Yuichi Kishino and Ryota Ideguchi Discuss Art, Culture, and Community Engagement: Starting Fresh with “Fun”

Reevaluating the Importance of “Walking Distance” and “Local” Post-Pandemic

-We’ve had the opportunity to speak with Kishino and Ideguchi twice before on CINRA.NET, in 2017 and 2018. During those conversations, we discussed Ideguchi’s innovative initiatives as the director of the “Nagasaki City Chitosapia Hall,” a public hall found in every region, where cutting-edge culture is introduced. We also explored Kishino’s perspective, having organized groundbreaking Bon dance events across Japan, providing insights into the realities of different regions. Through these discussions, we delved into issues concerning public spaces, culture, and the urban-rural divide.

Now, six years after our last conversation, it seems that the importance of reconsidering public and community through culture, which you both emphasized back then, has become even more apparent. However, we also sense that we’re entering a new phase in our era. Today, we’d like to hear your current perspectives after this long interval.

Firstly, one significant event that occurred during this period is the COVID-19 pandemic. Both of you are engaged in creating spaces where people gather, but how did this event influence your thinking?

Kishino: The first thing I did after the Corona Vortex was to buy a bicycle. I had traveled to various areas in Japan and abroad to see how culture was generated and what state it was in, but after Corona, when I was restricted from doing so, I began to think positively that it was a good opportunity to focus my activities on my immediate area, within walking and biking distance. I have been thinking positively about it since Corona, where I was restricted from doing so.

Kishino: The biggest influence and reference in our activities before the Corona Vortex was squatting (illegal occupation of abandoned land and buildings. In recent years, squatting is also used in projects to reuse abandoned houses.

In exchanging information and interacting with them, when I talked to the people involved, I found that even squatted buildings, which were originally a kind of hippie commune, have their own methods and logic of solution that have been cultivated over a long period of time and through failure. It is interesting to learn about that. In particular, there are examples of activities that were originally illegal, but are now paid for by the government, such as art and music classes for local children, restaurants that are visited by elderly people, and a children’s cafeteria similar to those in Japan, as well as a large local music festival. At first glance, these activities may appear to be illegal and anarchic, but I was strongly influenced by the methodology of how they have gained citizenship and rooted their activities in the community.

-Some of them are fully sanctioned, aren’t they?

Kishino: That’s right. There is learning in the process of why they did so, what mistakes they made, and what methodologies they used. And then to put those findings into practice in my own area, which is what I did with the Corona disaster.

One of the things that we did, specifically, was to follow the prescribed procedures. Receiving government subsidies and working within that framework may seem like a compromise from the traditional liberal value system. I have a course on social demonstration experiments at a university, and I once explained to students about the “road use permit procedure. At that time, when I showed them pictures of a hate speech marching group surrounded by police officers and a protester protesting from the sidewalk, the students said that the hate speech march looked more correct. They say that the people blocking the sidewalk without permission look worse. This, they say, is not a question of the content of the argument, but of the composition.

As long as we avoid the prescribed procedures, this means that liberal activism will appear more incompatible than nepotistic activism. This may require a change in approach. That is why, in Shintaro Ishihara’s early novels, there is a description of going to the police station to ask for security to hold a dance party, and I think that is how they secured their legitimacy. How can we resist such legitimacy?　Rather than being accustomed to power, I think we should consider the appropriateness of the method for the purpose. With this in mind, for example, in the “Sumiyume Odori Procession” held in Sumida Park in Sumida, my hometown in 2023, I was conscious of the fact that I had to negotiate with the government to create the event.

-I see. So that’s the kind of thinking behind the “Sumiyume Odori Gyoretsu.” On the other hand, Ideguchi, as a facility operator, how did you spend your time during the pandemic?

Ideguchi: As mentioned in our previous conversations, I have been focusing on introducing sharp culture that is not easily accessible in Nagasaki City using Chitosepia Hall as a stage, and I have been advocating that this would ensure cultural diversity in the local area. However, the Corona disaster made it impossible for me to move across prefectural borders, and that is what I was looking for.

Ideguchi: At that time, I suddenly came back to myself and reflected on the fact that all my activities up to that point had been to create a “Little Tokyo” in the countryside. I thought that all I wanted to do was to bring something cutting-edge from Tokyo and recreate a little Tokyo here.

However, in the midst of all this, I was also asked to manage the “Nagasaki City Kita Community Center” from 2020. In this way, the community center is really within a “radius of several kilometers,” isn’t it?

-So it really is a facility for the community.

Ideguchi: Yes. It goes back to what Kishino said, but I was thinking about what I could do locally, not about “inviting people from outside. At that time, it was very good that we had a place called a community center.

When you think about it, the community center has most everything. For example, there is a questionnaire that was taken when building a new cultural facility in Nagasaki, in which the following requests were written: “I want Wi-Fi,” “I want an exhibition space,” “I want a childcare support function,” “I want it to be a shelter in case of emergency,” and so on. These are things that community centers are already doing.

So, although I myself was not aware of it until 2020, I thought that many of the things that citizens wanted were already in the community center, and that the way we were presenting them was just not working. I was thinking about what kind of new approaches we could take to address that, and that is what I was thinking about in the Corona disaster.

Strategies for Engaging Individuals: Practical Methods in Community Centers and Parks

-Both of you seem to have had a shift in perspective towards your immediate surroundings due to the pandemic.

Kishino: That’s right. Also, I think a lot of people were aware of this, but you realized that actually getting a lot of people together in a physical setting is precious, whatever it is. A chemical reaction takes place that is unique to the field. That was so obvious that I didn’t realize it until I lost it once. This is one of the good things about going through the Corona Vortex. We could not make any progress by arguing on the Internet, but when we actually meet face-to-face, we can see the approximate drop-off point. I think this is because on the Internet, the deadline is unlimited and you can continue to argue as much as you want, whereas in the physical setting, people are aware that “I’m leaving in an hour, so it’s time to find a compromise.

Ideguchi: In that sense, the Little Tokyo-like use of the hall I mentioned earlier is also a good thing, isn’t it? After all, people come to halls to see things that are stimulating, exciting, and cutting-edge.

One of my most memorable experiences was when Shintaro Sakamoto gave a live performance at a cabaret in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto, organized by the FRUE people. I thought that this kind of thing is necessary for the local community. It was fun for me to be a part of it. And if this is the “hare” part of “hare and ke,” I am now more conscious of the “ke” part as well.

Kishino: I understand. I, too, have been focusing on enhancing the “ke” side. Holding an event is like a fireworks display, but I wanted to emphasize the everyday scenery. Specifically, I wanted to value the coziness of the park. I felt that a large outdoor park would be fine for the human density, even with the Corona Vortex, so instead of holding an “event,” I personally brought a DJ set to the park and played the sounds. Of course, I had to apply for an occupancy permit.

-That’s amazing [laughs].

Kishino: At first, I just brought a desk, turntables, mixer, and speakers and played. But this made it hard for people to approach me. They are just hobbyists. So I put up a sign that said “free to browse,” and put up a kind of skeleton tent around it, and it gave a very welcoming feeling. As a result, some people approached me and even offered to help me carry the equipment because they wanted me to do it again.

This experience made me think about “public”. I realized that even if the event is held in a public space, there is a surprisingly strong “invisible threshold” that is not even recognized by the people who are participating in the event. If there is no mechanism in place, people will feel that there are strange people or that it is a circle that has nothing to do with them. What kind of mechanisms are needed to remove these hurdles and make it possible for everyone to participate, and for everyone to see and hear what is going on? It was also a time to learn about this.

Furthermore, from this point of view, I thought that “how not to create a community” is important in order to create an effect in so-called regional development. Since the existence of an inside means the existence of an outside, it is necessary to “devise ways to make it not look like there is an inside. The same is true of skeleton tents. I think the key is not to put up a curtain, not to partition with ropes, etc.

-The tent is half-open, or loosely closed, but not completely separated.

Kishino: Yes. The skeleton shows that there is no separation between inside and outside. Through such practices in the local community, I have been able to see things that I could not see before.

Ideguchi: I have also been experimenting with how to involve people. This is because it is said that two of the problems facing community centers are the aging of the population and the fixed number of users.

So, in an effort to create a community center where people in their mid-40s, the same generation as myself, could come, I first asked the rice and flower shops that I usually go to to teach a community center course. Since it was just early winter, the lineup of lectures included making modern shimenawa ropes with a florist, making New Year’s Eve soba noodles with a soba noodle shop, a winter-themed book talk with the manager of an independent bookstore, a Nagasaki Prefecture financial public relations advisor’s talk for children on “Money Matters from New Year’s Gifts,” a talk by a local A local artist gave a light workshop using the hall’s lighting equipment. The event was published as an omnibus lecture titled “Winter Dressing at Kita Community Center” in “Drie,” a public relations magazine shared by the three facilities under operation. We then distributed it to elementary schools in the neighborhood.

Ideguchi: Even in this age of the Internet, flyers given to children at school have a 100% reach rate to their parents. So many people in their 40s who were raising children started coming to the school. When they came, they realized that the community center had a lot more to offer than they had expected, as I mentioned earlier.

-So, it became the first step in getting people to know about community centers. The Nagasaki City Kita Community Center has been recognized as an “Excellent Center” in the 75th Excellent Community Center Awards by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in 2022, thanks to a series of approachable courses, promotional activities through its newsletter and the internet, among others.

Ideguchi: I was very happy. I really thought there was a lot we could do.

Also, what I was thinking about that course was that I wanted to make a new generation of not only users but also instructors. The problem of the aging and fixed population of the community center means, on the other hand, that the community is still going strong from the high economic growth period when leisure time was increasing and the community center was booming. The teachers and their students from those days are aging together. That’s wonderful, of course, but I think we also need to build a relationship with the next generation.

Exploring Beyond Organizational Silos: Facilitating Connections among Shared Concerns

-By the way, in addition to the Chitosepia Hall and the Nagasaki City Kita Community Center you mentioned earlier, you also became the designated manager of the Nagasaki City Civic Activity Center Lantana starting in the fiscal year 2023. What potential do you see in managing multiple facilities across different areas like this?

Ideguchi: To begin with, these three facilities are under different administrative jurisdictions. The Community Center is under the jurisdiction of the Lifelong Learning Planning Division of the city’s Board of Education, the Hall is under the jurisdiction of the Cultural Promotion Division, and the Civic Activity Center is under the jurisdiction of the Civic Collaboration Promotion Office of the Civic Life Department. The fields of lifelong learning, cultural promotion, and civic activities are all different. However, this is the logic of the management and administrative side, and for the citizens who actually use the facilities, the division should have nothing to do with the fact that they are the same public facilities.

For example, the activities of civic groups at civic activity centers may be culture-related or lifelong learning. Also, when we think of civic activities, we tend to think of direct social contribution activities, but even cultural groups are contributing to society in the sense that they will improve the cultural environment of the community in the future.

Ideguchi: In this way, the activities originally conducted at these three facilities overlapped, and if they do overlap, it would be better if the know-how accumulated at one facility could be utilized at another. We thought that we could be a part of that network when we started managing the three facilities. It is often said that looking at things from various angles is “multifaceted,” but I think there is also strength in being “monocular,” looking at various organizations from the same perspective.

-That’s interesting. Prior to our conversation, Ideguchi shared with us a research report on the role of intermediaries between communities and cultural arts conducted by the General Incorporated Association Chiiki Souzou (“Roles of Changing Communities and Crossing Cultures,” 2022). In it, it was noted that traditionally, fields such as “culture and the arts,” “education,” and “welfare” existed independently, with a “bridge” between them. However, nowadays, these various domains are contiguous, and cross-border activities are being carried out.

Ideguchi: That’s right. Inseparability” and “border-crossing” of multiple domains are keywords when considering approaches to social issues in recent years. For example, when we consider “education,” it is not just a matter of the Board of Education, but also childcare support and welfare for the handicapped. Then it is better to collaborate across domains and organizations. Everyone knows this, and it is being called for here and there. However, even if you approach the government with this idea, it is still difficult because of the stove-piped structure of the government.

However, it doesn’t have to be that big of a story; it is enough if there are people in the town who share the same awareness of the issues and can talk about them. In fact, I think there is an increasing number of young people who are involved in art, but want to do more than just art; they also want to support child-rearing. You also have young people who are willing to help out with DJing at your performances, don’t you?

Kishino: Yes, that’s right. There are kids who just want to DJ. If they also want to help with set-up and tear-down, the number of DJs who want to help is reduced to about one-third of the total number of DJs, and the number is even smaller when it comes to management, including preparations in advance. However, even so, if we can find two or three people over the course of a year who are willing to help out on a regular basis, we can make it work. From my own life experience, those who do will do it, and those who don’t will not, for whatever reason. I don’t force people who don’t do it to do it.

After all, these community activities tend to be volunteer activities. In the end, they don’t last. At first, we started with donations, but that didn’t last either. So I thought about how to make it continue, and approached not the government but organizations such as tourist associations and ward shopping district associations. I approached these groups and found out that they could set up a kitchen car in the park, but they did not have the content to attract people to the park. They said they would give us a budget if we would prepare content, and we allocated the budget to the DJs to make it work.

Ideguchi: When you do an activity, you are talking about people who have content but no budget or place, and people who have budget and place but no content. I thought it would be great if we could naturally do something like that at the community center to fill in each other’s deficiencies. I try to be a local link between soba noodle shops and flower shops and the community center’s business.

Kishino: We don’t have a system for that matching at the moment, so it’s just a matter of doing it in practice and trying it out. I’m not talking about the beginning, but for the first two years or so, we were doing it guerrilla style. That is to say, we did it for free. But I thought this would not be culturally mature, so I started getting official permission to do it. Then the tourist association saw what we were doing, and they became aware of the fact that the park attracts people when these people come, and they were able to set up a budget for the event.

Ideguchi: You are so right that there is no matching system. For example, at the Citizen’s Activity Center, there are files introducing the activities of various groups. But the idea that it would be interesting to combine one with another, or that it would solve a problem, is only in the minds of the consultants and staff who are looking at the spines of the files.

So, no matter how advanced the tagging and search systems become, it is ultimately only manpower that brings people together. Some people are troublesome, but the only way is to actually meet many people face to face, accumulate catalogs in one’s head, and bump into them.

Kishino: That’s right. That’s why I said there is no system, but in fact, people can be the system. Like a meddling uncle, if you want to do it, there are people who have it, and they mediate. That is what we are practicing. The best way to do that is to “create a site. Actually meeting people in the field is more helpful than any filing or list.

Refreshing Rather than Dismantling

-Earlier, Kishino mentioned the idea of “not creating an inside=community.” What kind of image do you have regarding human interactions within the community at that time?

Kishino: People often ask me, “Why don’t you form an NPO?” I myself have avoided being a leader or a founder, and have taken the stance that I am simply a festival man in the town.

Returning to my point about “not creating a community,” in fact, it is easier to make progress if you operate in the form of an organization or group. However, this approach has only been used for four to five years. Usually, the rules become too strict and oppressive, and problems arise. The more they are recognized from the outside, the more they become a skeleton. Therefore, we have adopted the form of a mutual support network that allows people to come and go as they wish, project by project. When each project achieves its goal, it is disbanded.

Of course, we are open to people from outside, but as a result, people who are close to the project tend to continue. That is just the result, isn’t it? In some areas, there are pre-existing frames such as neighborhood associations. So you are saying that while building a relationship with that, you are preparing an alternative frame, a system that allows people to come and go, a system that is not a community.

-It may seem like a bit of a leap, but in that context, the Indonesian collective “RUANGRUPA” which served as the director for “Documenta 15” in 2022, brought to light the cultural activities of their region.

RUANGRUPA, based in Jakarta, introduced the concept of “Rumah” at “Documenta 15,” which means “rice barn” in Indonesian. This refers to a communal rice storage shared by the local community, where the rice stored there becomes a shared resource for everyone. Ruangrupa implemented this local mechanism into Documenta, creating unconventional projects with the slogan “NO ART MAKE FRIENDS,” which garnered attention.

Kishino’s practices resonate with this idea of focusing on existing local mechanisms and fostering relationships between people to share something not rigid but loosely.

The “Kassel Art Fair” is one of the world’s most influential international art exhibitions, held once every five years in Kassel, Germany. One or a group of directors selects the overall theme and artists for each exhibition.

Kishino: My practice is not art, but rather an extension of my daily life, but I feel that I am doing something close to that.

There are both bad and good aspects to the customs and climate that have existed in the community for a long time. On the bad side, they can inhibit new forms of democracy or be oppressive to the individual. On the other hand, the good side is the sense of building a relationship of mutual trust within the local community and managing the society jointly. I wonder if it would be possible to update this sense to fit the times and make it more suitable for today’s society.

One such activity that I have been engaged in for a long time is to update local festivals in a modern way. When I do this, I sometimes get comments like, “Why do we have a different festival when we have an old one? However, we dare to ask for cooperation and participation from those who have been involved in the traditional festivals. Instead of starting a new one, we think of ways to cooperate with what is already in place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwUSNJUgV6A&t=1s

Kishino: And the “Sumiyume Odori Procession” was not organized by a neighborhood association, but as a project of the ward. Again, we asked for the cooperation of the neighborhood associations. New residents are often hesitant to participate in the activities of neighborhood associations, but with this framework, we could invite people from outside and work together. I think this will make the community a very democratic place.

Ideguchi: Through Kishino’s activities, as I mentioned earlier about the tourism association, something and someone, or someone and someone, can meet, transcending the conventional fixed framework. That is interesting, isn’t it? What I want to do as a designated manager is something similar. There are some things that take time and cannot be handled by the old system, such as neighborhood associations and administrative jurisdiction, but private designated managers can speedily take care of them. In the end, I think this is what will bring the most return to the citizens.

-When it comes to the designated manager system, there are often many opportunities for the negative aspects to be highlighted, but in reality, it can also have its advantages.

Ideguchi: Yes, it does.

Kishino: In the end, it depends on the designated manager. I am in a different social position from you, but I feel that we are suited for the same things.