While other mothers use their baby’s nap time to catch up on house chores or get some shuteye themselves, 41-year-old Mami Koide likes to turn her sleeping daughter Nuno into a living, breathing work of art.
When the sun sets over Tokyo, and it’s time for baby Nuno to go to bed, her mother, cartoonist Mami Koide, gets ready for work. After making sure the toddler is sound asleep she sets her on a canvas improvised from two mattresses covered with a fluffy blanket and makes her the protagonist in various artistic installations. The creative mother uses everyday items like clothes, socks and even vegetables to create fantastic sceneries around Nuno, who is always the center star. Once everything is in place, she climbs onto a chair and takes a bird’s eye photo of the artwork. Koide created he first art piece to send to her husband, who works as a bartender and is away from home during the night, but as the ritual continued, she put together a collection of around 200 images, which eventually became an illustrated book, and a best seller on Amazon Japan just a week after it was released.
Nuno seems to be happy in the land of dreams while her mother builds fairy-tale settings around her, but Mami Koide is still not sure if her daughter will approve of what she’s doing while she’s asleep. “I’m still not confident if she’ll be satisfied and happy with what I’m doing without her permission, while she is sleeping”, the talented cartoonist says. Katsunori Sunami, Nuno’s father, couldn’t be happier about his wife’s hobby. “When I look at these pictures during my work at night, I’m assured that she’s fine, and I think that I should work hard to make this girl happy,” he said in an interview with NTD. But, Mami says Nuno is outgrowing her canvas and 200 photos are enough.
