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 live-streamed walk on Instagram Live. This project features chief Mende walking around a city and commenting on its lighting’s charm and problems. For the first episode, he walked from Ginza 1-chome to 8-chome, and for the second, he walked through Akabane, the city where he was born and raised.
■Night Walk Survey Live Stream
The third activity is a live-streamed Night Walk Survey on Instagram Live. The first survey, in April, took us through Kmpong Glam in Singapore, a lively neighborhood with stylish boutiques, restaurants, and a historic mosque. We could see that fewer people were wearing masks in Singapore, and the bustling city was coming back to life. There were many bright and glamorous spots, and our members in Singapore had mixed opinions on the lighting, giving a glimpse into what a typical Night Walk Survey is like.
■Looking Ahead
We plan to continue our activities, valuing in-person, face-to-face communication while also using live online streams to help people feel a sense of being there. Since the online videos can be watched anytime, we encourage those who missed them to watch now, and we hope you’ll also consider joining the Lighting Detectives’ in-person activities.
