Description: At the bottom of the Vistula River in Warsaw, mermaids are collecting blue castles. A blue castle, someone’s dream, is beautiful yet fragile; with the passage of time, it decays and, at times, is destroyed. Sisi, a Polish woman, and Ran, a Japanese woman, are led by the mermaid and meet at the bottom of the Vistula River, in a world of dreams. What the lonely women carry overlaps despite differences in time and place, and sinks deeper and deeper. This work is based on the old Polish fairy tale “The Mermaid of Warsaw” and the work of the same name, “The Blue Castle,” written by author Lucy Maud Montgomery.

When playing with children on the rocky shore, I noticed that tiny creatures were teeming all around us. I sought to capture the unadorned beauty and vitality of the summer sea, glimpsed through small things in the water: tide pools sparkling in the intense summer light, fish swimming in those clear pools of seawater, the decay of dead fish, and jellyfish rising leisurely toward the sun. I have intentionally incorporated the motif of dead fish, but I also believe that death is an important event in the cycle of life, and that it too can be naturally and beautifully alive. For that reason, I sometimes include decayed plants and animals as motifs. I created this work with the hope that it would connect to the intrinsic life value and beauty of human beings themselves, something that is often overlooked in contemporary society. By deliberately focusing on small beings and enlarging them into a grand work, I believe we may become aware of the value of each individual cell. I am also personally captivated by that small-scale beauty.

In the winter of 1962, an unprecedentedly sophisticated counterfeit bill was discovered in Japan. The counterfeit 1,000-yen notes were used through cunning methods, and the case ultimately came to a close without a single suspect being arrested. One of the counterfeit bills that was found was reportedly placed in a time capsule alongside genuine bills during the Osaka Expo. Reinterpreting the theme of this song, “Itsuwari,” which speaks of facing someone while deceiving and disguising oneself, as the production of counterfeit money, we created this music video. If something is carried through to the end, can even a fake stand alongside the real?