Growing up in postwar Japan has made me the person I am, but it is not why I do the work I do. It is a very personal thing - everything comes from inside.

I've always said that, growing up in postwar Japan, I never felt any connection to my work through those experiences. The work I do really comes from inside myself. For me, being born in Japan was an accident.

The monsters I thought about are those that don't fit in - those who think differently from the majority, the people of exception, outsiders. I wish that society would place more importance and value on these kinds of monsters.

It's interesting for me to sell Comme des Garcons in places it's never been sold before to people who might not have heard of Comme des Garcons.

We know in our hearts that technology at its best should make us feel even more human than we currently feel. Sometimes it makes us feel less human.

Businesses might have been helped by the ability to promote themselves on the Internet, but they have also been hit by the web's encouragement of time-wasting by their staff.

Surveillance technologies now available - including the monitoring of virtually all digital information - have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place.

You can think of the entire Internet as a place where ideas embodied in cyberspace are having a war, and it's not much different than the war of gods in heaven, which has been taking place since there's been human beings.