Yachiyo Tsuzuri is a photo album specialized for preservation, made using the traditional techniques of “kyōshi,” experts in the binding of Japanese books, a craft that has been passed down since the Nara period.

Commentary: Before COVID, even a few years earlier, around the time when people had become nervously hypersensitive in times of emergency, there was already a sense of suffocation, as if only things that were useful or meaningful were being demanded, and it felt as though that atmosphere had been cultivated after COVID began. As we were forced to relearn that no one had knowledge of this unknown virus, and that people held different ideas and opinions about how to deal with it, I imagined a sense of futility and of coexisting with various forms of life, drawn from the parallel between having no choice but to barricade ourselves in and the fact that everything is always passing. The track “The FOG” itself is by John Carpenter, but I think it also referenced films such as Fitzcarraldo, Straw Dogs, and The Wages of Fear.