ART LIVES TORIDE Where Art Is Born

If you ask me what I do, I am an artist. But when I’m serving drinks, I would say I’m running a restaurant. When I’m at the university, I would say I am an assistant. So it depends from time to time. In the morning, I usually work at the university or manage the stock and prepare food at the restaurant, and then in the evening I serve. Now It’s getting hard for me to go, but I also try to go to another bar of mine in Yamaguchi once a month.
I was in elementary school when I decided to enter art school. My grandfather had a tableware shop, so I guess that’s how I got influenced from. He had a workshop and store at home, so I watched him working all the time. I once wanted to be a joiner, but I only had good grades in art. So for me, art was the way to go.

My parents were both working, so I did a lot of the cooking at home. My mother does the shopping, my grandmother cooks the rice, and I make the side dishes. I would cook according to the family’s physical condition. Cooking has always been a communication tool since then.

When I was in college, I spent about six months helping Hiroshi Fuji with his “Kaekko”. I guess that’s the main reason I stopped painting. I learned that it’s possible to live as an artist without painting. I admired him, and one of my motivations was to exhibit with him in a museum someday.

After I came to Toride for my graduate school, I regularly organized food events. To enjoy the taste of home, I planned parties with mothers from neighbors. This made us become very good friends. For my graduation project, I traveled around Japan visiting universities with art departments and having potlucks with students there. It is great fun to meet and communicate with strangers. The idea of food as a communication tool has not changed since I was cooking for my family.

I was asked to exhibit in what would later become known as a “Haisyakkei”, when I was backpacking and researching art spaces around Southeast Asia. When I first came back to Toride, I was penniless. So I picked horsetail on the Tone River bank and found things to eat in the park. While people came in and went out, we all lived together and created works in “haisyakkei.”

We held exhibitions and parties often, but we didn’t have much money at that time. So the party fee was set at 500 yen or 300 yen. In order to keep the party fee low, I biked around the town to find inexpensive ingredients. To reduce the price from 1,000 yen to 300 yen, it cost me 700 yen worth of labor. I thought “I have to get money out of this.” Just around that time, I heard TAP was moving to a new office. So I asked them if they wanted to create a space together. That’s how I started “Confuri (=Conflictable Cube)” at the west exit of Toride station.

As only the art-related people were gathered at “haisyakkei”, there was almost no contact with the general public or the local community. It was kind of small. So I created a restaurant and organized a welcome party for new students in geidai on my own. I went around handing out flyers to invite new employees from the city hall and companies in Toride. At Confuri, people from various companies, artists, and just regular customers who want to have a drink would come. I feel that this place has become a point of contact or a door to meet people from all walks of life.

When I moved to the west exit and could manage Confuri, I came across the notice said “biennial residency wanted in Yamaguchi, Hiroshi Fuji as juror.” I came up with a plan and created a theatrical play called “Everyday Life Theater” in Ube, Yamaguchi. The idea was to have different people role-play the daily lives of various people and perform them in the city. The place we used as our base was Confuri in Yamaguchi. It is still used as a shared kitchen, and the “Theater of Everyday Life” is always taking place there.

Eventually, I would like to make people and projects move around between Toride and Ube, and I would love to create a similar place in another area too. I think when many things start to blend in, Confuri will finally become a work-like output from just a project.

I have a lot of things I want to do. I have projects I want to work on, I want to improve the restaurant, and I want to work on my art piece too. A while ago, I made an object made out of udon noodles, and I would like to make it into a larger piece. I want to do something interesting. I want to be an artist until I die, just as my grandfather was a joiner until he died. So for a while, I think I will be in a hurry, going back and forth between projects and production, just as I am doing right now.