Takashi Murakami: Little Boy, The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture (Yale University Press, 2005)
Takashi Murakami: Little Boy, The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture (Yale University Press, 2005)
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298 pages
11.25 x 9.25 in
Hardcover
ISBN-10:
0300102852
"Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture is the companion catalogue to the exhibition 'Little Boy' curated by artist Takashi Murakami. The book is about the aesthetics of postwar culture in Japan and marks the final project of Murakami's Superflat Trilogy started in 2000.
Curated by Murakami, this exhibition explored the culture of postwar Japan through the art and visual media from Hideaki Anno, Chiho Aoshima, Chinatsu Ban, Fujiko Fujio, Kawashima Hideaki, Kato Izumi, Komatsuzaki Shigeru, Mahomi Kunikata, Leiji Matsumoto, Miura Jun, Mr., Narita Toru, Tarō Okamoto, Ohshima Yuki, Katsuhiro Ōtomo, Otomo Shoji, Aya Takano, Tsubaki Noboru, Kenji Yanobe, Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami.
The 298 pages hardcover book was published by Yale University in conjunction with a series of art exhibitions and music events in the Japan Society of New York in 2005. The book interprets the complex intuitive twist of postwar Japanese art while defining its high-spirited and naturally buoyant escape from human tragedy and the events of World War II. Apart from Murakami, who authored three texts and interviewed Toshio Okada and Kaichiro Morikawa, other authors are Noi Sawaragi, Midori Matsui, Alexandra Munroe, Tom Eccles, and Katy Siegel.
Takashi Murakami coined the term superflat to argue for the two-dimensional sensibility and specific visual aspects of manga (comics), anime (animated television and cinema), and earlier Japanese art such as ukiyo-e, in conjunction to contemporary, "Neo-pop" artists from Japan. He argues how the recent international boom in consumer pop media culture influenced Japanese fine art where hierarchies between high and low art, fine art and popular culture, culture and subculture, were abolished, or flattened. He also acknowledges the cultural impact of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Little Boy is the code name for one of the atomic bombs) and the U.S. occupation as leading factors in the post-WWII traumas, including the infantilization of Japan as a society, which all found their way in popular culture such as manga and anime."
