The Founder’s Speech

In tribute to Kiyoshi Ichimura is a founder of Ricoh Co., Ltd., who died in 1968, the immersive installation gives opportunities to executives and employees working at Ricoh today to meet him and listen to his speech. It is installed in the RICOH 3L research institute opened in 2020 within the area where Ricoh was founded in Tokyo.

After answering a few questions displayed on the touch panel, the audience is invited to wear headphones in front of the music box playing company song and the founder Kiyoshi calls out their name and start talking to them. Then, as the voice prompts them, they move to the lobby and listen to a speech by Kiyoshi Ichimura. It is a speech played by a modern actor that has been reconstructed for present Ricoh employees, using the words of Kiyoshi’s lectures and books as much as possible. Kiyoshi’s visual expression based on the motif of “light and darkness,” which expresses his sense of justice, curiosity, fighting spirit, and humanity, stimulates the imagination of the audience.

They can’t actually meet Kiyoshi Ichimura, who traveled to the afterlife, but we can imagine what he would say if he were alive today. They can wonder what kind of work Kiyoshi would do if he were them now. When they try to install the way of his thinking to their mind, they could find another idea that they’ve never seem. It is an experimental work that uses the theatrical method of reconstructing and restaging the speeches of the founders to question the purpose of work to executives and employees of the company today.