Ikigai and Art with Konatsu Ishijima

Ikigai with Jennifer Shinkai

Have you wanted to do more art but think of yourself as not creative? My guest is the wonderful Konatsu Ishijima, an artist, personal coach, and theatre company founder. I was very impressed with Konatsu’s courage as this is not only her first podcast in English, which is not her first language, but her first podcast ever!

Konatsu has a wonderful artistic perspective which correlates to her Ikigai. She talks about her Ikigai as a fluid experience of moving between different ideas, emotions and experiences, ‘a shaking and a changing’. This shaking and changing is also something she incorporates into her art practice.

Konatsu also believes everyone can be an artist and in the interview she talks about different ways you and I can express ourselves artistically, including dancing with our families.

If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, we’d love to hear about it and know your biggest takeaway.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How being born in an artistic community in the Japanese countryside, with its contradictions, shaped Konatsu’s idea of Ikigai as ‘a shaking and a changing’ of seemingly disparate ideas and states of being
• How she incorporates this shaking and changing into her visual and performance art
• What led Konatsu to start her own theatre company despite having no formal experience in the theatre
• About Konatsu’s personal coaching and live painting sessions
• Why art is not limited to the formal or institutional, and why dancing at home with your family is art

About Konatsu:

Born in 1984 in Mashiko, Tochigi. Konatsu Ishijima grew up with her father, a potter, and her mother, an art college graduate, in a town of art and nature.

After graduating from the Faculty of Economics at Keio University in 2007, she worked in the customer service industry at a venture company and Leica Camera Japan K.K., where she worked with over 2,000 customers, mainly executives and artists.

In 2017, she started her own personal coaching business using a unique method called "Colourful Notebooks®", in which she uses coloured pens to draw what's on her mind on a plain white notebook.

In 2018, Konatsu was teaching mutual understanding training at venture companies, listed companies and multinational corporations. She supported team building that focuses on the human side of people, not on common sense and preconceptions.

In 2020, in order to start a theatre company, which Konatsu has always wanted to do, she set up a theatre company despite having no experience, and gathered 20 members in two nights through social networking sites.

In 2021, she changed her coloured pens to brushes and acrylic paints, and started live painting to vividly depict people's true nature on a blank canvas. By letting go of words, her expression awakens like a fish in water.

In the meantime, her own work as an artist has made her more persuasive in her personal coaching, and she offers six months of continuous coaching to help her clients who want to take care of not only their work, but also their family and all the things they love.

Connect with Konatsu:

Website: https://colorankoran.com/

Theatre company: https://gekidan-unlimited.studio.site

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/konatsu.ishijima

Instagram: https://instagram.com/conatwo.i

Note: https://note.com/conatwo

Connect with Jennifer

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifershinkai/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifershinkaicoach

Website: https://jennifershinkai.com/