travel

“I grew up in the countryside myself, so I used to love the commotion of the city… the rust, the crowded roadsides, the electric wires. I loved all that. But after I turned 30 or so, it started to get a little tiresome…”

“[whenever] I travel and stay at a hotel I put the TV on as soon as I enter the room, just to deal with the feeling of loneliness”

Every time Kojima got into a taxi, he looked at the driver’s name on their ID as if somewhere he were still searching for Travis Bickle. He never found that name in real life, but he wished that someday he could sit in the rear seat and thank Travis Bickle because, unlike the movie’s rescue of fourteen-year-old Iris, Travis had pulled Kojima out of his isolation.

In 1974 Kojima attended a tutoring school in another city more for the adventure of the commute than for studying. One rainy day he took shelter in a bookstore in Ikeda, and the large cover of the novelization Columbo: Publish or Perish, which contained black-and-white photographs inside, led him to buy with his allowance the first book he had chosen out of his own interest. He used each photograph, appearing about every twenty pages, like a breath of air and read all 261 pages in one sitting.

After leaving that screening into the warm rain of Shinjuku, Kojima saw skyscrapers and neon signs in various languages, heard sirens and foreign voices, and for a moment felt he was in the Los Angeles of 2019 imagined by Philip K. Dick and Ridley Scott. He said he smelled Blade Runner in the air, touched it in the city, and felt it on his skin and in the warmth of a puddle.

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.

The premiere of Control turned the city, for Kojima, into a Joy Division festival. He bought the soundtrack and Paul Smith T-shirts, several photobooks, remastered reissues, compilations and rarities; thanks to contacts at Konami’s London branch he also secured two UK-exclusive editions. Seeing posters, shops and cinemas full of the lost band felt like a day he had never imagined, and he expressed the desire to visit Ian Curtis’s grave someday.

In 2009 Kojima wrote that if he could have only one wish it would be to go into space before he dies. He said a brief orbit just beyond Earth’s atmosphere would be enough, and that to make it happen he would give up even his position as a game designer, his family, or his own life.

The Apollo 11 moon landing was the event that had the greatest impact on Kojima and gave him courage and hope. He also recalled the Apollo–Soyuz docking in 1975: watching on television the American and Soviet crews shake hands during the Cold War seemed to him the moment when science changed human prejudices, and he said it moved him more deeply than the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Kojima abandoned the idea of becoming a professional astronaut almost upon entering senior high: Japan’s space agency had no astronauts, becoming a cosmonaut on the other side of the Iron Curtain seemed impossible, and NASA required U.S. citizenship which he was not going to change. He later judged those to be simplistic excuses to force himself to grow up; he did not abandon the desire to travel to space and, as a college student, carried Takashi Tachibana’s Return from Space in his pocket.

When journalist Toyohiro Akiyama traveled to space in 1990 with funding from TBS and Soviet technology, Kojima realized a civilian route existed and reacted with frustration and jealousy for not having imagined it. This made him understand that he did not simply want to reach space but to train and go as an astronaut; for that reason he did not feel the same envy when game designer Richard Garriott paid about $30 million to travel to the International Space Station in 2008.

Kojima held that the deeper reason for going to space was not weightlessness, extraterrestrials, danger, or a special experience, but to find out who we are and what our place is. He described the journey to space as a journey to know oneself and the return to Earth as the passage from the past self to the future self; he concluded by asking where he himself would return as a game designer.

During the 2010 world tour for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Kojima was trapped with twelve other people (thirteen total) in a freight elevator at Uniqlo Soho in New York City. They managed to open the elevator doors with their bare hands and found only the metal wall of the shaft because the car had stopped between floors; as people began pounding on the cabin the smell of panic spread and there was fear of running out of oxygen, and Kojima found himself thinking of elevator movies. An hour later a rescue team evacuated them by ladder through the top of the elevator car, and they escaped without injury.

Kojima admired that North Face shifted genres like mountain weather: what first appears to be a war movie becomes a mountaineering film, then a satire of the press, and finally a disaster movie. He emphasized a material contrast: the climbers quit the alpine infantry, assemble homemade equipment and bicycle the entire 700 kilometers because they could not afford train tickets, while the journalists arrive as tourists, dine in formal wear in an opulent heated hotel and watch through telescopes those who sleep in a tent and sip barley soup amid the storm.

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.

Kojima bought Hankyu Densha solely for its cover and title. He began reading it propelled by railway nostalgia, became caught by the book’s gentle, almost maternal wistfulness, and joked that he finished it at express-train speed.

In February 2011, Kojima detoured from a business trip to visit his father’s grave near his old house and rode the Hankyu Railway for the first time in a year. He did not know anyone on the train; the view outside had changed greatly since he had lived there and the train car’s interior had been modernized, but the cozy, cradle-like sway felt nostalgic. He described the Hankyu not merely as transportation but as a time machine to his hometown and his memories.

Kojima lived near the sea in Tsujido until he was three, and after returning to the nearby Tokyo area in 1996 he took his eldest son many times to the coastal towns of his memories. On one route in Enoshima they saw fish, ate rice with seafood and manju buns, rode the ESCAR toll escalator—which Kojima called a rip-off—returned by ferry and ended the day in a café: Kojima drank coffee, the boy had juice, and Southern All-Stars songs played in the background.

As his eldest son grew, Kojima stopped visiting Kamakura and likewise became too lazy to go back to Kobe; Umimachi Diary reminded him of what he had lost and what he must not forget. At the end of that summer he went to Hayama with his younger son, and from the train saw the sea where he had played with his father and where he had gone with his first son, and he decided to resume that diary of outings when the younger son is old enough.

In 2012, while preparing to open Kojima Productions Los Angeles, Kojima envisioned the Tokyo and LA teams not as two separate sides but as a studio located in a third space between the two cities. He wanted a global goal to render location irrelevant and for the outcome to be not merely a patchwork of Japanese memes with something American, but a creation global in the truest sense.

“In Death Stranding, 'strand' stands for strings and connections, and I felt a mysterious connection to that song that I found in that CD shop in Reykjavík two years ago.”

Kojima argued that stories about impossible journeys can circulate through culture and help turn them into reality. In response to accusations of escapism, he maintained that fiction contains truth and can serve as a frontline tool to correct real-world problems; for that reason he wants to continue telling stories and creating connections between people, worlds, and times.

“my father pushing me out on the ocean on a boat. It was so frightening. I still go into the ocean, and I dive from time to time, but I get really frightened about these big waves and big ocean animals.”

Kojima says that going to a bookstore was a daily routine he did not abandon even during the frenetic start of his studio. There he takes books in his hands, buys the ones that call to him, and loses himself reading them; on business trips he is not at ease unless he has several books in his bag, and he considers choosing and reading books to be part of who he is.

“I came to Tokyo in 1996, not too long after going through the Kobe earthquake. At that time, I was making a game called Policenauts, and when we were working on the Sega Saturn version, Mr. Mamoru Oshii and I met and had our first conversation.”

“At one point, Mr. Oshii called me up and said, "I'm with Cameron in America, and we're going to go shoot some guns. Do you want to come with us?" At that time, I couldn't go though, but that's what our relationship has been like for 26 years.”

“The whole place was crazy. I saw it and thought, great things can be made here. The lunches and everything were crazy too.”

“I'm very much interested in films and novels from all over the world, but I am, after all, Japanese, so I try to make the most out of that in my creativity.”

“So when I drive, I get into accidents. Because I'm too distracted by my thoughts. […] I try to avoid driving whenever possible.”

“I mean, they're traveling to get footage of animals, but ultimately their goal is the same as mine. They want to give it all they've got, and there is a return for the effort they put in, and that is amazement.”

“And really, the guys from the big cities are the ones that look really unusual and out of place there.”

“I wanted to provide a different look to it and so I used Iceland as one of the concepts in order to incorporate a bit of surrealism to the world.”

“But it's meaningless if you lose your own colour in the process, so you have to find a place for yourself among the symphony but bring out the Japanese part of yourself too. Like, you can hear a Japanese flute from within the symphony.”

“My home was close to the sea, and it left a very strong impression on me.”

“It was like I saw the future. ... Technology would connect the world.”

“I could probably make games in space. I want to be the first.”

“Coincidence and traveling are very important to living creatures… if we just connect via the internet, we will lose that.”

“I was listening to Caroline Polachek last year and became a big fan of hers. After I put that on my Instagram, she contacted me, and then she DM'ed. We kept in touch and then eventually met up in Paris, and that's when she told me she wanted to write a new song for Death Stranding 2.”

“The book includes a selection from "70% of My Body Is Made of Movies," which was published years ago by Sony Magazines, film critiques I wrote for Bunshun Online after becoming independent, novel afterwords and contributions, a collection of comments from 'Hideo's Mysteries,' travel essays serialized in the Nikkei Sunday edition newspaper, and essays about Kōbō Abe, among others.”

“I bought the second generation Walkman in college. ... Looking at the views with music on was like having a soundtrack. ... iPod was released, and I moved to digital. Meanwhile, Sony released their digital Walkman.”

“I keep it in my bag everyday and take it with me on business trips, too. ... My kids had sports day at school. It had to be light and with autofocus ... The ease of use was a deciding factor for me.”

“I can't live without cotton swabs. ... The cotton swabs at the hotels in the US and Europe are rather big. My ear canals are quite narrow. ... I hope this brand stays in business.”

“I think my sense of smell is more sensitive than most people. ... I can even tell who was in the elevator before me ... I know what perfumes my staff use. I'm like a dog, I guess. I keep it a secret of which perfume I use.”

“I love museums, so I go every week. ... I go straight to the gift shop, buy these items, and read them at cafes. ... I love Buddhist statues too, so I buy the catalogs. ... postcards and plastic file folders. I sort of collect them”

“I'm not a fan of scarves. I don't like stuff around my neck. However, this neck gaiter is an exception. ... I received this neck gaiter back in the day, and I've been using it ever since. I keep it in my bag”

“This watch is a collaboration piece by Seiko and Kojima Productions. My first watch was a Seiko. It brings back memories. ... To sync it on a business trip ... I have to go outside but it doesn't always work. Hence my collaboration watch with Hamilton. ... I adjust this manually.”

“Unlike last year, like I was traveling all over the world, this year will be about staying grounded and laying solid foundations. [...] This year also marks my 40th anniversary in the game industry from 1986 and began my journey in game creation.”