In 2019, you released your photobook, and then in 2025, we visited Hawaii for work and were finally able to go to Wallows together, didn't we?

As for the photobook, I don't remember whether I suggested putting it out or if you said we should do something together. But I knew that if it was going to be published through your place, I wanted it to be about Wallows. The first skateboarding team we completely fell in love with was Powell Peralta's Bones Brigade. The video that got us and the friends we started skating with the most excited was Animal Chin (The Search for Animal Chin). In the opening scene, the Bones Brigade completely tears up Wallows. To us, it was a holy ground. We used to think, "That dream location where the people we look up to skate, does a paradise like this really exist?"
How did you see it back then?

It really was like a dream location, wasn't it? We used to walk around all the time, looking for spots like that by trying to find the Japanese equivalent.

The dream team was skating there, so we didn't even know if it was real or not.

It felt like we were watching a documentary about them, but later on, we gradually realized that they were actually acting.

We just wanted to see their gestures, attitudes, the clothes they wore, and the skateboards they rode in precise detail, so we just kept watching it over and over, didn't we? Then, we gradually realized there was a storyline, and we came to understand that they were all out on a skateboarding journey to find Animal Chin. It was only after becoming adults that we realized Animal Chin himself didn't actually matter. It was just a fictional premise to get everyone together, skating, having fun, and hitting up sessions everywhere. Once I realized that, when the time came to release the photobook through your label, I thought it would be great to go looking for Animal Chin together with you. You couldn't come when I was doing the actual photo shoot, but we finally went there together last year.

I looked into why Stacy Peralta made this kind of video back then. At the time, skateboarding was viewed merely as a passing trend or a competitive sport. Videos back then only featured tournament footage, highlighting nothing but the highly commercial aspect of the scene. However, Stacy made this video with the belief that a true skateboarding community is all about friends purely having fun together. To him, this is how skateboarding should actually be, even if that philosophy was rationalized after the fact. We watched that side of skateboarding culture constantly and were deeply influenced by it. Decades later, when the opportunity came for us to do something similar, it just clicked perfectly. It fit together so well that it everything happened naturally. We launched the publishing label "sign," created the photobook, gathered our old friends, and even hosted workshops.
Then, after five years passed and we navigated the pandemic, another opportunity came up to visit Hawaii for a separate project, and we finally made it to Wallows together.

When I first went there by myself, I was absolutely terrified. You have to climb over a fence, so I climbed over trying not to let anyone see me. Even though nobody was around as I walked in, whenever a helicopter flew overhead, I would hide. But honestly, looking back, the local people probably didn't care at all (laughs).

Before going in, I asked an old guy living in the house right next to the fence, "Is it okay to go in here?"
He just said, "Everyone goes in there with their skateboards."

It’s really lax, isn’t it?

And when we went in, it was pretty emotional, wasn't it?

Like, "Wow, it really does exist."

When I visit Wallows, I feel so many things like those emotional memories from our youth, my feelings about skateboarding, and so much more. But above all, it makes me start thinking about what kind of metaphors were hidden there. That is why I thought if Taro and I were to share our thoughts on Wallows, it would be really interesting to talk about those metaphors.

What did you think and feel then?

Just as Stacy did, it made me realize all over again that the true joy of skateboarding lies in purely having fun together with everyone. That's why when we visited Wallows, even though it's just a physical location that we only found out about through skateboarding, it made me really consider how much skateboarding actually nurtured our way of life and our way of thinking.

That's so true. We didn't start skateboarding alone, we were always moving in a group of five or six, influencing each other. The fact that the Bones Brigade also moved as a crew of five or six fit perfectly with us, so it really resonated. We would even assign roles to ourselves, mapping our own personalities onto the Bones Brigade members we sympathized with. For instance, Tetsu was Tommy Guerrero, and I was Lance Mountain. We formed a pseudo-Bones Brigade in our own corner of Tokyo. I bet this was happening all across Japan, and even worldwide. Now that we're adults, whenever we meet skaters from our generation, there's an instant connection, isn't there? It’s easy to go back to those days.

TG (Tommy Guerrero) mentioned that the skateboarding scene seems to be taking a turn for the worse again. There was a massive boom because of the Olympics, but the current regression is apparently the aftermath of that.

So it’s seen in that way in America too? It does seem in recent major contests, Japanese and other Asian kids have been sweeping the podium with 1-2-3 finishes. It must be disappointing, in a way.

Back when we were skating, it was completely normal to skate in places we technically weren't allowed to enter or skate in. There was a unique solidarity nurtured within our kids-only community, completely away from the eyes of our parents and other adults. We used to gather under random overpasses. Different crews would be sizing each other up, but at the end of the day, we were still a single community living through the exact same era. If you went to a certain skate shop, someone you knew was always just hanging out there. It might have just been a time where those things were tolerated, but for us, this was a massive turning point. If I had to define how skateboarding truly influenced us, it was the drive to do things, make things, and think things through for ourselves. After all, it wasn’t something we were ever taught in school.

The Olympics are fine, but it seems like skateboarding is gradually turning into just another after-school activity.

It’s a difference in attitudes, after all.

I went to Shanghai recently, and the mothers over there were absolutely buzzing about skateboarding. It’s a hyper-competitive academic society where you either have to get into an elite school to be wealthy or excel at a specific sport. Up until now, that sport was table tennis, but because the population is far larger than Japan's, breaking through is incredibly difficult, even for talented players. Apparently, because Asians are currently excelling at it, skateboarding has really jumped in popularity and they are building tons of skateparks in China right now.

Do they invite trainers from America or anything?

No, it's being driven by mothers who desperately want their own children to stand out. Something like the skateboard equivalent of soccer moms are starting to appear, but there isn’t much skateboard culture in the original sense driving it, so it's a bit of a shame that it is being treated as a specialized skill.

Back in the '80s, even names like Madonna (※4) or Sean Penn (※5) became the actual names of tricks. The joy of skateboarding comes from that kind of contextual naming, historical background, and culture. That’s why back in the mid-'90s when it was decided that the X Games and ESPN were going to broadcast it, Mr. O (Hiroshi Otaki ※6) was saying, "I wonder how that’ll work out..."

But it seems like America is properly able to preserve that kind of culture, you know? Even if something goes mainstream, people there say, "I'm not part of that side," and it can continue to exist as a culture. Even ordinary people are able to differentiate between the two. Conversely, I feel like Japan is in a precarious position as subcultures just tend to disappear. Almost as if we’re are at a critical point. If you don't strongly resist and rebel against this commercialisation of a subculture, it will completely vanish, so I want to make a proper stand against that. But when you do, it becomes radical, and to ordinary people, it looks and sounds scary. In America, however, it seems that they can loosely coexist. I don't know if it's the character of the people or the society’s structure, though. Come to think of it, remember when we went to that skatepark in Minamiuonuma in Niigata Prefecture with TG (Tommy Guerrero) a while back? We were pushing on our boards in the skatepark's parking lot, and we got yelled at. After only about five pushes, a security guard came over and told us skateboarding was prohibited. I feel like that is what the general stance is in Japan.

It really does seem that way.

What Tetsu was saying about how we used to just do things as kids, that was really great, I think. Our parents could never understand it. Even now, when you make something, it's driven by that same "do it ourselves" spirit. Nowadays, everything is laid out too clearly for you, so there's no sense of secrecy anymore. It seems like skating in the city is getting really difficult these days, too.

I've recently started riding my motorcycle again, but then I realized, "Wait, where am I supposed to park my motorcycle?"

I often hear people say they go out riding but can't find a place to park, so they just come straight home.

There are no motorcycle parking spaces anywhere. Car parking lots are off-limits too. Even parking within the white lines is strictly forbidden. The culture is disappearing. The way people play has completely changed.

I remember back in high school, you used to negotiate with a bakery near the school to let you park your motorcycle there.

We were really close (laughs). Let's go back a little bit, though. How has it been for your work? I mean, in terms of the influence from skateboarding.

I wonder. You know, when I think about what kind of person I am, I notice that I'm always looking for the finest details. Even if I say so myself. I watched because I wanted to see exactly what stickers the Bones Brigade people were putting on and at what precise angles. I would look at the hard-to-see spots, like a momentary glimpse passing by on a VHS tape; I was constantly watching those kinds of details. I think you were the exact same way, and for both of us, I believe that directly connects to the work we do now. That's why even when I'm just looking at people walking down the street, in terms of fashion, for instance, I naturally end up looking only at the minor details, like, "Oh, that person pulls their socks up high." There are actually surprisingly many people who don't notice those kinds of things at all, you know?

That's so true. It's exactly because we went through this experience that we're able to see these things, isn't it? We used to look really closely at edges, banks, and the road surface, too. We'd inspect the actual condition of the environment, like how the transition looks right where the flat ground meets the bank.

Even concrete varies a lot, like how the asphalt texture is fine. Every town has its own details. That is the kind of thing I look for and observe. Like, 'This area feels nice.'

Like searching for Animal Chin. I think I will always be searching for what kind of metaphor that was. Always.

For me, during the opening for the Wallows photo book at BOOKMARC, Taku (Editor Taku Takemura ※7), Shin-chan (SKATETHING ※8), and everyone else helped out, and TG actually came and played live. At that moment, I thought for a second, wait, hasn’t Animal Chin already been found? (laughs) Like, Animal Chin may have actually showed up.

They might have passed by, just like in the video (laughs).

That’s true. I remember how people from our generation who watched Animal Chin used to jokingly ask each other or write, “Have you found Animal Chin yet?” or things like that. In the end, Animal Chin was never found in that video, so everyone is still looking. Older skaters would occasionally say how interesting that is as a joke. But maybe that was it, when a session heats up, he is close by. Sessions like this are exactly the state of Animal Chin being there. Because we are having a good time, he is here. You come to understand it once you become an adult.

Chin appeared for a moment, didn’t he?

We summoned him for a fleeting moment, didn't we. But he doesn't really show up unless you work pretty hard for it (laughs).