Kansai

Kojima regarded the primary family form as a unit of four: his parents, his brother two years older, and himself. After moving from Tokyo toward Kansai, his parents built a house in 1970 in a new development in Hyogo, distant from grandparents and other relatives; Kojima’s father presented that house as where they were starting and from which their children could also begin. They did not have the typical suburban dog because Kojima’s mother had asthma.

The first screening of the Yamato movie in Tokyo fell on August 7, 1977, the day of Kojima’s father’s funeral. While handling related paperwork in Umeda with his mother, Kojima bought a presale movie ticket that included a poster and put up Starsha’s image on his bedroom wall. On the day Yamato opened in Kansai he took the first train, waited for hours in the sun in a very long line, and watched probably the third showing in a packed, fetid auditorium. There, for the first time since his father’s death, he was able to process the loss of the man who loved the Yamato.

For Kojima, the image of a train is the maroon Hankyu carriage running through the mountain valleys of Kansai. From his childhood moves through cram school, regular school, leisure, dates, movies, shopping, trips, New Year’s shrine visits, trips to the airport, work, and returning home, the Hankyu network accompanied roughly half his life, and its maroon color became associated with his youth.

“By the way, I first learned the word albedo from his album, Albedo 0.39. It's a term often used in the CG industry actually.”

“But when I was alone, I would hold my knees and listen to music and cry.”

Kojima, raised in Kansai, says he loves Osaka's takoyaki and Kobe's akashiyaki; he recounts that there the custom is to make them yourself, with 'takoyaki parties' in which each friend brings ingredients, and that for him they were special precisely because they demand achieving the perfect sphere.

Kojima's father worked for a pharmaceutical company and was an obsessive film fan; from Kojima's childhood he showed him a wide range of films and explained them. The family moved to the Kansai region when his father was transferred for work.