It’s linked with this ‘NOTES’ that was found in UK, isn’t it?
(There’s a booklet with same look and same title ‘NOTES’ in UK. The contents is on a high level, and Hattori and designers were pleased with it.)

Yes! Certainly!! I’m really glad to see that it’s innovative like that. It’s interesting, isn’t it? In fact, we want ‘NOTE’ to be copyleft.

It’s definitely a place for experimentation. Are you usually collaborating with people who participate, or do they create their works as they like?

That all depends. If they have something they want to do, I leave everything to them. If I think of an interesting idea for each, I approach them to collaborate. I think having various kinds of directions is good as long as there’s a consistent logic in this magazine.

I think the 90’s is a period that indie movements carried out by D.I.Y. spirit has blossomed in both media and music. Please tell us what you feel from the word as an indie.

I hope everything is indie… As an extreme example, Star Wars is, as you see in many magazines, an indie on a large scale because George Lucas wants to control everything by himself. It’s an independent movie that George spent his money on because he wanted to control the story and situation that audiences meet. No movie company spent money on it. I think this means indie exactly.

I agree. Indies is not just a music genre. The activity of George Lucas let us feel the beginning of an age that we can feel the word as Indie straightly.

The evolution of technology (I named our office ‘GO PUBLIC’ with such a meaning) has brought the internet and taken away the category as a border. Today is an age for individuals and people can access other individuals.

Please tell us the meaning of the word ‘GO PUBLIC’ in detail.

It means to become a public company in the language of the stock market. For example, before the store named Hattori goes public, it’s doing business around there, but once it goes public, it becomes well-known everywhere and some people will access or invest in the store. The Internet is great for me like that. But I don’t want to do on the internet, just want to return the matter that I noticed on the Internet to the real world. It’s various showcases, so I want to introduce unknown people and interesting things to the public. We also want to open ourselves to the public, but that’s not all. Anyway we want to tell the public. That is what the name means.

Do you aim for that in other activities except for ‘NOTE’?

Yes. I’ve been editing, but there’s a problem that we have and that’s to make money. Editing has something to do with promotion. We aim for the form in the middle of editing and promotion. I keep saying that I want to create a futuristic form of that from the beginning.

Do you have any concrete plans of that?

We’re still in the middle of experimentation and we haven’t found any firm form yet. But we’re trying to help the designer and company have something in common; not be forced by a company into producing a catalogue for a company. We’ll make the promotion field interesting. On the other hand, we’ll introduce and output such people to give them a job. It’s a weird company.

What do you think about current Tokyo? Some people say that music and media are hovering around.

Being brave. Everyone should feel what they’re impressed by and what they like. If you do something with no reality for yourself, it’s boring and you cannot move anyone. As I said before, everything will be boring for yourself if you don’t examine your feelings. Once you become worthless, everything around you will be worthless. Then you’ll start to say ‘everything is boring’.

Do you think actually there’s interesting things on the street? Or is there a lot of boring things now?

There’re some interesting things. I’ve been introducing them in Senken Newspaper and what I think interesting is something made by someone who believes it is interesting from one’s values. So I think Tokyo is in the course of changing.

The times are changing…?

We can get something, not only money. In recent years, a growing number of people have thought about one’s standard of value. So I think, I’m an optimist and idealist though, music or good things will pass from people to people and remain in the future. So I’m actually feeling that such interesting things are spreading beyond the languages.

So you’re creating a fruit as NOTE collecting such works. The reason why people are saying everything is boring is because they themselves cannot see anything.

When you say it’s boring, you yourself become boring. Your antenna to find out interesting things doesn’t work.