I was born in Kyoto and now live in Shiga Prefecture.
As a child, I was very quiet
and was not very good at expressing
my feelings openly.
When I was in the upper grades of elementary school,
I had an opportunity to write a poem in class,
and I still clearly remember
how happy I was when it was included
in our class anthology.
By putting things into writing,
I could express what was inside me.
I think that was the first time
I discovered the joy of expressing myself in that way.
As I grew older,
I gradually became brighter and more outgoing,
but what I had always loved remained the same:
stories and imaginary worlds,
and looking at beautiful things.
Things as transparent as glass,
translucent materials,
and soft pastel colors.
Rather than things that make a strong,
clear statement,
I have always been drawn to things
that seem slightly transparent,
and to soft colors gently overlapping one another.
I have also always loved
the elegant world of the French Rococo era
and the refined beauty of Japan’s Heian period.
Among them,
I was especially fascinated by Marie Antoinette,
and I read book after book
about her, the French Revolution,
and the period from Louis XIV to Louis XVI.
That fascination was also one of the reasons
I chose to major in French at university.
When I was in junior high school,
I once heard French spoken
on a television language program
and found the sound of the language
incredibly beautiful.
That, too, became one of the reasons
I was drawn to French.
I later visited France
and also followed Marie Antoinette’s footsteps
with my own feet, beginning in Vienna.
Standing in places where she had once been,
although they belonged to a distant time,
I felt a strange sense
that the era was somehow very close to me.
At the same time,
I have always been fascinated
by the beautiful layering of colors and fabrics
seen in the twelve-layered kimono
of Japan’s Heian period.
The French Rococo era
and Japan’s Heian period.
They belong to completely different places and times,
yet I feel that they share something in common.
The overlapping colors and fabrics,
the image of people softly exchanging words
from behind a fan,
and a world in which feelings are conveyed quietly
rather than spoken loudly.
Perhaps that is also one of the reasons
I have continued to be drawn
to these two periods.
After graduating from university,
because I had always loved airplanes,
I worked in a job connected with international flights
at Kansai International Airport.
The time I spent encountering
people and cultures from many different countries
remains a precious memory for me.
Later, I worked as a secretary
at a university medical school,
where I learned many things
in the very different world of medicine.
Being able to work under a professor
whom I deeply respected
also became a very important part of my life.
At the same time,
there were periods when
the busyness of everyday life
left me emotionally exhausted.
As I gradually began
to regain time for myself,
around the end of January 2026,
there was a moment when I suddenly found
the sound of paper rubbing together
and the sound of stickers being peeled
from their backing
deeply comforting.
Drawn by those sounds,
I bought some paper and stickers
and began making collages.
At first,
I thought collage might mean
filling the whole surface
with lots of paper and stickers.
But somehow,
a tightly packed composition
did not feel right to me.
When I tried leaving a little open space,
it felt much more natural and comfortable.
As I continued creating,
I gradually began to understand
why I was so drawn to that sense of space.
Because there is open space,
I can place a story there.
I can place words there.
And I can gently layer
my own emotions
and thoughts that feel almost like poetry.
For me,
open space is not an empty place.
It is a place
where the artwork can breathe.
When I look at stickers and paper,
a story softly begins to appear in my mind.
Following the images that grow from there
and gradually shaping them
into one small world
has become something
I truly enjoy.
And when I look back at a finished piece,
I sometimes realize
that the person within it
was actually myself.
“I wish I could be like this.”
“I remember feeling this way.”
Those wishes and memories,
the happy moments,
the lonely moments,
and the painful ones as well.
The things I have felt
throughout my life
sometimes appear in my work
without me even realizing it,
and little by little,
they become part of the world I create today.
Since discovering paper collage,
I feel as though I have finally found
a place where I can express,
in a way that feels true to me,
the things I had never been able
to put fully into words.
There have, of course,
been many happy moments in my life.
At the same time,
there have also been painful experiences
and things that have stayed in my heart.
But now,
the time I spend creating
feels as though it gently wraps
all of those past experiences
in something new.
I am still surprised
that there could be something in my life
that fills me with so much excitement
and allows me to lose myself in it so completely.
Right now,
I feel that I am living
more truly as myself
than ever before.
Through this website,
I hope that more people
will be able to see
the small paper worlds I create.