“One time, I traveled by ship to Hokkaido. Late at night, I went out for a stroll on deck. As I looked out at the dark, rain-pelted, seemingly endless expanse of ocean, I was overcome by a kind of horror. I had the feeling that the sea at night was the closest thing on Earth to the Great Beyond. But what was really strange about it was that this feeling was nevertheless somehow nostalgic.

A bar with an old-fashioned window that looks like it came from a shipwreck is the setting of this work. If you stand in front of the bar and look over your shoulder behind you in the mirror, you discover a woman—perhaps Lorelei, the mythical siren whose singing on a rock in the Rhine lures sailors to their doom on the reefs.” —Kazuhiko Hachiya