Born in 1967. An up and coming artist who spends his life travelling aroud the world and draws portraits of people he meets. He has alsopublished a book "Private World",
a picture book "Soranoiro Mizuiro", etc as well as having numerous contributions to magazines and books.
1967年生まれ。世界の街角で作品を描き続ける気鋭のアーティスト。著書に「PRAVATE WORLD」（山と渓谷社）、絵本「そらのいろみずいろ」（小峰書房）。
他、多くの雑誌・書籍にも作品を寄せている。
"Private World", a book which compiles portraits of people he drew throughout his two year's trip around the world. What was supposed to be one month for his first trip overseas ended up as two years of long term travel. Such an unbelievable trip....
It was initially meant to be a trip to go to Shanghai by a ship called "JIAN ZHEN" which I had always wanted to be on board, eat tons of Peking duck in Shanghai, then hang out in Hong Kong and basically spend 1 million Yen of all my savings I made from a part time job. But while I was in Shanghai, I came across the name of a town called "Xiahe" and was very much intrigued, so I decided to go there. On the way back, I came across an English traveller in Lanzhou and heard about Tibet so I headed for Tibet. Luckily I had no reason to go back to Japan at that time. After that I decided to go to Nepal as I did not feel like taking the same, long and bumpy bus trip back to Tibet. So I kept travelling from one place to another like this. I had never imagined of going to India or Europe. I would never have gone to Europe if I did not buy a world atlas in Kathmandu because Japanese world atlas always had Japan in the middle but the one I bought had "Europe" in the middle so I had to go there!
You travelled as mind goes for two years.
Do you look back upon the trip and what think?
Asian countries I visited (excluding Japan) do not have the same standard of living as big cities and I found that interesting. Once you move from one place to another place in Asia, you see a completely different world every time. The people and the cities were full of energy too. I particularly liked Nepal. Cities like Paris and London are quite similar to Tokyo in terms of their convenience. While I was there, I felt more like I lived there because generally, people have the same convenient standard of living in big cities. In the midst of my trip, I had one time where I felt so frustrated of not being able to be impressed with anything I saw and was thinking of going home. But I still insisted on continuing my trip hoping that I would still find something. And so I found things. I could say that my intuition brought me to all the places including Europe and I think such intuition makes travelling very interesting.
いきなり2年。こんな旅、なかなかありませんよね？
最初は、前から乗ってみたかった「鑑真号」という船で上海に行って、北京ダックをたくさん食べて香港あたりで遊び、アルバイトで貯めた100万円を全部使って帰ってくる
つもりだったんだけどね。たまたま上海で「夏河」という街の名前を耳にして行ってみることにしたのがキッカケです。その帰り道、今度は蘭州でイギリス人旅行者にチベットの話を聞き、そっちに進路変更。幸いにも、僕には早く日本に帰らなくちゃいけない用事もなかったし。で、次はネパール。だって、また何十時間もオンボロバスに揺られて同じ道を戻る気になれなかったんですよ。そうやって、なんとなく前に進み続けたんです。だから、自分がインドまで行くなんて想像もしなかったし、カトマンズで世界地図を買わなかったらヨーロッパには行かなかったでしょうね。なぜって、その四角い地図の真ん中は日本ではなく、ヨーロッパだったんだから。
◎気のおもむくままの旅だったわけですね。
今、振り返ってみてどうですか？
アジアはやっぱりおもしろいですね。ちょっと移動したらまったく違う国という感じで、人も街もエネルギーに溢れてる。特にネパールは大好き。パリやロンドンは便利だから、旅行しているはずが数日たつと生活になって、東京とあまり変わらなかったかな。旅の途中、一度だけ、何を見ても無感動でイライラして、もう帰ろうかと思ったことがあったんです。でも、もう少し先に行けば何かあるかもしれないと信じて進むと、やっぱりまたおもしろくなった。それが僕を2年間もの間、上海からヨーロッパまで運んできたのかと思うと、旅ってやっぱりおもしろいですね。
「PRAVATE WORLD」本体価格 2200円（山と渓谷社）