A chance meeting that changed my life

When I arrived in Tokyo, it was because I was utterly, completely exhausted.

I had spent the past eight years building a social media start-up, and then my own consultancy. But due to unforeseen personal circumstances, I knew I had to stop.

So I stopped everything I was doing, and flew to Tokyo.

I wanted to go to Tokyo both because it’s one of the world’s great cities and because I was unfamiliar with it. I didn’t know Japanese. I didn’t know the nuances of the culture. Here I could be a stranger in a strange land.

But as it turned out, fate had other plans.

“Grainy / rough, blurry, and out-of-focus”

Midway through my time in Japan, I stopped off at the Yokohama Museum of Art for typical tourist sightseeing. When I arrived, I was surprised to see there was barely any paintings in sight. Instead, the space was entirely devoted to famous Japanese photos.

Of all the photographers exhibited, one of them stood out, one who opened up a world of possibilities: Daidō Moriyama.

Japanese photographer Daidō Moriyama (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Daidō Moriyama’s photography was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was grimy, dirty, grainy — and broke every rule of photography I knew. I felt Moriyama was tearing down idols, that he was documenting things we weren’t supposed to see.

As I learned, Moriyama was the chief driver of a Japanese photography movement known as are-bureh-bokeh which in English means “grainy / rough, blurry, and out-of-focus”. But such terms do little to describe the actual art. What I really came to understand was that are-bureh-bokeh was a visual form of punk rock before punk rock, perhaps even more extreme.

On the Bed by Daidō Moriyama

The immediate effect of Moriyama’s work upon me was a surprising thought. “I could do that,” I pondered. If Moriyama could make compelling art by breaking all the rules, so could I.

An accidental meeting

A couple of days later, I was in a bar by myself in Roppongi, a well known district in Tokyo known for its night club scene. Sitting beside me was a young woman arguing loudly with an older gentleman in Japanese. I tried my best to ignore them as I nursed my beer.

But then the man left, and the young woman turned her attention to me.

“How are you doing?” she asked me in English.

“Fine,” I replied, “Do you work here?” — trying to decipher why she was talking to me.

“No!” she answered, seemingly offended.

Despite getting off on the wrong foot, I talked to her some more. Soon we got to discussing Daidō Moriyama.

“You know,” I said to her, “I really think I can do works like him but I’m going back to Canada soon, and I just know it won’t be the same. I don’t even know if now is the time to do it.”

“But why not now? You should still do it,” she urged me, “Of course it will be different. Whatever you do will be different — and it has to be. If you feel it in your bones, it will work.”

“What makes you think it will work?” I asked.

“All my life I wanted to be an idol,” the woman told me, “I made it happen. I did it for so many years. And it’s over now. It just finished, actually. But I’m still going to make art even if it’s not music. I’m still going to create what’s inside me in whatever shape it takes. Here, let me show you.”



The young woman showed me her iPhone, and swiped through her photo gallery. I saw a picture of a moon bathed in blue, blurry currents of ocean at sunset, and a grainy selfie of her holding a daisy. And it was all so beautiful.

“I don’t know if anyone will ever remember me as an idol,” she went on, “But I got to create something because I must. And if you feel it too, you must do it. You must do it even if it doesn’t make sense. You got to promise me that, okay?”

“Okay, I promise,” I affirmed.

“But only create if it comes out of you,” she continued, “If you don’t burn, don’t do it. If you’re looking for praise or someone in your bed or a pay cheque, don’t do it. Please only do it if doing nothing will kill you. Trust me, I know. Any other way is the way of heart break.”

I had nothing much else to say but I believed her. And to this day, I’ve kept my promise.



