──I suppose you've been drawing pictures since you were a kid, am I right?

Yes, I was colouring line drawings all the time when I was small! Day by day, my mom or my dad bought me a book from those street vendors, which I coloured then with crayons or wax pencils. I was doing that rather than communicate with people, and after school you could usually find me at home absorbed in my drawings. I won some prizes at block print competitions, but most of the time I was somber enough to prefer to shut myself up and draw all by myself. I guess it was when I entered high school and started making music that my character changed. I was into folk music at the time. I loved Garo, a Japanese folk band, and when I put together my own band later I was turning into an outgoing person.

──Is it true that you went not to an art-related university, but to an ordinary one?

That's right, I was at the department of economics (she laughs). I actually wanted to enter an art school, but at my high school students were preparing to proceed to university, and when I tried and took the exam, I eventually passed. At the time I was thinking that I could still change and study art afterwards, or maybe do both at the same time. After all, I found out that campus life was not that bad... Once at university, I became interested in theatre, and I ended up doing mostly avant-garde kind of stuff in the theatre department.

──So, you were on the cutting-edge already as a student - is there any artist in particular who influenced you?

First of all, I always liked things like antiestablishment, preferred European movies to Hollywood flicks, and liked to play in small theatres. I was watching films by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini or Theo Angelopoulos, and on the art side it was mainly the pop art of Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns that was hot at the time. But I also liked some of the big ones, such as Picasso, Miro, Klee, Kandinsly... The idea to change to an art school after graduation was always in my head, and even during my involvement in theatre I was not only acting, but designing stage sets and promotional material, and my biggest hobby was to draw things all the time anyway. I graduated, saved money, and finally enrolled in an art school! I chose the department of graphic design at a place called Toyo Institute of Art & Design.

──Did you have any jobs at the time?

Yes. I had been working freelance as an art director for a certain company, and right after entering the school I began to work as an assistant there. Their office was in Jingumae, and we were mostly working for Dentsu or Hakuhodo. At school I had a very tough schedule, too, with such a lot of exercises to do that I could only manage it all by working all night an average of two nights a week. Those were pretty fulfilling two years.

──Were you using computers at the time?

No, not at all. After graduating from art school, I first joined a small design office with 20 staffs. Then I was employed by Seibu, and only there I had my first encounter with computers. It was a section for media production, with an office in Sunshine Building in Ikebukuro. That's where I was assigned with the interface design for Videotex, which was at the time a so-called "new media"- what an obsolete term, isn't it? (she laughs)

──Please tell us more about Videotex.

It was kind of a pioneer of the Internet. There was a host computer in the Tokyo office, and that was connected to terminals in Seibu department stores, Family Mart and other shops across the country, where customers could log in a get all kinds of information on events, news, etc. Seibu's president at the time, Tsutsumi-san, was a guy who liked new things, and for the Videotex project he blow his own horn and spent several thousand million yen. But at the end he gave up after just about three years. That was because the system was too slow, and also the concept for the contents wasn't good, like, why should people in Hokkaido access the central computer to get information on Tokyo? Besides this, the terminals were equipped with keyboards, and since we're talking about a time when that was still quite exotic gear, most people weren't familiar with their use.

──What type of computer were you using?

It was an NEC computer, called PC100. With a display range of 125 colours, at the time it was known as a machine that was particularly good for the creation of images. An affiliate company was providing original drawing software, and with that I was restlessly putting together my first animation pieces. When I had a considerable amount of works ready, I showed them in solo exhibitions at a gallery called "Aterlier Nouveau" inside Ikebukuro's Seibu department store. They were extremely simple animated pieces of 20-30 seconds length, and when I look at them now I feel a bit ashamed. I guess you can call them my first digital works, made around 1985-86.

──Wow, that was really early for digital art!

Right, and there were even people from newspapers and magazines coming to interview me. On the same floor as the gallery was the "Ticket Saison" counter, and for them I designed tickets and posters. Then I left Seibu to work freelance, and with my avertisement and other designs I managed to save enough money to be able to travel to the USA. I first went to L.A., where I stayed a month, and right after that I went for three months to New York. I wanted to see more of the world, and to get inspiration I was walking around and tramping through galleries. Not only the art, but also lifestyles are different, aren't they? It was for me a practice to change my perspective, and switch my senses.

──What did you pick up during your time in the USA?

It was the time when MacII replaced Lisa, and I was very interested in that. There were also some kinds of "leaders" of a movement making magazine designs using PageMaker or Freehand. Have you heard about Michael Gosney from Verbum magazine? I me thim and asked him to employ me, even without payment. So I came to commute to the office of a design company called John Odam associates, which was in charge of the editorial design of Verbum magazine. They let me touch the computers and play around with the magazine's layout. Jack Davis, who later gained fame with WOW, was there, too.

──Marvelous, you were surrounded by a bunch of real pioneers!

Yes, indeed. I learned from them a lot about the use of - or rather the attitude toward - computers. The point is not to be in the mercy of the fact that one is using machines. First you have a sensation, and then you use the machine as an instrument. When observing the people that were surrounding me when I was living in San Diego, I realized how the machines were already bowing to their talents. We usually get excited everytime something new surfaces on the market, but for them it's more important to know exactly what kinds of things to make with SE or black-and-white displays. Isn't that an essential point?

──Were you visiting mainly the USA?

When I was living in San Diego, one day I heard that a friend's apartment in London was available, so I moved to the UK. After staying in the USA for a while I thought that Europe would be good to try next, and since I didn't speak any other language but English, the UK was my only option. The feeling there was again totally different from the USA, and it was an enormously fresh experience for me. When I returned to Tokyo later I got employed at Bates Japan, where I was making posters. But I realized that, when working busily as a company employee, I missed that certain impact, which made me decide to try something completely different again and try out Southeast Asia.

──Are such international experiences reflected in your works?

First of all, they made me realize my being Asian and reflect on various things Asian. Then, places like Hong Kong or Singapore were interesting because there I encountered languages I didn't understand, and that made me see letters in a new, interesting light. I realized that Korean Hangul or Arabic letters, for example, suddenly look like pure design. Derived from this, the idea behind my award-winning work was the assumption that Japanese hiragana letters must look to foreigners who don't understand Japanese like beautiful pieces of design. I wanted to show a Japanese only to look at, and without any meaning. As a result, I tried and put together sentences that not only foreigners, but even Japanese don't undestand. Also in other works, such as those using various signboards from metropolitan Tokyo, it is my intention to show just the visual aspects of the letters, without paying attention to their literal meanings.

──How do your plans for the future look like?

I want to stick to motion pictures. I'm also working on paper, but movies are simply more fun. And now I'm interesting to performance something mixtured. Movies, sounds, and dances... I'd like to make things people can enjoy in various places.