Japan, not only a mega-busy city that thrives on electronics and efficiency, actually has an almost sacred appreciation of nature. One must travel outside of Tokyo to truly experience the 'old Japan' and more importantly feel these aspects of Japanese culture.
I don't think about the audience, I don't think about what makes them happy, because there's no way for me to know. To try to think of what makes for entertainment is a very Japanese thing. The people who think like this are old-fashioned. They think of the audience as a mass, but in fact every person in the audience is different. So entertainment for everyone doesn't exist
Tokyo style is so specific. And I'm a very big fan of their history. It's pretty simple. A lot of the time, people expect to see the wild style that comes out of Japan, but I think, traditionally, the style is very simple.
I've always been really interested in the age of the samurai in Japan.
If you go to Tokyo, I think it becomes very obvious that there's this almost seamless mixture of popular culture and Japanese traditional culture.
Well, dojo is a traditional Japanese word for training hall.
I was really interested in geishas' work, and wanted to meet real geishas.
There's a kind of training, when you are sitting in a session in the Japanese tradition or any of the Buddhist traditions, taking your lotus posture or whatever it is. That's what you're doing.
Japanese feel an intimacy with the dead, at least for people up to my generation.
