Takashi Murakami Says His Business Faces Bankruptcy in Emotional Video

Contemporary pop artist and seasoned collaborator Takashi Murakami has revealed the devastating financial impact of Covid-19 on his business in a new video posted to Instagram.

Opening up by saying “I’m a very silly human being,” Murakami addresses how his Tokyo-based company Kaikai Kiki is facing bankruptcy due to Covid-19. The artist reveals that he has had to cancel many projects, including his passion project, the sequel to his Jellyfish Eyes feature film which he began filming in 2012. Ominously, he concedes he has yet to feel the full ramifications of the virus financially.

“Our company is in a very bad situation with money flow,” he says, detailing the various ways in which his business consultant and tax attorneys encouraged him to discontinue shooting Jellyfish Eyes Part 2: Mahashankh. Despite his disappointment, the artist is transparent with his fans in the hope that “it may have a cathartic effect on [my followers] to see the story of stupid Murakami’s failure.”

In lieu of a feature film, Murakami states that he intends to produce a series that will “publicly announce the discontinuation of the film’s production” against the backdrop of his company’s efforts to navigate an economic catastrophe.

See the full video below.

View this post on Instagram

This spring, I streamed a series of cooking show of a sort on Instagram Live. I’m sure those who watched them were utterly confused, but I was trying to buoy my own thoroughly sunken feelings through these streamings. With the sudden swoop of COVID-19 pandemic, my company faced bankruptcy and I had to give up on a number of projects, the most symbolic of which being the production of my sci-fi feature film, Jellyfish Eyes Part 2: Mahashankh. For nine long years, I had persevered! It was a film that was to realize my childish dreams! The enormous budget I poured into this project, as well as my tenacious persistence, put a constant and tremendous stress on my company’s operation for the past nine years. But at the same time, I was able to endure various hardships because I had this project. Faced with the current predicament, however, I was persuaded by both my business consultant and tax attorney that I must, simply must try and drastically reduce our business tax by filing the film’s production cost as tax-exempt expenditure. To that end, I am going to produce and release a series of videos to publicly announce the discontinuation of the film’s production. (To be clear, this is an entirely legitimate procedure—I’m not trying to evade tax!) These videos will be released against the backdrop of our struggle to avoid an economic catastrophe, but perhaps it may have a cathartic effect on the viewers/my followers to see the story of stupid Murakami’s failure. Long story short, I’m a silly human being for whom the moment of bliss is when I am thinking my truly childish sci-fi thoughts. I don’t know how many episodes the series will end up being, but a series it will be, so please come along with me on this journey for a little while.

A post shared by Takashi Murakami (@takashipom) on Jun 30, 2020 at 8:02am PDT