How were the beginnings of your magazine?
In the first issue I was trying, it was more free and experimental, with no structure. It was about expressing my own emotions, my own feelings. But then after five issues I felt the need to make a structure, so I could spend more less time with and spend more time with people.

 

Why is it named "Here and There"? Is it because of a bridge between Japan and other cities?
Can I tell you the truth? Here and There is not about a concept, but more about conversations and relationships. One day I was talking with my friend Elein Fleiss through the internet, it was just when internet appeared as something common... So I sent her an email saying "I'm going to Hawaii this December" and she wrote me "And I'm going to New Jersey. Why don't we mix our photos and make a book about with them?" It was really fun to exchange the photos, so we did that and it was a mix of one of my photos, and one of hers, one of mines, one of hers, like that…  and completely horizonal. I asked her what title should we put to this, and she said "What about  'Here and There'?" I used to travel a lot and travelling was also an inspiration, so it could also be a nice title for a magazine.

 

What's the frequency of the magazine?
It depends. Number 6 was fourteen months after number 5, and number 5 was six months after number 4. It always depends on how much time I have. Because I work independently I decide I want to make when I want  to. I don't want me to give me a rule, like doing it once a year or twice a year.

 

How do you the decide the format? With designer Kazunari Hattori?
He helps me a lot but mostly its me. Because I was pregnant the layout had to be simple, I didn't have much time. So when I had the baby, I had to take care a lot of him, and everything had to be very simple as possible.

 

When did the first issue came out?
I did the first one in spring 2000.  I work in fashion so I thought I could do it twice a year, like two seasons, autumn and spring. So the 2nd issue came six months after that, and the 3th was next spring. In the 1st and 2nd issue almost all text and photos were mine, but from the 3th issue Elein wrote some things and then Mark Borthwick wanted to participate. I didn't asked anyone to do it at first because there is no fee, but then slowly I started to invite people and then they wanted to collaborate again. The magazine was more like a place for people to meet, it wasn't now only my personal room.

 

Do you tell the contributors what the issue is about or they send anything they want?
It depends. Most of the time I don't tell them what to do but sometimes I think of something. Like one time Elein said she wanted to do something but didn't knew what to do. With her I do lots of collaborations, I translate her essays. I first make her texts in french be translated into english and then I translate it them into japanese. I can't translate french to japanese, my french isn't very good. So she once wrote in Purple Journal about one special tree, a willow tree and there is only one of it in Paris, standing in a jewish memorial. It was a very short text but very strong and emotional. So I remembered that one and since we really didn't have time to sit down and think what she could contribute for Here and There, I told her "What about that trees?" and so for The House and Garden issue she wrote her favourite trees in Paris. So the contributions in a way, come from all this past conversations, the things they send me are all very spontaneous. With Takashi Homma I had a project of taking pictures of my house because I move a lot, so we enjoy to do this thing together. I always send the new issue to Anne Daems, a long time friend, and the last time she emailed me saying "This is the best issue! What can I do for the next one?" She told me in the email that she stayed in the summer just by accident, in a house built by Rem Koolhaas. This house is very iconic, all architects know about it, but the owner of the house is very strict about the exposure of the house. Her husband was an art collector and asked Rem to do them a house. So Anne showed her the magazine and the owner liked it so she agreed to use Anne's photos of the inside of the house.

 

What do you like about doing a a magazine?
I always like to look at small printed matter. I'm always  attracted to flyers or something that someone made, not really like Vogue magazine style. That's my nature, when I make a magazine I like to think I'm making a book. But I'm also questioning the book, I don't really believe in books that seem to say "This is a book and this is 100 percent correct", or "everything is in this book". What I like about magazines is that they are just in the moment, it's not a conclusion, it's about becoming. So in a way, another part of me likes to think I'm making a magazine and not a book.

 

Which magazines do you like?
I used to like magazines a lot in the 80s and 90s. From 2000 I almost don't see magazines anymore. Because Elein is very good friend of mine, I really like Purple Journal, she's the editor and publisher of it. I also like a magazine from Hong Kong called RMM, Ready Made Magazine. It's a free paper and it's really well edited, they are always looking for fresh content. The magazines from here, from Tokyo, used to be like that, but now they seem more boring. I think people were really thinking seriously about magazines at the end of the 80s, when Wolfgang Tillmans was working with i-D magazine, when Kate Moss appeared... In those days magazines seemed to really be something part of the culture, but at the end of the nineties it went down.

 

Maybe it happened because of the internet.
Probably. But I don't think new things can come come from the old structure. We need new formats for new possibilites. I used to work for Shiseido which is a very tradicional japanese cosmetics company and I left there five years ago and I left because I felt that old structure.

 

What were you doing there?
I was working as an editor for a magazine they have called Hanatsubaki. It's a monthly magazine that started in the 1920s, to help the company image. So I could propose things to do since they don't talk about cosmetics. So through that magazine is how I met Elein, Mike Mills, different people. I always wanted to do articles on Susan Cianciolo, Bless, Cosmic Wonder. But fashion magazines they would never allow me to do this thing, you would have to look for different things all the time, but I only wanted to follow those I liked.

 

And that's also how you met your art director Kazunari Hattori?
No, he's an art director for advertising, but he loves the printed media thing. In Hanatsubaki there was already an art director, he is old, he's more than 70 years now. He's a great person but this generation is different, I wanted to make something with people from my generation. Takashi Homma is from my generation, Kazunari too.

 

And now Nieves from Switzerland is the young publisher for your magazine.
Benjamin Sommerhalder from Nieves comes to Tokyo very often, he just loves Japan. If he hadn't help me with the 6th issue, I wouldn't have been able to conclude it. When I changed for Nieves things went really well and we didn't actually planned it, it just happened like that. Before that, bookstores didn't carry the magazine, or I sent them and then they returned them after a period of time. And now it's from Nieves but it's still all made in Japan, but because it's Nieves they bookstores buy the magazines, because  it's and imported magazine...

 

Yesterday we went  to Nezu, the neighbourhood in Tokyo that you mentioned in Purple Journal.
Really? That's nice!

 

The flower shop was closed but we found a really good bazaar that was really close by. It's a very nice neighbourhood, very different to the rest of Tokyo. Here in Japan I think there is more space for gentleness where you can change things, but not agressively.
I think so, mostly because people here don't like to argue. Me, I don't like to argue. We don't really speak a lot, or battle; I don't know if that's good or not, but I love calmness rather than arguing. And if I compare my work with other editors from Europe and America it's really a different communication style. But I think we really care for people. From my experience when we communicate we imagine what the person is thinking, if they are feeling confortable or unconfortable. Maybe women are more like that.

 

Like there is another form of communication rather than speech. And I am also fascinated with the plants that people put in the sidewalk, all these pots. There's a need of putting plants everywhere. Sometimes it's a nice pot, but sometimes it's just a tin can. Who takes care of them?
It's not like that in Buenos Aires?

 

Well in some places, but not that much.
We care about a lot of things, sometimes too many things, it?s funny. When I went to Kyoto with Susan Cianciolo we stayed in small inn, a very cheap japanese hotel. It was more like a house, not a hotel, because the inn just had four rooms. Ours had a tatami, a mirror, a desk and a telephone, but everything was covered with a fabric that the owner made. For Japanese people that happens maybe when we go to our grandparents house, it's a very old image. But because it?s Kyoto everything is preserved like that. Susan was so fascinated about all those fabrics...

 

I'm not against progress but I feel like older people know about so many stuff that we are losing. How do you feel about traditional Japan? Tokyo is such a modern place, but then there is Kyoto which seems to be very different. Do you feel sometimes nostalgic about all this or not really?
It seems that nostalgy is a trend, people are feeling nostalgic. Sometimes I could not choose the place to
live, but this time I could, so I chose to live in the Nezu neighbourhood. Maybe it's because of nostalgy, because it's not a very convenient area, Harayuku is a more convenient area. But most of the people living here, in Tokyo, don't feel like this is their home or that this is where they are going to live forever. It feels like it's only temporary. And also the architecture is changing all the time.

 

Why do you think it?s like that?
The typical japanese house doesn't resist for too long. They are wooden houses, so maybe they stay for
30 or 40 years at it's maximum. It's also really cold inside them...

 

Yes, I heard they are very cold.
So that's why when a house gets 30-40 years they put it down and build the next one.

 

They will construct it in the same area or they will move to another one?
Japanese people don't move much from their places all the time. Maybe in Tokyo, which is a mega city, people just come here to work. But in the suburbs the people stay in the same place.

 

Now that you have a child, do you plan to raise him in Tokyo or maybe move?
I live one station from Nezu, so where I am there are just houses, not shops. So it's good for my kid to go to school, it's really a quiet area. At the moment we like it and we want to stay there, but it's true people are starting to chose to live somewhere else and not in Tokyo, like on the seaside or the mountains.

 

But also japanese are very westernized which seems to be the opposite of the japanese softness. Do you think that might change?
From my experience, when I went to school half were people like me, the ones who grew up in Japan and that never went abroad. But the other half, the modern half, were the ones that went abroad and when they returned they couldn't adjust to japanese culture again, they couldn't feel japanese. So in my school some teachers were giving the classes in english, you could chose if you wanted your classes to be in english or japanese. I think my generation chose the american personality, their behavouir is stronger; but I don't know what will happen with the next generation.

 

 

 

 

 

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