— You said you wanted to see more creativity in the titles when you were viewing the entries. I agree that the first clue to a work is its title. How do you come up with titles for your works? The title of your Excellence Award-winning work — You're running. I'm waiting with Dumbo ears. (1992) — was remarkable.

I have to admit that one is a bit too fey [laughs]. The work itself is very modest, so I figured that if I didn't give it an elaborate title, it would be difficult to get people to stop and pay attention to it.

A title is crucial in letting a work stand on its own, in letting people view it without any explanation or commentary. Titles are much like doors that give us entry into a work. It's much easier to enter if there's a door, right? Of course, art lets you come and go without a door too. However, when a title is tied too obviously to the actual work, our interest fades — like, “What is this piece trying to say? Oh, that's what it's trying say.”

It's certainly tough to title a work. Sometimes I struggle with coming up with a title, and in other cases — such as How to Make a Pearl (2000 – 2001) and Eleventh Finger (2006) — I have the title before the actual work begins. Other times, I simply decide to take the title from the subject.

In contests where many similar photos are lined up together, I think the title has the power to appeal to the viewer.

— How do you come up with ideas for your works?

My ideas aren't inspired by looking at art or watching movies; they sort of well up out of my daily existence. I need time to let the idea ferment in my mind, to think about what it really is, to connect it with something completely different as I watch it. For example, I might stare at a stereo camera for a long time and notice again that it has two lenses. Then I might wonder what would happen if I exposed these two lenses in two different places instead of just one. That was the inspiration for Roma – Roma (2004). So, it's not like my ideas come from some astounding revelation. It's like you have something on your mind that's been bothering you for a long time, and then one day, you suddenly get in the mood to start doing something about it.

In my case, the ideas I have in my head are a muddle of words, images, concepts, and techniques. Many works may seem to be almost purely conceptual, but they are still images, which is sufficient if we are talking about the visual arts. My works start from a chaotic place, where images are connected to words, and then gradually take shape from there.

It's not like I come up with something, start working on it right away, and voila! it's finished. It's not like that at all.

— You've created some exceptionally forceful and dynamic pieces up to eight meters in size, such as Architectural Bodies and Events (2018) and ACT (2015). Moreover, your work has been widely featured in the contemporary art world. Are you conscious of or do you feel there is a difference between photography and contemporary art?

I feel my work probably stands somewhere in the middle, straddling both those fields. People in the contemporary art world call my work “photography”, while those in photography circles see it as “contemporary art”. I'm perfectly at home to be in that borderline area. And, perhaps paradoxically, this area has plenty of potential. In the world of photography especially, there is a tendency to reduce things down to formalities — elevating form over substance. So it's important to take a stance that's at a slight remove from photography. On the flip side, if you declare your work to be contemporary art, you risk giving the impression that you treat photography as just another material. I find it interesting to see that art today does not fit neatly into cookie-cutter styles, where you pick and stick with just one genre, be it video, photography, sculpture, or oil painting. Nevertheless, if I were asked “Is your work photography?”, then I would be forced to say yes, because my work assimilates so much of the history of photography, the structure of the camera, printing techniques, and other photography-related circumstances. This creates a situation where people on the contemporary art side learn about photography.

In essence, I travel back and forth between the two, and I can say that this has been my style for a long time.

In every sense, I think it's essential to not associate yourself with one place, and that's what I do. It's this instability that allows me to express myself. I suspect this is partly due to the fact that I live in Paris. After 30 years of living abroad, although by birth I am Asian and Japanese, I can't really call myself Asian or Japanese. But I'm not French either. This ambiguity likely manifests itself in my values and in the way I create my work.

— It's a dream of contestants and winners to be able to do what they love as their profession. Have you faced hardships in sustaining your career?

I think younger generations nowadays may be more conscious in regarding artist as a profession. They seem to be much more serious about whether they can make a living as an artist. In my case, from the outset, I was convinced I would never make money from my art. Things I made believing they would never sell did, in fact, start to sell little by little, and eventually they sustained my livelihood. It took a long time, however, for my work to sell in any real way.

If I were to think about hardships, I guess I would say this. If you concentrate on selling your work from the beginning, you will probably drift away from art. It is paramount to keep going especially when conditions are hard. But there is no getting around the reality that persevering is not easy, given that almost all the work of an artist is like that of an unpaid volunteer.

In this day and age, the art market is wide open for anyone to see. So undoubtedly there are people purposefully creating work to match the market even while they are still in art school. And nearly everyone who wants to continue creating what they genuinely want to create needs some means, such as working part-time, to sustain themselves as artists.

However, it is not a good idea to strive to become an artist after you start on a career. You'll just end up being a Sunday painter. In today's Japan, university students seem to be solely focused on getting a job, no matter what their major is. I would rather have them ask themselves to what end are they studying what they like and build their future in a more constructive manner.