<read> Chisai Book

There are few books on Asian contemporary art written in English, but they are all wonderful. I'll teach you stealthily.

This page would be changed and corrected in the future.

When I wrote previous article, I remembered. Eh, what?

“Chisai Book #07”, 2018

The difference between Asia and other areas is that it is not connected by land, the sea is a border, and the island is a country. These languages are different, and the grammar and fonts/letters are almost quite different. In China, Google can't show up. When "flying away from Japan an hour" to Korea, I can't understand their fonts/letters at all (Now I can read it). Searching for something on a website, it is different to get result because I mistyped one fonts/letter. What should I do when the language is different? What should I do with this problem? I thought, "let's mix it up" rather than "let's connect". I thought about what I could do to carry it out. 

As I wrote above, I thought the website is not valid because it is not visible and the letters were different from country to country. Then I thought of editing newspapers and magazines, but rather books are better. And I tried interviews with artists and introductions to their artworks in it.

“Chisai Book #01”, 2016

That's how I published "Chisai Book". Chisai means "small" in Japanese, and my name has the same pronunciation (Is it crazy? yes, I think so since childhood!), so I choose its name. Chisai Book consisted of English and the native language of the person appearing.

I gave it to many people and I sent it to independent bookstores I didn't know. Sometimes, I also give it to someone when I asked for directions on the road, and I left it at such bookshops.

Then a number of interesting things happened. At independent bookstores in Korea, the owner said to me, "I hate Japanese people, but I like this book". A similar thing happened in Taiwan. An editor living in Hong Kong found "Chisai Book" in Hong Kong and visited my house in Kyoto, Japan. And "Chisai Book" was exhibited at an art book fair in China before I knew it.

“Chisai Book” in Shenzhen Design Week, China, 2019

I was mixing it little by little like this, but Covid-19 has started. It is difficult to meet directly and to touch something directly. I stopped making books when I heard that people would get infected by what they touched. But now I want to start "Chisai Book" again.