On the cover of his new album “Jumon” (“Spell”), Yuta Orisaka sits in a slightly old-fashioned kitchen, like one you might find at a grandparent’s home. There’s a bowl of what looks like parsley sitting on the counter; one of the cupboard doors is crooked. Look closely and you might notice a feline theme: a cat-shaped teapot on the windowsill, a maneki-neko (beckoning cat) figurine perched on a drying rack. Another minor detail: the 34-year-old songwriter seems to have grown a furry tail.
It isn’t his home, in case you were wondering. Orisaka borrowed someone else’s place for the shoot, “but they asked me not to say whose kitchen it was.”
This image of off-kilter domesticity carries over to our interview, at an office space in central Tokyo. Orisaka is joined by his 8-year-old son, whose school is taking the day off; he sits quietly, playing on a Nintendo Switch. It’s normal for managers or label staff to sit in on an interview, but this is the first I’ve conducted in the presence of an artist’s child.
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