For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty.

My energy comes from freedom and a rebellious spirit.

For me, creation can only come out of a certain kind of unhappiness. They say in Japan, this thing like the hungry spirit - the hungry mind - is what gets you going forward.

The more people that are afraid when they see new creation, the happier I am.

There's always a pattern in order to make a thing, but the starting point must be something I've never seen before. It's not two-dimensional, but it's like a sample. I work with patterns like a sculptor. I try to get [the team] not to work on a body, [but] to work on a free space, on a table. The work is basically on flat surfaces.

I've always said that growing up in postwar Japan, I never felt any connection to my work through those experiences. The work I do really comes from inside myself. For me, being born in Japan was an accident.

The first thing we do is sit around a table and discuss what we could pick up from daily life, from space. That's how it starts, completely abstract. There's no kind of, "Oh, let's do Peru," or "Let's do pleats," you know?