Tough interview questions and my answers

Tough interview questions

1 Tell me something you’re proud of.

2 What makes you think you could do this job?

3 What kind of leadership qualities do you have?

4 Why did you leave your last job?

5 Do you have any skills or hobbies you think might be useful for this job?

6 What do you think is your greatest fault?

7 How do you feel about spending time away from home?

8 What do you see yourself doing in five years’ time?

My answers

1 Tell me something you’re proud of.

I’m really proud of my great power to have a dream and my unlimited energy. For example, in March of 2003 I spontaneously started to act in order to protest against the Iraq War and since then I have been acting, speaking out my ideas and expressing myself on the Internet as well as on the real world almost everyday.

2 What makes you think you could do this job?

Because I think in case I encounter something unknown and I’m not given any information in advance on the situation where I am placed, I can judge the situation by myself, control my great stress and have flexible responces and actions.

3 What kind of leadership qualities do you have?

Around for 20 years I have been working as a teacher and I can discern each student’s merit and the unseen relationship between students. In addition, I have a strong sense of responsibility. Once I decide by myself, I have courage to accept every result of my decision. I never transfer my fault into other persons.

4 Why did you leave your last job?

I enjoy my work as a teacher and liked young people very much, but I judge it was time to quit working in established institutions such as Japanese universities and to move to the next step where I can fully achieve my mission.

5 Do you have any skills or hobbies you think might be useful for this job?

Gospel singing and jazz piano are useful for this job. Singing Gospel with other members and playing Jazz piano along with other players tells me the great importance of swing and solidarity. Music brings us beyond any boundaries. Music is a great metaphor of our Life in the Universe.

6 What do you think is your greatest fault?

Sometimes I simplify what I like and hate.

7 How do you feel about spending time away from home?

I never mind as far as I can have regular contact with my family members. I prepare to go and work anywhere.

8 What do you see yourself doing in five years’ time?

In five years, that is by 2015, I’ll be one of the main members here. I’ll understand the nature your magical power and control IT very well.

“What makes me come alive”

I’m interested in various kinds of human activities ranging from art to science. I like discussing social problems and human brains as well as going to museums and film theaters very much. What makes me come alive most now is, however, creating some works of art by myself.

Five years ago I happened to get an inspiring book titled The Artist’s Way. I was very moved by its strong message that we should do what we want to do. The author recommends us to have an “artist date.” What is an “artist date”? According to the author, we all have an artist sleeping within us, who represents our own inner creativity. The “artist date” is a tool to awaken our inner creativity: having an “artist date” means spending quality time with our inner artist and coming face-to-face with him or her. If we repeat artist dates, we win against our personal complex, get our self-autonomy and listen to our honest voice telling us what we really want.　

I accepted this advice and kept having my “artist date”. Thanks to these numerous dates, I came to recognize what I really wanted to do. I was so eager to change the structure of the stupid world, where even in the 21st century conflicts and genocide still continue. I quit my job as a parttime teacher and went to UK. There I joined peace parades, traveled to several European cities by myself and visited many museums. These experiences were exciting enough to encourage my inner artist to express herself or himself more spontaneously.

It was in 2005 that I launched my creative activity. In the summer of that year, I was at a loss as I had no job after I returned home from UK in the spring. I happened to join a workshop presented by a modern art museum, where a Swiss book designer was invited as an instructor and gave our participants a homework to make our own original books in a free style. I made three kinds of book art works at home: one dealing with a philosophical theme, and ones directly reflecting my political views. While making these works, I was really feeling I was full of active creativity. I cannot forget deep satisfaction and freedom I felt when I completed them.

This experience was a starting point of my present creative activity. Since then I have been doing many kinds of artistic activity including live performance. I’m aware that I prefer modern and a-vant-garde works of art to traditional ones. They are like punk music in the field of music. Like punk rockers, then, I make the fullest possible use of ordinary materials which are very easy to get. I believe that my daily life and personal experience are crucially important in my works of art. My works of art always try to directly connect “me” that breathe here to “you” that breathe there, even when they refer to philosophers and revolutionaries such as Nietzsche, Derrida and Guevara.

As a punk artist, which I want to call myself, I want to be free from such ideas as genre and forms. I have been seeking many ways to express. On the other side, I am greatly interested in possibilities for the fusion between art and science and for artistic collaboration between human and computer. For me creating works of art is to give definite forms to my ideal world, where human beings cooperate with non-human beings including computer, overcome such social problems as war, poverty and discrimination and can develop infinite possibility of individual brains. In other words, I create works of art to make my dream come true.

Recently I have come to believe that there must be a mutual interaction between what I create and what is given to me. For what Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung called “synchronicity” frequently happens. It seems to me that the more creative and innovative works of art I make, the more deep insight the world gives me. That’s why I enjoy continuing my artistic activity, which makes me come really alive!

(Original version of 17 July 2008)