TAKASHI MURAKAMI:

When did you know you’d become not just “big in Japan” but a huge voice in the cultural world?

I actually feel like the phrase “big in Japan” is not appropriate for me. The reason is that there are more people who sympathise with my practice in America than there are domestically in Japan. In Japan I am famous in certain special circles—mainly as someone who is trying to break down and enlighten the conventions of Japanese art. Rather than a big figure, I guess you could say I’m more of an influential minority symbol. How do you use that voice now?

In Japan I focus mostly on sending messages through Twitter, trying to spread my minority way of thinking. A way of thinking that, in the West, is generally considered a given—that to create art, we must study history and from that context try to envision the future. In Japan the majority way of thinking is that art is, and should be experienced as is, and that any preconceived ideas will only get in the way.

What inspired you to make “monster” movie? The inspiration was a manga called

When I was six it was the first manga I ever had my parents buy for me, and that experience accidentally formed the basis for the rest of my life. It was a completely chance encounter, so there’s nothing I can do to escape it.

Who is your favorite creature, and why? If you were one of your creatures, which one would you be?

That would be Oval—a pitiful creature who has no desire to be born into this world but is summoned anyway by scientists. In his surprise he reacts violently and is cast as a pariah, eventually being led back to the netherworld. Basically he is my self-portrait. Oval, is my ultimate F.R.I.E.N.D.

deals with how the younger generation communicates. How do you capture that?

In fact, the children in the story are imbued with my own childhood memories. So in a sense I’ve set the landscape of the children of the ’60s within the everyday life of the present day.

Considering all your accomplishments in 2-D (and you’ve called your style “superflat”), what inspired you to make a liveaction film?

In the past I was unable to create a narrative, so I’d given up becoming a filmmaker. But since then I’ve been a radio personality

Why a