As the title suggests, this collection's theme is a tribute to the late Shigeru Mizuki. The title, "gege," is a Tottori dialect word meaning "lower" and also Shigeru Mizuki's childhood nickname, "gege." Shigeru Mizuki passed away at the end of last year. Needless to say, he was the man who elevated the shadowy presence of yokai into everyday fantasy. Why did the Tottori environment give birth to Shigeru Mizuki, a manga artist who depicts such a negative world? I wanted to conduct research that would help me find my own answer to this question. It was with this in mind that I began creating this collection. When I explored Sakaiminato, Mizuki's hometown at the tip of the Yumigahama Peninsula, I found that there was no yokai atmosphere. Originally, the sandbar was formed by the accumulation of sand from the Hino River, which flows from the Chugoku Mountains, so there are no forests or mountains where you might expect yokai to live.


I was puzzled by this, but then I heard that Mizuki's family home was on the shore of the Sea of Japan, and that he would always look out at the Shimane Peninsula on the opposite shore and be enthralled by the idea of a world inhabited by yokai. This made sense. The neighboring prefecture is Shimane, known as the "Land of the Gods," where gods from all over Japan visit during the month of the gods in Izumo. Since it's a place where gods are likely to be found, there must have been many yokai.


In an interview during his lifetime, Mizuki said that he didn't sense any yokai in Tottori, but that he always sensed their presence in the neighboring prefecture of Shimane. Hearing this, I felt like interjecting, "Why not Tottori? LOL!" (Even though it's often referred to as the prefecture of yokai). However, and this is a bold hypothesis, perhaps it was precisely because there was nothing that the imagination was sparked? I thought this was an extraordinary worldview shared by another great Tottori photographer, Ueda Shoji.


A world that is also my roots, where a variety of creatures, both ordinary and extraordinary, mix together.


The world I paint is still small, but I would like to continue to paint a larger world where various values blend together.


So, Mizuki Shigeru, you have become a real yokai, and I have learned so much about this world from you.


Thank you very much.