over the last 3-5 years, working in Japan’s contemporary art scene, but of course not internationally recognised such as Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara, photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto and painter Hiroshi Senju, Tatsuo Miyajima and Yasumasa Morimura. The current ‘post’ generation of artists, what do you think they are increasingly influenced by, their concerns, and how they are responding to the increasingly international art scene? JW: Certainly, the Japanese art scene is not booming and a lot of Japanese artists live abroad and, like Shimabuku, don’t particularly want to go back. Their feeling is that the country is rather insular without much room for freedom of expression. KW: Yes. JW: I don’t think I could live there, but on the other hand, I am fascinated by it. And slightly love it in a way that I was describing. I identify a lot with it, aesthetically, philosophically in a way that I don’t with other Asian cultures. KW: I understand. I have had an interest in Japanese culture for some time now, but I don’t yet know, if I could or could not live there that is, for any pre-longed period. My approach is very much that it’s good to be there and it’s good to come away from it, because I can then look at what I have explored and what I have seen from a distance, with some perspective, which I find very difficult to do whilst in Japan.