‘Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture’

last updated 8 January 2015

Products bearing the image of the mouthless cat Hello Kitty make millions each year for the Japanese company Sanrio. This provocative exhibition of art and artifacts makes the case that the 'œappallingly cute little figure' actually represents a nation's powerlessness and its 'œsublimated hysteria,' said Mark Stevens in New York. Masterminded by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, 'œLittle Boy' is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Japan. Surveying flatly drawn pictures of puffy animals, pre-pubescent girls, and Godzilla's inner anatomy, Murakami makes the argument that, 'œfar from being just sugary kitsch, Japanese pop represents the strange, even psychotic response of a population traumatized by World War II.'

Murakami treats fine art and commercial products as equally compelling, said Matthew Gurewitsch in The Wall Street Journal. Sex-filled Japanese comic books (manga) and vintage toys stand side by side with Murakami's own contribution to the show, Time Bokan'”Black. This painting 'œreads simultaneously as a death's head and a mushroom-shaped cloud.' It looks like a reaction to Japan's unique position as a post-nuclear nation. But it is also a faithful rendering of the regular apocalyptic finale of an animated children's TV show from the '70s called Time Bokan. Millions of kids tuned in regularly.

The exhibition title 'œLittle Boy' refers to the nickname of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, said Benjamin Lytal in The New York Sun. It also points to the 'œsuppressed memories of defeat' and feelings of impotence under the American occupation. These memories and feelings seeped out into a simultaneously infantile and aggressive visual culture. Hello Kitty represents the cult of cuteness, or kawaii, while obsessive manga fans hang together as otaku, or nerds in thrall to 'œimaginary dystopias of anime cartoons.' Artist Chiho Aoshima combines both impulses. She plots out striking visualizations of a 'œpostapocalyptic paradise' through computer graphics. Flat-chested women morph into brilliantly fake green mountains in her murals.