Japanese monk Seigaku lives a Zen life with as little money as possible in Berlin. The desire for popularity led Seitaro Higuchi from Tottori on the Sea of Japan to Germany's capital, transforming himself along the way. He had sought to become an actor — and instead became a monk. How did this come about?
"I wanted to be popular with girls," Seigaku says over the phone, laughing. He is speaking from Kyoto, where he is shooting a movie over two months in summer.
As fate would have it, the 36-year-old monk is now also an actor, playing the role of a monk who was a student of poet Matsuo Basho in a fictional documentary by Swiss filmmaker Richard Dindo.