– Are you pleased with the place you currently live in?
[It isn’t perfect, but I like it. The view from the living room is incredibly good. It’s good 24 hours a day. The windows are big, so I can see the Rainbow bridge(1). From the bedroom, I see the skyscrapers of Shinjuku.]

– How nice~.
[It’s just a normal, simple place. All in white. The bath is all white too, with a glass door connected to the washroom(2).]

– Where do you spend the most time?
[That would be the living room, wouldn’t it? I have a white leather-covered sofa, and in the corner there’s a desk where my computer is set up, so between the Aeron chair(3) I have there and the sofa, I think I spend a lot of time sitting in that room.]

– How refined~. But, is everything really all white?
[Yes it is. I don’t really like black, so there isn’t a single piece of black furniture in my home. It’s basically white. I also like wood, glass, and aluminium. My whole place has that sort of feeling. But you know, there are things in the world that only come in black. Like the Aeron chair I mentioned earlier, it’s mostly black, but the netting on the back part is red. Generally they’re all black, although they do normally sell the ones with red netting now, but when I bought mine it was the first custom order in Japan. That was seven or eight years ago though.]

– That’s amazing~. So you live surrounded only by things you like?
[I just don’t want to make room for things I hate. I don’t want to have things I don’t like within my sight.]

– Have you liked interiors since you were a child?
[Yeah, I did. I think I had an interest in architecture itself. When I was a kid, I’d look at cool buildings and my heart would beat faster. I liked model rooms too. In third or fourth year of elementary school, I reformed my parent’s house. That is, I got to make my own room be how I wanted. I was picky back then, too. I talked with an old merchant. The wallpaper, the blinds, the door; I picked them all myself.]

– Very mature. What was the feel of that room you got to remake?
[Loghouse-ish (laughs). It was all wood patterned, totally different from the wood I like now. But for an elementary school kid, I think I was pretty blessed, being able to designed a satisfactory room.]

– How long did you live in that room?
[Uhmmm, until I was about 18. After high school graduation, I thought I should be independent, so I started living on my own.]

– You must have been picky then, too.
[Actually, that was amazing. The guy who played guitar in the band I was in back then decided on his own. He said “I’ll go see a real estate agent,” and then casually asked “Come check out my place too.” Then he said “I picked one!” It was a different room in the same building as him. “I even put down the deposit for you~” he said. I just said Whaaat?! (laughs).]

– Ahaha! Was it actually a place you liked?
[Totally! (laughs) But the way I was back then, I had no money, and they don’t give back deposits, you know. It would have been wasted. Well, whatever~]

– What kind of room was it?
[Tiny, profitable (laughs). Four and a half mats, no bath, shared toilet, public bath using. (4)]

– That’s not quite what I’d pictured as a place where you’d live, tetsu-san.
[Me neither (laughs). I didn’t care for it at all but lots of my musician buddies were invited there. By me. It had the spirit of that manga house, “Tokiwaso”(5). There was room for about twenty households in all, and by the end I had friends living in about half of them.]

– How long did you live there?
[Less than two years?]

– tetsu-san, that’s a long time for you, isn’t it?
[That’s right, a lot of the time I don’t even stay in the same place for a whole year. Well, I thought I’d move away as soon as I could, but my friends were right there, so it would be inconvenient to move away. In the end, within two years I moved into a normal one room mansion(6). I moved so many times after that, didn’t I? I’ve never renewed a lease.]

– Of all the places you’ve lived in, is the one you have now the one you like most?
[Yeah, it is. But I still made some compromises.]

– But, compared to your memories of that four and a half mat place, it’s superior, isn’t it?
[Well, they’re good memories…… they really are. But I wouldn’t want to live in a place like that again (laughs).]

– Interviewer : Harada Sachi
Translated by Natalie Arnold

1. The Rainbow Bridge is a long suspended bridge that crosses Tokyo Harbour. It has two levels, one used as an expressway for cars and the other being an ordinary road with sidewalks.Go back.

2. In Japanese homes, the bath is usually in a room apart from what Westerners would consider bathroom fixtures, like a sink and toilet.Go back.

3. The Aeron chair is a designer office chair that is made to be comfortable for long periods of time in various positions.Go back.

4. Japanese rooms are often measured in tatami mats size. One mat is six feet by three feet. Four and a half mats is quite small indeed. Public baths are very common in Japan, dating back to when most houses didn’t have baths of their own.Go back.

5. Tokiwaso, or Tokiwa apartments, was a cheap building of tiny apartments where many famous manga artists all lived back in the 1950s.Go back.

6. In Japanese, the English word mansion has come to mean a condominium rather than a large house.Go back.