The works I made at the start of my career rely on the themes of war, atomic power, and outer space.

I tried to teach myself to draw anime, but I was so bad.

For children of my generation, anime was an escape from Japan's loser complex following World War II. Anime wasn't foreign. It was our own.

My father, Fukujuro, drove a cab and my mother, Itsuko, was a homemaker. My parents often took me to see Impressionist exhibits. At home, I would paint pictures in a similar style.

I grew up in a low-income area of Tokyo. Like most homes in Tokyo, ours was small. It was a free-standing, two-family rental duplex built 30 years earlier.

When I was little, my parents belonged to a cult, a big Buddhist sect called Soka Gakkai. I didn't have any particular sentiment for or against religion, but I did feel bad about my parents' poverty and how it made them depend on that cult.

As a young artist in New York, I thought about postwar Japan - the consumer culture and the loose, deboned feeling prevalent in the character and animation culture. Mixing all those up in order to portray Japanese culture and society was my work.

I don't always enjoy curating, but I do believe it's part of my job. It's a good exercise for my brain, like warming up. Just focusing on my work would be so depressing! For me, curating is necessary - it's like physical training.

My company, Kaikai Kiki, is unique because it's an art business. I had to find out how to do this by myself.

In Japan, after having lost World War II, the hierarchy that used to exist in the society, from the rich to the poor, has been flattened, especially by the winners, by Americans. As a Japanese artist debuting in America, I really had to bring that kind of theme into the work.