On 1 December 2008, Shibuya Channel’s People | Close-Up series profiled musician-maker BUN — known on stages with project KOH-TAO, and equally for burning art, handmade kalimba (thumb piano), and gourd lights.
Festival credits in the feature included Fuji Rock, Aichi Expo, and Tokyo’s Nagisa Music Festival. The kalimbas he played were self-built; each soundboard carried careful pyrography so the instrument read as both sound and image.
Craft before shortcuts
Burning art began as decoration for original kalimba tops, then scaled into larger pictures and exhibitions. Some pieces took up to a year. One wrong burn cannot be undone, so line work and gradients demanded slow nerve. String tension and heat treatment followed what he called a personal golden ratio — each instrument finished to a quality he would stand behind.
Gourd lights shared the same handmade ethic: music, picture, and light assembled into one room atmosphere for live nights. Monochrome preference traced back to an earlier path aiming at professional photography while traveling with a camera.
Polynesia echoes and Shibuya work
Designs that felt original later overlapped, he said, with Polynesian patterning — noticed after friends pointed it out and after travel through Easter Island, Tahiti, and Māori cultural zones. Overseas burning-art shows had not yet happened at interview time, but the visual language already traveled.
Shibuya was practical infrastructure: monthly kalimba workshops and lives in Kamiyama-cho, tracks on SHIBUYA-FM, and nearby recording. Collaborations reached toward SANDII (SANDII and the Sunsetz / kumu hula lineage). December 2008 dates listed Warehouse Azabu-juban, pema in Kamiyama, and Kita-Kamakura’s Setsudo Museum, with a January 2009 Ikebukuro hall show for overtone orchestra After the Thunderstorm.
The Close-Up closing note praised handmade insistence in a digital-shortcut decade — objects that keep a person’s hand visible.
Kamiyama sits a short walk from the scramble density still visible on the Shibuya Crossing live camera. Readers tying archive interviews to today’s street feeds can start with how to watch Japan live.
