MOMENT05

Introduction

MOMENT is a trans-local magazine for those who explore the new roles of our cities while working in the intersections of various disciplines and neighborhoods. Our freshly redesigned fifth issue, titled “Listening to Islands, Reading Forests, Touching Cities,” features a cover story from a design studio in Lisbon, Portugal, and a visit to an architectural atelier in Porto. This issue includes a three-day chronicle spent on Awaji Island with people who distill the scents of local plants; an illustrated story created in a cedar forest in Chiba, where the sounds of kigari-uta and taiko drums echo; and reflections on the time of trees. Also featured are a day of eating octopus in Brittany, a “sound diary” from Brussels, and a dialogue between anthropologist and manga artist. Through the murmurs of cities, drifting scents, and the tactile sense of things, we search for new circuits that connect places and ourselves.

Purchase

MOMENT 5：Listening to Islands, Reading Forests, Touching Cities

Publisher: Re-Public
Release date: November 7, 2025
Format: Modified B6 size
Pages: 166
Language: Japanese
ISBN ：978-4-9910759-4-0 C0030
Price: Print edition: ¥2,200 + tax / Digital edition: ¥1,900 + tax

→ Buy Print

→ Buy Digital

You can purchase past MOMENT magazines from here

Share on : X , Facebook

Feature 1

Exploring the Universe
of Paulo de Cantos with Barbara Says…

Paulo de Cantos (1892–1979) was a Portuguese educator and amateur typographer who devoted himself to educational reform in the early 20th century. Between the 1920s and 1970s, he created numerous textbooks with unique typographic and visual compositions—combining playful word structures, diagrams, and acrostics. Thanks to the ongoing archival and research efforts of the design studio Barbara Says…, his works have recently been re-evaluated in Portugal. Drawn by the mysterious charm and humor of Cantos’s forms, we visited Barbara Says… in Lisbon.

Lisbon, Portugal

Feature 2

Where Does Scent Come From?
Three Days on Awaji Island with Olfactive Studio Ne

“It’s often called the Island of Fragrance,” someone said—and that was our cue to visit Awaji Island, Japan’s largest producer of incense and the place where jinkō (aloeswood) is said to have first washed ashore in Japan. There we met Kan Izumi, founder of the creative studio Olfactive Studio Ne, who cultivates and distills local plants to extract their aromas. With architect Rugo Itasaka joining the editorial team, we spent three days listening to the island’s fragrances as we toured fields and distilleries.

Hyogo, Japan

Feature 3

Picture Book: Orai in the Forest / A Story of a Cedar from Chiba

Following the echoes of Kiyari-uta (lumber-dragging songs) and taiko drums, we entered the forest of Hyuga in Sanmu City, Chiba. This is where the Terada Honke sake brewery in Kozaki, Chiba—who longed to make wooden barrels from local timber—met forest arborists and began the Kiyari Festival. Cedars felled in Sanmu were hauled out by hand and reborn as sake barrels and taiko drum bodies. From a single tree, tracing the long passage of time, we created a picture book colored with the hues of the land.

Chiba, Japan

Special

Comic : Future Village

Tetsu Kayama

Serialized comics by Tetsu Kayama, who draws stories from his unique perspective of traveling as he lives and living as he travels.

This issue includes two new short stories—“Tummy Trouble” and “Shared Factory”— depicting various forms of human settlements that may emerge after multiple ends of the world.

①A glowing globe at a friend’s house

Photograph by Nanako Ono

②Zinc engrabings by Paulo de Cantos

Photograph by Nanako Ono

③Second-floor in fala’s studio and residence

Photograph by Nanako Ono

④Park beside MAAT, Lisbon

Photograph by Nanako Ono

⑤Restaurant near Alfama in Lisbon

Photograph by Nanako Ono

⑥Pass-through at a fala member’s home

Photograph by Nanako Ono

⑦Architectural model made by ahmed belkhodja at a year-end party

Photograph by Nanako Ono

“It’s time you came to Lisbon—I’ll show you around.”
That single line from my friend Roberto, whom I hadn’t seen in eight years, set this issue’s journey in motion.

Once Portugal became our destination, people and places I wanted to encounter began to appear one after another: a writer untangling illusions about design; a 20th-century designer who made textbooks with children, and the Lisbon studio tracing his legacy; and an architectural atelier in Porto crafting a unique world from small residential renovations.

The opening photographs capture the landscapes that connect these serendipitous encounters.

This issue’s theme—“Listening to Islands, Reading Forests, Touching Cities”— extends from the scent of holy basil essential oil distilled on Awaji Island, to the sounds of *kiyari-uta* and *taiko* that drew us into the deep, time-stretching forests of Chiba.
Immersed in the tactile presence of different life-worlds, new circuits quietly form between self and place— just as chance and coincidence weave us together.
From invisible fungi to the strangely shaped Earth itself, our senses and thoughts expand and contract repeatedly.

In an age when AI endlessly generates words and images that threaten to engulf our everyday lives, perhaps it’s time to set aside rigid gestures— and begin by surrendering ourselves wholly to wherever we arrive.

November 2025 — Ryo Shirai

Credits

Re:public Inc.
Publisher: Hiroshi Tamura, Fumiko Ichikawa
Edition-in-Chief: Ryo Shirai
Design: ido (Shohei Iida, Yuki Shimooka, Haru Sasaki)
Editorial Team: Yumiko Kataoka, Rui Itasaka, Yuria Kaneda, Hinako Takita,
Kae Hirose, Kahono Sugiura

Cover photo : Nanako Ono
Feature Content 1 - PHOTOGRAPHS : Nanako Ono
Feature Content 2 - PHOTOGRAPHS : Shohei Iida
Feature Content 3 - ILLUSTRATIONS：Kodai Mitsuhashi,
PHOTOGRAPH : Shohei Iida
Special - Comic : Tetsu Kayama
Web : Daiki kashima

JA

/

EN