In this survey I would like to investigate contemporary Japanese cultural and historical identity as manifest in the words and work of two prominent Japanese artists, for whom issues concerning national ethos are major themes. I’ve selected the visual artist Takashi Murakami who in the last ten years has made a splash in the international art scene with his distinctive, highly stylized graphics and dynamic marketability, and Nobel laureate of literature Kenzaburo Oe whose prolific career has spanned from the immediate postwar to the present. Oe and Murakami have expressed strong opinions about the predicament of Japan’s postwar culture, which is currently a widespread theme in literature concerning Japan both by Japanese and foreign scholars. In order to properly analyze their responses as to the genesis and consequences of this perceived deficiency it is necessary to first understand the cultural movements to which each artist belongs and how they inform differing conceptions of Japan.
Oe aligns himself with the school of junbungaku, or “serious literature.” This literary method enjoys a lineage concurrent with Japan’s modernization that stretches back to the Meiji era in which intellectuals rejected the established literary tradition and began to absorb Western literature. By combining a strong influence from abroad with their scholarship of Chinese classics they endeavored to construct narratives that could give Japanese a contemporary identity in an international context. During the prewar and war years that were defined by the emergence of militarism this kind of literature was suppressed and latent junbungaku writers could only distinguished themselves through the study of European literature. With the end of the war freedom of expression was reclaimed and these young intellectuals immediately produced a flurry of activity, inspired by Japan’s aggression and defeat to search for a new place in the world wholly apart from prewar aspirations. They broke from the autobiographical style of the then-popular “I-novel” and adopted a fundamentally existential worldview, and weren’t afraid to merge sex and politics with the realm of high literature. [1] They reevaluated Japanese modernity, looking towards Okinawan and Korean models as successful mergers of traditional and imported cultures. They also sought to bridge the considerable chasms between Japan and the West, as well as third world countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. To Oe the marvel of postwar literature represents the acme of modern Japanese literature and he models his identity as a writer on preserving the heritage of this group.
Comprised of intellectuals writing for intellectuals, junbungaku and the postwar school consciously occupied a unique station outside the realm of mass-produced, morally vacuous culture, which Oe denotes as popular and mundane. [2] Effectively self-marginalized, this writing initially survived on the basis of an intellectually engaged readership, but as the impoverished postwar years gave way to the era of recovery and in turn remarkable economic growth the demand for high literature steadily waned. Oe provides the example of the five existent literary monthlies who rely on producing a large volume of “sheer entertainment” in order to remain commercially viable. “The number of serious literary works,” according to Oe, “has decreased as the number of other publications has continued to grow.” [3] Indeed in 1995 forty percent of books and magazines sold in Japan was constituted by manga alone. [4] For Oe, this inability of junbungaku to resist being overpowered by frivolous entertainment is an ominous harbinger of a culture losing its vitality. He imagines, “a scenario in which Japanese culture, after losing the capacity to create a human model for the future, withers and dies, leaving behind nothing that moves but a few objects like cars, TVs, and microcomputers.” [5]
While commenting on these economic factors, he also indicts the generation of young intellectuals that succeeded his own. Unlike their predecessors who were involved in and informed the movements in the 1960s protesting such things as the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese control, this new generation had become more conservative and decidedly apolitical. They did retain the intellectual predilection for European culture but instead of internalizing foreign concepts in an effort to develop domestic cultural narratives they merely consumed one theory after another, or as Oe puts it, “accepted” and “discharged,” them until flow of these ideas concluded. [6] This method of transplantation never allowed imported cultural theories to be evaluated in the context of Japanese society and combined with the lack of engagement with postwar ideals led to the failure of the intellectuals in the 1970s and 80s to develop a cultural theory of their own. Oe goes so far as to say that they were not genuine intellectuals, “but merely young Japanese following a subcultural fad that swept through an average, urban consumer society.”[7] Oe could only look on as an increasingly disinterested youth becomes captivated by passing cultural trends and at the same time overlooks the loss of their best method of critically investigating the state of Japanese society and forming models for their future. The inability of the postwar school to survive in a growing climate of conformity has not however interrupted Oe from pursing, with literature as his torch, “ways to be of some use in the cure and reconciliation of mankind.” [8]
Subculture, on the other hand, has come to define Murakami’s inspiration and aesthetic sensibility. In the 1960s the leveling of incomes coupled with the explosion of home television set ownership found local customs losing out to a popular culture, promulgated by a homogenized media environment. [9] This in turn allowed for the widespread proliferation of pop culture, especially in the form of children’s programming, subculturally joining young people on a nationwide scale and effectively swelling the generation gap to an unprecedented level. Early incarnations of the growing subculture took form in popular forms such as anime, tokusatsu, literally “special effects,” or what we would equate with monster movies in the vein of Godzilla and television programs like Power Rangers, science fiction, as well as manga, though over time the passion and faithfulness of audiences known as otaku transformed these genres in unprecedented ways. As this generation reached adulthood in the 1980s its infatuation with these elements rendered it unfamiliar to previous generations and to some degree repulsive; it might be seen as no accident that this coincided with Oe’s bemoaned sidelining of intellectual pursuit. This alienation and ensuing antinomy between generations is the struggle underlying the formation of a new class of self-imposed outcasts, the otaku.
Etymologically otaku finds its origins in a society where individuals, especially within the family unit, are increasingly isolated from one another. By the “rapid growth” era of the 1960s husbands spent most of their time at work, and indeed it could be said that they found a more traditionally fulfilling role in the family of the workplace. [10] Fierce competition for academic advancement encouraged parents to send their children to after-hour cram schools, in which seventy percent of schoolchildren had enrolled by the mid-1970s, [11] and wives and mothers found themselves quarantined in the home. Literally translating to “your home,” neighborhood women used this term as an honorific for one another, the main source of their identity lying in the material space of the household, [12] and entered the vocabulary of their children who had a similarly isolated contact with their peers.
While the cultural origins can be traced back to the abounding subcultures of a homogenized youth, developing a fundamental definition of otaku is a nebulous and ultimately futile affair; new generations of otaku continue to transform the way they define themselves and generation gaps exist even within this subculture. Marked by an emphasis on personal taste and obsession, perhaps the most accurate translation would be “fanboy,” but the otaku’s uncanny trust in the utopia of their fantasies and practice of identifying themselves through self-marginalization that is evocative though in an altogether different spirit than that of the postwar school—in a society where conformity is considered essential to national wellbeing—makes them an infinitely more deviant variety. From their beginnings in sci-fi fandom otaku have shared a love of subcultural phenomena that are arch, experimental, of high quality and in pursuit of an overarching Eros. In each genre a hierarchy has evolved based on the inexhaustible accumulation of detail and debate, the ultimate goal to become an “otaku king,” something Murakami failed to do, and this derailment one factor in his decision to become an artist. [13] This behavior seems perhaps stereotypical of Japanese commitment and technical fixation but due to their immateriality of focus and devotion to fantasy otaku inevitably became alienated from the mainstream. Unable to truly escape the society that discriminated against them, otaku fell deeper into the rabbit-hole of their subcultural obsessions. Aware that otaku were their most zealous audience and critic, creators of manga and anime maintained high standards of production and thematically these products became increasingly complex. This intimate relationship between creator and consumer, along with their sizable knowledge of cultural artifacts led many young otaku to become themselves innovators in the fields of anime and manga. As the end of the 1980s approached, this generation saw, in the bursting of the “bubble economy,” what was their dream of a utopian future crashing down, and could explain the subsequent increases of apocalyptic themes and imagery in the subculture of the 1990s. Since then otaku have become increasingly diverse and ambiguous, ranging from model-tank builders to erotic toy aficionados to creators of their own amateur manga who flock to the biannual Comiket comic convention in the hundreds of thousands. This diversity of mentality and taste continues to the extent that one of the few remaining qualities of all otaku is the willingness to pursue their fantasies at the cost of social rejection, bound in an ahistorical paralysis. As both the consumers and producers of their culture, the otaku have been able to sustain their peripheral existence and in the process substantiated the critical assessment of subculture in Japan, an essential step towards the emergence of Neo Pop, the springboard from which Murakami launched his Superflat movement.
Twice in modern history Japan has played a frantic game of economic and technological catch-up with the West, as well as in terms of politics and culture. As a consequence in the first instance an imperial Japan sets out to establish its empire in Asia, which inevitably comes to a head in the fifteen-year Pacific War, the outcome of which was a Japan demoralized by the violence it had inflicted in the war and suffered in defeat. In the second instance a newly democratized Japan fervently applies the American economic model in an effort to regain equal standing with Western nations. With all energies focused on recovery the prospect of financial rehabilitation soon gave way to the reality of spectacular growth. Having already equaled and surpassed many Western nations in building capital and financial infrastructure, when the economy stalled in the early nineties the Japanese finally had the chance to reflect on the last forty years of collective tunnel vision and wonder what it was they were working so hard to achieve. They found that in pursuing the American Dream they lost sight of the their own Japanese Dream and remain hard-pressed for a clear purpose in Japan’s modern landscape. The concept of wakon-yosai, translating literally to “Japanese spirit, Western knowledge,” has provided the ideological basis for Japanese modernization since the early restoration period. With so much of the contemporary Japanese way of life finding its origin outside of native tradition, the Japanese repeatedly find themselves grappling with a diffuse national identity and ambiguous place in the international community. This struggle comes to the fore in the work of Oe and Murakami, and as two of the most well known working Japanese artists both at home and abroad they have power to shape, and therefore share a responsibility for the representation of, the Japanese identity.
As a successor to the legacy of the postwar school of writers Oe has frankly professed his intention to produce literature distinct from, “reflections of the vast consumer culture of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.” [14] One of the distinguishing qualities of these writers indicated by Oe is a desire for moral values to predominate over material concerns, a mark of junbungaku since its inception. He includes the example of Soseki deploring the “fierce appetites” of Japanese society stimulated by “a tidal wave that had swept from European shores,” along with their ignorance of European morality. [15] Though made almost one hundred years prior this example is an equally apt descriptor of contemporary Japan, only that it should seem moderate by comparison. The illustration is also relevant in that it demonstrates not only a sense of morality in the intellectuals of that time, but their association of that morality with an indigenous one preexisting modernization. Soseki believed that the balance between moral and material desires would only be restored once Japan had equal financial footing with Europe, but never imagined that day to come. The better part of a century later Japan has reached that stage of financial security; unfortunately the moral equilibrium has not been replaced but in fact progressed in the opposite direction, to what Oe calls a “state of outright spiritual poverty.” [16] In order to play a responsible role in international affairs, this moral deficit must be countered by a sense of morality both applicable to Western values and derived from pre-modern traditions, according to Oe. Ironically, the period of Japanese history that he equates with the highest level of intellectual interaction with moral issues coincides with the segment of history, between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the growth era in the sixties, that represents the greatest instance of poverty and privation in modern Japanese history.
Japan’s ambiguous international identity is in fact an amalgamation of the first and third world and yet resides properly in neither as Japan can neither embrace its identity as a third world nation nor demonstrate its status in the first; Oe defines this ambiguity as a, “kind of chronic disease that has been prevalent throughout the modern age.” [17] A serious repercussion of Japan’s ambiguity can be observed in its aggression towards other Asian nations during World War II and the preceding years, effectively driving a deep rift between Japan and its neighbors both politically and culturally, which continued antagonism has failed to assuage. That Japan has so often taken the role of aggressor against those nations, “among which it should count itself,” weighs heavily on Oe. [18] In the West Japan has also yet to fully liberate itself from its shadowy identity, not aided by Japan’s increasing competitiveness in global markets. Consider then the influence over Japan that the American government, as Japan’s principal trade partner and source of military protection, still holds. Japan’s ambiguity seems to be accelerating, and as a writer Oe looks for a ways to articulate this ambiguity for the Japanese people, that in self-reflection they might find a new life, “as an integral part of the third world, in Asia.” [19]
To Murakami, ambiguity is less of an issue; he has a clear idea of contemporary Japan, what he refers to as an “apocalyptic tragic paradise.” [20] As a child in the 1960s and 70s, Murakami could find little reality in the atrocities of war, as the images of which reached his generation through television images of the war and children’s programming. He was also too young to experience the passionate student movements that questioned and challenged postwar paradigms. For him Japan, humiliated and acquiescent in defeat, became a “greenhouse” of American-style democracy and capitalism without historical grounds and lacking autonomy, a system that does not produce ‘adults.’ [21] Murakami holds that compulsory implementation of the American model, along with the traumatization that stems from being the only nation on Earth to have suffered the horrific effects of nuclear war and fallout, produces a society with an infantile sensibility, and he is corroborated by Douglas MacAurthur likening Japan to, “a boy of twelve,” in an address to the United States Senate in 1951. [22]
This syndrome of immaturity repeatedly manifests itself in the Japanese popular culture produced for domestic consumption and lends itself to the export of Japanese cultural identity internationally. Since the 1960s anime has been a cornerstone of Japanese popular culture and along with the ubiquitous manga provides a readily available outlet for fantasy and escapism for the public at large. Based in drawing, these forms are able to depict impossible worlds as well as remain visually simplistic enough to allow the projection of ideas onto the images by the audience. [23] Adapted from a comic strip that began in 1946, the popular anime Sazae-san has been one of the most commercially successful ever produced and is the longest-running animated television series in history; it first aired in 1969 and continues to be produced today. Set in an ahistorical postwar Japan, Sazae-san portrays a traditionally outmoded family that includes three generations living in the same household and is characterized by their wholesome and customary family life. Its continual domination of television ratings betrays the attraction to a nostalgic and ideal past for the Japanese public and the function of its popular culture to supply these images. While they have by now left the world of “children’s programming,” and appeal to all age groups, narratives in anime and manga continue to focus on children and childhood dreams. An archetypical example of this is the anime series Doraemon, like most anime shows the animated adaptation of a popular manga series. It stars a “lovable loser” grade-schooler, a widespread character type, and a cat-like robot (robotics being another dominant media trope) from the future that has access to an assortment of fantastic technology, which is used in the resolution of the main character’s perpetual adolescent dilemmas. The level to which Japanese identify with this kind of show is revealed by the actions of Japan’s foreign minister, who in 2008 appointed the titular robot cat as “anime ambassador” as well as arranged showings of the cartoon in Japanese diplomatic missions in numerous countries around the world. [24] While evident of Japan’s endeavors to harness its “soft power,” it also presents a somehow naive image of how the Japanese identify themselves in their culture and how they present themselves through that culture to the international community. The attention that Japanese popular culture gives to childlike dreams of the future and nostalgic visions of the past leads many young people, as they approach adulthood, to feel betrayed by the constricting reality of a Japanese society that possesses neither a widespread progressive movement or strong sense of traditional values. This impetus to further submerge themselves into the realm of the imagination often culminates in an otaku sensibility or its more socially worrisome analog, hikikomori. Literally “pulling in and retiring,” hikikomori are those who have socially and physically withdrawn from society, rarely leaving their rooms or communicating with others, including their parents. [25]
If Doraemon is Japan’s “anime ambassador,” then kawaii is his entourage. “Cute” culture emerged in the 1970s and by the 1980s had become a dominant cultural theme. Fueled by widespread affluence and the targeting of young girls as an opportune market in a rampant consumerist society, kawaii culture and its paraphernalia effectively supported a lifestyle that could be called the female version of otaku, one that prized collectibility and pathos, and emphasized the private space of the individual. The idea of kawaii in its most commercial sense is perhaps best embodied by “character goods,” the most instantly recognizable of which is Hello Kitty, that have no identity or narrative but exist simply as a promotion of any manifestation of the products they happen to be on, of which there are a seemingly infinite variety. In 2003 alone, the Hello Kitty line, which includes approximately fifty thousand products sold around the world, generated close to a billion dollars in sales for Sanrio. [26] This method of ubiquitous and meaningless branding is another theme explored by Murakami on an artistic, as well as commercial level, discussed further below. Another offshoot of kawaii culture is the phenomenon of yuru chara. Roughly translating as “pathetic characters” but free of negative overtones, yuru chara are essentially life-sized mascots created by municipalities to commemorate a specific event or advertise local tourism and are often inspire their own line of merchandise. To Murakami they, “stand in for the Japanese themselves,” representatives of an immature and impotent culture. Oe once used the analogy of denouement in the novel, as a way of finding new interpretations through the illumination of previously grasped truth, to explain the effect of the defeat of Japan on interpreting its hitherto stunted attempts at modernization. [27] Murakami coincidentally also chooses the same word in his assessment of modern Japan, but as a caustic remonstration of a comatose society.
Murakami himself admits a propensity, “to immerse myself in thinking and talking about things in the fantasy world that have no role in society whatsoever,” [28] that shapes his identity as an otaku, and though his meditations on Japanese history and aesthetics are equally apparent in the array of his professional ambitions, he felt constrained by his subcultural identity as an artist in Japan. Drawing a parallel with the hinin, or outcasts of pre-modern Japan that worked as entertainers, Murakami asserts that otaku have taken up this role of pariah in contemporary Japanese society. Originally scorned for their obsession with what the mainstream perceived as entertainment for children, anime and manga have since become hugely profitable enterprises that appeal to the mainstream, even some of those produced with a distinctly otaku bent. The term mania has also come into popular use and, from the English maniac, has come to refer to those with similar tastes as otaku but remain socially well-adjusted and don’t project the same aura of distaste.
In 1989 the almost instinctual aversion felt by the general populace who were aware of otaku was intensified on a national level, and to many validated, by the arrest of Tsutomu Miyazaki, a pervert and the murderer of four little girls. The ensuing images of his room broadcast on Japanese television showed an extensive videotape collection, consisting largely of horror and anime films, and was deemed by the media an ‘otaku space.’ Commenting on the discrimination of otaku following the media frenzy, Murakami recalls that, “it was just like my room,” as well as the rooms of all his friends, only they weren’t psychopathic. [29] The situation was not improved when in 1995 the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult carried out an attack with sarin gas on the Tokyo subway system resulting in twelve deaths with many more seriously injured, some permanently. Aum’s connection to otaku were numerous, including subculture references in their promotional literature, a storefront in the otaku-frequented Akihabara shopping district, and their guiding prophetic doctrine, which was a rehashing of various Armageddon fantasies that proliferated in otaku culture. The indiscriminate act of terrorism shocked Japan, and when the public learned of Aum’s otaku leanings it triggered what Murakami remembers as, “a media bonanza,” and otaku were soon relegated even further from mainstream society as something completely unfathomable. [30] Despite all this otaku continue to proliferate; in 2006 there were an estimated 2.85 Japanese living as otaku. [31] As prevalent as they have become the social stigma has begun to evaporate yet, “they remain unable to the shed the air of the grotesque,” and Murakami sees fit to record their struggle as a significant portion of the population that is both discriminated against yet undeniably integrated into society as an indication of the current situation of Japan. [32]
Though Murakami employs a familiar aesthetic and adheres to otaku-esque principles of quality and concept that does not necessarily mean that otaku readily embrace or appreciate his work. As a self-styled otaku historian Murakami in effect becomes their mirror and spokesperson, both challenging their sensibilities and piquing their self-consciousness. Author and lecturer on otaku studies Toshio Okada reacts to Murakami’s collectible figurine shokugan by comparing it to those that accompany a weekly manga, “their work is more creative, whereas your shokugan are very commercial,” and that the manga’s figurines appeal to him more as “art.” [33] Estranged from the art scene in Japan and not recognized as a true purveyor of otaku culture, Murakami acknowledged that what he was trying to create was, “neither commercially acceptable nor sustainable in Japan,” and consequently departed for America, where his work was more readily embraced. [34] Murakami’s transition from the Japanese to the global art market allowed his work to enter the critical discourse of “fine art” and enabled him to both diversify the nature of his craft and pursue the concepts that would ultimately form the Superflat philosophy. Merging into western art history he did not eschew comparisons to American Pop but is plain in differentiating contemporary Japanese art: “the formatting of pop as a context has finally finished,” forty years after its American version, “and the reconstruction of the culture is just starting.” [35] Outside of Japan Murakami is able to produce art that is distinctly Japanese that at the same time is not derived from within the constructs of contemporary Japanese society, which empowers him to make a compelling critique of that society in an international context.
Since the postwar began Japanese society has come to encompass a multitude of intertwined paradoxes, a large contribution of which stem directly from the war and its aftereffects. To this day the most contentious part of the Constitution of Japan, unaltered since its ratification in 1947, has been Article 9, which renounces Japan’s right to wage war or maintain an armed service. However, the Self Defense Forces, while legally identified as an extension of the national police force its constitutionality has regularly been question and the presence of any armed force in Japan continues to wear on the Japanese conscience. On the other hand many perceive the vision of “peace” bestowed on the Japanese as a fabrication itself due to the continued presence of U.S. military bases in Japan, the nuclear arms race of the Cold War era, and Japan being forced to navigate international pressures during both Gulf Wars. Another dimension of this paradoxical identity is the cycle of death and rebirth. With a higher death rate than birth rate Japan must soon address the realities of an aging society, especially that of a looming labor crisis. At the same time many young people, when confronted with the necessity of sacrificing personal realization and the demanding social, educational, and professional environments of a traditionally successful life are simply refusing that option, sometimes in favor of a hermetic existence. As this whirlwind of self-contradictions begins to loosen the spiritual moorings of “rapid growth” and a consumer-based culture the Japanese are in a decisive position to conduct a personal reevaluation of the ambiguous Japanese Dream. Oe and Murakami have developed two distinct templates for coping with this ambiguity, and while neither one claims to have cracked the code of Japanese uniqueness, they both speak with urgency and purpose.
Oe refers to this ambiguity as a destructive force, one that divides Japan and isolates it from its neighbors, yet one he carries around with him, “like a deep-felt scar.” [36] Literature, however, allows him a vehicle for spiritual recovery and inspiration. For Oe, writing about his personal traumas and surviving them are one in the same. It is significant that he illustrates his fundamental method of writing about, “society, the state, and the world in general,” as consistently grounded in his personal struggles, providing a basis for interpreting his novels that is human and relatable. [37] His personal identity being irretrievably associated with the periphery of society, Oe uses the methodology of grotesque realism to entertain his ambitions of universality: depicting the indivisibility of the body, society and the cosmos and leveling all that is ideal or transcendental with the physical earth and body. [38] In pursuing the comedy and humanity of this technique his voice often becomes that of a clown, and indeed Oe insists that that is the job of the writer, to be, “the clown who also talks about sorrow, ” [39] and thus like the Shakespearean fool offer insight into unfortunate actualities under the guise of foolishness. Oe is also a determined practitioner of “cultural negation,” portraying the peripheral as a means of sidestepping the constructs of “official” culture and in turn relegating the center to the margin. He utilizes this negation in creating his own mythology, one that focuses not on the Emperor but the gods who were chased into the forest upon the Emperor’s arrival, forming an alternate mythic history of Japan. In a way this is Oe’s method of maintaining the ideals of the postwar school, the writers of which in that brief and unprecedented period of time were able to “relativize” the Emperor System in their search for new models of living. [40] In Oe’s view the Emperor is neither a symbol of Japanese identity or the center of his worldview, instead he is a catalyst for the Japanese people to forget themselves and their responsibility for a collective history and inasmuch, “what has been suppressing the arts and the minds of the masses.” [41] Oe is deeply troubled by the unchecked spread of a nationalism based on the nostalgia for a largely invented history. This new nationalism, in its urge to amend Article 9, threatens the survival of the Japanese people’s self-determination and also the, “permanent peace as the moral basis for their rebirth,” in the wake of the catastrophe of war. [42]
For Murakami, the more paradoxes that emerge and compound each other, the more meaningless Japan’s “journey of self-discovery” becomes, [43] and it is necessary to follow the chaotic progress of the “real” in contemporary Japan in order to plot a course for the future. After World War II’s catastrophic end, the Japanese initiated their own retreat from reality by effectively prescribing amnesia in regards to the lingering nightmares of the atrocities committed at home and abroad. Such a powerful and complex memory would not stay buried, however, and began to materialize in pop culture, like the not-so-subtle allegory of Godzilla, and the anime subculture of the post-1960s aimed at children. Channeling repressed memories of war and the continuing anxiety of nuclear eradication, subculture came to be the de facto incubator of the reality of Japan’s fictionalized past in an era when fine art rarely breached the subject. However distorted and exaggerated, the truth survived in children’s tales, and Murakami correlates the birth of the otaku sensibility with its recognition of these storytellers. [44] After the extinction of the postwar junbungaku school Japan would become a virtual desert of artistic intellectual discourse on the war and recovery until its reemergence in the early 1990s in the form of Tokyo Pop. Co-opting both Japan’s distorted sense of history and kawaii culture in disturbing juxtaposition, this movement of young artists grew up in a Japan flooded with subculture, which they claimed for their own in a visual representation of Japan’s paradoxical history.
However, the borrowing of Pop to describe this new and wholly Japanese generation of artists never sat right with Murakami, the, “theme of Pop was too narrow to comprehensively explain postwar Japanese culture.” [45] And so the idea for a new theory to describe contemporary Japanese culture swirled in Murakami’s mind, until the chance phrase of a sales pitch by an L.A. gallerist gave it life: “How about this painting? It’s super flat, super high quality, and super clean!” [46] Hearing a fundamental, if bizarre, truth in these words, Murakami found his descriptor for Japan’s art and culture. Reminiscent of Oe’s grotesque realism, Superflat not only described the physical surfaces of his paintings, but a leveling—of past, present, and future, high and low culture, craft and merchandise. Bijutsu, the fine arts, was installed in Japan in 1873 in order to meet with Western standards of modernity, whereas up until that point there has been no hierarchical difference between art forms, whether painting or ornamentation. It is Murakami’s hope that the Japanese “passion to decorate” will rid itself of the constrictions of “pure art” and redefine Japanese art. [47] Manga’s ancestry also predates Japan’s modernization and another function of Superflat is to validate Japanese art history in its various subcultural forms over the past fifty years. In this way Murakami constructs a lineage from nihonga, a traditionalist school of painting formed in reaction to modernization, through manga, anime and Japanese Neo Pop to the present day. He is essentially following Oe’s guideline for constructing a new moral direction but in the most cultural practice of art, establishing a theory that, “can be shared with Western nations but that, for its own purposes, is firmly founded on the traditions of Japan's premodern period.” [48] In light of this, Murakami also applies his leveling effect to the dichotomy of high art and merchandising, his desire to reach a mass audience necessitates a move outside the museum or gallery space. [49] With a full staff behind him Murakami produces a huge assortment of knick-knacks that have even made their way back to the otaku shops in Japan, though as we’ve seen, are considered “very commercial.” Perhaps the most striking example of this crossover is Murakami’s 2003 collaboration with Marc Jacobs on a Louis Vuitton series that merged their brand potential with incredible success. In that year alone the sales reached $300 million, [50] in part due to Murakami’s ability to distill fifty years of Japanese anime and his entire body of work into a single, recognizable symbol, indeed he has found an, “effective medium to survive cheerfully,” [51] whatever lies ahead in Japan’s future.
From the moment Japan began the long journey towards modernization, it has faced the problem of transforming itself in the likeness of Western nations while at the same time preserving what was fundamentally Japanese, and if to continue on this path is equivalent to sacrificing the latter to make way for the former, the essence of what is historically Japanese has eroded to the point of becoming nearly indecipherable. For contemporary Japanese society to successfully contend with what amounts to a national existential crisis and still remain a modern state, finding a model rooted in their past is not an option; neither can try to interpret their reflection in the eyes of the West, they must look inside themselves, as Oe and Murakami have and continue to do, and take the next step as if it were their first.
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