Films

Grand Bouquet | 14m28s | 2018

A helpless woman confronts “a black object” with a power greater than hers. The “black object” shoots her questions. The woman has answers to these questions, but can’t say them aloud. She feels up against the wall, and begins to throw up beautiful colorful flowers instead of speaking.

The Pear and the Fang | 30m | 2018

Ayano is a woman shutting herself in her city apartment. One day, she finds a Japanese pear that she hadn’t noticed. She names this lovely plump pear “Tamako,” and dotes on it. Satoko is a woman growing Japanese pears in a place full of nature. One day, she notices a pear that she raised with great care was stolen from her farm. And there is a bloody fang of a beast beside a torn burlap sack. Secret worlds of two women cross over a fresh pear and sharp fang.

Across the Water | 8m47s | 2018

This is a dance film that takes place by a lakeside. Where the rain never stops and where bodies are entrusted to the water, air, and nature.

Stories floating on the wind | 9m4s | 2018

Manazuru — A Coastal Town in Kanagawa, Japan. This City Cycling Fantasy Film uses nonfiction stories and anecdotes gathered from the locals as inspiration, and turns them into fictional story about a girl that cycles around the town.

Breathing House | 12m12s | 2017

Director’s Statement

In the March of 2016, I headed for Kyoto because I had been commissioned to take a documentary film of an important house because it was going to be demolished soon. The house was with an important history as it promoted in Kyoto a health exercise named Okada Style Breathing which was very popular during the Taisho era. When I arrived at the house, people were already in the middle of moving out and the place was filled with the possessions of the four generations of people who had resided in the house. I started filming the house as I helped them with their packings.

While I looked inside the old drawers or the bookshelves, I found a hand-written note. When I saw it I felt a full respect for the long history of mankind’s search for peace of mind through trials and errors. I developed this work of mine by a process I had never employed before. I observed and filmed a real event in life to edit it afterwards in my own way. Hence, this work may be interpreted as a fantasy story about breathing that is connected to the Breathing House I filmed.

Solo Exhibition: “Breathing Room” Trailer
hottamaru・days | 37m11s | 2015

There is a wooden one-story house. In this tiny house, four dancer nymphs are living besides Satoko (Singer) , a human being. They are absorbed in Satoko’s music and having a comfortable life. But one day, dancer nymphs found by chance that another little girl was living in the house…

Note:

“Hottamaru” is a coined word that is made of two Japanese words “Hotteoku”(leaving something as it is) and “Tamaru”(accumulating). It means things that accumulate if we leave something as it is. Fallen things from human body such as hair, nails, skins of the sole of their feet. Or various smells that accumulate in everyday life.

“hottamaru ・days” will be screened online at JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA. Screenings are from December 15 2022 to March 15 2023.

https://jff.jpf.go.jp/watch/independent-cinema/film-lineup/hottamaru-days/

I want to go out | 6m55s | 2014

Director’s Statement

We often divide human civilization and nature, but there is no perfect human society and its order, it is all just a part of nature. And nature is the absurd thing that we cannot control or fight against. We should just accept it. And even after we accept it, if we still have the greed, then in a way we can believe only this strong greed. Unyielding desire. That we should value it. This desire also is a nature.

-Confusing as a spring, stink bug came to the warm room and died away. I often superimposed myself and this stink bug, putting the corpse into tissues and dumping, said to them, “Yes, I know, but still you want to go out”-

February,2014

At Akiyoshidai International Art Village.

Bicycle girl | 9m58s | 2013
Grooming | 4m26s | 2013