Outsider Artist

At first, he stood out because other artists did not take his use of latex seriously, and his works were often dismissed as juvenile. Nonetheless, he persisted, exhibiting his work at every art show that would accept his unconventional works, and, along the way, earned a reputation as an avant-garde, even Outsider, artist. True to the origins of those considered Outsider artists, Hideki claimed to have once spent time in a psychiatric hospital in Japan, after having been placed there by his parents, where he taught some of the other patients how to tie balloon animals. In fact, he claimed that Junji Sakamoto, famous creator of the Shiva elephant balloon series, was one of his students.

I asked Hideki why his family had placed him in a psychiatric hospital. He responded that normally he refused to talk about this time in his life but that, due to my frankness, which he claimed to admire, he would tell me and that I could write about it.