To Tokyo, with self-taught film Believing in the gift.

Updated 2026.10.02

Once I started making films at church, every day was all about film. Films for worship, photography, design, websites, live streaming. Every week, every month, every year, I was immersed in film.

While working at the supermarket, I kept making films on weekends. Six years of refusing to give up on making film my job.

At 23, starting with 3 million yen of debt

In March, at 23, I decided to make film my work. I started from nothing: no equipment, not even a computer to edit on. My family was not wealthy, so there was no one to invest in me.

So, believing in the gift I had been given, I took on nearly 3 million yen of debt.

No way back. Days in a Tokyo where I knew no one.
All-nighters every day.

I think that when things are that hard, the only choice left is to live with everything you have.

I could make films, but I could not make them reach people

In the first year, I never hit my monthly targets. I could make films, but I did not know how to work with clients. Days of complaints. I caught myself lowering my prices, selling myself cheap.

“This can't go on.”

I decided to step away from the church work that had supported me and spend a year in training. I had three goals: to work for companies everyone knows, to become known among creators, and to become someone who could not only make things but solve problems and make work reach people.

Putting my pride aside, I went to meet all kinds of people to learn from them. The basics of client work, marketing and branding. I also took on too much work at once and collapsed a few times. (Laughs)

By the end of the year, I was working on projects for big companies. Jobs that had paid 15,000 yen became 150,000. After going independent in Tokyo, 500,000. After learning marketing, as a director, 2 million. The scale of my work changed year by year.

But what scared me most was that my heart might be left behind by the speed of it all.

Care for people, more than budgets

When people talk about film, the first word that usually comes up is “budget.” But what I have valued most for ten years is care for people.

Out of thousands of creators,
why have they asked me?

I have been trusted with the chance to send out into the world a product someone has staked their life on and poured their soul into. If you are aware of that, you don't brush off even an unreasonable request with “I can't.” As a film professional, you can suggest, “How about doing it this way?” and explain why.

On the other side of every budget, there is always a person. Budgets and care seem to pull against each other, but both were things I must never forget.

“Not taking on a challenge, but keeping going”

A commercial with a former Olympic gymnast, music videos for well-known celebrities, motion graphics for a project by a former member of Japan's national soccer team. On glamorous city sets, I worked desperately to sharpen my animation, direction and video advertising.

On the commercial with the former gymnast, what drew me was not the glamorous stage itself. How was she able to perform just as she had in her competitive days, after a seven-year gap? The answer was that she had kept stretching every day. Not taking on a challenge, but keeping going. I made the film with that in mind.

When I came across one theme song, the moment I heard it at the first meeting, I felt, “This will encourage Japan.” We had only a few weeks, but I put the entire budget into it and made it with friends through the night. Making it in a Tokyo studio as just another job would have been easy. But through that person's way of life, I wanted to show someone what it means to live without giving up.

By then I could talk about technique endlessly. People take in 80 percent of information through their eyes. So: how do you guide the gaze, and with what colors and what movement do you move people's hearts? I even had cheeky thoughts about “hacking the human eye.”

It's not a lack of talent, only a lack of the right environment

In those years, I also gained an important companion: a student I taught film to for two years, my right hand, like a younger brother. Working with him, I always thought:

Even kids who seem to have no talent do not lack talent.
They only lack the environment. They only lack someone who believes in them.

If one person believes in another's potential and keeps loving them without giving up, how many dreams might come true from that alone? Just as I myself was once saved that way.

A strain I had not yet noticed

At the supermarket register, people avoided me: “Ugh, a foreigner, let's use another register.” With nothing but the gift of film, I have walked this far. That is why I believe in this gift.

But to be honest, back then I had pride, in both good and bad ways. I think I clung to some things, too. Running, piling up effort, catching up, overtaking. I had not yet noticed that this strain would one day corner me.

“As each has received a gift, employ it in serving one another, as good managers of the grace of God in its various forms.”— 1 Peter 4:10 (World English Bible)