I try not so much to create new characters and worlds but to create new game-play experiences.

Japan actually is an aging population, and so as the population has aged, they have had a lot more problems with health.

When I look around and see how aged cartoonists continue to work on their manga and how movie directors create new movies all the time, I understand that they would never retire. And by the same token, I guess I will still be making games somehow. The only question is whether the younger people will be willing to work with me at that far point in the future.

Nowadays I think it's really important that designers are really unique and individual.

Games are a trigger for adults to again become primitive, primal, as a way of thinking and remembering. An adult is a child who has more ethics and morals, that's all. I am not creating a game. I am in the game. The game is not for children, it is for me. It is for an adult who still has a character of a child.

I think what's really the most ideal thing is for the player themselves, within their own imagination, to carve out what they view as being the essence of the character.

There are some ghost stories in Japan where - when you are sitting in the bathroom in the traditional style of the Japanese toilet - a hand is actually starting to grab you from beneath. It's a very scary story.