In a world without people with disabilities, the difficulty of living would be widespread - An interview with Takashi Itagaki of Lumbini Museum [Part 2]

Lumbini Museum is where HERALBONY began. The many conversations that the museum's art director, Takashi Itagaki, who has been a leader in the welfare industry, has had with CEO Takaya Matsuda and Fumito have served as important ethical guideposts for the subsequent business development of HERALBONY.

In the first part, we reinterpreted the word "life" to explore the true reason why we are attracted to the art of artists with intellectual disabilities. In the second part, we consider what it means for people with intellectual disabilities to exist in this world, and what a society that overcomes disabilities would lose.

>>Click here for the first part: In this world, there are "heavy lives" and "light lives" - that's a misunderstanding about life. Interview with Takashi Itagaki [Part 1]

Works that make you realize that your perspective is cheap

--What was your impression when you first saw the works created by the users of the welfare facility?

Itagaki: I thought, how complex and beautiful! There was something there that was way beyond what I had imagined. I found out later that some of the works were created by people who hadn't even attended elementary school, and I was shocked that they had been created purely through originality, given that I had received specialized art education.

In terms of both humanity and creativity, people with intellectual disabilities were completely different to the image I had of them.

--In a sense, this experience completely overturned your previous values.

Itagaki: At that time, while spending my days with people with intellectual disabilities, I became very aware of the prejudices and assumptions I had up until then. Before that, even as a child, I knew nothing about people with intellectual disabilities, and I thought of them as scary beings that I could not understand, and felt a sense of fear and contempt for them. I asked myself every day how on earth I had formed such thoughts. I realized that life can be despised and oppressed, or conversely, praised, just as I had done, and I think I gradually developed the will to correct this unfair treatment of life.

That's why I've come to think that it's most important to realize what a person is trying to create as fully as possible. What a person is trying to do may be different from what others around them think is good, but if they can't separate themselves from the judgments of others and express who they are, there's no point in them existing in this world. I realized that the most important thing is to allow what that person's life is trying to bring to fruition to come to fruition.

--What did you do, Itagaki-san, to ensure that they were able to fully realize what they wanted to do?

Itagaki: First, I observe the work without interfering with it. I look at the artist's figure, facial expression, movements, and the content of what they are drawing, and sense the desires of the artist's heart. Then, finally, I make the necessary adjustments to the environment to realize those desires. The main adjustments to the environment concern the tools.

What a world without people with disabilities would lose

Itagaki: I think it is "someone who remembers the very beginning of their life."

What I mean is that right after we are born, we are delivered by the midwife and held by our mother, and our relationship begins as "the baby" to the midwife and "my child" to our mother. As we grow, we are always "someone's self," such as a "student" to a teacher or "so-and-so" to a friend. This means that we only have the opportunity to feel our true selves in a relative sense. Eventually, we almost unconsciously and automatically begin to live as "someone's self."

Still, we all have experiences where we become engrossed in something or lose ourselves in it from time to time, and this state gives us a lot of energy. At this time, we are regaining the sense that we are not someone to someone else, but that we are ourselves, that is, that we exist first as a self in this world.

This feeling is what we had when life first began, in the womb, before birth. It is not based on any meaning or evaluation from anyone, it is just our true self. It is our original self.

I feel that many people with intellectual disabilities have this feeling all their lives. Therefore, they can create with their own hands, without worrying about the opinions of others, simply following the desires that well up from within them: "I want to see this kind of color" or "I want to create this kind of shape." By experiencing this creative process, we hope to regain this feeling ourselves. For us, the works of people with intellectual disabilities are like signposts that lead us back to life.

--People with intellectual disabilities are the ones who hold onto those important senses that we all long for deep down but that are very difficult to regain.

Itagaki: This may sound far-fetched, but with advances in medicine, it is possible that in the not-too-distant future, we will be able to create a society in which no one is born with congenital intellectual disabilities. This will be the end of a turbulent history in which countless people have suffered for many years, sometimes collapsing, and sometimes finding a ray of hope beyond. This liberation from turmoil also means that we will lose one of the major guideposts mentioned above. We may enter a world where there is no one to teach us the things that Satoru Kobayashi and Toyoshi Yaegashi taught us.

I have a hunch that in a society that loses the opportunity to think deeply about the origins of life and the reason for its existence, a sense of stagnation and difficulty in living will become widespread.

Many disabilities and illnesses are accompanied by physical and mental pain in themselves. Being free from such pain is an unshakable desire for everyone. On the other hand, intellectual disabilities are not painful in themselves, but only occur when people around them negatively treat their disabilities. Such pain is not caused by the disability itself, but by the way the disability is perceived by those around them and by society; it is a social pain, so to speak.

Before we can eliminate disabilities, I think there is something our society must do first. We must meet each other properly and understand each other's hearts. There is always a reason for life, and in our hearts there is pain, sadness, precious things, wishes, and joy. We must know that there is a reality to what it means to live.

It is not just about understanding disabilities, but literacy about life itself. It is about cultivating in society the understanding and recognition that we all have a say in our existence.

We need to start preparing now so that by the time it becomes technologically possible to eliminate disabilities, humans will be in a position to think about what path they want to take based on a more mature view of life and humanity. To that end, we would like to provide materials for people to understand, verbalize, and share the meaning of the existence of people with disabilities by conveying in depth the image of people with intellectual disabilities through various opportunities and channels, including the activities of the Lumbini Museum.

I believe that people with disabilities are incredibly important teachers and masters for our society. While Satoru and others are still with us in this society, it is necessary for society to have a sufficient number of people who realize the meaning of the existence of people with disabilities at a more mature level than we do now, before humanity becomes capable of arbitrarily erasing or correcting disabilities.

Perhaps intellectual disabilities will disappear not by eliminating the disability itself, but by changing society's perception of them. There will no longer be any need to recognize them as "disabilities."

The boyish vulnerability and vitality I sensed from Representative Matsuda

--Itagaki-san and Matsuda Takaya and Fumito's meeting dates back to 2016, but do you remember when Takaya first came here when he was 24 years old?

Itagaki: I remember very well the time we met in this café where we are now. To be honest, at that point there wasn't anything particularly appealing about the contents of the proposal or the design of the tie. But it was still a very interesting meeting.

In the past, Lumbini had approached us with a few ideas to use the work of their staff in a product, but this was something different from the previous projects. This was due to their youth and passion, and another reason may have been that they were not in the welfare field, but were each working in business, and were trying to start their own project apart from their day jobs.

Takaya has a tremendous passion inside him, but he also exudes a sense of vulnerability and vitality, like a boy who has found a rare flower in a field and rushed in. And yet he is very polite and humble. He hasn't changed at all since then.

It wasn't the content of the project, but the presence of the young people trying to make it happen and the overwhelming energy was really interesting and exciting. I felt like there was no way I could ignore this strong, shining energy.

If the author doesn't agree, the project is scrapped. A decision that accepts business risks

--The rule of always getting the artist's consent before commercializing a work was one of the first promises made between Itagaki and HERALBONY.

Itagaki: I think it was in 2018 when Fumito came to tell us about the establishment of HERALBONY, and we told him again that we wanted the process of commercializing art by artists with disabilities to include a procedure that would require the consent of the artist themselves.

Generally, when using artworks in a licensing business, the contract includes a clause on "non-exercise of moral rights of the author." If moral rights of the author are exercised, the consent of the author would be required for processing such as trimming, which would be a hindrance to the business.

However, it is difficult for authors with intellectual disabilities to fully understand the contents of this agreement, and even if they understand and are dissatisfied, they will have difficulty expressing their dissatisfaction. If they are forced to promise not to exercise their moral rights in a situation where they have difficulty understanding and expressing their dissatisfaction, their rights will essentially be completely suppressed in society.

Entering into a license agreement in this way is not desirable for the author, his family, or us, and it would also be a huge contradiction for the business that HERALBONY is trying to launch in the future. It would make the philosophy that HERALBONY advocates obsolete, and we could be criticized for exploiting people with disabilities.

To avoid this, we thought it necessary to leave the moral rights of the author to the individual and make them exercisable -- in other words, to build in the risk that if the author says "no," the project will be scrapped. Furthermore, by officially announcing this, we can encourage other companies to follow suit.

--Even now, six years later, this spirit of valuing the process remains a major guiding principle and has become part of the company's culture.

Itagaki: That being said, I think it was a very difficult decision from a business perspective. The speed of the business would have slowed down due to the need to communicate with the creators to get their consent, and we might have missed out on a job that we were close to securing. However, I thought that only by connecting with a partner company that understood and sympathized with the importance of this process could we be able to bring about major social change, and that's what I told Fumito.

I think Fumito could have answered, "I know that's the right thing to do, but it's difficult in reality." But he said, "You're right, aren't you? I get it. I'll do it." This became the foundation of my unshakable trust in HERALBONY.

For several years after that, Fumito would come here each time, opening his laptop and showing the designer the image while repeatedly explaining the details. Now that the number of projects has increased dramatically since then, the employee in charge of each project shares the details with the staff at Runbinii, who then explain the contents one by one to the designer, and we proceed only after confirming that the designer is truly OK with it.

What religion and welfare could not achieve

--At the 6th anniversary commemorative lecture, you expressed your expectations, saying, "HERALBONY's actions will be a turning point in the history of mankind."

Itagaki: The ethical idea that "discrimination should not be tolerated" has been advocated in the past by religion, morality, and welfare. However, these are premised on altruism (wishing the happiness of others above one's own). The aim is to suppress selfishness and enhance altruism. However, this method has its limits, and even if a certain number of people sympathize and accept it, it cannot overcome the fact that many people will reject it, saying, "It's none of my business."

What makes HERALBONY revolutionary in this respect is that it does not reject selfishness at all. It takes an approach that satisfies one's own needs for happiness, saying, "There are clothes you want to wear. There are pictures you want to hang in your room. Get them. Make yourself happy."

At the same time, HERALBONY's worldview and story are powerfully communicated, and it is designed to be handed over together with the product. This allows consumers to purchase the product for themselves, while at the same time feeling the social significance of their purchasing behavior and recognizing that their actions are connected to social change. Satisfying one's desire for happiness and wearing the item becomes a statement to others, and acts as a driving force for social change. This is a new methodology that allows many people to participate in social change without the trade-off between selfishness and altruism that could not be achieved through religion or welfare. It is approaching something that humanity has long sought but has not been able to achieve.

Furthermore, this business model has the potential to transform capitalism itself. By demonstrating that it is possible to achieve social good while also being profitable, it could inspire the birth of new businesses and ultimately change the very nature of capitalism. HERALBONY is a pioneer that fights within capitalism while also updating it.

I am convinced that HERALBONY will revolutionize capitalism and at the same time realize a new society that humanity has not achieved through religion, ethics, or morality since the dawn of history.

The special exhibition "The Beginning of Unusual" is currently being held

Message from Itagaki-san

Profile

Takashi Itagaki

Takashi Itagaki

Born in Hanamaki City in 1971. Art director of the Lumbini Museum, a social welfare corporation run by Korinkan. After graduating from high school, he moved to Tokyo and studied neuropsychology at a university, then majored in art at a university in Iwate Prefecture. In 1997, while working part-time and earning a living while pursuing his own creative endeavors, he was invited by Nobuyoshi Mitsui of Korinkan to join Lumbini Garden, run by Korinkan, to support agricultural work and creative activities. He played a central role in the opening of the Lumbini Museum in 2007, and has planned over 60 exhibitions since its opening. In addition to providing skills training for people involved in interpersonal support and consulting on art activities at welfare facilities, he also runs his own organization, the Social Medicine Research Institute, which approaches social issues by utilizing cognitive changes brought about by language and artistic expression.