About Me

 

 

Kagaya Yutaka (カガヤ?, born 1968, Saitama) is a Japanese digital artist who is known for painting elaborately detailed and spectacularly colored images. His images often include elements with a luminous quality. Some of his favorite subjects areastronomy and visions of utopian worlds. His most famous works focus on three main topics: Celestial Exploring, Galactic Railroad and Starry Tales. Kagaya really likes the night sky with stars and he often uses the blue color in his work.

 

Kagaya is more famous in North America than Japan, mainly because he has an occidental style. He only uses occidental women (who can speak only a little Japanese) as his models because they are taller than average Japanese women.

Kagaya released a DVD on February 23, 2007, called Fantasy Railroad in the Stars (銀河鉄道の夜), with Kenji Miyazawa. The DVD features the story of a boy dreaming of travelling by train through the Milky Way. The story is narrated by voice actress Kuwashima Houko.[2]

Kagaya also had an exhibition of his works in Canada. In 2008, he did an exhibition in South Korea.

 

 

What happens in Kagaya stays in Kagaya

 

Frog is stranger than fiction. Don’t ask us what this means. We spent a large part of our evening at Kagaya mulling over the obscure slogan. We thought perhaps there was a clue to be found in the family of green plastic toy frogs watching us from a ledge next to our table. But when we asked Mark – the owner of this famously quirky bar and restaurant that’s been featured in Time Out guide books since 1999 – about the significance of the frogs, he said, ‘Nothing in particular.’

Here’s the thing about Kagaya: nothing makes sense. There’s no point in trying to figure out how Mark came up with the idea to serve drinks dressed up in costumes that represent different countries. (We asked him if he was an actor before and he said, enigmatically, ‘I used to do something before, but that’s in the past.’) You won’t even get a straight answer to why he chose to open the 30-year-old restaurant in the first place. (He told us: ‘One day, I was walking along and I got struck by lightning…’) But perhaps this is exactly why locals and tourists alike continue to be fascinated by the inexplicable world Mark creates in a small, unremarkable room at the bottom of a flight of stairs in Shinbashi.

 

While we were there, a TV crew showed up, along with three other groups of customers. Table by table, Mark gives everyone the Kagaya treatment. This entails a high-pitched sing-song greeting by him, some confusingly crude gesturing, and a robot version of Japanese fictional character Anpanman (above) delivering oshibori (wet hand towels) to the table. When you choose your drinks, you also select a country, prompting Mark to slip into a little side room and dress up according to his interpretation of the nation you’ve picked. We’re not sure if a red octopus hat, colourful arm bands and jumping up and down to samba music properly represents Brazil, but nevertheless, this was the theatrical guise of our host as he served us beer in a vibrating glass and water that streams from a figurine with a tiny metal ‘penis’.

 

As for ordering food, you’ll literally be singing for your supper as Mark will insist you warble your order at him using the crayon-inscribed ‘script’ in the menu book. It’s all very mysterious as none of the dishes are spelled out – you’ll simply be asking for something ‘light’, something ‘wow’, or ‘many many foods, no limit drinks’.