｜What do you find most rewarding about this work?

Updating tradition, carrying the spirit of enjoyment into the future.

As a project manager for immersive art museums such as the Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition and the YOKAI Immersive Experience Exhibition, and for projection mapping projects aimed at regional revitalisation, I am involved across the whole process, from the planning stage through spatial direction to audience development.

What I value most is not simply putting works on display, but asking how visitors will feel and how they will enjoy themselves.

Through storytelling and spatial design, I want to create places where people become immersed and can enter into a dialogue with culture.

Within that, what I find most rewarding is the moment when a concept we sketched out becomes a real experience and takes shape right in front of our visitors.

One project that left a deep impression was the Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition. Today ukiyo-e tends to be treated as high art, but in the Edo period it was pop culture, loved by ordinary people.

To bring that sense of fun into the present, we used digital art to design a space where visitors could immerse themselves in the world of the works.

We set a theme for each room — waves built around the indigo prized around the world as Japan Blue, projection mapping onto a three-dimensional form modelled on Mount Fuji, the symbol of Japan — and built in many devices so that the exhibition could be enjoyed as an experience, not only as something visually striking.

We carried the same narrative consistency into how we reached audiences, from the visual composition of the official website to collaboration menus with restaurants at neighbouring hotels.

As a result, we saw children visiting the exhibition and people encountering ukiyo-e for the first time light up with enjoyment.

It was just as striking to watch younger visitors who had come with social media in mind be genuinely surprised by a space they could not help wanting to share.

Feeling that we had gone one step beyond the act of viewing found at most art exhibitions and delivered a new experience of enjoying traditional culture is the greatest reward this work can offer.

Of course, as a project manager my words and decisions carry real responsibility for how the team moves.

Not so long ago I could not even handle a phone call properly; now I put a vision into words and lead a team to move a project forward.

Along the way I learned how much it matters to think about how you communicate and where the other person stands.

That is exactly why the sense of achievement when a project succeeds and we meet visitors' smiles is something special.

｜Where do you feel you have grown?

Creating the ideas we envision together, and taking them to the world.

Where I feel my growth as a project manager most is in being able to put the ideas in my head into precise language, share the same image across the whole team, and give it form.

The YOKAI Immersive Experience Exhibition was a real turning point.

The first room is a crucial space — it opens the entire exhibition.

There I aimed for a visual expression that held two axes at once: the theme of the homeland of yokai, while at the same time introducing visitors to what yokai actually are.

To convey that intent to our creators, I articulated the concept clearly in writing and supported it with visual references that conveyed the world we were building.

The finished space achieved even more immersion than the world I had pictured, and I felt that my ability to communicate accurately to the team, and to direct, had risen considerably.

It was the moment my words reached people correctly, and professionals across video production, design, CG and projection mapping technology combined their expertise to produce an output that surpassed my original image.

There was a time when I could not convey my ideas well, and struggled to bring what was in my head into reality. It was frustrating.

Now, by putting a concept into words and translating it into diagrams and documents, I can align a professional team of dozens of people in the same direction.

In projects such as the Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition and the YOKAI Immersive Experience Exhibition, tens of thousands of people have visited venues we built in collaboration with professionals from many fields across national borders, and I feel we are genuinely moving people.

By repeating the cycle of refining the next expression based on visitors' reactions, I have also developed a sense of what kind of expression draws out what kind of emotion.

The ability to turn a mere idea into a work — to reproduce a concept with precision, and then to evolve it further together with our creators. I feel that growth every day.

｜Working on exhibitions has taken you to regions all over Japan. What has stayed with you?

The bonds formed in each region give rise to the next challenge.

Running projects across Japan, what stays with me most is the connections between people. In every region, the time and the energy we shared with the people we met there become my own driving force.

At the Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition in Kagoshima, local people threw themselves into the project with tremendous energy and it was a great success. When we were told afterwards that they wanted to do the YOKAI exhibition with us next, I felt the power of those bonds to create the future.

Beyond planning and operations, connecting people with people and creating new value together with a region — I want to keep valuing those connections and keep creating new value alongside the regions we work with.

｜A day in the life

｜How I spend my days off

Refreshing, and picking up new inspiration.

I have been here for about a year, and work has already taken me on business trips to around five countries. The local food in each place is one of the pleasures between jobs. In my free time I always visit the sights, cutting-edge digital art and immersive experiences, and being able to feel the newest creative work first hand is a huge stimulus. Those experiences overseas become the source of new plans and ideas, and a driving force that raises the quality of my work. I really do feel that I am living sparkling days while taking in cultures and forms of expression from all over the world.