Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture

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Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture is a non-fiction photographic narrative from internationally renowned Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. The book is a blowup of cutting-edge aesthetics and high-loaded imagery from one of the most enduring artistic innovations of Japan's subculture.

Contents 1 Blueprint 2 Japan Society 3 Coda 4 Footnotes

[edit] Blueprint

The 448 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 2. Takashi Murakami also coins the term superflat to chronicle the two-dimensional aspect of manga (comics) and anime (animated television and cinema). He argues how this international boom in pop media culture influenced Japanese fine art in relation to the social implications of superflat regarding the true impact of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. On Japanese art and culture, Little Boy is the code name for one of the atomic bombs that devastated Japan.

Little Boy also examines Kawaii (可愛さ kawaisa), the culture of cuteness which influenced Mexico during the postmodernist era of late 1900s; and the dissected pop-culture movement of Otaku. The book contains a mind-blowing collection of works ranging from the first Godzilla to the anime masterpiece of Neon Genesis Evangelion. It also includes the provocative paintings of Chiho Aoshima accompanied by essays that Dig deeply within a unified field of themes, sound and resonance. Takashi Murakami's New Little Boy is the heartbeat of mesmerizing manga and multifaceted anime which resembles the boom of the Beat Generation with The Ticket That Exploded from 1962.

[edit] Japan Society

Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture (Exhibition) was a major art showcase of in expositions and out installations curated by Takashi Murakami for the city of New York in conjunction with the Japan Society and the Public Art Fund between April 8 and July 24, 2005. This landmark exhibition explored the culture of postwar Japan through the art and visual media from Anno Hideaki, Aoshima Chiho, Ban Chinatsu, Fujiko F. Fujio, Kawashima Hideaki, Kato Izumi, Komatsuzaki Shigeru, Mahomi Kunikata, Matsumoto Reiji, Miura Jun, "Mr.," Narita Toru, Okamoto Taro, Oshima Yuki, Otomo Katsuhiro, Otomo Shoji, Takano Aya, Tsubaki Noboru, Yanobe Kenji, Yoshitomo Nara, Ban, Aoshima and Takashi Murakami.

[edit] Coda

Focusing on the phenomenally influential subcultures of Otaku (roughly translated as "pop cult fanaticism") and its relationships to Japan's artistic vanguard, Takashi Murakami explored the historical influences that shape Japanese contemporary art and its distinct graphic idioms. The exhibition's title, Little Boy, refers to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, clearly locating the birth of these new cultural forms in the trauma and generational aftershock. In Murakami's perspective, a resonant figure for Japan's contemporary condition is that of the "little boy"--both the nickname for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and an image of Japan]'s infantalized culture. Little Boy concluded Murakami's "Superflat" trilogy, a project conceived in 2000 to introduce a new wave of Japanese artists and to place their work in the historical context of traditional Japanese styles and concepts. The exhibition showcased the work of key Otaku artists and designers, many of whom are cult celebrities in Japan, and introduced their film and video animations, video games and internet sites, music, toys, and fashion to American audiences.^[1] It was documented in musical form with The Endless Sum of an Ancient Sun.

[edit] Footnotes