Mirai Nikki (future diary)

Kikuchi University
Kikuchi University is a cultural-educational centre based in Kumamoto, Japan. The physical location is currently under renovation, in partnership with their first residency participant, William Davis. The renovations are to establish facilities for workshops, events, residencies and cultural-economic as well as community activity. 

The purpose of the centre is to stimulate the development of new approaches to social and economic problems, by creating space and support for experimentation and self education, where there is an earnest intention to contribute to the increasingly complex and unwieldy economic-cultural ecosystem. 


青い ('Blue')
"We're acting and writing with Collage, Graffiti and Literature in Japan."


富田真希子
Makiko Tomita was born in a rural village in Kagoshima, Japan. Her family run a Shinto shrine, and so grew up surrounded by Japanese mythology and symbolism accumulated over several thousand years of culture.

Time moves in cycles, not lines, and so the gateway to the future is found through the wisdom and tradition of the past. Innovation and conservation go hand in hand. The key to our future is in human insight and potential, not expansion and technology.

In the next 10 or 15 years, management of the Shrine will fall to Makiko, and this will become the essence of her creative practice.


Chugen Nakahara
Seeking employment, Chugen Nakahara mistook a bag store (鞄屋) for a shoe store (靴屋), but he got the bag store job anyway. Subsequently he started going drinking every night. 

At the vocational training school he entered after working at the bag store, he constantly fell asleep, and so only ever learned how to sharpen a plane. He then began building a new base by piling stones at an abandoned factory at his parents' house, which was in ruins.

Inspired by all sorts of culture and debris, from movies and music to alcohol and comics, he works freely developing entire atmospheres out of only his tools and scrap materials.

Chugen represents the third generation of Nakahara Mokuzai, which has been in business since the post-war period in Hagi, Yamaguchi. Currently, while mainly producing furniture, he seeks to express human polarity (yin/yang) in a “funny” way, through a creativity unique to waste materials.

カツオ(のえ)ブ(ｫ)シ
Katsuo(noe)bu(o)shi works in various media, including but not limited to Nihonga (Traditional Japanese painting).

His work deals with themes surrounding affirmation born of negation; questioning the 2D through the 3D; and questioning the 3D through the 2D.

立石和也　
Kazuya Tateishi is a genius among geniuses.

Hana Kobori
"I practice photography while working as a nurse;
Expressing the movement of emotions
through photographic image.

Currently exhibiting etc.
Based between Kumamoto and Tokyo."

Sonoda Moeco
"Growing up in an environment where nature, animals and plants were always nearby, running around the mountains in the snowy mountains of Hokuriku: I've loved drawing since I was a child. 

From drawing all over the back of junk mail, by junior high and high school, I devoted myself to imitations of anime and manga.

At university, I went south to Kyushu to study agriculture, while continuing to draw on the side, but took a hiatus when I became pregnant with my first child.

Recently, I rediscovered the joy of painting, and resumed my creative work. I usually combine oil pastels, paints, color pens, and colored pencils freely. Mainly plants, scenes that combine the reality and fantasy seen through the eyes, illustrations of people, etc."


Kyohei Sakaguchi
Kyohei Sakaguchi is a Japanese artist and architect who was born in Kumamoto. He graduated from Waseda University's department of architecture in 2001. He is most known for his Zero Yen Project, which involves studying structures built at no cost, such as shanties made by the homeless.