SHISEIDO Ultimune“With One Another. Without Limits. Our Future Is Beautiful.”, Poster, 2020
Photo: Sebastian Kim, Model: Beverly Maeda

With One Another.
Without Limits.
Our Future Is Beautiful.
Empowered by Ultimune Power Infusing Concentrate.

Confidence, colour: redConfidence, colour: red

K: This is quite an open description. Only two words.
This gives us a lot of freedom of interpretation.
A: The descriptions we were given for theRemodeling project around 2016 wereoften more generic, weren’t they? ‘Beautiful woman, attractive, sexy’ or ‘Girl, sensual, black and white, natural hair, pretty,young, naked’, and things like that. I foundthem quite clichéd.
K: It shows that models are generally seen like that.
The meaning of the words ‘beautiful woman,attractive, sexy’ is very personal though. Could‘beautiful lady, attractive, sexy’ also mean confident?
A: Hm. Yes, I think so. For me, confidence
stands for being strong and independent.
In museums, you see many paintings ofsemi-naked women posing. Some feelvery posed, while others are expressiveand strong.
I think you could describe most of thosenudes with the words ‘beautiful woman,attractive, sexy.’.
K: Yes, there’s a fine line between ‘naked’ and ‘nudity’. The line where ‘being naked’ becomes ‘being
a nude’ in art. I read in an article that the nude isalways in danger of being ‘soft porn for the elite’.
A: I believe in respecting freedom of expression, but at the same time, there
are many images in art museums thatare close to pornographic. I guess that’s
partly because most of the time, the artists
or photographers were men painting or
photographing women?
K: As models, women have been always been thesubject of the gaze. Both before and after theadvent of photography.
A: T hat’s true. The act of observing andlooking represents a certain power. Theobserver is superior to the subject of thegaze. When I take a portrait, I try not to

be too dominant over the model. Becauseof the situation, the person behind thecamera can easily ask the model to “posein a certain way”, but I try not to overdo it.
For me, taking a picture is a collaboration.
I enjoy going through that process together. I need the model in order to create aportrait, so the model is as important as
I am.
K: That is an important balance.
A: Speaking of looking and being looked
at, do you think people wear make-up
because they are being observed?
K: Yes, I think so. It shows how you want to present
yourself to others. It’s related to your identity – asan individual, and also in your relationships withothers, your place in society. I remember when
we were kids, my sister and me played around
putting on my mother’s red lipstick. I felt as if
I became an adult when I put it on. I guess I’dlearned that adults used make-up and I wanted
to try it as well.
A: Red lipstick. Red is also in the description.
Red is a bold colour. You wouldn’t wear
red clothing or red lipstick if you didn’t
want to stand out, right?
K: Yes, we can use red for both clothing and lipstick. Which says confidence more? Wearing
red lipstick to attract people’s attention? Or not
wearing red lipstick because you are confident
enough without it?
A: I think both suggest confidence? Let’schoose one after the photoshoot.

SHISEIDO Ultimune“With One Another. Without Limits. Our Future Is Beautiful.”, Poster, 2020
Photo: Sebastian Kim, Model: Beverly Maeda

With One Another.
Without Limits.
Our Future Is Beautiful.
Empowered by Ultimune Power Infusing Concentrate.

Red, Passion, Pride, Positive, Progress, Healthy, StrengthRed, Passion, Pride, Positive, Progress, Healthy, Strength

K: What do you think of this description? Do you
have any particular associations with any ofthese words?
A: Well, in the context of Amsterdam, pride
makes me think of Gay Pride. What doyou think?
K: You’re right, the English word ‘pride’ has become
associated with ‘Gay Pride’ here. Also ‘Transsexual pride’, and ‘Women with pride’. It’s used forpeople who feel their rights aren’t treated equally.
In Japanese, the English word pride often has anegative meaning, such as “having a lot of pride”
or “wounding pride”, but originally the word isabout honouring and having respect for oneself.
The Gay Pride flag is a rainbow. I think that’s alsoa symbol of respect for individuality and diversity.
What about the other words? passion, progress,and so on…
A: Well, for me, passion lies in the energy ofthe model. You feel it through a person’s
body language and the expression of
their eyes. So, we can think about bodylanguage. How do you show passion withbody language?
K: The model looks straight into the camera.
A: But if you capture someone standing ina strong posture looking away from thecamera, that might also look passionate.
K: That’s true. Then how about the pose? What isa ‘passionate pose’?
A: I think people sitting on a chair with theirlegs spread expresses a certain strength.
Also open arms signify passion. Feet on
the ground also says strength? And thenin terms of the opposite, covering the facewith hair, or putting hands in front of yourface reduces a sense of both passion andstrength.
K: How about progress?

A: T he photo could be a frozen momentfrom a particular movement. A moment
cut out from a process. We’ve got theword healthy, so we could think about asporting situation.
K: Yeah. Who could be a model?
A: I can imagine Mariko or Salome workingwell?
K: Good idea. Both have a strong look, and at thesame time give a calm and confident impression.
Both have black hair. Salome has dark skin andcurly hair. Mariko has western features, and herhair is straight.
A: Huh? That is funny. For me as a German,
with her almond eyes and black straight
hair, Mariko looks Asian. Also her cheekbones I guess make her Asian-looking forme. For you as a Japanese person, shehas western features. Interesting.
K: I guess we hold things up to our social and cultural background. For better or for worse, that
influences the way we look at people.

The Right Half

Coming across her photograph was a total coincidence.
Paying a visit to my parents’ house for the first time in ages,
I was clearing the desk in my old room, which now functioned
more or less as a storage cupboard. As I opened up a drawerof the desk, I noticed something flutter down, and then there
was her face staring up at me from the floor – the last face
I’d expected to see there. A face I had last seen 30 years ago,
which I scarcely brought to mind any more.
Her name was Cynthia, or Cindy for short. It was her voicethat had first drawn me to her. It had to it a richness that echoed in the belly, a mysterious quality like travelling down to thebottom of the ocean. And then, after we got to know one another, there was the magnetism of her skin. Yes, her skin had
a forceful energy to it, as if there were invisible suction pads allover her body. Embracing her, I experienced the exultation oftransforming into a different kind of creature entirely.
Back then, it was the very height of Japan’s bubble era, andthe media was kept on its toes by news of Japanese firms buying up the Rockefeller Center in New York, or Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting at auction. Cindy taught English at a language
school in the day, and worked at a karaoke bar at night, wherenon-Japanese people from the area would congregate. At thattime, Tokyo was a place where people from English-speaking
nations could make a killing in a short time.
When the expiry date on Cindy’s visa was drawing near andthe time for her to return home approaching, I thought about
going with her to London. It was my final year of university, butI felt that getting a job straight after graduating was boring,and so I said to myself that the important thing was first to
glimpse life outside of Japan. I realize now that my ability toentertain naïve impulses with such ease was testament to Japan’s state of prosperity.
I was sure that Cindy would welcome the idea of me accompanying her—so convinced was I, in fact, that it never once
occurred to me to think otherwise. Yet when I confidently informed her of my plans, her behaviour immediately altered.
Her attitude grew cooler, she began to tell me more frequently
that she was busy, and one day, she vanished from me entirely.
At the time, I had no idea what was going on. Like a plastic suction pad that had suddenly come unstuck, I felt totallyat a loss. I wondered if I’d done something to offend her, but I
couldn’t think of one single thing it might have been. I was insuch shock that it took me a good while to admit to myself thatit had just been a fleeting relationship, of the kind that wereten-a-penny around me.
The photograph was a promotional shot from her modelling
agency. I could keep it, she’d said as she gave it to me, because
she’d had a bunch of them printed. In it, her right eyebrow wasraised. This was an expression that she often made. She would
jut out her right shoulder at a slant and look at me over it, herchin slightly cocked. ‘You should go further, you mustn’t holdyourself back like that’—I remember her saying those words

to me on several occasions. I had no awareness of holding myself back, as such—I just didn’t know how to let myself out. Yet
when she would say such things to me with that bold directness of hers, which suggested she could at any moment yankup her anchor and set sail on the seas of life, I felt something
deep within me rising up, as if in response. If I didn’t have any of
the kinds of abilities that could be awakened by a provocation
like that, unfaltering as the straightest arrow, her words did atleast generate in me a kind of thrill.
Now, staring at the photograph, I felt something niggling at
me. I tried turning it so it was straight, tilting it at an angle, andthen, eventually, put my palm over her face, concealing theright side. After repeatedly lifting up my palm up, then replacing it, I realized what the issue was. The left and the right-handsides of her face gave a quite different impression. There, concealed in the left half, was a different person to the one whoappeared in the right.
It came to me that back when we were together, there had
been a moment when I’d had a similar feeling. I’d gone to meet
her after work, and after having a quick dinner together, we’dpopped into a bar, where for some reason I sat to the left ofher. At that time, whether we were on the train, alongside one
another at a bar counter, sitting on the sofa watching videos,or lying together in bed, I was always positioned to her right.
I was hard of hearing in my right ear, and so whomever I waswith, I was accustomed to positioning myself so that my better
ear was closer to the person I was speaking to. In the bar, sitting on the other side of her to usual, I noticed that her profile
looked different. Was this really how she looked? Had she notswapped places with another woman I didn’t know? The burstof anxiety that surfaced in at that moment took me by surprise. Cindy wore a tired expression that day, and didn’t speak
much, just took two or three sips of her scotch and then fell
into silence. With our conversation at a standstill, we’d left thebar after one drink, but now, gazing down at the left side of her
face in the photograph, the strange sensation I’d felt on thatoccasion returned to me.
It struck me that, concealed in the left side of her face
was the essence of a Cindy whose existence I’d been totallyunaware of back then. There was no doubting that she wasa friendly, sociable, cheerful person, but that didn’t mean she
was a pushover. Her way of seeing things was as a mature as
her rich voice, and when she’d made up her mind about something, she showed no mercy. The left half of her face took on
an expression best described as a kind of rational cool-headedness. Back then, I had my head in the clouds, and the extent
of my naivety was somewhat tedious. In fact, I was much like
Japan itself in those days: sweet, but with no real bite, like theflimsy-thin wafers you’d find perched on top of the ice-creamserved after dinner. It was really no wonder that she got boredof me. Now, the photograph from thirty years past whispered
in my ear: I had been looking only at the right side of her face,
and worshipping only that half. The photograph itself remained as it had always been—it was me who had changed.
Written by Akiko Otake. Translated by Polly Barton.