eyes / Bang the drums right now”
February 2021 issue
Dead Flower 2020 Remastered
There is another painting with this same title that I created at age 34, in 1994. The depicted image is also the same. I really like that painting, and whenever I have a retrospective exhibition, I try to borrow it, but the owner rarely loans it out. So I decided to paint another one, like remastering a music recording. In ‘94, I painted it in one go, despite some worries. But the painter I am now has fixed things that the past me didn’t even notice, like sound leaks, unnecessary noise, and weakness in the assembly, resulting in an image with a strong structure. I also increased the size. Now, how’s my singing at this age, on this old song of mine?
March 2021 issue
In the Pink Water
There was a painting I had done on some old pieces of cloth stitched together. I wasn’t satisfied with how it turned out, so I found some stretcher bars and re-stretched it, then primed it with white to create a new painting. Since the texture of the old fabric was already strong, I created the painting in a simple manner. The child was originally standing but I painted over her legs with pink, placing her in a pink river. Ordinarily, I don’t use strong colors like pink over large areas, so I was surprised at myself. While working on this painting, I was listened to a homemade CD made by G. Yoko from Ishigaki Island, so I think this bold pink color came from the tropics.