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Interviewer: So you joined SQUARE ENIX in 2003, correct?



Shimomura: I'll confess that, at the time, I was thinking of stopping my freelancer worker temporarily to take care of myself. I was pregnant at the time as well so I thought: "No, I cannot work this way. Straining myself will be bad for the baby." I also wasn't very interested with my freelancing job so I wondered if I could become a full-time housewife.



Interviewer: But instead, you ended up finding work for yourself.



Shimomura: I really needed to find time to rest, I thought. But then I got the opportunity to work with SQUARE ENIX. My first work was to compose songs for KINGDOM HEARTS [more specifically, the first game: Kingdom Hearts I]. I could hardly rest. I composed songs until probably about 20 hours before my daughter was born. I stayed up until 4 AM listening and fine tuning the music demos; and then my daughter was about to be born. I dragged my weak feet to the hospital. I took a 2 month break after her birth, and immediately resumed my work after that.



Interviewer: Woah, that must've been really tough!



Shimomura: As you know, composers have a deadline to submit their work for the game. I try to keep a balance between the three things I do: working, creating music and living. During my time at SQUARE ENIX, as I was in my thirties, I took a 3 month break. But even then, I just wanted to create music. At the time, we were transitioning from the Super Famicon [called the Super NES outside Japan] and the PlayStation, so I thought to myself: "Do we have better hardware?"