7 questions to Masami Tokuda

Q. What made you decide to make things as your job ?

A. I cannot do anything else.  it’s my livelihood while I am alive.

 

Q. Why did you choose wood as the material ?

A. I don’t remember choosing it, so I’d be happy if wood chose me.

 

Q. You used to focus on furniture, but why did you start to make ‘Utsuwa’ or wooden tableware ?

A. It is because I want to make things more intuitively, away from drawings and conventions. Since I started to make tableware, I feel that the furniture I made have become more intuitive too. Recently, I just sketch the image in mind and don’t draw a plan.

 

Q. You said sounds are important for you. What do sound and music mean to you?

A. Whatever it is in nature or in the human world, I perceive phenomena by sounds rather than visuals. I feel figures by hearing, not by sight. When I work, I try to make something which make sounds I want to express and hear.Sometimes I draw an image, but what I want to keep in works is the sound.If I keep it in mind visually, it is more concrete and easy to understand, but it omits and ignore various elements, so the sense works restrictedly, even the reproduction from the visual is more limited.Both sound and light are waves. It seems that the elementary particles that make up all substances are also constantly vibrating. Waves and vibrations should be accompanied by sustained sounds, therefore everything can be heard.It sounds annoying and complicated when I try to explain it in words, but it is just a chop logic I checked now to answer the question. I’m not always thinking about anything.I believe my hands think about what I make as long as I keep moving them.

 

Q. What do you want to do and convey through making things?

A. I have no clear will.I just give shapes to my sense that I feel like spring water.The spring water flows where it flows, and sometimes becomes a river or springs, sometimes it stays just a drop of water, where it arrives, it can give a new feeling or a fresh will to someone.

 

Q. What are the difficulty and happiness of working for you?

A. The difficulty for me is to meet the deadline.The happiness is to have the freedom to go to the sea whenever good waves rise.So I cannot meet the deadline.

 

Q. What do you think of a "rich life"?

A. It cannot be realized by the quantity or speed. It’s to spend life that we feel something deep from apparently small, useless things.

 


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