This is the third film made from the same collection of photographs.
Grand Green Osaka at night on October 25, 2026.
And Umeda at dusk on October 28.
This time, I have made these 104 photographs into a 4K film accompanied by the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.”
The performance is by the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Kenichiro Kobayashi, known as Kobaken.
“Resurrection.”
Never has the name of this work resonated so closely with my own memories.
The land I lost, the years that followed, and an unexpected reunion with the company that acquired that land.
Amid the light of the city I had been photographing, my past came back to life.
The other night, I was astonished.
I had been concentrating on photography and, incredible as it may seem, had not noticed at all.
For about a week before the event on October 24 and 25, work had been underway to erect tents.
On roughly my second visit during the preparations, I learned that it was a charity event for the Noto and Kumamoto earthquakes.
However, I had assumed that it would run for about a week from October 30.
These days, I am overwhelmed by an enormous workload, day after day.
On November 18 last year, goo Blog, where I had published most of my work, closed.
The essays I had continued publishing since July 16, 2010, numbered approximately 350,000.
There can hardly be anyone else who has continued writing such an enormous number of essays.
NTT, which operated the service, had arranged migration options to Hatena and Ameba.
The migration to Hatena finally finished after more than a week.
For some reason, numerous groups of entries could not be transferred to Ameba.
Most of this material predates the arrival of AI.
There are also many chapters in various languages translated using Google Translate—which, although considerably improved from its earliest days, remained imperfect—and later DeepL.
I decided to rewrite everything.
As readers know, this column will continue for another 170 years.
For that purpose, I also took out a Pro subscription to the finest AI.
Saturday, October 24.
After finishing work, I hurried to Umeda.
I wanted to take photographs from a particular place at a particular time.
But that moment had already passed.
For some reason, the walkway was closed.
Only then did I realize my mistake.
The event was being held on October 24 and 25.
The crowds were enormous.
Music with a wonderful sound filled the air.
Only the outer perimeter of the venue remained open to pedestrians.
The band sounded extraordinarily good.
It was CHARA.
The name came back to me from memory.
I stopped and listened intently.
The sound was simply that good.
When CHARA mentioned her 35th anniversary, I looked up her age on my smartphone.
I knew her name.
I cut short my photography and went home.
The following day, I headed there at about the same time.
I had assumed that Ulfuls would appear at 7 p.m. to close the event.
I intended to finish taking photographs before then.
However, by the time I arrived, all the bands had finished performing.
Music was coming from a DJ tent at the venue.
I took photographs from the walkways that remained open and returned home.
The resulting film turned out very well.
The day before yesterday, I was astonished while watching it.
The organizer of this excellent, regularly held event was BAYCREW’S!
Partly because the event had a long name written in the Latin alphabet, “BAYCREW’S FESTIVAL…,” I had assumed it was something to do with bicycles.
My company, which had been building an exceptionally strong track record and had reached the point of anticipating an over-the-counter stock listing within a few years, had been established before one of Japan’s leading real estate sales companies opened its Osaka branch.
We were each other’s finest and strongest rivals.
Every year, I hired an entire establishment in Kitashinchi, one of my regular places, run by a professional keyboard player and a guitarist, and held a joint year-end party for the rival company’s employees and our own.
Among my signature songs at the time were ♬We Are the World♬ and ♬Blue Hawaii♬.
One of our clients was trying to acquire a piece of land in front of a railway station in Tokyo for 650 million yen, but the transaction was not moving forward.
We were asked to step in as an intermediary.
When I asked which company represented the seller, I was told it was the Tokyo head office of the rival company mentioned above.
In that case, matters would proceed quickly.
They knew our company well.
The contract for this transaction was concluded almost instantaneously.
The people at their head office said, “We have never handled such a splendid transaction.”
“Do you have time?”
“Please let us treat you to lunch.”
It was a Japanese restaurant on the top floor of a skyscraper.
“President, why don’t you acquire some real estate in Tokyo?”
“I hadn’t considered Tokyo, but… I don’t like Shinjuku, so Shibuya, Chuo, Minato, or Chiyoda—if a beautiful piece of land worthy of a professional’s purchase comes onto the market in one of those wards, let me know…”
About a year later, while I was completing the contract and settlement for a transaction at the Sendai branch of a major financial institution, the telephone rang.
“We’ve found one…”
I cancelled all my plans for the following day and arrived at their head office early that morning.
Since I had brought the company seal and everything else required, we concluded the contract then and there.
That is how we acquired the beautiful piece of land in Jinnan, Shibuya, that would become a milestone for our company.
Their Tokyo head office had been appointed the exclusive agent for its sale.
I was told that, immediately after our acquisition, more than fifty Tokyo real estate companies approached us asking to buy it.
One company reportedly offered to add as much as ten million yen per tsubo to the price.
We intended to construct a building that would be Italian from top to bottom, incorporating our Tokyo branch, so I had every offer declined.
What happened afterward has already been described.
I have already written that the 1990 restrictions on real estate lending marked the beginning of Japan’s “lost thirty years.”
Subsequently, Prime Minister Miyazawa, having recognized the situation, stated at an LDP study meeting in Karuizawa that public funds in increments of ten trillion yen had to be injected to resolve the problem at a stroke.
I have also already written that it was a certain Yamada, a reporter in the Asahi Shimbun’s economics department, and the Asahi Shimbun itself that launched the chorus of foolish, self-righteous indignation that defeated this proposal and sealed Japan’s “lost thirty years.”
It was not only my company that suffered a devastating blow.
The damage this man and the Asahi Shimbun inflicted on Japan was so astronomical that even countless Asahi Shimbun companies could never repay it.
This Yamada and the Asahi Shimbun demonstrated, through the worst possible example, the truth I was the first in the world to identify in this column: “Everything begins with one person.”
“There is no point counting the years a dead child would have lived.”
Employees of major financial institutions used to repeat this saying almost as a habit.
The same applied to the land in Senri New Town that I had acquired after an employee of the rival company mentioned above said to me, “President, instead of spending all your time looking after other people, let’s find you a home for your later years.”
And the same applied to this property.
I disposed of everything at once, at extraordinarily low prices.
Naturally, a buyer immediately appeared for this beautiful piece of land as well.
That buyer was BAYCREW’S, then a midsized apparel company headquartered in Shibuya.
Even now, I vividly remember signing the contract at their headquarters.
The moment they acquired it, they gained an enormous unrealized profit.
Their remarkable subsequent expansion is well known.
And there is something more about this place, where they hold such an outstanding event every year.
Without me, it would have become nothing more than a park, without the walkways and buildings that stand there today.
In other words, this was a reunion with two, even three layers of meaning.
“I will not let such foolish incompetents destroy Osaka, or my life, for which I chose Osaka as the stage.”
With that determination, I spent three months, entirely on my own, confronting the organizations concerned and defeating this foolish plan.
Immediately afterward came another plan of extreme foolishness and incompetence: to turn the site into a football stadium and seek to host the World Cup.
I have already described how I defeated that plan as well, entirely on my own.
And how, at that point, I felt I could spend no more time on this because it would interfere with my work.
That was why I made my appearance through this column on July 16, 2010.
That this column completely defeated that foolishness is a plain fact.
It is no exaggeration to say that, for BAYCREW’S, the organizer, I was the architect of its resurgence.
After all, by using the headquarters site I had transferred at an exceptionally low price as collateral, they were able to obtain low-interest financing sufficient to support all their subsequent business expansion.
On October 24, the sound of CHARA’s band filling the venue was superb.
The sound of a wonderful band was flowing through a place that can, without exaggeration, be called one of the finest examples of urban planning in postwar Japan.
It was only natural that a fashion show should be held on the final evening, Sunday, October 25.
Nor is it any exaggeration to say that the fashion show took place in a setting that would never have existed had I done nothing.
Standing there, I was concentrating on taking photographs.
I had not even noticed that the organizer’s name was connected to my own past.
And now, as I look back over these 104 photographs, I see, alongside the light of those days, the life I have lived.
Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.”
It is the first movement that accompanies this collection of photographs.
What we have lost does not simply return as it was.
Yet the years we lived with it do not disappear either.
In an unexpected place, a single name awakens those years.
Amid the light of the city I was photographing that day, my own history revealed itself once more.
Photography and video sequence: MIKIO KISARA（木皿幹雄）
Dates and locations:
October 25, 2026 / Grand Green Osaka at night
October 28, 2026 / Umeda at dusk
Photographs: 104
Video: 4K
Music:
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” First Movement
Conductor: Kenichiro Kobayashi (Kobaken)
Orchestra: Japan Philharmonic Orchestra