HU Liwei

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HU Liwei

Participating Project	International Creator Residency Program (Individual Projects)
Activity Based	Chongqing/Amsterdam
City / Place stayed	Tokyo
Period	2026.1 - 2026.3

Purpose of the residency

Few things suit a snowy day in Tokyo better than yakiimo. While at TOKAS, I want to develop a “mobile sweet potato cart” that may not take a literal form. Based on Imohyakuchin, an Edo-period cookbook, the project explores how memories are shared and remade through sweet potato recipes.

The “cart” begins in Kawagoe, an Edo-era sweet potato town, moves to the Hoshiimo Shrine in Ibaraki, and continues south to Kagoshima for a sip of imo-shōchū. It also extends into anime and Japanese pop culture, where sweet potatoes circulate as images, gestures, and social cues in global media.

Plan during the residency

• Conduct archival research on Imohyakuchin and Bansho-kō (1735) and related visual documents at the National Diet Library and Tokyo National Museum.
• Conduct field visits in Kawagoe, Ibaraki, and Kagoshima to observe how sweet potatoes function across local history, ritual, production, and drinking culture.
• Collect sweet potato recipes from local residents and explore adapted or contemporary variations as living archives.
• Research how Yakiimo are represented in Japanese anime.
• Experiment with recipes, sensory documentation, sweet potato fibers, and shared meal formats to develop possible presentation forms.

Creator Information