How would you name and describe your profession?
Editor.
Because I read so many descriptions like artist, photographer
I am not an artist!
I even read social anthropologist...
Really?
Yeah.
I don't know what that means... No, I am editor. So basically my job is making books and magazines. But sometimes its difficult to work with photographers, writers or other people, because of the limitation of budget and time and also because of the difficulty of communication - just to explain what I want to do.
So, eventually I started to write by myself and I started to take photos by myself - and purely from economical reason...
Is there any manager or agency that is helping you out with the numerous exhibitions abroad?
No, no...
You do it all by yourself?
Yeah. Of course there are some people helping me but I don't belong to any grand gallery - so, basically I am by myself. And I'm not an artist. It's not that I am showing my artistic photos - I am not an artistic photographer. With my photos I am showing some unknown artists. Therefore I am just the medium to show European or American people what no other Japanese media covers. [...] It's documentary in a way. I want the people to see what is inside the photo, like that strange architecture or interior. It's not about if these photos are beautiful or not...
So you would consider that to mediate Tokyo architecture or Tokyo strange places to other people as your main concept or main issue?
It's not only Tokyo...
Of course...
I am covering a lot of things, like back-in-the-countryside sex-museums that nobody knows. Usually these people who design that kind of things, these spaces, they are not considered as artists or architects at all, but in some cases their work is much more stimulating than any Avant-garde to me and much more familiar to most of the Japanese people. There are not many people who can commission Tadao ANDO to build their own house. But there are a lot of Japanese people who at least go once in their life to a Love Hotel. So this is much more interesting but no architecture media covers that. I mean it's not like trying to find funny subjects - it's about showing the other side of the creativity in Japan, which then is misunderstood in many cases as the attempt to be ironical.
That would have been my next question....
It's totally opposite! If it looks like ironical, my work, my writing, my photos are not good enough, I think. Because it's a very, very positive journalistic approach I am trying to make.
I see. Where do you get your first initial idea to start a project, like the project about the Tokyo Style?
It's just happening all the time...I don't know...maybe 10, 15 years ago I started to have very young friends around 15 years younger than me. And these young kids, they didn't have much money, you know, so going out meant not to go out to some clubs, but to go to some friend's place to eat and drink.
So I started to see a lot of young kids' apartments and they were small and dirty - but in the same way very comfortable and I thought it would be nice to see more of these. I looked at many interior or architecture magazines, but nothing! That's why I felt I have to do that.
And it's the same about the Roadside Japan. You see, all you read in travel magazines is about Hot Springs and food and drinks, but the reality is not like that. The same with architecture - architecture magazines never ever do issues on Love Hotels or similar topics. I am not trying to find something un-normal. My work comes from the professional media's lack of energy that has lead to the fact that they are always showing the same stuff. [...]
And the interesting things are going away pretty soon. A lot of sex-museums are closing down and then the old-style Love Hotels are closing down. And if I don't catch them, they're all gone. It's like, you know, you go out to the jungle and take photos of some rare animals or something.
In your books, for example the Tokyo Style, the layout mainly shows some big pictures and a text. Sometimes I think the language you use is a little bit sloppy. [...]
No I am just trying to write, like I talk. I am not an academic writer - I hate those kinds of texts anyway, because you can't read most of them. [...] I have been writing to regular Japanese people for a long time, like twenty-five years or something. I have been trying all the time to write more plain or easy to understand. In a way that's more difficult. [...] That's why I don't ask anybody to write for my books - your befriended critic's text or something - I don't like that. [...] But usually that's the way books are made...with long intellectual texts...
A preface...
Yeah...
So let us talk about this project a little more. It was the first big project that edited under your own name?
Before this I did a series called Art Random - it's mentioned here, I think.
Yes, those 102 volumes on the international art scene of the 1980s.
Exactly. That was my first big project. Before that I was only publishing in magazines. So this is the second one.
Do you have a favorite spot in here?
Oh no! All of them are my favorite. What I like is that most of them don't exist any more. I think ninety percent of them are already gone.
Because the people moved?
Yeah. When you live in a smaller place it's easier to move. [...] When they found a new group of friends or a new place to eat or something, they just moved. I like that attitude. You know, we are always told to build up our own place and personalize it so it expresses our own self. And that's fine - it's ok. But there can be also a different approach to life, you know, like changing your clothes from summer to winter. If you are able to change your interior or your living environment, you will feel different. That's what you can do in the city - in an urban space.
In the countryside it's different.
So many Tatami rooms appear in here, maybe san-j™ or yon-j™-han or something. I think they are the perfect space or the perfect module for this kind of living: the hopping around the city. If that place doesn't fit anymore you just move to the next one.
I mean I wrote about it, but for these people having an apartment doesn't mean much. I mean this guy didn't choose this apartment because of this apartment. He maybe considered about his friends living around there and, you know his favorite bars or his favorite bookshops. [...] Because the apartment is modular everything is much easier, you don't have to recostumize. But then, they don't care about interior, anyway.
Did you know some of those people before or was there any relationship in advance?
No, nothing. First of all I never do location-hunting, that means I never go before I should. Mostly it was the first time for me to go to these apartments and first time to meet them. I found those people from friends and their friends, they lived sometimes in the same apartment.
So you called them before?
Yes, most of the cases, I at least called before or met someone in a bar or something. There we would talk about what I was doing and if I could go to see his or her place.
But in some cases I went to some place and I asked the people there: "Do you know someone in the other apartments?" "Well, next door lives my friend, so let's try to go in." Sometimes it wasn't locked and I just entered. And he said he would tell the other guy later. So in some cases I didn't even see the people inside.
Yes, I was wondering because in this book you cannot find any people. In the exhibition that is now presented in Paris, the Happy Victims, you have a similar setting, but the persons are the focus. Why did you choose for this work not to show the people? I mean, you might be able to guess from those photos, who is it...who is living here...
But that's how you see the people, right?
If there is this kind of nice-looking girl or something, you don't see the interior. I am sure everybody has seen so many of these sorts of apartments on private photos, but they don't see the space because they concentrate on the human beings inside. Furthermore, in this way without the people inside you get much more stimulation to your imagination. So you will see much more closely. And you see this or that must be the girl and while you try to find a clue to the person that is living there. If you have a person inside the photo you don't use your imagination at all. And a good photo or a bad photo - it totally depends on the look of that person. I mean if she looks nice - it's better, if she is naked - it's better, but it will never be about the interior. The exhibition I am doing in Paris right now is not about the interior...it's about the person and his or her fashion collection. For me this series is totally about people. But basically my photos are without people. Basically like this.
Which kind of equipment did you use?
Large format camera. Four by Five. Six by six, because I wanted to do the same approach as the professional architecture photographer [...] He wants to catch that beautiful house in the most beautiful way...So he takes time, sees that everything is okay, checks and checks again...I did the same approach, because I wanted to respect these small places.
But you didn't use any special lights
No. Because you see like that. [...] It was impossible to use artificial light, and the electric outlets were full anyway, so I couldn't install a big lighting system.
And I didn't have a car. I used a scooter to go around. I could only bring just one camera-bag and one set of tripod.
Did you arrange anything?
No, no. I couldn't arrange anything because it was perfect as it was.
This book was made ten years ago. So if you would go out and try to make the same book now again - you said before that meanwhile they all have moved, but maybe you could find other people - would you find the same style again?
Yes, absolutely. Because, at the end of 2001 or one and a half year ago I made another book called Universe for Rent. The time of the Tokyo Style was around the period when Japan was on the final stage of the Bubble Economy. Now it is the bottom, right? So each person's lifestyle changed a lot.
But for all those poor kids it's still the same. It doesn't make much difference. Some changes of course: you see TV in every room, but in some places nowadays you wouldn't have TV but a computer-set. And mobile phones instead of just regular phones...only these small differences. [...]
How did you feel among these spaces?
I...
When you entered these spaces...
I envied them.
Really?
Yeah, because they might have been poor, but for a 4 1/2-Tatami room they paid like 20.000\ per month and that meant they didn't have to work a lot. [...] I didn't feel pity for them at all - that would have made a totally different book.
I didn't expect pity regarding that book....
In a way they were happy like that. I mean they could have moved to some suburbs where they would have had a bigger space. But they didn't do that. It was more important that they could walk back from their favorite bar or something like that. You know, it's not like a rich style. The very important thing is that you have the choice of living in the suburbs in a nice space or living in the center in a very small space. That's the advantage of living in this kind of mega-sized city like Tokyo, cause there are so many choices. I think for that, Tokyo is one of the perfect examples, because there is no zoning here. Like this area. It is one of the most expensive areas, but you can find a very cheap apartment here. It's not like the very expensive area here and the ghetto there. Therefore it's mixed and you can choose a lot of different styles of living. [...] But not only Japan. There was the pocket book version of Tokyo Style, published by an American publisher and it was sold very well in New York. The reason is that it is very difficult to have a large space in New York. A lot of people have to live in very small spaces. So they are buying my book not for an exotic reason but for a very practical one...
A lot of advices you give in here...
Oh yeah! People naturally gave different responses, but for me, this life here doesn't look pity.
May I ask you some questions about your person?
Yeah.
Where did you grow up? In Tokyo, right?
Ahh, around here.
So you have been always in the same area?
No, I mean, I was born and raised around here, but when I grew up, I moved out from my parent's house and I went to a lot of apartments around Tokyo. Sometimes I lived in Kyoto, but now here. But I rent another apartment, quite nice in Nakano...
In Nakano...?
Yeah, I like moving...
That's where I am living, too...
Oh yeah? That's nice.
In Honcho
Ah honto?
I like it there.
Cause, I mean, I don't have family - so for me it's really easy to move around. I don't want to stick to one place. I don't have any desire to have a nice house.
I want to be able to stay in that moving stage, because for journalists it is the most important working basis.
What do you remember of your childhood's room? Was it a traditional one or...
No, no, a concrete build apartment.
Some items you always think of or you still have?
No, no, no... I don't want to carry my history around, I even don't have a family photo album.
Really? Well, this is so important to Europeans...
To Japanese, too [...]
Where do you live in America, may I ask?
I don't live there. Right now it is my long-term project to go to different states, all states of America, 15...
The extension of the Roadside Japan?
Yeah, the Roadside America. So basically I go to a different state each month. At least I have to go there 15 times. But I go to the countryside every time, Next week I go to Kentucky.
Like most of the people I meet are so poor, so simply living. And you know, there's a young father, a mother, two kids living in a mortar-house or something. It's about 500$ a month, but, you know, Bill Gates earns 500$ each second - even when he is sleeping. So there's so much difference in money. [...]
I see. You seem to travel these days a lot. Europe and America and for the Roadside Japan you traveled a lot in Japan of course. How does this kind of mobility affect your work or the way you work?
You know, when you travel, people turn to think, that the reason for traveling is to get the tourist's experience, to see the things you haven't seen before. The new things, but to me it's much more important to go out to some other place and meet someone who is somehow like me. That makes me feel I could live there, if I couldn't live in Tokyo. From that experience you have more choices in a way. If you cannot do what you want in Berlin, you can come to Tokyo, once you know Tokyo. Before you came to Tokyo, you probably thought that Tokyo is one of the most expensive cities where it is difficult to live of course...
It hasn't been how I expected it to be at all...
But now it's kind of understandable, right? You have one more choice now, if you do something really bad, or you cannot find any interesting job in Berlin. But if you don't know any other place in Berlin, you have to take that and that will make you feel very, very depressed [...] To have the choice in your mind is very important, I think. Every place has its own identity. I feel I could live there and what I should do if I had to live there. That's interesting...I mean, that's a nice feeling.
Meanwhile you have to have a huge list of places...
Yeah...
...of places you wanted to live in?
Yeah, to escape.
So, do you think that Japanese people or especially people from Tokyo have a special approach to mobility, to be always on the move?
No, I don't think so particularly, but Tokyo is a good place for mobility There are so many apartments on the market and each place is not so expensive, I think. Of course you have to pay the key money but it's getting and less and less right now. Because back in New York you just can't choose with your budget, right? If you live in a cheap apartment that means you live in a dangerous area. So you pay for your security. But in Tokyo you usually don't have to pay for security. That's the big difference. And most of the big cities in the world are like that: you pay more - you live in a better safer place. If you live in Nakano in a 10000\ -room per month, or in a one million Yen apartment, both will have the same security. And also there are so many arubaito-jobs, side-jobs. Especially for young people. So if they get bored with one town, they can move to somewhere else - it's easy to find another arubaito-job. That's very difficult for example in London.
So, I don't know, there are so many bad things about Tokyo too, I think, but it's a very interesting and easy place to live.
Talking about mobility, I can say that my daily life spreads over a huge area in Tokyo. I live in Nakano, I'm going to Waseda for studies, I meet my friends in Shibuya for a coffee. It's a big city but the whole city is my home. I have the feeling that this is a very different concept from being home in Germany. So, how does your personal city spread over Tokyo?
Because I think Tokyo is not like one city, but like a cluster of small towns, it's almost like Los Angeles. Even if you have lived in Tokyo like for 20 years and you might have not been to the eastern half of Tokyo, it's still hard to stick to the same group of towns. So you can remix the best parts of the city for yourself. It's not the same space for everyone. [...]
Let's switch to the Street Design Files - some issues I have read. It seems to me that you are interested in everything that is retro-design. What kind of reason is behind that?
I don't see that there is a retro. No. Again, it's a part of the design world, that the design-media should cover but they don't! It's just like the things I said, like the Love Hotels, or something. Because about the Street Design Files my concept is very, very common to the lifestyle of that country or the people that it belongs to, but never treated seriously.
I am just thinking of the issue about the garden dwarves...
Yeah, I mean it's the most popular thing in Europe...
But everybody hates them...
Yeah, but only because they are the most disgusting subjects to intellectual European people. The same about the things in the Love Hotels. I am not saying that these garden dwarves are better than the beautiful landscape gardens...That's the journalist's way - to offer the reader this and other choices - their own thing. [...] The garden dwarf can be interesting - and so many people love them, but it's never ever been treated seriously in Europe. You just shouldn't neglect them.
You wouldn't say that there is a certain nostalgia as a motive?
Oh, no, that's more a product design approach. Because, you have seen all the design magazines and they're the same if you are in Japan or in Europe or in America - it's nothing but boring, you know, beautiful professional design. What you see is made with Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. You can't feel the character. But the things like garden dwarfs or Mexican masks, or something, are more human. Not nostalgia. It's about different possibilities of design.
I see... What's your favorite music? Stupid question, but I wanted to ask.
Ahh, all kinds. I mean from Classic Rock to Japanese Enka...
Really?
Noise Music, I don't know - I don't find any field of music I don't like.
J-Pop?
Oh yeah!!!
J-Pop is also a very popular culture - maybe after Manga it's the second popular culture you step on if you are a foreigner that is coming to Japan. Other popular cultures you discovered and published in the Roadside Japan when you were traveling that much. I wanted to know, what was your initial idea when you first sat down in your Toyota and headed for the countryside? What did you have in your mind about this project?
It started for a magazine project and I was talking with the editor, we were drinking, talking about some stupid places in the countryside: "So why don't we choose that?" We started as a short-term series of articles maybe like three month or so. Then I found out that there are so many of those places!
You never expected it to become a six years project...
No, no, because I didn't have any information about that. At that time there was no internet-site about it. It was totally impossible to get the information of that kind. So most of the places I just drove by and discovered.
You never knew these things before?
Oh no, for most of the people it is the first experience, because they are not covered by travel magazines and not covered by any of the TV programs [...]
Some is really hard stuff, especially the pictures from the temples about the hell...
Oh yeah, definitely.
Wow, this is so expressive.
In some cases I could show it in Japanese magazines and books, but I couldn't show them in the edition in Europe.
I see. In the Roadside Japan you describe the Nose-Ring Burial-Mount and you say this is a piece of art. What did you exactly mean with that?
First of all, purely the sight of that huge mount of plastic rings. If you see it on the floor of a contemporary art museum you would name it an installation. And also the background, once you know the story, you have to imagine the incredible amount of cows that are slaughtered. And the journey: from all the slaughterhouses to this small countryside-temple, it is like a traffic, which no one knows. And so this huge plastic-mount has so many stories.
So for me, how can I call it instead of art?
So let's talk about the Sex Museums and the Love Hotels more. What is your personal sense of erotic? What do you see as erotic?
Ahhm, you went to the Berlin Sex Museum?
I haven't been to the one in Berlin - I've been to the one in Amsterdam. Is that alright?
For me the European erotic museum is totally boring, because it pretends to be intellectual. And it pretends to be like an anthropological research or anything.
There is a new one opening in New York. Have you been there?
No, but I can see that it is boring, that erotic-art-kind-of-approach, you know, but the Japanese one is totally different. It's pure entertainment - it's almost like Disneyland. And I like it, because it doesn't pretend. A lot of Japanese sex-related businesses are like that. They don't pretend to be something else, you know? Of course it's sexy but there is a light feeling among that.
So if there is a hidden beauty, where would you see in these installations this beauty, or don't you think that these installations are about the beauty?
They don't make it as an art-piece...
No, no, that's for sure...
Yeah, that's the interesting thing! They don't pretend that it's art. They just think they made up something that people would like and they would like to see themselves. Sometimes you don't have to be an artist, but for someone else it is good as art. And that's the difference between craft and art. I mean, African tribe's sculptures, they don't make it as art, you know. They just make it for a special reason. For example they want to celebrate the dead. For European people it looks like an artistic sculpture. So that's the same thing, right? For the countryside people the Sex Museums are just a place to enjoy their virtual sex-experience. I imagine those things being moved into a contemporary art space; then everyone would see it as art. On the other hand lots of the so-called contemporary art-pieces in contemporary art museums are just junk. They only look like art, because they are just simply inside the museum and not outside. It makes me feel two things, you know: There is the possibility of finding more artistic objects among the streets and you can have a clearer view of what is called "art-piece" in the museum.
So for you the concept of art is much more about those pieces you find beyond museums and beyond galleries?
Oh no, because it's too easy to say so. But to have that kind of eye and attitude, you need to have the experience before to find something you feel artistic on the streets outside of the museum. Otherwise it's just a concept.
One question that came into my mind when reading Roadside Japan is that sexuality and erotic were embedded in the traditional Japanese space. Like for instance those items you discovered in the Sex Museums originated from temples. So what evolved the break in the Japanese way of dealing with sexuality? Because in normal daily life any physical contact or any talking about sexuality is nearly taboo, if you talk to normal people...
Really?
Yeah. Maybe it's because of me - because I am a foreigner.
No, Japan is an almost open country, I think. I mean, we don't have a confinement from religion like the Christianity or something, which makes a big change, I think. You walk on the streets and you can see so many advertisements about sex-places and people are openly reading sexual Manga and, but it never existed like that and you will never see something like that in Europe.
So how did you feel when at the 2002 Taipei Biennial your exhibition space had been taken of the kid's tour-guide? And they also put barriers around it.
No, in Taipei it was really open, I think, ...
Well I read about that in the Internet...
...but at the Yokohama Triennale, because it was an explicit Sex Museum recreation, it was prohibited for those under 18 years of age. But that was really not an official order, you know, we just put it like that as a joke, just to make the people more curious. It didn't show anything hardcore.
What's the most fascinating thing about love hotels for you - I mean spatially?
The creativity of the architects, because, you know, if you are a good architect you try to design to benefit the client the most. That means for a Love Hotel, you design an interior. So if the customers go there, they get more sexy feelings, get aroused, have the best sex in their life. [...] The Hotels spend so much money on that, like rotating beds or something. It doesn't make you feel any better, but it's fun. Because it is an useless effort, it is art. If it's too useful than it's craft.
I thought the Love Hotel management organizes all by itself.
Oh no! They never do that! There are specialized Love Hotel architectural firms - there are so many charismatic Love Hotel architects.
Really?
Yeah, and I've been talking so many times with the architectural magazines about that, but they don't listen. But there is a big, big industry. The Love Hotels are a big market for the equipment companies like Panasonic or Cola or whatever. It's not the regular people that buy the most expensive bathtubs, it's the Love Hotel people - and not the city hotel. And the most advanced stereo sound system, it's in the Love Hotel. And there are so many architecture firms - they design everything from the exterior to the interior, color, systems - just everything. The management is just management.
I see.
So it is a very interesting field of work, I think, but I really wonder why the interior architecture media or any furniture firms never make any kind of survey.
I read your article from the Columbia University and that was the only serious article I have found so far about these projects... But just two last questions: what are you working on right now?
One of the big things is the research on the Roadside America. In Japan, I'm trying to cover more not global but local architecture, like the Kenko...have you heard of the Kenko-Lando?
No...
The artificial Hot Springs, just that kind of things. It's more or less Japanese local architecture that I am covering.
I see. Is it also for the Street Design Files?
No, that's finished.
Ok, this is finished. So actually, I was told that you have become quite famous over the last ten years.
Really?
Yeah, I hadn't known your work before I was starting my research about artists in Tokyo. But anyway, what kind of character was most important for you to bring you to the point where you are now? I think you had many difficulties at the beginning to push things through, working with publishers and so on...
Just...energy, I think. It's just like all my works start with anger, actually. Because I was really annoyed and really angry with the professional media, you know. Like I was so angry with the professional architectural media, that's why I started by myself. Because before this I didn't have a camera, you know. So I had to do it by myself. It's not from a strategic point of view that I wanted to investigate there. No market research, pure anger.
I see...
Why they don't do that. It's so interesting and it's going away. I just don't want to complain while doing nothing. So I have to do it It's dying in front of me. Of course there are also famous architects, that take commission from the Love Hotels, but they never use their name. They do it, but they don't put it in their biography, you know. And that's really dirty!