Maybe it was in 1999. After the second party following NIPAF, we were talking about going to my house and drinking together. I said, “Let’s all go to my place and drink tonight!”

Then Lee Wen said, “I want to go to ARAI-san’s house too.”

“Okay, then, let’s go together,” I answered.

But that was actually the first time I had ever met Lee Wen. It felt like some strange Chinese guy had suddenly said to me, “Can I go too?”

So, late at night, I went back to my house with CHEN Shi-sen and the others.

While drinking with Lee Wen at my house, I gradually realized who he was. The more we talked, the more I understood.

This guy is the Yellow Man!

I was really pissed off about the “Yellow Man.”

Around the time I came back to Japan after working with the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers, there was an Asian Art Exhibition at the Fukuoka Art Museum in 1994. Lee Wen and Jason Lim—both of whom are my friends now—came from Singapore.

The exhibition was mainly about displaying artworks, but Lee Wen’s performance of “Yellow Man,” for example, was talked about very positively afterward. I think this was because the exhibition catalog was published as a special issue of Bijutsu Techo and distributed through bookstores. The Fukuoka exhibition catalog was being sold in bookstores in Tokyo and elsewhere as a regular book.

It was probably the first exhibition in Japan to introduce young contemporary artists from Asia, and it included performances as well. The whole thing became one special issue of Bijutsu Techo.

When I saw it in a bookstore, I thought, “Bijutsu Techo, you bastards!!”

What about SHIMODA Seiji and me, who had already been doing performance art all this time?

Before introducing artists from Asia, there were things you should have done first, I thought. Isn’t this strange?

If you have that much time, why don’t you dig up all the unknown artists in Japan? That was how I felt.

“Yellow Man” was certainly interesting. But I thought there were even more interesting artists in Japan.

And when I saw photographs of the crazy performances Jason Lim was doing, I thought, There are much crazier artists than this in Japan. Why don’t they dig them up?

The reason was that it was connected with the Japan Foundation. It was national policy.

And this “national policy” was, in other words, a Japanese version of globalism.

It was different from the kind of thing the United States had done with Abstract Expressionism—the idea of creating a new art history based on formalism and spreading that idea throughout the world.

In Japan, the government was supporting artists from Asia in a different way.

I thought it was incredibly stupid.

And then, suddenly, one of the people involved was sitting in my house.

If I had known that he was the Yellow Man, I would have said, “Don’t come.”

The impact of that special issue of Bijutsu Techo, the exhibition catalog, had been very strong. I myself had not bought it.

That night, I found out that Lee Wen was the Yellow Man.

This guy is the Yellow Man!

I thought, Why the hell am I drinking with this guy?

But I couldn’t say, “Get out. Go home.”

He was already there.

And before I knew who he was, Lee Wen had been a nice guy.

He had seen my work that day—a different version of “Happy Japan!”—and asked me in English, “What do you think about Japanese society?”

I answered him in my poor, stumbling English.

Then Lee Wen said, “This is the first time I have met an artist who has such a clear opinion and talks about Japanese society like this.”

So even after I found out that he was the Yellow Man, I couldn’t tell him to go home.

In the end, this became the beginning of my friendship with Lee Wen.

Later, CHEN Shi-sen decided to return to China, in 2002.

During the daytime, Lee Wen and I bought a case of 24 cans of beer and went to CHEN Shi-sen’s apartment around Tokorozawa, where he was preparing to return to China.

CHEN Shi-sen spoke only Japanese and Chinese.

Lee Wen spoke only English.

I spoke only Japanese and a little bit English.

But we drank a lot from the middle of the day and had a great time.

In the end, we kept drinking until almost the time of the last train.

CHEN Shi-sen’s apartment was in the countryside, and there were only a few streetlights along the way to the station late at night.

Lee Wen staggered, and I grabbed him.

He grabbed me back and hugged me.

I didn’t know what to do, but I hugged him back.

He was crying without making a sound.

He was quietly sobbing.

After about thirty seconds, I said, “The last train is coming. We’d better hurry.”

And we headed toward the dimly lit station.