Hikaru Kimura Due to the impact of the COVID-19, the Lighting Detectives have voluntarily suspended in-person activities since 2020. While we haven’t been able to conduct our usual activities, we’ve been exploring new methods, such as individual Night Walk Surveys and connecting our salons via the web. Now that we’ve grown accustomed to online communication due to the pandemic, we have launched three new live-streamed online activities on YouTube and Instagram as new content. ■Lounge Talk with Chief Mende and Friends The first is a live-streamed lounge talk on YouTube Live. This is a special project where chief Mende invites his friends to have a casual and candid conversation over drinks. For the first episode, we invited Mr. Naomitsu Tokieda from Toki Corporation as our guest, who has a personal relationship with chief Mende and has participated in the Lighting Detectives World Forum. It was a fun first episode with a relaxed, private atmosphere unique to YouTube, which included anecdotes from Mr. Tokieda’s younger days.The second episode, titled “The Dawn of the Lighting Detectives: A Look Back at 1990-2000,” featured guests Mr. Yu Inaba and Ms. Reiko Kasai. They shared their founding beliefs and the struggles from the group’s early days. A must-see part of this episode is the rare, never-before-seen footage from a 1998 exhibition, where 100 prominent figures from various fields predicted the “Tokyo nightscape in 2050.” ■Take a Walk with Chief Mende The second activity is a…

Did you know that there are over 1,200 members of the Lighting Detective spread across the globe? Seeking to foster connections among our international members, who rarely have opportunities to interact, we hosted our first-ever online talk event and YouTube video feed. For our inaugural event, we focused on the theme of “Nightscape in Your Town.” Four members from diverse locations—Swansea, Basel, Colombo, and Takamatsu—shared their unique perspectives on the night scenes of their respective cities. Our first speaker, Howie Ruan, is a doctoral student in Swansea, a seaside city in the southeast of UK. He shared beautiful photographs capturing the daily changes in the sky, the moon’s glow, and the long blue moment in this tranquil town. His presentation conveyed a deep appreciation for the distinctive beauty of European lighting, contrasting with his hometown of Guangzhou. Next, we heard from Michael Hübscher, a lighting designer based in Basel, Switzerland’s third-largest city. He discussed the evolution of Basel’s cityscape over its long history, as well as recent debates surrounding the sudden emergence of colorful façade lighting. I’m particularly intrigued by Basel’s unique carnival, where the city lights are extinguished and lanterns illuminate the streets. Our third speaker was Nilusha Rajapaksha, a lighting designer based in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. She highlighted concerns about light pollution and safety in popular tourist areas of Colombo, as well as the slow pace of LED conversion for street lighting. Her insights into…

We had our third “Lounge Talk with Mr. Mende and Friends” live streamed on YouTube.The theme was “Light on the waterfront. We delivered an enjoyable one-hour talk with Mr. Hidenobu Jinnai, a guest who was perfect for the theme. The third installment of “Lounge Talk withMr.Mende and Friends” was held after a year’s absence. We invited architectural historian, Mr. Hidenobu Jinnai as a guest and delivered a one-hour talk live. Mr. Jinnai has been researching waterside urban planning for many years, having studied in Venezia after graduating from university. Whenever the theme of the Lighting Detectives’ events has been waterfront lighting, we have always invited Mr. Jinnai and asked for his opinions. In this episode, He reviewed the Lighting Detectives’ practical lecture series, the Sumida River houseboat tour in 1996, and an interview in 1998 in which he asked the audience to predict the nightscape of Tokyo in 2050, as well as the proposal for Tokyo waterside lighting created by the LPA for the “2050” exhibition held in 2016. He reviewed the “Tokyo Nightscape Proposal” that LPA created for that exhibition, and discussed his vision for the future of waterside lighting and which areas have great potential. In the preliminary meeting, we had talked about ending the live stream in about 45 minutes, but the conversation kept going, and Mr. Mende and Mr. Jinnai seemed to be able to talk forever, but since it was a one-hour program, we ended…