IF YOU SEE A CAT

In Japan, it is said that one in twenty people receives treatment for some form of mental illness. Japan's mental healthcare system faces various problems stemming from historical context, the inherent challenges of mental healthcare itself, and distortions arising from its structural framework. These issues carry the potential to hinder the recovery of people living with mental illness. In this work, a boy who sees his deceased beloved cat as a hallucination is diagnosed with a mental illness solely because he “sees a cat,” leading to his hospitalization and treatment. Within the VR experience, the player assumes the perspective of the hallucinatory cat, observing the boy's experiences within the hospital. Precisely because it allows for such close witnessing, this VR-specific work offers a vividly real sense of the problems within mental healthcare, the mother-son relationship, and what constitutes salvation for the boy.