To Paul and Eulalia Stewart and Jan Stewart

To Paul and Eulalia Stewart and Jan Stewart
ii
Acknowledgements
This dissertation would not have been possible without tremendous
support from the curatorial staff of the Ashiya City Museum of History & Art,
Ashiya, Hyôgo. They shared their extensive knowledge and resources on the
Gutai Art Association with me and were always willing to help me to locate
materials. Especially I would like to thank Chief Curator Kawasaki Kôichi, who
kindly arranged for me to conduct interviews with the former Gutai members in
the summer of 2002. Numerous conversations with him inspired me to look into
various aspects of Gutai, many of which materialized in this project. Curators
Katô Mizuho and Yamamoto Atsuo patiently helped me to sort materials and
answered many questions. During my research in the Kansai area, the curator of
Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art (later Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of
Art) Hirai Shôichi also guided me in finding research materials.
I am grateful to former Gutai members, Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga
Kazuo, and Motonaga Sadamasa for sharing their stories and memories of
Yoshihara Jirô and Gutai. Interviews with these active artists allowed me to
glimpse the great energy of the original Gutai group. I would also like to thank
iii
Shiraga Fujiko, wife of Shiraga Kazuo and herself a former Gutai member, who
accompanied us to her husband’s studio.
Since I started my graduate study, Professor Jonathan Reynolds has
continuously and vigorously supported my interest in modern and contemporary
Japanese art and Gutai. His thoughtful advice and suggestions throughout the
research and writing stages of this project were critical to its success. Professor
and later Senior Curator of Asian Art at the University of Michigan Museum of Art,
Dr. Maribeth Graybill has given me advice on the structure of the project, and
constantly encouraged me to work on the topic. Working with her at the museum
led me to acknowledge the importance of seeing real objects of art. Professor
Martin Powers inspired me to methodically frame Gutai, an art group in Asia, in
relation to international/Western modern art history. Professor Maria Gough
shared her extensive knowledge of European and American modernist art and
taught me the significance of working with primary texts. This dissertation greatly
owed to her research methodology. Professor Leslie Pincus helped immensely in
my effort to contextualize Gutai within the intellectual currents of postwar Japan.
Her seminar on Japanese modern thought was a great inspiration for this
dissertation. I am particularly grateful to Professor Kevin Carr for becoming an
advisor to this dissertation at the very final stage, giving insightful comments,
great encouragement and even technical help. His support was essential to the
completion of this project.
iv
I received generous financial support from the Department of History of Art
and the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, which
enabled me to conduct research and interviews in Japan.
At the University of Michigan, I was very fortunate to have many friends
who generously offered their expertise, knowledge, and most of all, emotional
support to ease some of the hardships I felt in the process of completing the
project. Lisa Langlois, Wen-Chien Cheng, and Mary-Louise Totton read drafts
and provided insightful comments. Michelle Plauché helped to polish my
translation from Japanese to English. Walter Langlois kindly offered to help edit
my writing. In Japan, my former colleagues Mizutani Mitsuru and Ichijô Akiko
helped to locate research materials in Japan on my behalf.
Finally, I would like to express deep gratitude to my family members. My
parents Kazuyoshi and Chizuko Oyobe have been patient and supportive over
the course of my graduate study. My children Mirei and Seri Stewart always have
brought joy to my life. This text is dedicated to my parents in law, Paul and
Eulalia Stewart, and my husband Jan Stewart. Their enduring support,
encouragement and patience truly helped me to complete this project. Thank
you.
In accordance with Japanese practice, Japanese names are written
surname first. Exceptions are made for Japanese Americans or Japanese-born
individuals who reside permanently abroad. Macrons are used to indicate long
vowels in Japanese names and words such as Jirô and yôga, with the exception
of those standardized in the English language, such as Tokyo and Osaka. All the
translations from Japanese material are by the author, unless otherwise noted. In
some instances, the titles of books, exhibitions or artwork have been translated
into more common English expressions, instead of direct translation word for
word.
vi
Table of Contents
Dedication ..............................................................................................................ii
Acknowledgements ...............................................................................................iii
List of Figures ......................................................................................................viii
List of Appendices ...............................................................................................xix
Chapter One: Introduction .....................................................................................1

Chapter Two: Materials and Human Subjectivity: Yoshihara Jirô and Japanese
Modernist Art of the Early Postwar Era .....................................................35
Chapter Three: Laboratory of Experiments I: Gutai Exhibitions 1955-1958 ......114
Chapter Four: Laboratories of Experiments II: The Works of Three Gutai Artists,
Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko.........................160
Chapter Five: Creatures from Mars: Reception of the Gutai Art Association
among the Japanese Art Community ......................................................237
Chapter Six: Conclusion ....................................................................................280
Figures ...............................................................................................................290
Appendices ........................................................................................................458
Bibliography .......................................................................................................475
vii
List of Figures
Figure 1. Shimamoto Shôzô, public demonstration of Painting by 291

Throwing Bottles, the Second Gutai Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall,
Tokyo, October 1956.
Figure 2. Shiraga Kazuo, Please Come In, paint on wood, 292

1955/1992.
Figure 3. Tanaka Atsuko, Electric Dress, mixed media, 293

1956/1986.
Figure 4. Georges Mathieu, public demonstration, September 294

1957.
Figure 5. Nakanishi Natsuyuki, Clothespins Assert Churning 295

Action, shown at the 15th Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition, Tokyo
Metropolitan Art Museum, 1963.
Figure 6. Kanayama Akira, Work, mixed media on vinyl [top], 296

shown at the Third Gutai Exhibition, Kyoto City Museum of Art
[bottom], 1957.
Figure 7. Hasegawa Saburô, untitled image in his “Sho wa bi no 297

hôko desu” (Calligraphy is Treasure House of Beauty), Sho no bi 31
(November 1950), 13.
Figure 8. Okamoto Tarô, Heavy Industry, oil on canvas, 1949. 298
Figure 9. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work (Painting of Cannons), 299

industrial paint, glass, paper on canvas, 1955.
Figure 10. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, cotton cloth, 1955, shown at the 300
First Gutai Art Exhibition, October 1955 [top] and extant pieces
[bottom]; all created in 1955.
Figure 11. Tsuruoka Masao, Heavy Hands, oil on canvas, 1949. 301
Figure 12. Kazuki Yasuo, Burial, oil on canvas, 1948. 302
viii
Figure 13. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, oil on canvas, 1937. 303
Figure 14. Yamashita Kikuji, The Tale of Akebono Village, oil on 304
canvas, 1953.
Figure 15. Nakamura Hiroshi, Fifth District of Sunagawa, oil on 305

wood, 1955.
Figure 16. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, oil on canvas, c.1936. 306
Figure 17. Yoshihara Jirô, Chrysanthemums, oil on canvas, 1942. 307
Figure 18. The First Genbi (Contemporary Art Discussion Group) 308
Exhibition, 1953.
Figure 19. Yoshihara Jirô, stage designs for ballet program 309
Amerika (America), March 18-19, 1950.
Figure 20. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work: Holes, paint and pencil on 310
newspaper, 1950.
Figure 21. Yoshihara Jirô, Fish and Morning Glories, oil on 311
canvas, 1928.
Figure 22. Yoshihara Jirô, Ship Mast, oil on canvas, 1931. 312
Figure 23. Yoshihara Jirô, Landscape D, oil on canvas, c.1933. 313
Figure 24. Yoshihara Jirô, Flowers and Children, oil on canvas, 314
1947.
Figure 25. Yoshihara Jirô, Face with Running Tears, oil on 315
canvas, 1949.
Figure 26. Haniwa (terra-cotta tomb figurines), Dancing People, 316

Kofun Period, 6th century.
Figure 27. Yoshihara Jirô, Drawing, pencil on paper, c. 1948. 317
Figure 28. Yoshihara Jirô, Face, oil on canvas, 1949. 318
ix
Figure 31. Joseph Glasco, Two Figures, oil and sand on canvas,
1951.
Figure 32. Yoshihara Jirô, Drawing, pencil on paper, c. 1948.
Figure 33. Jackson Pollock, Number 8, oil, enamel, and aluminum

paint on canvas, 1949.
Figure 34. Nakahara Nantenbô, Calligraphy, circa December 20,

1913, Kaiseiji Temple, Nishinomiya City, Hyôgo.
Figure 35. “[Zadankai] Nantenbô no sho” ([Roundtable

discussion] Calligraphy of Nantenbô), Bokubi 14 (July 1952), the
front page.

discussion] Calligraphy of Nantenbô), Bokubi 14 (July 1952).
Nakahara Nantenbô, Calligraphy (screens 5 and 6), circa
December 20, 1913.

discussion] Calligraphy of Nantenbô), Bokubi 14 (July 1952).
Nakahara Nantenbô, Calligraphy (screen 1 [R] and details of
screens 3 and 5 [L]), circa December 20, 1913.
Figure 38. Ryôkan, Heaven and Earth, ink on paper, Edo period.
Figure 39. Yoshihara Jirô, Girl and Seven Birds, oil on canvas,
1950.
Figure 40. Yoshihara Jirô, Bird, oil on canvas, c.1950.
Figure 41. Yoshihara Jirô, Cat and Fish, oil on canvas, c.1950.
Figure 42. Yoshihara Jirô, Drawing, ink on paper, c. 1951.
Figure 44. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, oil on canvas, c.1952.
Figure 45. Yoshihara Jirô, Night, Bird, Hunter, oil on canvas,

1951.
Figure 46. Yoshihara Jirô, Primordial, oil on canvas, c. 1952.
Figure 47. Yoshihara Jirô, Work B, oil on canvas, 1953.
321
322
323
324
325
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327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
xi
Figure 48. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, oil on canvas, 1953. 338
Figure 49. Suda Kokuta, Work 13, oil on canvas, 1954. 339
Figure 50. Willem De Kooning, Excavation, oil and enamel on 340

canvas, 1950.
Figure 51. “α bu” (Alpha section). Bokubi 11 (April 1954), 341

unpaged.
Figure 52. Tanaka Atsuko, Work (Bell), mixed media, 1955/1981. 342
Figure 53. Inoue Yûichi, Hin, ink on paper, c. 1955. 343
Figure 54. Morita Shiryû, Soko (Bottom), ink on paper, 1955. 344
Figure 55. Kinoshita Toshiko, titles unknown, mixed media on 345

paper, 1956, shown at the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara
Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, October 1956.
Figure 56. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, industrial paint on asphalt 346

sheet, c. 1950-1952.
Figure 57. Critique and selection before the Seventh Gutai Art 347
Exhibition, Turin, Italy, June 1959, at Yoshihara’s studio, in his
residence in Ashiya.
Figure 58. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, industrial paint on 348

newspaper, 1951.
Figure 59. Shiraga Kazuo, Work, oil on paper, 1955 (The actual 349
entry piece is undertermined; this is a similar piece also created in
1955).
Figure 60. Murakami Saburô, Entrance, paper and wood, 350

1955/1992
Figure 61. Shiraga Kazuo, Challenging Mud, earth, cement and 351
water, 1955.
Figure 62. Yoshida Toshio, The Entrance Sign for Yomigaeru 352
Yagaiten (Outdoor Exhibition Revived), July 25 – August 2, 1992, at
Ashiya Park, Ashiya.
Figure 63. Shimamoto Shôzô, Untitled, metal sheet, 1955. 353
xi
Figure 64. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, industrial paint on metal sheet,

1955/1992.
Figure 65. Yamazaki Tsuruko, Danger, metal sheet, wood and

nails, 1955/1992.
Figure 66. Yoshihara Michio, Work, mixed media, 1955.
Figure 67. Murakami Saburô, Work, asphalt sheet, 1955.
Figure 68. Motonaga Sadamasa, Liquid: Red, vinyl sheet, ink,

and water, 1955/1992.
Figure 69. Tanaka Atsuko, Untitled, cloth, 1955/1992.
Figure 70. Yoshida Toshio, Untitled, industrial paint and wood

panel, 1955.
Figure 71. Kanayama Akira, Work B, industrial paint, rubber ball,

and wood panel, 1955/1992
Figure 72. Sumi Yasuo, Work, enamel paint, cloth, and wire net,
1955/1992.
Figure 73. Tanaka Atsuko, Yellow Tree, paint on wood panel,

1955.
Figure 74. Motonaga Sadamasa, Work “Water,” polyethylene, ink

and water 1956/1992.
Figure 75. Kanayama Akira, Footsteps, industrial pain and vinyl

sheet, 1956/1992.
Figure 76. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, mixed media, 1955.
Figure 77. Yamazaki Tsuruko, Room, vinyl, wood and light bulbs,
1956/1992.
Figure 78. Tanaka Atsuko, Stage Clothes, mixed media, 1956.
Figure 79. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, mixed media, 1956.
Figure 80. Motonaga Sadamasa, Work, mixed media, 1956.
Figure 81. Shiraga Kazuo, , earth, water, vinyl, and

linen ropes, 1956.
xii
354
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356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
xiii
Figure 82. Shimamoto Shôzô, Please Walk On This, mixed 372

media, 1956.
Figure 83. Taniguchi Saikô, Untitled, ping pong balls, bamboo 373
sticks, and wood panel, 1955.
Figure 84. Murakami Saburô, Sky, mixed media, 1955/1992. 374
Figure 85. Sakamitsu Noboru, Work, elastic and cotton gloves, 375
1955.
Figure 86. Sumi Yasuo, Automatism Drawing, shown at the First 376
Gutai Art on Stage, 1957.
Figure 87. Shiraga Kazuo, Ultramodern Sanbasô, shown at the 377

First Gutai Art on Stage, 1957.
Figure 88. Kanayama Akira, Big Balloon, shown at the First Gutai 378
Art on Stage, 1957.
Figure 89. Yoshida Toshio, Fabric Ritual , shown at the Second 379
Gutai Art on Stage, April 1958.
Figure 90. Yoshihara Jirô, Two Spaces, shown at the First Gutai 380
Art on Stage, 1957.
Figure 91. Tanaka Atsuko, Stage Clothes, 1956-1957, shown at 381

the First Gutai Art on Stage, 1957.
Figure 92. Tanaka Atsuko and Motonaga Sadamasa, Finale: 382

Stage Clothes and Smoke (1956-1957), shown at the First Gutai Art
on Stage, 1957.
Figure 93. Shimamoto Shôzô, Hitting and Destroying Objects, 383

1956, shown at the First Gutai Art on Stage, 1957.
Figure 94. Tanaka Atsuko, Stage Clothes 1956-1957, shown at 384



xiii
Figure 97. View of the First Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan 387
Hall, Tokyo, October 1955.
Figure 98. Murakami Saburô, Six Holes, 1955, shown at the First 388
Gutai Art Exhibition, October 1955.
Figure 99. Motonaga Sadamasa, Work, 1956, shown at the One 389
Day Outdoor Exhibition, April 1956.
Figure 100 Murakami Saburô, Breaking Papers, 1956, shown at 390

the One Day Outdoor Exhibition, April 1956.
Figure 101. Shiraga Kazuo, demonstration of Foot Painting, 1956, 391

shown at the One Day Outdoor Exhibition, April 1956.
Figure 102. Kanayama Akira, Work, oil on wooden board, 1954. 392
Figure 103. Kanayama Akira, WORK-S1, oil on canvas, 1954. 393
Figure 104. Kanayama Akira, Balloon, rubber balloon, 1955. 394
Figure 105. Kanayama Akira, Red Ball, light bulb, 1955. 395
Figure 106. Kanayama Akira, Signal, mixed media, 1956. 396
Figure 107. View of the Third Gutai Art Exhibition, Kyoto City 397
Museum of Art, April 1957.
Figure 108. Shiraga Kazuo, public demonstration of Foot Painting, 398

the Second Gutai Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, October
1956.
Figure 109. Murakami Saburô, Passing Through, 1956, shown at 399

the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, October
1956.
Figure 110. Yoshida Toshio, Work, 1956, shown at the Second 400
Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, October 1956.
Figure 111. Motonaga Sadamasa, Work, oil on wooden board, 401

1958.
Figure 112. Murakami Saburô, Exfoliating Painting (Hakuraku suru 402

kaiga), mixed media on wooden board, 1957.
xiv
Figure 113. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, oil on wood, c. 1950 [top] 403
and Sekine Yoshio, Work, 1949, (the reverse side of Shimamoto’s
Work) [bottom].
Figure 114. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, paint on cloth, 1956. 404
Figure 115. Sumi Yasuo, Work, enamel paint on paper, 1955. 405
Figure 116. Yoshihara Michio, demonstration of Bicycle Painting, 406

1956, One Day Outdoor Exhibition, April 1956.
Figure 117. Yoshida Toshio, public demonstration of Painting by 407

Watering Can, the Second Gutai Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall,
Figure 118. Shimamoto Shôzô, demonstration of Painting by 408

Throwing Bottles, for BBC Television, February, 1959.
Figure 119. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, paint on paper and canvas, 409
1957.
Figure 120. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, paint on canvas, 1960. 410
Figure 121. Shiraga Kazuo, Concentration of Instinct, oil on 411

canvas, 1952.
Figure 122. Shiraga Kazuo, Flowing Vein 2, oil on canvas, 1953. 412
Figure 123. Shiraga Kazuo, Wriggles, oil on canvas, 1954. 413
Figure 124. Shiraga Kazuo, Work, oil on canvas, 1954. 414
Figure 125. Shiraga Kazuo, Hand, oil on canvas, 1954. 415
Figure 126. Shiraga Kazuo, Work I, oil on paper, 1954. 416
Figure 127. Murakami Saburô, Work Painted by Throwing a Ball 417

(Tôkyû Kaiga), ink on paper, 1954.
Figure 128. Shiraga Kazuo, creating Foot Painting at his studio. 418
Figure 129. Shiraga Kazuo, Work II, oil on paper, 1958. 419
xv
Figure 130. Shiraga Kazuo, Challenging Mud, earth, cement and Figure
water, 1955, details [bottom] and his essay “Kotai no kakuritsu 146.
(Establishing one’s individuality)” [top] published in Gutai 4 (July 1, Tanaka
1956), 6-8. Atsuko,
Notch,
Figure 131. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, oil on canvas, 1955, details copper
published in Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956). on wood
board,
Figure 132. Shiraga Kazuo, ○, earth, water, and vinyl, 1957. 1955.
Figure 133. Shiraga Kazuo, Red Liquid, mixed media, 1956.
Figure 134. Shiraga Kazuo, Stuffed Red Bottle, mixed media,

1957.
Figure 135. Shiraga Kazuo, Ultramodern Sanbasô, 1957, shown at

Figure 136. Shiraga Kazuo, Object From Challenging Red Wooden

Logs, red paint and wooden logs, 1956.
Figure 137. Shiraga Kazuo, Work BB21, oil on vellum paper, 1956.
Figure 138. Shiraga Kazuo, Tensatsu-sei Koku-senpû , oil on

canvas, 1962.
Figure 139. Shiraga Kazuo, Hunting Boar (Two), oil and boar fur on
canvas, 1963.
Figure 140. Satô Seiichi, Human Bag (ningen bukuro), mixed

media, 1956.
Figure 141. Tanaka Atsuko, Calendar, paper collage with ink and
pencil, c. 1954.
Figure 142. Tanaka Atsuko, Calendar, paper collage with oil and
ink, c. 1954.
Figure 143. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, ink and adhesive on hemp, c.

1954.

1954.
Figure 145. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, paint on wood, 1955.
xvi
420
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425
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427
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429
430
431
432
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xvii
Figure 147. Tanaka Atsuko, Untitled – Study for Work (Bell), 1955
and Plan for Work (Bell), ink on paper, 1955, published in Gutai 4
(July 1, 1956), 24.
Figure 148. Tanaka Atsuko, Electric Dress and drawings for

Electric Dress, shown at the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, October
1956.
Figure 149. Tanaka Atsuko, Sketches for Work, Electric Dress and
Work, ink and pencil on paper, 1955-1956.
Figure 150. Tanaka Atsuko, Lightning Disks and Clothes, shown at

the Second Gutai Art on Stage, April, 1958.
Figure 151. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, mixed media (including recycled

pieces from Electric Dress), 1957.
Figure 152. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, ink, oil and enamel paint on
paper, 1957.
Figure 153. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, ink and oil on paper, 1957.
Figure 154. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, ink and enamel paint on paper,
1957.
Figure 155. Tanaka Atsuko, Work and plan for Work, published on
Gutai 5 (October 1, 1956).
Figure 156. Tanaka Atsuko, painting a piece (Work) for the

International Art of New Era: Art Informel and Gutai, 1957-1958.
Figure 157. Tanaka Atsuko, Work (on the floor), enamel paint on
vinyl sheet, shown at the International Art of New Era: Art Informel
and Gutai, April 1958.
Figure 158. Front cover of Gutai 1, January 1, 1955.
Figure 159. Shimamoto Shôzô, Advertising poster for the First

Gutai Art Exhibition, 1955.
Figure 160. Invitation card for the First Gutai Art Exhibition, 1955.
Figure 161. Invitation card for the Second Gutai Art Exhibition,
1956.
Figure 162. Invitation card for the First Gutai Art on Stage, 1957.
xvii
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438
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440
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xviii
 
Figure 163. Zen’yasai (pre-opening night festival) of the Nika-kai 453

exhibition, appeared in Asahi Shinbun, 31 August 1952, evening
edition.
Figure 164. Gutai Pinacotheca, Nakanoshima, Osaka. 454
Figure 165. Gutai Art Festival, the Osaka World Exposition, 1970. 455
Figure 166. Yoshida Katsurô, Cut Off (Hang), wood, rope and 456
stone, 1969.
Figure 167. Hikosaka Naoyoshi, Delivery Event + Floor Event, 457

1972.
xviii
List of Appendices
Appendix 1. The Gutai Art Manifesto 459
Appendix 2. Chronology of Events 465
Appendix 3. Selected Exhibitions of the Gutai Art Association after 472

1972
xix
Chapter One
Introduction
There were no restrictions; our destination was an unknown realm. The

only limitation was that we had to come to grips with the materials by
[giving them] some form or another. We also had to present these forms
so that they reflected life. In other words, we thought we had to use the
materials to concretely exhibit the innermost [nature of ourselves] as
human beings.1
This dissertation focuses on the remarkable approaches toward materials
and the use of materials in art objects taken by the Japanese modernist art group
the Gutai Art Association (Gutai; 具体美術協会／具体) and its leader Yoshihara
1 Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai gurûpu no jûnen, 2” (Ten Years of the Group Gutai, 1), Bijutsu Journal 39
(April 1963), reprinted in Ashiya City Museum of Art and History ed. Gutai shiryôshû: Dokyumento
Gutai, 1954-1972 (Anthology of Gutai documents: Document Gutai, 1954-1972; henceforth
GSDG) (Ashiya, Ashiya City Museum of Art and History, 1993), 324.
Jirô (1905-1972) in the mid-1950s.2 Responding to the Japanese art community’s
concerns with representation of human experience and national identity,
Yoshihara and his Gutai colleagues placed special emphasis on how the
intervention of the artist became inscribed in the materials and the materiality of
the object. Their recognition of the importance of the artist’s engagement with
materials as an expression of human presence in visual art radically departed
from the contemporaneous Japanese art practice of representation and
interpretation of the outside world. By expanding the use of tools and materials
beyond oil paint, paintbrush and canvas, Gutai transformed the practice of
Japanese modernist art that had evolved in response to Western art since the
2 “Gutai” (具体) literally means “concrete” or “embodiment.” In the English synopsis of the second
issue of the Gutai journal, member Ukita Yôzô translated gutai as “embodiment.” Ukita Yôzô,
“Documentary on the Second Edition of ‘GUTAI’”, Gutai 2 (October 10, 1955), reprinted in GSDG,
272. Osaki Shi’ichirô points out that each member had his/her own interpretation of the name
“Gutai.” Shiraga Kazuo interpreted it in a kind of psychological approach toward art making:
“Gutai-ism is the ways in which, when you desire to do such a thing, artistic drive is straight-
forwardly presented. I think this is the proper vehicle to give the history of art a new direction.”
Sankei Shinbun, 31 July 1955, quoted in Osaki Shin’ichirô, “Seisei to jizoku: Gutai bijutsu kyôkai
saikô, 2” (Generation and duration: Re-examination of Gutai Art Association, 2), Art and Critique
(Kyoto Junior College of Art) 2 (September 1987), 40, footnote 21. For Yoshihara, on the other
hand, “Gutai” meant the process of materializing (“gutai teki ni teiji suru” 具体的に提示する) one’s
inner thought. See Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai gurûpu no jûnen, 1” (Ten Years of the Group Gutai, 1),
Bijutsu Journal 38 (March 1963), reprinted in GSDG, 323.
The name “Gutai” stirred confusion in the art community, because it can be easily
associated with the term “gushô” which means “representational.” In many cases, the members
needed to explain the ideas behind “Gutai,” which was initially a source of irritation. See
Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai gurûpu no jûnen, 1,” in GSDG, 324. In fact, the word gutai was frequently
used as a form of adverb “gutaiteki ni” in the contemporary art community. Rather than discussing
contemporary art “abstractly” (chûshôteki ni; 抽象的に), people often opted to present one’s idea
or one’s art “concretely” (gutaiteki ni). This usage of the word corresponded well with Shiraga and
Yoshihara’s interpretation of the name Gutai.
Art historian Tatehata Akira suggests that one should perhaps not look for the “active
meaning” of the name Gutai. Tatehata thinks that, “a hard sound of the word ‘gutai’ suited their
[Gutai members’] ambition of pursuing practice, rather than theories.” See Tatehata Akira, “Seisei
suru taburô: Gutai Bijutsu Kyôkai no 1950 nendai” (Generating Tableau: the 1950s of Gutai Art),
in National Museum of Art [Kokuritsu Kokusai Bijutsukan], Kaiga no arashi, 1950 nendai: Informel,
Gutai, COBRA (Action et emotion, peintures des annés 50: Informel, Gutai, COBRA) (Osaka,
1985), 15.
ii
late 19th century. In the process, Gutai members also grappled with many thorny
issues of national identity in cultural production.
In response to a general interest in subjectivity and the rejection of
conventional ideas and systems of early postwar Japan, modernist artists
confronted two major issues: how to incorporate human experience into art, and
how to challenge the criticism of being derivative of Western art. Yoshihara Jirô
developed a conceptual model of materiality and human subjectivity that
ingeniously incorporated the human presence into non-figurative art, thereby
appearing to overcome the problems of national “authenticity” in modernist
styles. Applying Yoshihara’s concept in conjunction with their own theorization of
painting practice, Gutai artists – Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka
Atsuko – developed highly individual works spanning sculpture, installations, and
performance pieces (Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3). Although Gutai artists
consciously planned their presentations to generate critical conversations, critics
and artists in Japan failed to acknowledge its ground-breaking discourse; this
negative reaction greatly affected Gutai’s decision to return to painting. Through
careful examination of the wider historical, intellectual, and cultural context of the
early Gutai, this dissertation demonstrates that the group’s innovative concept of
materiality and human subjectivity was a response to the problems shared by
Japanese artists in the mid-1950s, while also prefiguring many new
developments in modern art of the 1960s and beyond.
Today, more than thirty years after its disintegration, Gutai is now
inarguably one of the best-known and the most important Japanese artist groups
iii
in the postwar history of Japanese art. In the historical surveys of Japanese
modern art, Gutai is positioned as the first major movement of the postwar era. In
modernist art histories, usually presented as “Western,” Gutai’s practice have
been mentioned alongside those of Abstract Expressionism, Informel,
performance art, and Happenings. As an art group originating outside of Europe
or America, this treatment is remarkable.3 The reason for this high reputation is
Gutai’s wide range of activities outside the conventional field of painting. The
interdisciplinary activities of Gutai artists in the early years anticipated such later
currents as site-specific installation, Conceptual Art, Happenings, Earth Art, and
Kinetic Art.
However, this dominant discourse on Gutai raises several troubling
questions. It places the group in a special, isolated space, separating it from its
geographical origin (the Kansai region of Japan), and its historical context in the
art of the 1950s, by emphasizing the artists’ foresight in view of later currents.
Among many who have begun to question the current high status of Gutai, one
might turn to comments by the contemporary Japanese artist Morimura
Yasumasa:
I do not object to the view of “Gutai” as being one of the most prominent
artistic movements in the Kansai region (and in postwar Japanese art
history). …Now “Gutai” is more than authoritative (ken’i ka 権威化); it is
even becoming a legend. Becoming a legend means that it is now
3 “The Gutai Art Manifesto” by Yoshihara Jirô, is the only text by a non-Western artist and
originally published in a non-western country, that was included in Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz
eds., Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Source Book of Artists’ Writings (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996) 695-698. Former Gutai member Shimamoto Shôzô is hailed
as one of four originators of performative interest in art, along with Jackson Pollock, John Cage,
and Lucio Fontana in Paul Schimmel, Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object,
1949-1979 (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), 18-25.
iv
considered inviolable. Everyone admires it and believes that there was no

flaw in it. …4
As Morimura points out, the exaltation of Gutai has raised the questions as to
whether the group was an isolated phenomenon and whether it produced such
an unorthodox body of work in isolation. In fact, a close reading of writing on the
issue of subjectivity (shutaisei 主体性) in early postwar Japan suggests critical
links between contemporary intellectuals and Gutai leader Yoshihara Jirô.
Political historian Maruyama Masao’s concept of “subjective spirit” (shutaiteki
seishin 主体的精神) seemed to be especially close to Yoshihara’s idea of “spirit”
(seishin 精神).5 This dissertation will be the first substantial study of Gutai to
focus on the construction of Yoshihara Jirô’s aesthetic concept and Gutai’s early
activities in light of historical and cultural contexts of early postwar Japan.
Gutai Scholarship: Historiographic Survey
4Morimura Yasumasa, “’Onna’? ‘Nihon’? ‘Bi’? Nôto” (A Note on Women? Japan? Beauty?), in
Kumakura Takaaki and Chino Kaori eds., Onna? Nihon? Bi?: Aratana jendâ hihyô ni mukete
(Women? Japan? Beauty? Toward a New Gender Criticism) (Tokyo: Keiô Gijuku Daigaku
Shuppankai, 1999), 255-256.
5 Maruyama uses the term “subjective spirit” (shutaiteki seishin 主体的精神) in Maruyama Masao,
“Nihon ni okeru jiyûishiki no keisei to tokushitsu” (Formation and Characteristics of Liberal
Thought in Japan), Teikoku Daigaku Shinbun, 21 August, 1947, reprinted in Maruyama Masao
shû, 3 (Collected Essays of Maruyama Masao, 3) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995), 153-161.
While Gutai may occupy a prestigious position in current historiography of
postwar Japanese art in Japan and Euro-America, during its eighteen years as a
functioning group, Gutai’s works and theories received little critical acclaim in
Japanese art criticism.6 Before the group’s breakup in 1972, there were two
important publications in which two Gutai members, leader Yoshihara Jirô and
core member Shiraga Kazuo, reminisced about Gutai’s activities. The essays
“Ten Years of the Group Gutai” (Gutai gurûpu no jûnen) by Yoshihara (1963) and
“Document of Adventure: Writing on Episodes from Twelve Years of Gutai”
(Bôken no kiroku: Episôdo de tsuzuru Gutai gurûpu no jûni nen) by Shiraga
(1967), are full of information that vividly outlines Gutai’s history.7 Although these
two essays were by no means critical accounts of Gutai, together with the Gutai
journals, they have been an invaluable source for later Gutai studies. Also writing
in the 1960s, young art critic Miyakawa Atsushi wrote “After Informel”
(Anforumeru ikô), which laid the theoretical groundwork for Gutai studies as they
would develop after the 1970s. In this article, Miyakawa articulated a
fundamental paradigmatic change in visual art before and after the arrival of
6 Survey of the early historiography is indebted to Osaki Shin’ichirô, “Seisei to jizoku: Gutai
bijutsu kyôkai saikô, 1” (Generation and Duration: Re-examination of the Gutai Art Association, 1),
Art and Critique (Kyoto Junior College of Art), no. 1 (July, 1987), 44-47.
7 Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai gurûpu no jûnen, 1, 2, 3” (Ten Years of the Group Gutai). Bijutsu Journal
38, 39, 40 (March-May 1963), reprinted in GSDG, 323-327; and Shiraga Kazuo, “Bôken no
kiroku: episôdo de tsuzuru Gutai gurûpu no jûninen” (Document of Adventure: Writing on
Episodes from Twelve Years of Gutai), Bijutsu Techô no. 285-291 (July-December 1967),
reprinted in GSDG, 335-353.
vi
French art critic Michel Tapié’s Informel movement in Japan (Figure 4).8 Informel,
according to Miyakawa, was a proximate impetus for Japanese young artists to
shift from the question of contents of representation (hyôgen 表現) to theory of
representation (hyôgen ron 表現論). In other words, it was the “gesture” of an
Informel painter (approach), not the “gestural representation” of an Informel
painting (style), which appealed to young Japanese artists in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, leading them to create wild, violent, and chaotic objects and
installation work which destroyed conventional notions of painting (Figure 5).9
This important text does not mention Gutai, yet as Hikosaka Naoyoshi later
would argue, the paradigmatic shift was already visible in the early work of the
Gutai group even before the arrival of Informel.10 Nevertheless, Miyakawa’s new
historical approach provided a point of reference for understanding the
development of Gutai’s radical experiments between 1955 and 1957.
Artist and critic Hikosaka Naoyoshi was the first to recognize the group’s
critical significance after Yoshihara Jirô’s death and Gutai’s dissolution in 1972.
Hikosaka’s 1973 essay “Beyond the Closed Circle: What to Learn from Gutai’s
8 Miyakawa Atsushi, “Anforumeru ikô” (After Informel), Bijutsu Techô (May 1963), cited in Chiba
Shigeo, Gendai bijutsu itsudatsushi 1945-1985 (A History of Deviation in Contemporary Art
1945-1985) (Tokyo: Shôbunsha, 1986), 38-39. Tapié claimed that Informel was the most
significant painting movement to emerge after the tabula rasa of art that was initiated by the
Dadaists. Michel Tapié, untitled text in Gutai 9 (April 1958), reprinted in GSDG, 323-327. Although
Informel took a variety of forms and encompassed both figurative and non-figurative paintings, it
generally emphasized spontaneous, gestural brushstrokes, and therefore was considered as a
European counterpart of Abstract Expressionism.
9 Ibid., 38-39.
10 Hikosaka Naoyoshi, “Tojirareta enkan no kanata wa: ‘Gutai’ no kiseki kara nani wo… “ (Beyond
the Closed Circle: What to Learn from Gutai’s Trajectory), Bijutsu Techô no. 370 (August 1973),
85-91. Chiba Shigeo suggests the critical connection between Miyakawa’s theory and Hikosaka’s
interpretation of Gutai. See Chiba, Gendai bijutsu itsudatsushi 1945-1985, 43-44.
vii

Trajectory” (Tojirareta enkan no kanata wa: ‘Gutai’ no kiseki kara nani wo…)
applies Miyakawa Atsushi’s theory to Gutai, and argues that its objectification
(mokuteki ka 目的化) of approach allowed them to produce a significant volume
of highly original works in the early years. However, according to Hikosaka, when
they returned to painting, this emphasis on approach ruined the quality of their
work. He points out that Gutai members sought “originality” only in terms of ways
and methods and not in terms of finished paintings; as a result, their automatic
paintings all assumed a similar appearance. Hikosaka laments their return to
painting as a “tragedy,” holding up Kanayama Akira’s gigantic piece “drawn” by a
toy car (Figure 6) as the most poignant case of Gutai’s creative regression. Thus,
Hikosaka concludes that the artists’ increasing interest in painting, particularly
after the visit of Informel leader Michel Tapié in 1957, was an unfortunate turn for
the group.11 His interpretation of Gutai’s history, from their early period of
groundbreaking interdisciplinary practice to the later phase of formalized painting,
was to become quite influential in subsequent scholarship and popular
journalism.
Over the next twenty years after Hikosaka’s essay, Gutai gradually gained
recognition: during the rest of the 1970s several retrospective exhibitions were
held, mainly in the Kansai region. In the 1980s, Gutai was included in exhibitions
of postwar Japanese art, some of which were organized in Tokyo.12 As Gutai was
given more exposure, critical study of the group appeared more frequently. The
11 Hikosaka, “Tojirareta enkan no kanata wa: ‘Gutai’ no kiseki kara nani wo… ,“ 83-86.
12 Major exhibitions of the Gutai Art Association after 1972 are listed in Appendix 3.
viii
discourse surrounding Gutai basically followed Hikosaka’s interpretation: early
Gutai’s innovation and originality were hailed, while the later years were labeled
as derivative of Informel painting.
The standard for studies of Gutai came with the 1986 publication of
History of Deviations in Contemporary Art 1945-1985 (Gendai bijutsu itsudatsushi
1945-1985), the first comprehensive monograph of postwar Japanese art history,
written by Chiba Shigeo, curator of the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art and a
prominent art critic. According to Chiba, the history of contemporary Japanese art
has been shaped by its “deviation” (itsudatsu 逸脱) from the framework of
Western art history. He positions Gutai as the starting point of this “history of
deviation” – deviating from the Western concept of two major artistic categories,
painting and sculpture. He sees Gutai as a great turning point, when modern
Japan, which had incessantly imported and deployed concepts and styles
originating in the West, finally began to transcend the imitation, appropriation,
and hybridization of Western art and overcame its subjugation. Thus, Chiba
argues:
… in the “new current art” of the Taisho period [1913-1925], a body of work
which deviated from, rejected, and destroyed Western notions of painting
and sculpture … only suggested the possibility [of an art history of
deviation] … yet after Gutai, that current of “art,” which was elevated to a
different level, became the mainstream and core [of Japanese art history].
And I think that the terrain (isô 位相) of “art” born out of this continuum is
characteristic to contemporary Japan. … one I would like to call the “art of
anomalies” (rui toshite no bijutsu 類としての美術), that is, “art” which
develops beyond “conceptual categories” of “painting” and “sculpture.”
More precisely, “something uncategorizable” (‘nanigoto ka’ 何事か) that
are neither “painting,” “sculpture” nor “art” …13
13 Chiba, Gendai bijutsu itsudatsushi 1945-1985,13-14.
ix
Chiba’s theory of the “art of anomalies” allowed Japanese art history to
incorporate artists and movements that were outside of painting and sculpture,
such as Anti-art (Han Geijutsu 反芸術), the Conceptual School of Japan (Nihon
Gainen-ha 日本概念派) and the Mono-ha (“School of Thing” もの派), but also
made it difficult to merge them with contemporaneous Western currents.14 This
book further reinforced the earlier discourse on Gutai, because Chiba’s
historicization of Gutai in the Japanese context disparaged Gutai’s painting
period as a return to a subservient position, that of being a derivative of Western
art.
Chiba’s theory of “deviation” provided a totally new perspective that
offered hope to the Japanese art community in the late 1980s. At the height of
the Bubble Economy and “yen” power, news of Japanese art collectors buying
Impressionist and Fauvist paintings at Christie’s and Sotherby’s auctions, and
public and private museums paying hefty prices to acquire Western modernist
work, caused deep ambivalence among Japanese artists and art critics. To them,
it was a recurring scene in modern Japanese history: the overwhelming flow of
Western art and influence, coupled with uncritical Japanese receptivity. While
some artists embraced the heightened optimism of the Bubble Economy and
created large installation works financially backed by corporations, others were
facing an identity crisis and asking the question, “What is Japanese art?” At the
same time, as Japan’s world presence became significant, there was a surge of
14 Ibid., 14.
interest in the international community in the specificity of Japanese culture, its
cultural hybridity, or in more popular terms, its “postmodernity.” Culture watchers
were fascinated with Japan’s distinctive flexibility in juxtaposing premodern and
modern, Western and Japanese, high art and kitsch – in cityscapes, architecture,
visual art, popular culture and lifestyle. In visual art, there were major
international exhibitions which provided historical surveys of modern and
contemporary Japanese art that highlighted its dichotomous aspects. These
foreign interests gave further impetus to Japanese artists and critics, prompting
them to reflect upon their own history and cultural identity.15
Chiba’s theory of “deviation” was acclaimed by artists and art critics
concerned with their cultural identity, and quickly became an influential narrative
rendering of postwar Japanese art history. Accordingly, Gutai was firmly posited
as the beginning of the “proper” modern art history of Japan. In the late 1980s
and throughout the 1990s, Gutai was the subject of major retrospective
exhibitions and was included in historical surveys of modern Japanese art both in
Japan and abroad. In 1986, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris held Japon
des Avant Gardes 1910 – 1970, and highly evaluated the early experiments of
15 Chiba’s new perspective on Japanese art history was perhaps influenced by a theoretical
approach of the literary critic Karatani Kôjin, who tried to situate “modernism” in Japanese literary
representation. In this book, Karatani traces some of the moments in modern Japanese literal
representation that “inverted” or changed previous consciousness. Karatani sees a voluntary
discovery of modernist perspective among Japanese intellectuals, and objects to the common
notion that the importation of Western technologies and thoughts brought modernism to Japan.
Karatani’s influential book, Nihon kindai bungaku no kigen (Origins of Modern Japanese
Literature) was first published in 1980, but the original texts were published as articles in between
1979 and 1980. Brett de Bary, “Introduction” in Karatani Kôjin, Origins of Modern Japanese
Literature, translation edited by Brett de Bary (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 1.
xi

Gutai.16 The Shôtô Museum of Art held a retrospective exhibition of Gutai in 1990
– the first comprehensive Gutai exhibition in Tokyo.17 Also, the short-lived
Penrose Institute of Contemporary Art in Tokyo organized a Gutai exhibition
called Gutai 1955/56: The Restart Point of Japanese Contemporary Art (Gutai
1955/56: Nihon Gendai Bijutsu no Risutâto Chiten) in 1993.18 The Shôtô show
exhibited many painted works, yet curator Mitsuda Yuri’s main essay included in
the exhibition catalogue emphasized the radicalism of Gutai’s early experiments.
The Penrose Institute exhibition focused solely on Gutai’s interdisciplinary
approach in 1955 and 1956. Likewise, two other thematic exhibitions in Europe,
Giappone all’avanguardia: Il Gruppo Gutai negli anni Cinquanta (Japanese
Avant-garde: the Gutai Group in the 1950s; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna,
Rome, Italy, 1990) and Gutai Japaniche Avantgarde / Japanese Avant-Garde
1954-1965 (Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Germany, 1991) presented similar views
16 This exhibition was jointly organized by the Museé National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges
Pompidou and the Japan Foundation. Many Japanese art critics and art historians, including
Chiba Shigeo, contributed to the catalogue. Chiba, in his essay on the art of the late 1960s,
introduced his concept of a “history of deviation.” Chiba Shigeo, “Situation d’une période critique
a la fin des annés 60” in Japon des Avant gardes 1910 – 1970, 375. Although the publication of
Chiba’s book was in the same year as the exhibition, it is quite likely that Chiba’s view strongly
influenced the show’s historical narrative.
17In the Kansai area, Gutai was frequently featured in solo exhibitions and thematic exhibitions.
For more detail, see Appendix 3.
18 As the title itself suggests, the structure of the exhibition closely followed Chiba’s theory of a
“history of deviation.” Chiba also contributed to the catalogue of the exhibition. Chiba Shigeo,
“Nihon no bijutsu, 1950-60 nendai” (Japanese Art in the 1950’s and 1960’s), Penrose Institute of
Contemporary Art, Gutai, 1955/56: Nihon gendaibijutsu no risutâto chiten (Gutai, 1955/1956: The
Restart Point of Japanese Contemporary Art) (Tokyo, 1993), 17-19. English translation included,
20-21.
xii
of Gutai. Early Gutai works were reconstructed and some former Gutai members
performed at these sites.19
The late 1980s and early 1990s, however, saw a new current in Gutai
research. It emerged among curators in the Kansai area, whose geographic
location afforded them easy access to Gutai’s extant work, documents, and
former members. The exhibitions organized by these curators aimed to be more
inclusive of Gutai history and to provide a more nuanced perspective than the
Hikosaka-Chiba discourse. Osaki Shin’ichirô, then an assistant to a major
collector of Gutai work, Yamamura Tokutarô, and later a curator at the Hyôgo
Prefectural Museum of Modern Art in Kôbe, wrote a series of articles under the
title “Generation and Duration: Re-examination of the Gutai Art Association”
(Seisei to Jizoku: Gutai bijutsu kyôkai saikô) in a Kansai-based art magazine.20
Osaki agreed with Hikosaka and Chiba’s views regarding Gutai’s innovative
experiments in mid-1950s Japan, but argued that there was indeed continuity
19 The exhibitions themselves drew significant attention, and more importantly, the exhibition
catalogues greatly contributed to the dissemination of Gutai discourse. Monumental catalogues
produced in conjunction with Japon des Avant-gardes, organized by the Centre Georges
Pompidou in Paris (1989), and Scream Against The Sky: Japanese Art after 1945, organized by
the Guggenheim Museum (1994), included scholarly study, essays by contemporary artists and
critics, primary sources and most of all, abundant photo images of objects. The Scream Against
the Sky catalogue remains the only comprehensive historical survey of Japanese postwar art in
the English language to date, and it is widely used as a textbook in college courses focusing on
Japanese modern art.
In addition, art critic Sawaragi Noi’s book Nihon, Gendai, Bijutsu (Japan, Contemporary,
Art) should be mentioned as regards Gutai historiography. Highly controversial yet influential,
Sawaragi positions Gutai as the beginning of a conscious de-historicization of the “bloody”
(chinurareta 血塗られた) past, which has persisted until recently in Japanese art. He argues that
Gutai’s emphasis on materials resulted in the loss of both awareness of Japan’s international
position as a defeated country and memories of the war, and states that critical artists of the
recent phenomenon of Japan Pop have tried to recover these issues. It is obvious that
Sawaragi’s narrative is constructed rhetorically to support Japan Pop, represented by artists such
as Murakami Takashi and Aida Makoto. Sawaragi Noi, Nihon, Gendai, Bijutsu (Japan,
Contemporary Era, Art) (Tokyo: Shinchôsha, 1998).
20Osaki, “Seisei to Jizoku: Gutai bijutsu kyôkai saikô 1-10,” A and C (July 1987 – March 1989).
Osaki is currently curator of the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.
xiii

between the experimental period and the painting period. Osaki points out that
“painting” was always the center of their attention, with non-two dimensional
works used as a testing ground where Gutai members each problematized
preconceived notions of “painting.” Thanks to this formative experimental period,
Osaki argues, later Gutai painting was enriched.21 Osaki’s approach in identifying
this organic connection between Gutai’s early experimental period and its later
painting period has helped to revise the conventional one-sided view of Gutai’s
history.
The curators at the Ashiya City Museum of Art & History (hereafter
ACMAH), Kawasaki Kôichi, Yamamoto Atsuo, and Katô Mizuho, along with
curator Hirai Shioichi of the Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art (now
Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Art) shared Osaki’s concern about a more
inclusive view of Gutai. In 1993, ACMAH published Anthology of Gutai
Documents: Document Gutai, 1954-1972 (Gutai shiryôshû: Dokyumento Gutai,
1954-1972), an anthology of Gutai-related documents and records, including a
chronology, photographs of Gutai exhibitions, Gutai journals, contemporary
articles and reviews, critical texts, interviews with former members, and a
detailed bibliography. This monograph was a monumental effort and introduced
to a general audience for the first time the entire history of Gutai. Osaki
Shin’ichirô’s aforementioned texts were summarized and included in this
anthology, and the inclusion of contemporary Gutai documentation, richly
21 Osaki, “Seisei to jizoku: Gutai bijutsu kyôkai saikô 1,” 47-48.
xiv

illustrated in photographs, proved his thesis that there was continuity, rather than
disruption, in the Gutai program.
ACMAH also organized several exhibitions which attempted to pay evenly
balanced attention to Gutai’s entire history. Simply titled Gutai I, II, III, each venue
showed Gutai members’ work divided into three periods: 1954 – 1958 (which
included some pre-Gutai work), 1959 – 1965, and 1965 – 1972. In addition,
ACMAH reconstructed Gutai’s famous outdoor exhibitions. Outdoor Exhibition
Revived (Yomigaeru Yagaiten) was held in mid-summer 1992, aiming to recreate
an environment close to the two original exhibitions Challenge the Mid-Summer
Sun Exhibition (1955) and the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition (1956).22 The
catalogue of these exhibitions, Gutai I, II, III, includes a text by ACMAH curator
Yamamoto Atsuo, which gives a comprehensive history of Gutai’s eighteen years.
The catalogue also included photographs of former Gutai members’ major work
throughout their Gutai years according to artist, enabling the reader to trace the
particular development of each. Previous studies had tended to show the specific
phases of Gutai (i.e. the outdoor shows, the experimental period, or paintings of
Gutai’s Informel era), and thus, they tended to generalize the various features
and currents within these phases. In contrast, this catalogue revealed the
continuous career of each individual Gutai artist.
22 The selection and reconstruction of works for Outdoor Exhibition Revived proceeded in close
consultation with former members. Due to budgetary and environmental concerns (which in the
mid-1950s the Gutai members and the owner of Ashiya Park, Ashiya City, perhaps did not have),
some of the important work, such as Tanaka Atsuko’s Stage Clothes and Shimamoto Shôzô’s
Painting by Cannon, were not reconstructed. “Yomigaeru Yagaiten” in the Ashiya City Museum of
Art and History ed., Gutai I, II, III (Ashiya, 1994), 49. For reconstructed works, see 50-58.
xv

The 1990s saw another new approach to the study of Gutai. Two historical
events of the time – the death of Japanese Emperor Hirohito in 1989 and the
fifty-year anniversary of the end of the war in 1995 – prompted reflection on, and
reconsideration of, postwar history and culture in Japan. Museum exhibitions
were organized giving overviews of various cultural phenomena of the late 1940s
and 1950s. One such exhibition, Japanese Culture: the Fifty Postwar Years
(Japanese title: Sengo Bunka no Kiseki: 1945-1995) included not only “high”
visual art, but also photography, architecture, industrial design, fashion design,
film, and comics. Similarly, the 1998 exhibition Sôgetsu And Its Era: 1945-1970
(Sôgetsu to sono jidai: 1945-1970; curated jointly by ACMAH’s Katô Mizuho and
Chiba City Museum’s Warashina Tetsuya) examined the colorful activities of
ikebana (flower arrangement) master Teshigahara Sôfû and his son Hiroshi, who
interacted with artists of various fields and nationalities. These two exhibitions
placed Gutai on the general artistic and cultural map of its time, and thus helped
to historically contextualize Gutai works. Japanese Culture: the Fifty Postwar
Years discusses Gutai’s relationship to the early-1960s movement Anti-art (Han
Geijutsu), as these two artist groups shared interests in found objects.23 The
Sôgetsu exhibition, on the other hand, examined Gutai’s involvement with Michel
Tapié’s Informel movement (Teshigahara Sôfû was also picked up by Tapié and
23 Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo, et al., Sengo Bunka no Kiseki: 1945-1995 (English title:
Japanese Culture: the Fifty Postwar Years) (Tokyo, 1995), 125-126. Curator Yamazaki Hitoshi
distinguishes the differences in their use of found objects: Gutai utilized them as tools, while the
artists of Anti-art incorporated them into their work.
xvi

became an important Informel artist). The exhibition examined Gutai’s painting in
relationship to the Informel movement.24
Along with these comprehensive studies on the program and history of
Gutai as a group, in the 1990s and 2000s retrospective exhibitions of former core
members of Gutai were also organized. For example, Yoshihara Jirô’s
retrospective show (at ACMAH, 1992) assembled nearly 200 works from
throughout his painting career. The catalogue included many of his writings,
helping to illuminate his theories and ideas. Most of these manuscripts had been
difficult to access before the catalogue’s publication, and the volume also
included texts penned by four Kansai-based curators that discussed Yoshihara in
broad perspective beyond his role as a leader of Gutai. Similarly, the
retrospective exhibitions of Shiraga Kazuo (at the Hyogo Museum of Modern Art,
2001) and Tanaka Atsuko (at ACMAH and other venues, 2002-2004) were
intended to show the individual artist’s entire career, including works from their
pre- and post- Gutai periods.25
24 Ashiya City Museum of Art & History and Chiba City Museum of Art, Sôgetsu to sono jidai:
1945-1970 (Sôgetsu and its era: 1945-1970) (Ashiya and Chiba, 1998). There was another
important exhibition that examined a simultaneous interest in gesture and materials among
international art groups/movements of the 1950s, Informel, the Gutai, and Cobra. Cobra was a
group of artists from Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands, active between 1948 and 1951.
The major artists included Karel Appel and Asger Jorn. National Museum of Art [Kokuritsu
Kokusai Bijutsukan], Kaiga no arashi, 1950 nendai: Informel, Gutai, COBRA (Action et emotion,
peintures des annés 50: Informel, Gutai, COBRA) (Osaka, 1985).
25 Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Akushon peintâ: Shiraga Kazuo ten (Action Painter:
Shiraga Kazuo Retrospective Exhibition) (Kôbe, 2001); Ashiya City Museum of Art and History,
Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000 (Tanaka Atsuko: Search for an Unknown
Aesthetic 1954-2000) (Ashiya, 2000); and Katô Mizuho and Ming Tiampo, Electrifying Art: Tanaka
Atsuko, 1954-1968 (Vancouver: The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2004). For more
information on former Gutai members’ exhibitions, see Appendix 3. In addition, former Gutai
member Uemae Chiyû published an autobiography based on his diaries in the mid- to late 1950s.
This autobiography is an important document showing the early activities and interactions of
Yoshihara Jirô and Gutai members. Uemae Chiyû, Jigadô (My Way of Painting) (Kôbe: Kyôdô
shuppansha, 1985).
xvii

While Gutai did not receive much critical response from the Japanese art
community until Hikosaka’s study in the 1970s, it did receive significant support
from the Euro-American art community, particularly since Gutai’s introduction by
Michel Tapié in 1957. Yet since Tapié’s Informel was essentially a painting
movement grounded in the history of modern Western painting, his evaluation of
Gutai focused mainly on that genre, which posed a problem for subsequent
understanding of the group in Europe. Tapié dismissed Gutai’s early experiments,
and promoted its painting almost exclusively. After the encounter with Tapié,
Gutai’s distinctive early aspects, such as its unconventional, interdisciplinary use
of materials and forms, was largely abandoned, and painting surfaced as the
dominant medium. Additionally, to secure the internationalist claims of the
Informel movement, Tapié had to legitimize the inclusion of non-Western artists
and artist groups like Gutai, who, according to Tapié, did not inherit the history of
Western modern painting. What Tapié did was to isolate Gutai and other
selected Japanese artists from the history of Japanese modernist art. In Avant-
Garde Art in Japan (1962), Tapié argued that Japan, modernized only recently in
the mid-nineteenth century, had preserved tradition into the present without a
significant break. In this preserved tradition, its “avant-garde” qualities had
existed since the fifteenth century (i.e., Zen painting). While many “false” avant-
garde movements proliferated, imitating the academicized styles of the West
imported in the modern era, the “authentic avant-garde” lineage had also
survived. Thus, Tapié concluded, “Orientals had a practice of abstractions in art
xviii

and philosophy ahead of the Westerners.”26 In his interpretation the
contemporary concerns of Gutai with establishing human subjectivity and cultural
identity were erased.
Gutai was also introduced in the United States, first by two articles
appearing in the New York Times, both likely written by a writer named Ray Falk
(these articles will be further discussed in Chapter Five). In short, they examined
Gutai’s two experimental exhibitions the Second Outdoor Exhibition (1956) and
Gutai Art on Stage (1957). The articles, presenting Gutai as an experimental
group, stirred the interest of the New York art community.27 They also conditioned
the later reception of Gutai when Michel Tapié organized a show of Gutai
paintings at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York in 1958. To the New York
audience, which had highly valued Gutai’s three-dimensional and performative
work, their two-dimensional work seemed stylistically derivative of the gestural
mode in American Abstract Expressionism.28
In the 1960s, Gutai’s early experiments were again highlighted this time by
an artist and theorist of Happenings, Allan Kaprow. In his 1966 book
Assemblage, Environments, and Happenings, Kaprow situated Gutai’s
performative works as a predecessor of Happenings.29 The book is illustrated
26Michel Tapié and Tôre [sic] Haga, Avant-garde Art in Japan (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1962), n.p.
27Ming Tiampo, “Gutai & Informel: Post-War Art in Japan and France, 1945-1965,” Ph.D.
Dissertation (Evanston: Northwestern University, 2003), 82-84.
28 Dore Ashton, “Japanese Avantgardism,” Arts and Architecture 75 (November 1958), reprinted
in GSDG, 332.
29 AllanKaprow, Assemblage, Environments and Happenings (New York: Harry N. Abrams,

1966), 211-225.
xix

with numerous photographs of Gutai members engaging in the process of
creation, yet conspicuously lacks images of finished work. Kaprow’s framing of
Gutai as an artistic group engaged in site-specific, spontaneous events, has
reinforced Gutai discourse in the American art community, one which persists to
this day, even after the 1994 exhibition Scream Against the Sky: Japanese Art
after 1945 and the publication of its catalogue, which included many Gutai
paintings.30
The exhibition Scream Against the Sky was an ambitious project aimed at
presenting the first comprehensive history of postwar Japanese art to an
American audience. The curator, Alexandra Munroe, a specialist in Japanese art,
was well versed in recent developments in Gutai scholarship in Japan. Inspired
by Chiba Shigeo’s History of Deviations in Contemporary Art 1945-1985, Munroe
placed Gutai as the starting point of the exhibition’s narrative of postwar
Japanese art. Yet in the section on Gutai, Munroe frequently cited not only
Chiba’s text, but also Osaki Shin’ichirô’s aforementioned essays; although the
emphasis was still on Gutai’s early period, she tried to present its continuous
history as well.
Nevertheless, Munroe’s historicizing effort is intertwined with her
problematic view of postwar Japanese art as an isolated, “unique” phenomenon
30 The aforementioned exhibition, Out of Action, paralleled Gutai’s interest in process along with
Abstract Expressionism, as represented by Jackson Pollock, performance art of composer John
Cage, and the gestural painting of Italian painter Lucio Fontana. Curator Paul Schimmel claims
that Pollock, Cage, Fontana and Gutai’s Shimamoto are originators of the performative interest in
visual art. The exhibition itself traced the history of the performative aspect in visual art
throughout the 1970s. Schimmel, Out of Actions, 18-25. Also, Theories and Documents of
Contemporary Art categorizes Yoshihara Jirô’s “Gutai Art Manifesto” (1956) under “Performance
Art.” This anthology is widely used in college courses on Western/international modern history of
art in the United States. Stiles and Selz eds., Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art,
695-698.
xx

outside currents in the West. In this sense, she shares the essentialist view of
Michel Tapié regarding Japanese modern art. Munroe rightly points out that
critical Japanese modernist artists distinguished between modernism and
Westernization and recognized the relative status of Western “modernism.” Yet at
the same time, she argues that Japan’s different guise of modernism is due to
Japan’s uniqueness, a spiritual essence that has transformed any foreign
importations and persisted throughout the history of Japan:
Like the waves of Chinese and Indian culture that visited Japan over the
millennia, modern Euro-American philosophy was also “remade” since the
time it was officially adopted by the progressive Meiji leaders in the
nineteenth century. … Characterized by extremist action and a
metaphysical mind, the special aesthetic of Japanese avant-garde culture
could suggest the persistent presence of Japan’s “old gods” in a post-
atomic age.31
In the mid to late 1990s, as the master narrative of modernism was
increasingly critiqued and challenged, Gutai was also highlighted in the context of
modern art history as constructed by historians in America and Europe. At the
1996 exhibition Formless at the Centre Georges Pompidou, art historians Yve-
Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss contested Clement Greenberg’s influential
formalist construction of modernist art history. Although the exhibition did not
make an appearance in the United States, the catalogue was translated and
widely circulated. “Formless,” according to Bois, is not a style or “ism,” but an
anti-authoritative “operational” mode that resists academicization and
31 Alexandra Munroe, “Scream Against the Sky,” in her Scream Against The Sky: Japanese Art
After 1945 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 19-25.
xxi
systematization.32 By reading art of the modern era according to an operational
mode, Bois and Krauss objected to the singular, linear, ethnocentric history of
modernism and opened the way to an examination of this heterogeneous body of
work. For example, in the catalogue Krauss discusses the common subversive
practice of horizontally positioning a canvas, referring to the works of Jackson
Pollock, Andy Warhol and Gutai member Shiraga Kazuo.33 Krauss and Bois thus
established a new approach which transcends the boundaries of cultures and
time and allows us to examine Gutai work in a new way.34
Position of the Dissertation
This dissertation examines the distinctive approaches of Gutai leader
Yoshihara Jirô and Gutai members to the issues of national identity and
subjectivity in cultural production in early postwar Japan, aiming at a broader and
more contextualized perspective on Gutai. Surveying the historiography of Gutai,
it is apparent that research has been almost exclusively done in the context of
museum exhibitions.35 Many of those exhibitions did indeed help to establish
empirical ground for the study of Gutai work, and some exhibition catalogues,
32 Bois said, “… (Battaille) refuses to define ‘informe’: ‘It is not only an adjective having a given
meaning, but a term that serves to brings things down [déclasser] in the world.’ It is not so much a
stable motif to which we can refer, a symbolizable theme, a given quality, as it is a term allowing
one to operate a declassification, in the double sense of lowering and of taxonomic disorder.
Nothing in and of itself, the formless has only an operational existence: it is a performative, like
obscene words, the violence of which derives less from semantic than from the very act of their
delivery … The formless is an operation.” Yve-Alain Bois, “Introduction” in Yve-Alain Bois and
Rosalind E. Krauss, Formless: A User’s Guide (New York: Zone books, 1997), 18.
33 Rosalind Krauss, “Horizontality” in Formless, 93-103.
34 I will further discuss these points and problems in Chapter Four.
35
One exception is Ming Tiampo’s recent dissertation on Gutai. Tiampo, “Gutai & Informel: Post-
War Art in Japan and France, 1945-1965.”
xxii
especially those published by ACMAH, presented ample documentation,
illustrations, and critical texts based on detailed research. Yet museum-based
research has its limitations; more sustained, scholarly attention is needed to
evaluate Gutai’s position in view of its ever more notable place in Japanese and
international art historical research. This study, consisting of a careful reading
and analysis of contemporary texts; documentation, both published and
unpublished; artworks extant and reconstructed; and interviews, is one of the few
studies in the English language focusing on Gutai, and will establish and interpret
the group’s significance in the field of art history.
In recent scholarship on what is generally treated as Western modernist
art, there have been a growing number of studies critiquing the formalist
construction of modernism spearheaded by art critic Clement Greenberg, whose
work has long been influential in the United States. Formless, by the
aforementioned Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss is one of the most
significant. There is also a series of studies that examines the political intentions
of Greenberg’s formalist history, and others which explore the identity formation
in Abstract Expressionism that operated to exclude racial, gender, and cultural
anomalies.36 This dissertation on Gutai contributes a new dimension to critical
inquiry on the formalist construction of modernism.
36 Key texts includes: Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract
Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, Arthur Goldhammer trans. (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1983); Eva Cockcroft, “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War,” Art
Forum 12, no. 10 (June 1974), 39-41, reprinted in Francis Frascina ed., Pollock and After: The
Critical Debate (London: Harper and Row Publishers, 1985), 125-133; Michael Leja, Framing
Abstract Expressionism (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1993); Ann Gibson, Abstract
Expressionism: Other Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).; and Bert Winther-
Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early Postwar
Years (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002).
xxiii
Yoshihara Jirô theorized that the gestural mode of painting was one of the
best ways to engage with material/materiality, as it maximized the artist’s
subjective intervention. The paintings of the leading figure of Abstract
Expressionism, Jackson Pollock, greatly inspired Yoshihara’s construction of this
theory; Yoshihara found what he was looking for in Pollock’s self-critiquing
practice: the possibility of painting to become pure and autonomous.
Furthermore, Yoshihara saw in Pollock’s painting that attention to materials could
lead to transformation of painting practice, from painterly expression to the
physical “object.” This interpretation of Pollock’s painting led Yoshihara to
encourage young Gutai artists to transcend painting practice and to create three-
dimensional and installation works. Yoshihara’s critical appreciation of Pollock,
together with Gutai artists’ rich exploration of the possibilities of Pollock’s
painting, defied the singular, monolithic model in formalist history concerning the
succession of styles after Abstract Expressionism.37
In addition, there has been a surge of interest in modern and
contemporary visual culture in the discipline of Japanese art history. The
discipline has long been a stronghold of premodern (pre-Meiji period
[1868-1911]) art practice, yet in the past five years various scholarly monographs
have provided insightful analyses of the arts of modern Japan.38 This interest in
37Several Gutai artists stated that they were not aware of Pollock’s painting between 1955-1956,
when they were producing experimental works. For example, see Shimamoto Shôzô, interviewed
by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 370.
38 For example, see Jonathan M. Reynolds, Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese
Modernist Architecture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Gennifer Weisenfeld,
Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2002); and Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American
Artists in the Early Postwar Years.
xxiv
modern and contemporary art has risen simultaneously with critiques of
Japanese “modernism” among historians of Japan, who object to a dominant
discourse that collapses Japanese modernism with Westernization. By focusing
on the achievement of the artist group Gutai in response to the issues
surrounding modernist art practice in the early postwar period, this study will add
another point of reference in this area of Japanese art history.
Although Gutai’s activities spanned fourteen years, this dissertation
focuses on the group’s formative (1947 – 1954) and early years (1954 – 1958).39
Like many critical studies of Gutai, this study also maintains that Gutai’s early
years showed the most remarkable possibilities for expanding the theoretical
terrain of painting practice. After 1958, Gutai’s radical direction and its chaotic but
highly energetic activities were tamed, and two-dimensional work came to
dominate Gutai oeuvre. At the same time, this study pays special attention to the
pre-Gutai years, a period generally overlooked in current Gutai research. This
period is crucial to understanding the context in which Gutai practice emerged –
Gutai leader Yoshihara’s concepts of materials and human subjectivity were
closely connected with society and culture in early postwar Japan. Thus, this
dissertation explores three intellectual and artistic intersections in Gutai’s early
years: between Yoshihara Jirô and his contemporaries, between Yoshihara and
individual Gutai members, and between Gutai and the Japanese art community
as a whole. Examination of these ideological and creative crossroads allows us
39 In his attempt to overview Gutai’s history, Osaki Shin’ichirô divides the group’s eighteen-year
existence into three periods: the period of “action” (1954-1957), the period of painting (1957-the
early 1960s) and the period of diversification of methods (1960s – 1972). Osaki Shin’ichirô,
“Gutai: Kaiga e itaru akushon” (Art in Gutai; Action into Painting), in GSDG, 14.
xxv
to understand Gutai within the moment of early postwar Japan. In doing so, this
dissertation effectively challenges the academic tendency to isolate Gutai from its
historical context.
Following this introductory chapter, the dissertation will first explore the
development of Yoshihara Jirô’s concept of materials and human subjectivity and
its place on the historical, social, and cultural map of Japan in the early postwar
period. Chapter Two, “Materials and Human Subjectivity: Yoshihara Jirô and
Japanese Modernist Art of the Early Postwar Era” will establish that Yoshihara’s
aesthetic concept was a response to the question of how to incorporate human
experience into art and how to challenge the criticism of being derivative of
Western art, a charge brought against many modernist artists at the time. These
modernist concerns were closely tied to a more generalized desire to reject from
the present those preexisting hierarchies and systems associated with Japan’s
wartime period, and to maintain Japan’s political autonomy at a time of American
hegemony in international politics.
Chapter Three, “Laboratory of Experiments I: Gutai Exhibitions 1955 –
1958” examines how Yoshihara’s concept of materials and human subjectivity
was transmitted to and interpreted by Gutai’s young artists, focusing on works
which appeared in Gutai’s exhibitions between 1955 and 1958. After playing an
important role in interdisciplinary groups in the Kansai area, Yoshihara went on to
form Gutai in 1954, where he facilitated a movement to pursue new possibilities
in painting practice. Responding to a growing interest among Gutai members in
“object-hood” and process in painting, Yoshihara gave theoretical support and
xxvi

organized exhibitions in such unusual venues as an outdoor site and a theater.
This chapter pays special attention to the physical challenges of these sites,
which led Gutai members to create a variety of sculptures, installations, and
performances that transcended established boundaries.
Chapter Four, “Laboratories of Experiments II: The Works of Three Gutai
Artists, Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko,” examines the
individual development of three important Gutai members. These artists all
pursued distinctive interests in painting practice and adopted a remarkable range
of materials and methods. The study of these three artists will pay particular
attention to their artistic conversations with Yoshihara, whose conceptual model
of materials and human subjectivity operated on the premise of each individual’s
subjective interaction with the materials. Yoshihara believed that innovative art
would emerge through that interactive dynamism. Thus, while these Gutai
members shared interests in “object-hood” and process in painting practice, the
ways in which each realized them were quite distinctive. For example,
Shimamoto adopted mechanical force to make splashes of paint, Shiraga used
his own body as a tool to physically grapple with chosen materials, and Tanaka
utilized fabrics and electricity to pursue her interest in the plastic aspect of
painting.
Chapter Five, “Creatures from Mars: Reception of the Gutai Art
Association among the Japanese Art Community,” examines the negative
responses to Gutai on the part of the Japanese art community. Although
Yoshihara carefully planned the presentation of Gutai works in Tokyo, the center
xxvii

of Japan’s art community, the group did not receive much positive feedback. The
major problem was that Gutai’s conceptual approach failed to appeal to a
generation of up-and-coming critics in the mid-1950s. Young critics were taking
the initiative in defining Japan’s cultural identity at a time when the Japanese art
community was involved in increasing international cultural and artistic exchange
in the form of exhibitions and migrating artists. Although they shared Gutai’s
interest in the material aspect of the art object and tried to relate that to the
artist’s subjectivity, in practice they considered figuration as essential to relating
the material world to the subjective consciousness of the human being. This
conceptual difference in effect prevented the Tokyo art community from
appreciating fully Gutai’s potential to break through Western painting practice in
Japan. The negative responses of the Tokyo art community contributed greatly to
Yoshihara’s decision to redirect Gutai toward a focus on painting.
Yoshihara Jirô and Gutai: Contesting “Modernism”
By positioning Gutai as one of the most significant artist groups to emerge
in the postwar era, this dissertation contests the singular and linear model in the
current mainstream of “modernism” in art. Central to my argument about Gutai is
a particular reading of “modernism.” The heavily used term “modernism”
historically has assumed various meanings – depending on one’s political or
aesthetic positions, “modernism” could mean “progressivism,” “anti-tradition,” or
“individualism.” In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Yoshihara and Gutai were
cognizant of such notions of “modernism” – Yoshihara developed his concept of
xxviii

materials and human subjectivity as a response to Japanese “modernist” artists’
struggle to define their artistic style and its significance when Japan’s national
identity was in question. It is therefore appropriate to summarize here the various
discourses surrounding the term “modernism.” Articulating these different
concepts will clarify the various meanings attached to this common term, which
indeed embraced multiple variations in the early years of Gutai.
Historian Marshall Berman defines “modernity” as a universal body of
experience shared by all mankind today. According to Berman, while “modernity”
provides us with “adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and
the world … [it] threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know,
everything we are.” Further, “modernism” is a variety of visions and values that
“aim to make men and women the subjects, as well as the objects of
modernization, to give them the power to change the world that is changing
them, to make their way through the maelstrom and make it their own.”40 In
Berman’s definition, “modernity” is a general, universal condition, but because of
its inherently multivalent nature, “modernism” naturally assumes various forms.
In the fields of European and American art, “modernism” generally refers
to aesthetic values and styles that emerged in the early twentieth century. As
Perry Anderson points out in his critique of Berman’s text, “modernism” as art/
aesthetic is construed by its opposition to realist and other classical forms of the
40 Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 15,
cited in Perry Anderson, “Modernity and Revolution” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg,
eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
1988), 317-318.
xxix

previous centuries.41 Furthermore, in the field of Western “modernist” art, the
early 1950s were until recently considered one high point of “modernism,”
specifically Abstract Expressionism as represented by Jackson Pollock (this
period is often called “high modernism”). Clement Greenberg’s formalist view of
“modernist” history has become a vehicle for this discourse, through his series of
influential publications from the 1940s to the early 1960s. Greenberg considers
that the essence of “modernism” lies in a given discipline’s self-critiquing practice.
In the “modernist” process, he argues, each art would pursue certain formal
properties that characterize that art; in painting those were “the flat surface, the
shape of the support, and the properties of the pigment.” Among those,
Greenberg considers the flatness of surface as the most fundamental
characteristic in painting – thus the “modernist” painting would become most
“advanced” and “purest” picture.42 He argues that the achievement of “modernist”
art, Abstract Expressionism, reached the highest point in this progress after
Cubism, in its attention to the flat surface and its rejection of literal
connotations.43
In addition, “modernism” in Western art connotes geographical
confinements. Despite criticism of the notion, it is still widely believed that
“modernist” aesthetics, movements, styles, and attitudes all originated in the
41 Anderson, “Modernity and Revolution,” 322.
42Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” Forum Lectures (Washington, D. C.: Voice of

America, 1960), reprinted in his The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 4: Modernism with a
Vengeance, 1957-1969, John O’Brian ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993),
86-87.
43 Clement Greenberg, “Toward a Newer Laocoon,” Partisan Review (July-August 1940),

reprinted in his The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 1: Perceptions and Judgments,
1939-1944. John O’Brian ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 23-38.
xxx
West, especially in the public realm of art/aesthetic production (i.e., blockbuster
exhibitions, coffee-table book publications). The conflation of “modernist” art/
aesthetics and the Western locale has posed problems in the historical narrative
of non-Western art, in which styles of “modernism” (as opposed to a force or
tendency of “modernization”) were first introduced and imported from the West. In
pre- and interwar Japan, for example, the term “modernism” (and its translation
“kindai shugi” 近代主義), was generally used to espouse artists and artworks that
had adopted the styles accepted already at that time as “modernist” in Europe,
such as Impressionism, Cubism, and Fauvism. Thus, at times when Japan’s
national identity was in question, for example, the late Meiji period (1890s and
1900s) and the inter-war years, this same “modernism” was challenged as a
foreign, Western-derived concept.44
In the late 1940s, the issue of Japan’s national identity resurfaced as the
country grappled with its restored independence. “Modernism” as derivative of
Western art and the practice of Japanese “modernist” art was again contested. In
this critical environment, two alternative modes of “modernism” emerged in the
art community. One merged “modernism” (identified with the West) and “tradition”
(dentô 伝統) in order to create new hybrid “modernist” art suitable for a newly
revived Japan. Yoshihara Jirô’s good friend and artist Hasegawa Saburô was one
of the most active advocates of this hybrid “modernism.” In his practice, he opted
to combine materials and calligraphic traditions of premodern Japan with line
44 For more discussion, see Chapter Five.
xxxi
drawing and anti-mimetic practices of “Western” abstract painting (Figure 7).45
Artist Okamoto Tarô, who praised the dynamism of earthenware of the Jômon
period (10,000 – 400 BCE) in its juxtaposition of heterogeneous forms and
details, can also be considered a protagonist of this hybrid “modernism.”
Okamoto mixed strange, unpredictable objects, such as heavy machines and
vegetables, with geometric patterns to recreate the disharmonious dynamism of
Jômon earthenware (Figure 8).46
The other major current of thought defined “modernism” as the approach
and attitude of an artist toward his or her life, art, and society, in which the artist
became consciously involved in the creative process and thus in changing his/
her social environment. This definition emerged concurrently with the
contemporary concern with political autonomy, and as such, this mode of
“modernism” became a theoretical cornerstone for young art critics and artists
who aspired to sever ties with the rubric of derivative “modernist” styles and to
establish a new “modernist” art firmly rooted in the reality of Japan.47 The terms
45Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early
Postwar Years, 32-43.
46 Okamoto Tarô, “Jômon doki: Minzoku no seimeiryoku” (Jômon Earthenware: Sense of Life in
Race), Mizue (February 1952), reprinted in his Okamoto Tarô: Genshoku no jumon (Okamoto
Tarô: Spell in Prime Colors) (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjû sha, 1968), 163-164. I should point out that
unlike Hasegawa Saburô, Okamoto did not pursue a simplistic hybridization of stylistic features of
the Jômon earthenware and Western “modernist” art, but tried to emulate the Jômon ceramic’s
dynamism and raw energy in his surrealistic (Western-derived “modernist”) imagery. He called
this dynamism “Polemism” (Taikyoku shugi).
47 Although placing it in the Taishô (1911-1925) and the early Shôwa (1926-1930s) context, art
historian Gennifer Weisenfeld defines “modernism” in Japan: “…modernism in Japan may be
defined as the movement of art for art’s sake – or, autonomous art … Thus, modernism in
Japanese art embraced aestheticism and subjectivity, focusing on pictorial technique and
eschewing mimesis in order to make apparent the role of the artist in the production of art.”
Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931, 4.
xxxii
“shutai” (subject; 主体) and “shutaisei” (subjectivity; 主体性) were frequently used
to advocate this creative role in making “modernist” art.
What, then, was Yoshihara Jirô’s “modernism,” and what was “modernist”
about Gutai? Yoshihara seemed to consciously avoid the use of such terms as
“modern,” “modernist,” “modernism,” or “avant-garde” to describe Gutai and its
activities. In his “Gutai Art Manifesto” (1956), Yoshihara simply suggests that
Gutai was aiming to “advance” beyond abstract art (chûshô shugi 抽象主義).48
But before Gutai’s formation in 1954, Yoshihara frequently spoke in public on
“modernist” art. Yoshihara described “modernist” art (he used the term “modan
âto” [modern art]) as a “dominant” mode of art that directs painting practice to its
“essence” (honshitsu 本質), as seen in Picasso’s Cubist experiments with colors,
shapes, and lines.49 Yoshihara’s view of “modernist” art, and also the rhetoric
used to legitimize his own art, is quite close to Clement Greenberg’s formalist
perspective and appears to be at odds with the first of the Japanese
interpretations of the modern that were discussed above. As we will see in detail
in Chapter Two, Yoshihara’s pursuit of the “essence” of painting led him even
further into the material level of painting practice.
At the same time, Yoshihara’s view of “modernism” intersected with the
issue of autonomous role of an artist in art making. From texts he wrote to
educate the public about “modernist” art, to his recorded conversations with
48Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai bijutsu sengen” (Gutai Art Manifesto), Geijutsu Shinchô 7, no. 12
(December 1956), 203, reprinted in GSDG, 6. English translation included, 8. For the entire text,
see Appendix 1.
49Yoshihara Jirô, “Bijutsu kanshô shijô kôza: Modan Âto” (Lecture on Paper, Art Appreciation:
Modern Art), Shinkô Shinbun, November 7, 1951.
xxxiii
avant-garde calligraphers, Yoshihara stressed the subjective attitude of an
individual – freed from organizations and categorical constraints – to understand
and create “modernist” art. In his “Gutai Art Manifesto,” this attitude was framed
as “spirit” (seishin 精神), and became a part of the creative encounters between
materials (busshitsu 物質) and artist. In this regard, Yoshihara’s view of
“modernism” similarly took subjectivity as an important criterion, as did the new
“modernism” as defined by contemporary young critics and artists.50
Thus Yoshihara’s “modernism” had a double meaning: on one hand it
shared the point presented in the formalist historicism of Clement Greenberg
and, on the other, it espoused a consciousness of subjectivity in line with young
critics and artists. In addition to these two shared sensitivities – both
contemporaneous – Yoshihara’s principle of the concrete (“gutai shugi” 具体主義)
was integral to his constellation of “modernism.” As Yoshihara explained, Gutai
aimed to “use the materials to concretely exhibit the innermost [nature of
ourselves] as human beings,” hence the name “gutai.”51 His emphasis on
practice (jissaku shugi 実作主義) resonated with the criticism of the logo-centrism
of Japanese “modernist” art by Yoshihara’s contemporary Takiguchi Shûzô, an
50 While young art critics such as Haryû Ichirô used the term shutai in their writings, Yoshihara
seemed to avoid it and instead, preferred to use seishin to describe the artist’s conscious
engagement with his/her environment. For example, Yoshihara wrote in 1954:
The most important matter for us is that contemporary art provides the least restrained,
free space for people who aspire to live through this harsh modern world; we strongly
believe that creative force in this free space will benefit the advancement of the mankind.
We wish to present in a concrete way (gutai teki ni 具体的に) the proof that our
spirit (seishin 精神) is free. …
Yoshihara Jirô, “Hakkan ni saishite” (On the Publication of Journal), Gutai 1 (January 1, 1955),
reprinted in GSDG, 268.
51 Yoshihara, “Gutai gurûpu no jûnen, 2,” Bijutsu Journal 39 (April 1963), reprinted in GSDG, 324.
xxxiv

established art critic and a producer behind the interdisciplinary group Jikken
Kôbô (Experimental Workshop). Here Takiguchi voices his doubts about the
rubric of modernism:
I would like to urge [the Japanese art community] to reflect on the serious
fact that by self-validating this kind of ambiguous term [modernism], this
group of Japanese artists has blurred their work and lived in the
uncontested space of this exaggerated concept. …
No matter how hard we try to describe, define, and restrict definitions of
such words as “modern art” and “avant-garde,” which are already fixed
concepts, there is no way to close the break between [the concepts] and
live work in the real world. … The important matter is why [the art
community] defines [aesthetic currents] not so much in terms of actual
practice, but rather by using such ambiguous names.52
More than a theorist of “modernist” art, Yoshihara was a practitioner. He believed
that only through actual practice would the art of new era come to fruition. At the
juncture where preconceived notions of “modernism” were contested, Yoshihara
Jirô and the Gutai artists sought to represent their own aesthetic value – the
unification of materials and subjectivity – in practice. Just as in Gutai’s own
moment, current critical scholarship challenges the monolithic view of
“modernism.” This study of Gutai will contribute to expanding our understanding
of the multiplicities of “modernism” in Japan and the world.
52 Takiguchi Shûzô, “Zen’ei kaiga no shôtai” (True Character of Avant-garde Painting), Atorie 277
(January 1950), 18-19.
xxxv
Chapter Two
Materials and Human Subjectivity: Yoshihara Jirô and Japanese Modernist

Art of the Early Postwar Era
Gutai Art (Gutai bijutsu 具体美術) does not alter the materials. Gutai Art
imparts life to the materials. Gutai Art does not distort the materials.
... The materials never compromise themselves with the spirit; the spirit
never dominates the materials.53
In December of 1956, the manifesto of the Gutai Art Association (hereafter
Gutai) was published in a popular art magazine, Geijutsu Shinchô. Written by the
group’s leader Yoshihara Jirô in a defiant yet graceful tone, the manifesto stated
that Gutai would bid farewell to preexisting arts, styles, and isms. The new
movement – according to Yoshihara – aimed to bring materials and material
quality to the forefront in an art object by way of the artist’s direct engagement
with the materials. In this conceptual model of “materials” (busshitsu 物質) and
“spirit” (seishin 精神), intermediary elements, such as figurative imagery,
meanings, concepts and ideologies, were totally rejected as “the meaningless act
of signification by a human.”54
53 Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai bijutsu sengen” (Gutai Art Manifesto), Geijutsu Shinchô 7, no. 12
(December 1956), 202-204, reprinted in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History ed., Gutai
shiryôshû: Dokyumento Gutai, 1954-1972 (Anthology of Gutai Documents: Document Gutai,
1954-1972; henceforth GSDG) (Ashiya: Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, 1993), 6-7. English
translation included, 8-9. For the entire text, see Appendix 1.
54 Ibid., 6.
xxxvi
With this core program, Gutai produced an unprecedented body of works,
ranging from painting and sculpture, to installation and performance. The works
were mostly non-figurative art, devoid of representational images, or traces of the
images still visible in abstract art. Instead, in these non-figurative works the
materials and the quality of those materials were emphasized. For example, the
splash of oil paint and its thick, fluid quality were distinguishing characteristics of
Gutai member Shimamoto Shôzô’s Work (Sakuhin, 1955; Figure 9), and the
infinite expandability and flexible form of cotton cloth were the sole subjects of
Work (Sakuhin, 1955; Figure 10), by another member, Tanaka Atsuko.
In Yoshihara’s formation of the conceptual model, artists did not just aim to
recover the inherent qualities of the materials and to aestheticize them as in the
non-figurative sculptures created by Russian Constructivists in the 1910s. As the
other half of the model presented in the manifesto suggests, the presence of the
artist was the crucial element in Gutai work. The artist had to engage the
materials in some way. This might be accomplished through the choice of
materials, a particular way of utilizing them, or a trace of the artist’s physical
action left on the materials. By emphasizing the artist’s individual, “original”
approach to the materials, Yoshihara’s conceptual model remarkably
incorporated the subjective presence of the human being in a non-figurative art
object.
This chapter first examines the historical, social, and cultural background
that led Yoshihara to construct this concept of the materials and human
subjectivity, the latter expressed as “spirit” in the Gutai Art Manifesto. Although
xxxvii
the manifesto was written by Yoshihara in 1956, more than two years after the
establishment of Gutai in August 1954, his concerns expressed in this document
were formulated during that initial period and can be traced back to the years
before Gutai. During that time, between 1945 and 1956, Japan went through a
dynamic transformation from a defeated, impoverished country occupied by the
Allied Powers to an economically sufficient, independent nation. Those involved
in intellectual and cultural spheres eagerly sought ways to get involved in, and
make sense of, the country’s changing status in international politics and
economic recovery, both closely tied to Japan’s alliance with the United States.
Two issues were particularly important in consciousness of those involved in
active reconstruction of the nation: One was to reject preexisting hierarchies and
systems associated with Japan’s war years, and the other was how to maintain
Japan’s autonomous position as an independent nation, as the tension in Asia
rose between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Many
intellectuals and ordinary citizens actively participated in debates,
demonstrations, and social movements in order to make their voice heard during
this historic change.
Japanese modernist artists responded to these issues with rigor.
Modernist art was popular in the Japanese art community in the early postwar
years in part because it embodied a sense of freshness at Japan’s new start as a
democratic country. Its visual aesthetics of simplified, reductive forms and bold
use of colors looked refreshing and free to many who remembered the
ideologically charged, realistic images of war painting. Yet modernist art was also
xxxviii
criticized for its lack of humanist (ningen teki 人間的) content and concerns, as
social awareness was a significant aspect of the culture of the time. Furthermore,
as the issue of national identity became crucial in the early 1950s, modernist
artists were attacked for their lack of “subjective” position as Japanese—that
was, the history of the practice had evolved through adaptations of new styles as
purely derived from the West. As this chapter will explain, those criticisms led
many modernist artists to consider their history and practice critically. Being an
abstract/non-figurative painter since the 1930s, Gutai leader Yoshihara Jirô was
naturally concerned with these issues. His concept of materials and the human
subjectivity was developed through this process of self-critique.
The later historiography of postwar Japanese art has positioned Gutai as
“unique” and as an “anomaly” in the Japanese art community of the early postwar
years.55 Gutai’s works expanded the conventional categories of painting and
were indeed distinctive compared to modernist works produced in the mid-1950s,
which were largely confined to abstracted images of the outside world. However,
as this chapter will suggest, their motivations and ideas – the rejection of
preconceived meanings and styles, the primacy of subjective position of the artist
in art-making – were deeply rooted in the historical and geographical culture of
early postwar Japan. The examination of Gutai’s leader Yoshihara’s writings,
artistic work, and involvement in various organizations sheds light on the close
relationship between this “unique” group and its geo-historical context.
55 For example, see Chiba Shigeo, Gendai bijutsu itsudatsushi 1945-1985 (A History of Deviation
in Contemporary Art 1945-1985) (Tokyo: Shôbunsha, 1986).
xxxix

End of War: Rejecting the Old
On August 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s recorded speech,
announcing Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers was broadcast
nationwide. It was the end of the Fifteen Year War that had devastated the
country and its people (not to mention other Asian countries). Listening to the
broadcast, forty-year-old modernist painter Yoshihara Jirô was moved to tears in
a rural village where he had taken refuge from the air raids. Throughout the war,
Japanese people were rigorously indoctrinated with the claim that Japan’s
“divine” power would defeat the Allied Powers and would conquer the “eight
corners of the universe.” Most Japanese were convinced of the country’s
eventual victory, and so could endure an impoverished life and human sacrifice.
The Emperor’s speech shattered not only their hopes but also more
fundamentally, the foundation of their lives – the very truth that they had lived for
and believed in for many years. Like Yoshihara, many Japanese wept in front of
radio sets on that hot summer day. Yet soon they realized that the “official”
messages that the wartime government had used were full of euphemisms,
fabrications and false facts. It is significant that these facts were revealed by the
real voice of the Emperor, whose divinity was stripped away at the end of war.56
This historic moment was viewed by Japanese as the end of the old era
and the start of a new one. As soon as the numerous wartime restrictions were
removed and people overcame the initial confusion, the desire to deny and reject
rules, regulations, existing systems, hierarchies, and languages became
56Japanese civilians had never heard the Emperor’s voice until the broadcast on August 15,
1945. John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 1999), 33.
xl

widespread.57 The arrival of the Occupation Army, which consisted mainly of
American military and civilian personnel profoundly influenced this sentiment.
Armored with a zealous mission to convert “fascistic” Japanese militants into
democratic citizens, the Americans effected the writing of a new constitution, anti-
zaibatsu (financial monopolies) campaigns, and numerous reforms of prewar
systems including land ownership and labor relations.
In the social realm, defiance against the old systems was shown most
dramatically in the organization of labor unions in the workplace. To challenge
managerial authority and to build their autonomy in critical decisions concerning
safety, salary, equal opportunities, and secure career path, laborers throughout
Japan began an intensive union movement. Union membership increased from
about 5,000 in October 1945 to nearly 5 million by December 1946, and through
June 1946 157,000 union members engaged in 255 instances of “production
control” (seisan kanri 生産管理), locking out managers and running “their”
enterprises on their own when demands for wages and the “democratization” of
the workplace were denied.58 Although the movement for production control was
quickly restricted due to fears of socialist revolution on the part of the Supreme
Command of the Allied Powers (SCAP), the laborers in many workplaces gained
the right to negotiate in labor-management joint councils.59
57Some women put on red lipstick and wore flamboyant dresses on the night of August 15; the
makeup and unpractical clothes were considered too luxurious and decadent during the war.
Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture,
1945-1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 53.
58 Andrew Gordon, “Contests for the Workplace” in Andrew Gordon ed., Postwar Japan as
History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 378.
59 Ibid., 379. According to Andrew Gordon, those councils were formed in as many as two-thirds
of all unionized firms by the middle of 1946.
xli

In the cultural sphere, the sentiment of rejecting preexisting systems and
hierarchies surfaced as two inter-related forms. One was the emergence of a
younger generation that openly claimed initiative in constructing ideas, literature,
and art for the new era. These people, between their twenties and early forties,
shared a generational sentiment of victimization – they felt that the war had
deprived them of many years of work at an important phase of their careers.
Many of them were disillusioned with the opportunistic attitudes of the older
generation, who had supported leftist movement in the 1930s, then switched to
collaborate with the wartime regime, and after Japan’s defeat, “converted” once
again to hail the democratic “revolution” brought by the Allied Powers.
Representative of this younger generation, Ara Masato was a member of the
influential new literary group Kindai Bungaku (Modern Literature), which primarily
consisted of novelists in their thirties. He showed his resentment toward the older
generation that had betrayed the idealism in his “first” youth, claiming that only
the younger generation (especially those in their 30s) had the right and power to
reestablish peace for mankind because they had experienced both times of
optimism and despair: “We the people in our thirties, are the intelligentsia who
flew on wings of idealism in the days of youth, and who were beaten against the
walls of reality by the storm of Fascism.”60
60 Ara Masato, “Dai ni no seishun” (The Second Youth), Kindai Bungaku (Feburary 1946),
reprinted in Hidaka Rokurô ed., Sengo nihon shisô taikei 1: Sengo shisô no shuppatsu
(Chronicles of Postwar Thoughts in Japan 1: Beginning of Postwar Thoughts) (Tokyo: Chikuma
Shobô, 1968), 355. Also, see Tsuzuki Tsutomu, Sengo nihon no chishikijin: Maruyama Masao to
sono jidai (Postwar Japanese Intellectuals: Maruyama Masao and His Era) (Tokyo: Seori Shobô,
1995), 107.
xlii

The second prominent phenomenon was a burgeoning of interdisciplinary
groups that intended to increase communications between different fields, to
pursue collaborative work, and in some cases to promote the welfare of their
members. The Peace Problems Symposium Group (Heiwa Mondai Danwakai;
established in 1948), a group that took an important role in organizing a
movement against American military policies, was premised on the strong ties
among scholars and intellectuals beyond their specialties. The active members of
the group were in their 30s and 40s. In the realm of cultural production, the
younger generation, who was dissatisfied with prewar literary and exhibition
groups, played a central role in organizing new ones. In the art world, the most
ambitious group was the Japan Art Association (the Nihon Bijutsu-kai),
established in April 1946 in Tokyo. The group was intended to be an artists’
union, influenced by the ideologies of Marxism and the Communist Party. At its
inaugural meeting, the Japan Art Association formed branches to discuss
individually such issues as securing a living wage for artists, democratic ways of
organizing exhibitions, and art education for the public.61 The Japan Art
Association also defied the traditional art exhibition system that consisted of the
juried art competition for the government-run public exhibition, Nihon Bijutsu
Tenrankai (Japan Art Exhibition), known by its abbreviated title, Nitten, and
exhibition groups, including Nika-kai. Instead, in 1948, they organized the non-
61Haryû Ichirô, Sengo bijtusu seisui shi (The Rise and Fall of Postwar Japanese Art) (Tokyo:
Tokyo Shoseki, 1979), 38.
xliii

juried Japan Indépendent Exhibition (Nihon Andepandan ten), calling for artists’
entries regardless of medium, style, position, or group affiliation.62
Many modernist artists joined a group called the Japan Avant-garde Artists
Club (the Nihon Abangyarudo Bijutsuka Kurabu), established in 1947. This group
aimed at providing modernist artists with an alternative place to show their works
outside formal organizations. The Japan Avant-garde Artists Club therefore
existed mainly for organizing alternative exhibition venues.63 A group called Night
Group (Yoru-no-kai) was more loosely organized. It aimed at providing an
informal discussion arena for not only artists but also art and literary critics and
novelists. Started in 1948 by literary critic Hanada Kiyoteru and one of the most
vocal modernist artists of the early postwar period, Okamoto Tarô (who was also
62 The rejection of hierarchical relations and structures was not a concern particular to the early
postwar period in the Japanese art community. From the 1910s, numerous exhibition groups
were established to challenge the authority of spring and fall Bunten (Monbushô Bijutsu Tenrankai
“Art Exhibition sponsored by the Ministry of Education”). Among them was the Nika-kai. For a
discussion of the emergence of exhibition groups in the 1910s and 1920s, see Kawakita and
Takashina, Kindai nihon kaigashi, 195-207. Also, the desire to remove boundaries between art
and the masses was already significant in the activities of avant-garde artists in the early 1920s.
The artists of the group Mavo exhibited their works at cafes and restaurants as they thought such
venues were closer to the public. They also engaged in the reconstruction of the city of Tokyo
after the Great Kanto Earthquake on September 1, 1923, by entering designs for the architectural
design show, and actually designing facades of shops. For a discussion of the Mavo, see Omuka
Toshiharu, Taishôki shinkô bijutsu undô no kenkyû (A Study of the New Art Movements of the
Taishô Period) (Tokyo: Sukaidoa, 1995), and Gennifer Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and
the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
In the art world of the early postwar period, however, the tendency to reject hierarchy was
expressed more often. The Nitten (Nihon Bijutsu Tenrankai, “Japan Art Exhibition”) – the new
name of the government-sponsored exhibition Bunten – was under severe criticism for its
academism and conservatism. After the ill-fated attempt to “democratize” the selection process by
appointing new juries from oppositional groups such as the Nika-kai in the fall of 1946, there was
a heated discussion in the art community about whether they would abolish the Nitten altogether.
Many people regarded the Nitten as a hindrance to the art community as it tried to reconstruct
itself. The Occupation government ordered the reform of the Nitten in July 1948. See Mizusawa
Sumio, “Tenrankai to iumono eno gimon” (Questioning the “Exhibition”), Atorie (Atelier) 268 (May
1949). At the same time, the aspiration for closer involvement with the public was more
widespread than the isolated activities of the group Mavo in the 1920s. Simultaneously, the desire
to communicate with artists in other fields was more conspicuous in the early postwar era.
63 While these two groups were based in Tokyo, Yoshihara Jirô was one of the representatives of
the Japan Avant-garde Artists Club, along with Okamoto.
xliv
a member of the Nika-kai and the Japan Avant-garde Artists Club), Night Group
facilitated lively discussions among young people from literary and visual art
fields. Both the Japan Avant-garde Artists Club and Night Group were fertile
ground for artistic experiments integrating literary and visual arts.64 Since most of
the artists in these interdisciplinary groups continued to belong to traditional
exhibition groups, alternative movements did not fundamentally change the
exhibition system. However, they had sown the seeds for the future disintegration
of the system in the mid-1950s, when works started to be shown at solo
exhibitions of individual artists or groups (without juried competition) and at
Indépendent exhibitions.
As part of the rejection of old systems and wartime experience, the
reaction against ideologies, theories and abstract ideas was widespread among
Japanese. As people came to know the “truths” and “realities” of Japan’s
disastrous state that were hidden behind euphemisms of wartime ideologues,
they desired to grasp facts in direct and “concrete” (gutai teki 具体的) ways. A
radio program to reveal “truths” of the war years, Truth Box (Shinsô Bako) gained
great popularity in the mid- to late- 1940s.65 In popular culture, this sentiment was
most vividly expressed as the veneration of the bare human body and desire, as
64 Jikken Kôbô (Experimental Workshop), an interdisciplinary group which created works

integrating visual art, music, poetry and theater, came out of young artists gathered in these two
groups. From Night Group (by 1949 the name was changed to Abangyarudo Geijutsu Kenkyûkai
[Avantgarde Art Study Group]. Many young novelists, critics, and artists who participated in Night
Group became prominent in the postwar culture. The regular members included Noma Hiroshi,
Shiina Rinzô, Sasaki Kiichi, Haryû Ichirô, Kitashiro Shôzô, Yamaguchi Katsuhiro, Segi Shin’ichi,
Teshigahara Hiroshi, and Abe Kôbô. For details, see Haryû. Sengo bijtusu seisui shi, 61-64 and
Satani Kazuhiko, Jikken Kôbô to Takiguchi Shûzô (Jikken Kôbô and Takiguchi Shûzô) (Tokyo:
Satani Garô, 1991).
65 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 243.
xlv

in the so-called “carnal literature” (nikutai bungaku 肉体文学), pulp magazines,
and erotic performance.66 Popular novelists such as Sakaguchi Ango mingled
with people in red light districts and black markets to literally pursue the life of
desire. Historian John Dower analyzes Sakaguchi’s “On Decadence” (published
in April 1946) in the light of the contrasts between pre- and postwar:
Although “healthy” and “wholesome,” were treasured words of the wartime

ideologues and censors, the world so described had in actuality been
morbidly sick. In contrast, to be decadent and immoral was truthful,
realistic – and supremely human. Only by starting with a humble attitude
toward decadence could people begin to imagine a new, more genuine
morality.67
Yet at the same time, as the wartime imperial ideology collapsed and
American democratic ideals affected every aspect of life, people eagerly looked
for “ideas” that could provide a fundamental, philosophical structure for the
construction of a new future out of the political and social chaos. Marxism and
communism attracted many Japanese of various social statuses, ages, and
backgrounds, including day laborers, intellectuals, young and old, men and
women. To many ordinary citizens, communists who resisted the wartime regime
and who were imprisoned or expatriated were great models of integrity and
political authenticity. For intellectuals, Marxism offered a theoretical and scientific
framework to explain the war in terms of feudal remnants, capitalist
contradictions and class struggle. Marxism and the Communist Party were
viewed as sources of clear, secular, universal principles that transcended the
66 Ibid., 148-162.
67 Ibid., 157.
xlvi
disastrous, arbitrary values of the imperial state.68 At the same time, the idea of
democracy that backed the actual democratizing measures implemented by the
Allied Powers found fervent supporters, as well.
In Japanese people’s desire to find a new theoretical structure, there was
a concerted effort not to make “ideas” devoid of substance. Massive numbers of
workers and ordinary citizens gathered at the May Day demonstrations on May 1,
1946, described by American journalist Mark Gain in the following terms: “… the
great demonstration – the joy, the freedom, the potent – was the best tribute we
have yet had to the brand of democracy we had brought to this feudal land.”69
The desire to actively participate in and to become an agent of a movement was
very strong.
Intellectuals and thinkers shared the same desire as the general public. In
their case, they had a strong feeling of remorse for the pre and interwar era,
when they could not exert a significant force to challenge the abuse of imperial
ideology and helplessly resigned themselves to silence.70 The magazine Sekai
(World) was launched in 1946 in the hope of forging stronger ties between
intellectuals and the general public. It published many essays by the political
thinker Maruyama Masao, whose concept of human subjectivity became
influential in early postwar culture; Maruyama’s essays also served as the vehicle
for organizing the Peace Problems Symposium Group in 1948, which initiated a
significant movement against Japan’s security alliance with the United States.
68 Ibid., 235-236.
69 Mark Gain, Japan Diary (Tokyo: the Charles E. Tuttle, 1981), 199-200.
70 Tsuzuki, Sengo nihon no chishikijin: Maruyama Masao to sono jidai, 160-161.
xlvii
Sociologists Tsurumi Shunsuke and Minami Hiroshi established the Institute for
the Science of Thought (Shisô no Kagaku Kenkyûjo) and published the journal
Shisô no Kagaku (Science of Thought), in order to create a space where
academics and intellectuals from various fields could do research together as
citizens, and act with other citizens.71 Many intellectuals also participated in
public lectures and became instructors for newly established adult education
schools and classes to seek more direct connection with the masses.72
Artists also despised abstract ideas and sought ways to engage the
general public. At the most visible level, many modernist artists – including
Yoshihara – abandoned the abstract style and adopted a more representational
style to depict human figures suffering in dire conditions during and after the war.
Yet more fundamentally, the rise of social consciousness led many artists to
reject the reclusive, bohemian attitude of an artist making art for art’s sake, and
to get involved directly with the public through lectures and art education for
adults and children. Some artists became teachers at “painting clubs” for blue
collar workers in factories and companies. These “painting clubs” burgeoned
nationwide, and became a national movement called “art at the work place”
(shokuba bijutsu 職場美術), which organized exhibitions at such premier
museums as the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art and published their own
71 Andrew Barshay, “Postwar Social and Political Thought, 1945-90” in Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi
ed., Modern Japanese Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 305-306.
72 Ibid., 307. Some scholars actually chose to live with farmers and outcast class (burakumin) to
study their consciousness. See Arase Yutaka, “Sengo shisô to sono tenkai” (Postwar Thought
and Its Development) in Itô Sei et.al eds., Kindai Nihon shisôshi kôza 1: Rekishiteki gaikan
(Lectures of History of Modern Japanese Thought 1: Historical Survey) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobô,
1959), 363-364.
xlviii
journal.73 Other artists facilitated art classes for children, often outside of the
school system. Rather than teaching technical skills, these artists aimed to
nurture children’s self-expression and natural creativity, long suppressed in the
rigorous wartime school curriculum, which was geared toward training subjects to
be loyal to the imperial state. Modernist artists became judges and teachers at
children’s art competitions and programs. A modernist artist, Kitagawa Tamiji,
organized informal, outside art classes for children at a zoo in Nagoya.74
Reverse Course: The Issue of Subjectivity And Japan’s Regained

Independence
The sense of optimism that these activities and phenomena of the
immediate postwar period embodied – in labor movements, the rise of younger
generations in the cultural arena, the construction of new ideologies,
interdisciplinary groups, and child and adult education – became seriously
threatened by a series of political events between 1949 and 1952. By 1947, the
American government’s policy toward occupied Japan had begun to shift due to
the increasing tension between the Soviet Union and the United States, and
concerns about the tax burdens of the occupation on the American public. The
SCAP took measures to prevent Japan’s internal economic collapse and political
shift to the left that might have allowed a socialist/communist party to gain power.
73 Bijutsu Kenkyûjo ed., Nihon bijutsu nenkan, Shôwa 22 - 26 nen ban (Art Almanac of Japan,
Shôwa 22 – 26 [1947-1951] Edition) (Tokyo: Insatsuchô, 1952), 25-26. Also see Sanami Hajime,
“Kinrôsha to bijutsu” (Workers and Art), Bijutsu Techô no. 17 (May 1949), 46-47. According to
Sanami Hajime, the national organization of painting clubs Council of Art at Work Place (Shokuba
Bijutsu Kyôgikai) amounted 150 clubs and more than 2000 members. Ibid., 46.
74Kitagawa Tamiji, “Atarashii jidô bijutsu no jikken” (New Experiments of Children’s Art), Mizue
no. 533 (March 1950), 59-64.
xlix
Many democratization policies, such as trade union laws and the anti-zaibatsu
campaign, were revised or terminated, while purges of communists and socialists
resumed. Moves were also made to rearm Japan.75 As the signing of the partial
San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Security Treaty in 1951 approached and the
economy greatly benefited from the military demands of the Korean War
(1950-1953), Japan’s “reverse course” cast a dark shadow on many Japanese
who believed they had just been emancipated from the recent war.
Under these circumstances, when Japan’s political autonomy in world
politics was questioned, the issue of subjectivity (shutaisei 主体性) became a
leading topic in the intellectual and cultural arena. Since the end of the war, many
cultural protagonists had defied old systems and values and sought to construct
new intellectual and cultural models. A key concept in this process was the
autonomous individual resistant to co-optation by the state, totalitarianism, or
conventional ties and connections, and conscious of his or her creative role. The
issue of subjectivity in the late 1940s and early 1950s emerged from this interest
in a strong sense of an autonomous self, that directed its own historical destiny.76
In debates, essays, speeches, where the terms “shutai” (subject; 主体) and
“shutaisei” (subjectivity) often appeared to describe the nation’s current political
situation, there was an underlying concern that political and social creation and
action could not function without human agency.77 This emphasis on autonomy of
75 Paul Bailey, Postwar Japan: 1945 to the Present (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 52-64.
76See Rikki Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan: Maruyama Masao and the Search for
Autonomy (London: Routledge, 1996), 78.
77 Ibid., 49.
the individual, as it emerged in early postwar consciousness can be called a
discourse of “human subjectivity.” As I will discuss below, this discourse of human
subjectivity was a significant part of much of Japanese ideas and movements
and of intellectual, literal and art works produced in early postwar Japan.78
Some of the most powerful manifestations of the discourse of human
subjectivity appeared in the language of grassroots movements against the
threat of the re-militarization of Japan, such as the construction of American
military bases and rearmament in the early 1950s. These movements backed the
rise of the Social Party (Shakaitô), which addressed these issues, as a significant
political opposition to prime minister Yoshida Shigeru’s conservative, pro-
American government. The theoretical backbone of these movements was an
influential statement published in March 1949 by the Peace Problems
Symposium Group (Heiwa Mondai Danwakai) comprising four proposals:
implementation of a total peace treaty; no partial peace treaty in exchange for
economic independence; neutrality and membership in the United Nations; no
military bases for other countries on Japanese soil. In a subsequent statement
titled “Statement of the Peace Problems Symposium Group Regarding Peace
Treaty Issues” published in January 1951, the group called upon the Japanese
public to take a subjective position, regardless of U.S. pressure and the
apparently conformist position of the conservative Japanese government:
78 Interest in human subjectivity was not limited to Japan. Intellectuals and artists in Germany
also engaged in reconstructing human subjectivity through their work after the collapse of Nazi
totalitarianism and the disillusionment with modern rationality. See Yule F. Heibel, Reconstructing
the Subject: Modernist Painting in Western Germany, 1945-1950 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1995), 1-2.
li
Yet again, as we regret that we lost the chance to determine our own
destiny at the beginning of the war, we now desire to determine our
destiny by our own hands. … Probably anyone would agree that the
occupation by the Allied Powers has been crucial in democratization and
establishing a foundation for Japan. However, there is absolutely no doubt
that further development of democratization in Japan is possible only if the
Japan’s people themselves take full responsibility and apply their own
creative spirit to the task.79
This passage from the statement shows the members’ strong determination to
take an active role at that historical moment in determining the future of their own
county.
The Peace Problems Symposium Group and its statement were the fruit of
an ongoing effort by intellectuals to express ideas and argument in concrete
form, and to engage the general public. One of the members, political historian
Maruyama Masao, through his numerous publications in the immediate postwar
period, tried to articulate the eminence of subjectivity in an individual. He
positioned the “human being” of the subjective mind as the base of the modern
political system.80 To explain Japanese submission to a “fascist” regime during
the war, Maruyama posited that subjectivity with a modern spirit (kindai seishin 近
代精神) had never fully matured in pre- and wartime Japanese society. He
argued that this was due to the political system, where the emperor was the
center of power and ethics. Without the establishment of subjectivity among
Japanese individuals, Maruyama said, this systemic pattern in politics would
79 “Kôwa mondai ni tsuiteno Heiwa Mondai Danwa kai seimei” (Statement of the Peace Problems
Symposium Group Regarding Peace Treaty Issues), Sekai (March 1950), cited in Tsuzuki, Sengo
nihon no chishikijin: Maruyama Masao to sono jidai, 161-162.
80 Ibid., 146.
lii

continue. Circumstances in 1951 led Maruyama to fear that Japan would once
again take a familiar course. Yet unlike the interwar period, Maruyama and other
intellectuals in the group took the initiative to organize a movement to fight the
trend.
The discourse of human subjectivity was also the key concept in cultural
representation. The celebration of the human body and raw sexuality in “carnal
literature” seemed sensational and scandalous, but in its rhetoric it championed a
sense of an autonomous self who could act independently from social
constraints. In visual art, the interest in human subjectivity was vividly indicated in
images of human figures. Some artists at the end of war represented a sentiment
of confused, dark era through human figures, as in Tsuruoka Masao’s Heavy
Hands (Figure 11). Others, like Kazuki Yasuo, depicted images of ordinary
people and soldiers suffering and struggling during war and defeat (Figure 12).
Many modernist artists, including Yoshihara Jirô, who worked mainly in abstract
styles in the 1930s, also represented human figures, and were deeply influenced
by Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937; Figure 13), a monumental anti-war
painting.81
Modernist Art at Stake
In Japan’s dynamic changes of the mid-1940s and early 1950s, many
intellectuals and ordinary citizens worked eagerly to make their voices heard and
81Yamamoto Atsuo, “V. Tori to hito no jidai” (V. Period of Birds and Human Figures) in Ashiya City
Museum of Art & History, Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten (Retrospective Exhibition of
Yoshihara Jirô) (Ashiya, 1992), 88.
liii
have an influence on the course of Japan. At the base of their action was a
strong aspiration to reject preexisting systems and values and to take part in
determining the country’s future, here referred to here as the discourse of human
subjectivity. In conjunction with contemporary cultural production, modernist
artists were an integral part of this discourse through their organization of
interdisciplinary groups, adult and youth education, and representation of human
figures and experience. Modernist art was immensely popular in the early
postwar era both for its sense of newness and because its styles were
considered antidotes to realistic and ideologically-charged art. Even the
Japanese government considered modernist art to be representative of
contemporary Japanese art and sent such works to international exhibitions. Yet
as its popularity grew, criticism against modernist art grew as well. Despite their
efforts to incorporate humanist subjects, modernist works and artists were
criticized for their omission of human content. Also, because historically
Japanese modernist art had developed by adopting new styles derived in
Europe, their practice was considered to lack subjectivity. Many critical artists in
the practice sought to find ways to answer to these criticisms.
Modernist art practice in Japan – which entailed a wide variety of styles
such as surrealist, Fauvist, Cubist and expressionistic abstraction, and non-
figurative styles – was largely suppressed in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as
Japan’s involvement in the war intensified. Modernist artists were oppressed by
the wartime government for their adherence to the liberalism of Japan’s Western
enemies, as well as for their aesthetic concerns seen as “unrealistic” for a
liv

country at war. In his memoir, Yoshihara Jirô recalled the difficult circumstances
as a modernist artist during wartime:
…Now, paintings other than war pictures were considered “play,” an

unthinkable act which had to be disregarded for the emergent situation.
After the 1941 exhibition of the Nika-kai (“group of the second section”), a
certain information officer of the Army in a roundtable discussion of Mizue
[art magazine] stated the following: “I went to the Nika-kai’s exhibition
today again, and found unpatriotic people (hikokumin 非国民), who
playfully draw circles and triangles.” That was quite bizzare. [Exhibition
group] Jiyû Bijutsu [Kyôkai] was ordered disbanded; Hasegawa Saburô
was harshly interrogated. In Tokyo, Takiguchi Shûzô had to spend several
weeks in jail only because he was a liberal. The only artists who painted
circles and triangles at that year’s Nika exhibition were perhaps
Yamaguchi Takeo and I.82
The government restricted the availability of art materials for artists reluctant to
cooperate with the war effort; modernist artists either became producers of war
painting or stopped practicing altogether.
Thus, the end of war and the removal of pressures and restrictions were
more than welcome to modernist artists. Major exhibitions groups, including the
Nika-kai and Shin Seisaku-ha Kyôkai (Association of New Creation School),
quickly re-organized and resumed their annual competitions. As early as the fall
of 1945 Yoshihara received news from the postwar leader of Nika-kai, Tôgô Seiji,
that the exhibition group had been re-organized and Tôgô appointed Yoshihara to
82Yoshihara Jirô, “Waga kokoro no jijoden, 5” (Autobiography of My Heart, 5), Kôbe Shinbun, 2
July 1967, reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 200.
lv

be the branch representative of the Nika-kai group in Osaka.83 The group held
their first exhibition of the postwar period in 1946, when a large part of Japan was
still in ruins and its people in the midst of shortages of food and everyday goods.
Parallel to the re-establishment of these prewar organizations, some modernist
artists started more democratic, interdisciplinary groups like the Japan Art
Association (Nihon Bijutsu-kai) and the Night Group (Yoru-no-kai), as discussed
above.
As prewar modernist artists returned to production, modernist styles
became a major current in the art community in Japan. Aspiring young artists and
art students embraced modernist art styles as media through which to represent
their lives and feelings during a chaotic time when distress and optimism
mingled. To many artists and exhibition goers, the serene picture plane and
subject matter of Japanese-style painting (nihonga 日本画) did not reflect the
realities of Japan, and straight-forward depiction of realistic style in some
western-style painting (yôga 洋画) seemed insufficient for expressing
complexities and contradictions of their reality.84 Moreover, the latest ideas and
arts from former enemy countries – which were all suppressed during wartime –
83 “Nika” (二科) literary means “second section.” In 1913, some young painters, discontented with
the judge’s selection at the Monbushô Bijutsu Tenrankai (Bunten; the art exhibition organized by
the Ministry of Education), asked for a new (“second”) section to be established for painting of
newer tendency. Their request was rejected, and the young painters formed the Nika-kai (the
Association of the Second Section). Their first exhibition was held in October 1914, to coincide
intentionally with the fall exhibition of Bunten. See Kawakita Rinmei and Takashina Shûji, Kindai
nihon kaigashi (Modern Japanese History of Painting) (Tokyo: Chûô Kôronsha, 1978), 200-203.
For an English source, see Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931,
22.
84Hijikata Teiichi, “Shisô to gijutsu no sakuhin wo – Hon’nendo bijutsukai no kaiko” (Create

Works with Strong Basis of Ideas and Techniques – Review of This Year’s Art World), Mainichi
Shinbun, December 25, 1951. Reprinted in Hijikata Teiichi, Bijutsu hihyô 1946-1980 (Tokyo:
Keibunsha), 177-178.
lvi

looked refreshing, as well as the ideas of Western liberalism associated with the
style. The edition of Nihon bijutsu nenkan (Art Almanac of Japan) covering 1947
– 1951 reports that starting around 1948 a substantial number of works of “avant-
garde tendency” (zen’ei teki keikô 前衛的傾向), such as surrealism and
abstraction, were exhibited in art competitions and appeared in the pages of art
magazines.85 Conversely, the almanac also reported the dramatic decline of the
popularity of Japanese-style painting, which was hailed in the nationalist milieu of
the interwar years, especially among the younger generations. It was telling that,
in 1948, applicants for the Japanese-style painting department at the prominent
Tokyo National School of Art exceeded available places by only one person.86
Modernist art also assumed an important role in building Japan’s new
image as a “nation of culture” (bunka kokka 文化国家) which both the Japanese
government and cultural sector hoped to promote. To project to the international
community the image of a nation of democratic, antimilitaristic principles,
“Construct a Nation of Culture” (Bunka Kokka Kensetsu 文化国家建設) became a
national slogan along with “Construct a Nation of Peace” (Heiwa Kokka Kensetsu
平和国家建設).87 The emphasis on culture, not politics, in Japan’s new national
identity was necessarily neutral, to cover up the recent history of Japan’s imperial
project and its shift from the United States’ enemy to its ally.88 For example, the
85 Nihon bijutsu nenkan, Shôwa 22 - 26 nen ban, 15.
86 Ibid., 14.
87 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 176-177.
88 Igarashi, Bodies of Memory, 73.
lvii

promotion of traditional art crafts for foreign consumption, such as textiles,
ceramics and lacquer wares, was a convenient medium to project the continuity
of Japanese culture (during wartime regarded as a deviation from tradition). Later
in the 1950s, major exhibitions of premodern art were organized and traveled in
the United States and European countries.89 Yet equally important was showing
“current” visual arts of Japan proving the continuity of the vital tradition of cultural
production. The first public museum of modern art opened in Kamakura,
Kanagawa Prefecture, in 1951, and the first national museum of modern art in
the following year. Although these museums covered visual arts produced since
the Taishô era (1911-1925), they exhibited many contemporary works of
Japanese modernist artists. Most symbolically, the Emperor and Empress visited
the 1947 exhibition of the Association of Art Groups (Bijutsu Dantai Rengô),
which was comprised of works selected from major modernist artist groups.
The presence of modernist art became even more important for Japan’s
“nation of culture” discourse in the early 1950s, as the approach of the end of the
occupation enabled more frequent cultural exchanges in the forms of exhibitions
and migrating artists. Large exhibitions of modern European masters, such as
Pablo Picasso (1951), Henri Matisse (1951), and Georges Braque (1952), came
to Japan and drew significant audiences. In particular, an exhibition that featured
a group of contemporary French painters belonging to the Salon de Mai (May
Salon) – Salon de Mai in Japan [Saron do me (mei)] Nihon ten; February 1951) –
89 Exhibition of Japanese Painting and Sculpture traveled in 1953 to National Gallery of Art,
Washington; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Art
Institute of Chicago; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle. A similar exhibition of premodern art was
organized and traveled to France, England, the Netherlands, and Italy in 1957 and 1958.
lviii

was received with great enthusiasm. Once Japan regained its sovereignty, the
Japanese art community received invitations to international art exhibitions,
including the Venice Biannual, the Sao Paulo Biannual, and the Carnegie
International. Japan also inaugurated the International Art Exhibition in Japan
(Nihon kokusai bijutsu ten) in 1952 and invited six countries.90 Established
modernist painters Fujita Tsuguharu and Okada Kenzô moved to Paris (1949)
and New York (1951) respectively; and from the younger generation, Imai
Toshimitsu and Dômoto Hisao, who would become important bridges between
Gutai and the Informel movement after 1957, went to study in Paris in 1952. Art
critic Hijikata Teiichi observed in 1951 that the year was “epochal” in the sense
that the Japanese art community and people for the first time after the war began
in a demonstrable way to contemplate the place of Japanese contemporary art
within the world.91
Although modernist art gained great popularity and occupied a significant
position in the formation of the new national identity, it also suffered criticism. The
most common criticism heard in early postwar was that modernist artists ignored
humanistic concerns. In a sense, the criticism itself showed how important this
issue was in the early postwar consciousness. In the late 1940s, artists and
critics aligned with the Japan Communist Party (JCP) accused modernist art of
being nothing more than “art for art’s sake,” having no connection to the lives of
real people. JCP theorist Kurahara Korehito attacked modernist art as the pursuit
90They were France, USA, Italy, Belgium, Brazil, and Great Britain, all signatories to the San
Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951 with Japan.
91 Hijikata, “Shisô to gijutsu no sakuhin wo,” 178.
lix

of individualism, which ignored social objectives and universal morality and thus
denied social duty and responsibility. He argued that modernism negated
humanism.92 In a famous debate in February 1949, Okamoto Tarô, a polemic
modernist artist and Yoshihara’s colleague at Nika-kai, stressed that modernist
art works strongly reflected artists’ lives, in response to JCP member artist
Uchida Iwao’s criticism of modernist painting’s indifference to the lives of people.
Okamoto argued that art was not science or politics: it should aim to present the
complexity of reality, and not just reality as construed in the social realism to
which Uchida adhered. This debate drew significant attention in the intellectual
and art communities, however, it did not reconcile the difference between
modernist artists’ emphasis on individual expressions and JCP’s support of social
realism, with its view that art had to serve social and political objectives.93
In the early 1950s, similar criticism of modernist art arose within modernist
art circles. Art critics, mainly from the new generation who were students during
the war and started their career critiquing modernist art in the early 1950s,
understood humanism to be an important element in modernist works, yet
questioned the “quality” of their humanism. They regarded the majority of works
as confined to individualistic interests and not successful in expressing
“universal” humanism. Haryû Ichirô (b. 1925), one of the most active art critics of
the new generation, criticized many works produced in 1953 for romanticizing
92Victor Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1996), 206-207.
93Okamoto Tarô, Uchida Iwao, and Imaizumi Atsuo, “Atarashii bijutsu towa nanika: Yomiuri
Shinbunsha shusai tôronkai” (What is New Art?: Debate Organized by Yomiuri Newspapers),
Yomiuri Kôdô (Yomiuri Auditorium), 19 Feburary 1949, transcribed in Mizue no. 522 (May 1949),
33-37.
lx

feelings shared within a certain group or family, and failing to incorporate
universal humanism. He urged artists to abandon these kinds of sentimental
feelings and subjectively “challenge” society and reality. Haryû termed this
attitude real “humanism.”94 Another young critic, Segi Shin’ichi (b. 1928), wrote
an essay in 1953 titled “Kaiga ni okeru ningen no mondai” (The Issue of the
Human in Painting) in which he argued that humanism and the individuality of an
artist had to be unified to establish a “model” human being on the picture plane.95
For these critics, humanism related not only to subject matter, but also the
subjective attitude and approach of the artists who were producing these works.
In that sense, the discourse of human subjectivity was an important criterion in
their critique of modernist art.96
In addition to the lack of humanism, modernist art was also criticized for its
derivative origin and thus lack of cultural authenticity. This criticism intensified in
the early 1950s as international cultural exchange increased and members of the
Japanese art community became more aware of their position in the world. The
introduction of the works by European modernist masters such as Pablo Picasso
94 Haryû Ichirô in “[Zadankai] Shimohanki bijutsukaii wo hihan suru” ([Roundtable discussion]

Criticizing the Art World of the Latter Half of 1953), Bijutsu Hihyô 23 (November 1953), 16.
95Segi Shin’ichi, response to Ikeda Masuo, Bijutsu Hihyô 25 (January 1954), cited in Segi
Shin’ichi, Sengo kûhakuki no bijutsu (Art in the Blank Era after the War) (Tokyo: Shichôsha,
1996), 211-212. Ikeda Masuo, then an art student, was to become a well known artist and
novelist. Also see Segi Shin’ichi, “Kaiga ni okeru ningen no mondai” (The Issue of Human in
Painting), Bijutsu Hihyô 23 (November 1953), 37-46.
96 Abstract style, especially non-figurative style, was also often criticized as too “formalist”
(keishiki shugi teki) and “decorative” (sôshoku teki) and thus considered lacking in humanistic
depth. In the critical apparatus of ningen, some sense of figural imagery was considered
essential. For example, Uemura Takachiyo cited some novelists’ criticism of abstract painting as
“disruptive” and “disconnected with reality.” Uemura Takachiyo, “Genjitsu to kakumei teki
romanchishizumu: Sakadachi shiteita kindai ishiki” (Art and Revolutionary Romanticism: Modern
Consciousness on Its Head),” Bijutsu Hihyô 6 (June 1952), 16.
lxi

and Henri Matisse, through reproductions in the late 1940s and blockbuster
exhibitions in 1951, brought a plethora of paintings similar to the works of
Picasso and Matisse in many modernist groups’ exhibitions. One critic
sarcastically called this phenomenon “Machiso” (a combination of the Japanese
reading of Matisse, “Machisu ,” and of Picasso, “Pikaso”), while another critic
observed it was “as if wearing ‘Aloha Shirts’” (Aroha shatsu teki ryûkô アロハシャ
ツ的狂騒).97
The depth of this concern was particularly visible in the hysterical reaction
of the art community to the report that art critic Imaizumi Atsuo wrote after he saw
Japanese modernist works at the Salon de Mai exhibition in Paris in May 1952.
In this report, Imaizumi frankly said that the Japanese paintings were completely
ignored by French critics; all looked murky and lifeless in comparison to works by
Parisian artists.98 Imaizumi wrote that the Japanese paintings struck him as
“impression of being sluggish, stagnant, and unable to move forward” which he
meant in both a metaphorical and a physical sense. According to him, Japanese
painting seemed to be irresolute and overworked. It seemed that Japanese
painters had lots of obstacles, from conception to execution to finish. As a
Japanese painter worked and reworked, the plane of the picture assumed this
97 Segi Shin’ichi, Sengo kûhakuki no bijutsu, 74 and Funato Kô, “Nika, Kôdô, Shinseisaku-ha,
Sôzô Bijutsu” (Reviews of Exhibition Groups: Nika-kai, Kôdô Bijutsu Kyôkai, Shinseisaku-ha
Kyôkai, and Sôzô Bijutsu Kyôkai) in Bijutsu Techô no. 11 (November 1948), 60-61. “Aloha shirts”
refer to the fact that the trend can be added or removed as easily as wearing a shirt. Also, “aloha
shirts” connote the foreign origin of the style.
98For an English summary of Imaizumi’s report, see Bert Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of
Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early Postwar Years (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2002), 16. Because of the sensation that Imaizumi’s report created, the whole
phenomenon was called “Imaizumi Senpû” (Imaizumi whirlwind).
lxii
sluggish, stagnant appearance. He concluded his report by saying that this
sluggishness was the result of Japanese artists’ dependence on derivative styles,
and he urged Japanese artists to find their distinctive “form”: “To build the
modernism of Japanese art, first we must start walking independently from
French art.”99
Although the accusation of derivativeness had been an issue throughout
prewar times, Imaizumi’s accusation shook the art community at a time when
concern with subjectivity was especially heightened. This remark was made by a
Japanese art critic who saw first-hand the status of Japanese modernist art in the
world for the first time in the postwar period. Imaizumi, who would later be
appointed as assistant director of the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo
(Tokyo Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan), had been an influential critic in the art
community in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In reaction to his scathing
comments, artists and critics in Japan either uncritically agreed with Imaizumi, or
became defensive.100 Critics Tokudaiji Kimihide and Uemura Takachiyo argued
that it was shortsighted to generalize about the various tendencies in Japanese
contemporary painting; one needed to have a broad perspective to understand
the situation beyond just one exhibition. Another critic, Tominaga Sôichi, twisted
Imaizumi’s point and said Japanese painting had been characteristically without
character (museikaku 無性格). According to Tominaga, the strong master-student
99 Imaizumi Atsuo, “Nihon no bijutsukai ni uttaeru” (Protest to the Japanese Art Community),
Tokyo Shinbun, 1-2 August 1952, reprinted in Imaizumi Atsuo Chosakushû 2: Yôgaron, Kindai
nihon (Collected Essays of Imaizumi Atsuo 2: On Western-style Painting of Modern Japan)
(Tokyo: Kyûryûdô, 1979), 258-262.
100“Raundo Têburu: Saron do Me’e Nihon shuppin sakka wa kô kangaeru” (Roundtable:

Opinions from Japanese Participating Artists for the Salon de Mai), Bijutsu Hihyô 9 (September
1952), 2-15.
lxiii
relationship and Japanese artists’ tendency to chase after new stylistic
innovations from the West produced non-characteristic “Japanese” painting.101
These critics stressed the point that Japanese artists were doing what they could.
The concern with cultural authenticity had been a recurring issue in
modernist painting practice whenever Japan’s political autonomy had met serious
challenges in the past.102 Yet Japanese modernist artists and critics in the 1950s
had to face this question in relation to their subjective position within the
international art community for the first time. Unlike the pre-and interwar years,
when this question was debated mainly within the domestic arena, these artists
in the 1950s were expected to express “What is Japanese modernist art?” to an
international audience. Like the humanist critique, the problem of Japanese-ness
tied in closely with the issue of human subjectivity, and a lack of cultural
authenticity implied the lack of an autonomous position.
Thus, Japanese modernist artists confronted these two difficult questions:
how to incorporate human experience and presence and how to represent, or
simply indicate, Japanese-ness in their practice. One group of artists, including
those affiliated with Japan Communist Party, responded to the challenge by
taking subject matter from the numerous social conflicts that occurred in 1950s
Japan. Yamashita Kikuji’s The Tale of Akebono Village (Akebono Mura
Monogatari; Figure 14) used a surrealist technique – a montage of various
scenes in one picture. These scenes – the tragic suicide of an old woman whose
101Tominaga Sôichi and Tokudaiji Kimihide, “Dokuritsu, Niki, Jiyûbijutsu ten wo mite” (Reviews of
Dokuritsu, Niki, Jiyûbijutsu Exhibitions), Bijutsu Techô no. 63 (December 1952), 27-28.
102 For more detail, see Introduction.
lxiv
life savings had vanished due to her bank’s bankruptcy (her granddaughter
eating the mucous falling from the woman’s nostrils), a JCP underground activist
who died as a result of being chased by the police, and village people with fox
faces who would shamelessly betray fellow villagers for their own profit – were
depicted side by side in earthy tones to create a sense of gloominess that
surrounded this small village. Although based on real incidents, the village’s
generic name Akebono (Sunrise) suggests that this sort of tragedy occurred
everywhere in Japan. Nakamura Hiroshi’s Fifth District of Sunagawa (Sunagawa
Goban; Figure 15) was also based on an actual incident, a conflict between
farmers and police at the construction site for the expansion of an American
military base in Tachikawa, Tokyo. Influenced by the dynamic composition of
such Mexican muralists as David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, Nakamura
created a dramatic scene of the contestation between the two groups. Visually
contrasting police in black color and farmers in lighter color, inanimate and
agitated expressions, modern machines and premodern houses, the artist
effectively heightened the drama of this intense situation. Juxtaposition of a black
U.S. military airplane, a flock of crows, and the dark sky in the background seem
to connote Japan’s ominous future under U.S. hegemony. Utilizing modernist
styles of deformed, surrealistic images, these artists were trying to represent the
reality of the contemporary Japanese society, but not in a didactic, social realist
style. In that way, they sought to create new Japanese painting concerned with
human subjectivity.
lxv
Other modernist artists, especially those working with abstract and non-
figurative styles, found abstract forms of “primitive” and traditional Japanese art
appealing, and adopted them in their work. Initially, the artists’ discovery of
premodern art was the result of their interest in plastic aspects of those periods,
which emerged along with their interest in children’s art. They saw in premodern
and children’s art parallels with their own art in terms of a tendency toward
abstraction, a rejection of illusionism, an indifference to technical skillfulness, a
preference for primal colors, and a sense of spontaneity. However, as the issue
of Japanese-ness in visual art grew, modernist artists began to acknowledge that
premodern art, especially “primitive” art, could serve rhetorically to empower the
position of modernist artists. By emphasizing a plastic similarity between
modernist and “primitive” arts, some artists claimed that there were indigenous
characteristics in their modern work. Against the criticism of modernist art as
mere mimicry of Western-derived artistic styles, they could make the
counterclaim that their own roots lay in Japan. Better still, “primitive” art’s
chronological place in history gave more authenticity to their claims. Because
“primitive” art was created before the importation of Buddhist art in the eighth
century, artists like Suda Kokuta claimed that it had a “true, Japanese quality.”103
103 Suda Kokuta, in Yoshihara Jirô, et al., “[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu ni tsuite” ([Roundtable
discussion] On Contemporary Art), Ashiya Bijutsu 3 (May 1950), 5, reprinted in Ashiya City Art
Association and Ashiya City Museum of Art & History eds., Ashiya Shiten: 1948-1997 (The
History of Ashiya City Exhibition From 1948 to 1997) (Ashiya, 1997), n.p.
lxvi
In other words, “primitive” art was more authentically Japanese than the later
arts, which were greatly influenced by foreign cultures.104
One of the modernist artists who saw an intimate relationship between the
premodern and the practice of modernist art was Hasegawa Saburô. Greatly
inspired by Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, Hasegawa considered
Japanese premodern art a great source of “abstract” art forms that needed to be
studied and utilized by contemporary artists.105 Particularly, he was intrigued by
calligraphic practice, which was not only the art of abstracted forms, but also long
had been considered expressive of the personality and emotional state of the
calligrapher in China and Japan. He argued that the art of calligraphy, which had
been part of the Japanese tradition, preceded the experiments of the great
modern masters – Cézanne, Matisse, Kandinsky, and Mondrian – in the pursuit
of eliminating illusory depth and ultimately the representation of nature in
104 Both Bert Winther and Jonathan Reynolds point out that the rhetoric of many architects also
became nationalistic in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Many in the leftist opposition and liberals,
who supported the earlier reforms led by the American-led Allied Powers, were drawn to
traditions. Yet their use of tradition was selective: non-Chinese, non-authoritarian, and non-
“Western favorites”(such as Ukiyoe prints) were favored. Even the interpretation of one historical
object (such as the Ise Shrine) could be modified, whether one emphasizes its authoritarian
nature (being sponsored by the Imperial Family) or humanitarian and indigenous nature (the size,
style, and the materials). See Bert Winther, “Isamu Noguchi: Conflicts of Japanese Culture in the
Early Postwar Years,” Ph.D. Diss (New York: New York University, 1992), 87-89, and Jonathan M.
Reynolds, Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001), 214-219.
105 Noguchi visited Japan in May 1950 and stayed there for four months. During his stay, he
explored many aspects of Japanese tradition, conducted public lectures, and produced art works.
He also built friendly relationships with individuals in the Japanese art community. He became a
good friend of modernist painter Hasegawa Saburô, and through him got acquainted with other
modernist artists in the Kansai area, including Yoshihara, and avant-garde calligraphers of the
Bokujin-kai. Noguchi’s sculptures, which draw significant references from “primitive” art, and his
interpretation of past art from the modernist perspective gave fresh impetus to many Japanese
artists in their understanding of premodern Japanese art. See Bert Winther-Tamaki, Art in the
Encounter of Nations, 123. Winther-Tamaki describes Noguchi’s impact on Hasegawa Saburô.
See ibid., 33-34. Also, see Inokuma Gen’ichirô, “Mu” (Nothingness), Mizue no. 540 (October
1950), 30-31.
lxvii

painting.106 Yet he also warned that superficial appropriation of premodern art
would not foster an authentic culture of modern art: the pursuit of new modernist
art had to be based on the incessant effort of an artist, grounded by a strong will
and an autonomous self.107 Using the tools and materials of calligraphy,
Hasegawa produced a series of non-figurative paintings in which he tried to
merge calligraphic tradition with his western-style painting training (Figure 7).
Yoshihara Jirô: Modernist Artist in Kansai, 1945-1954
“My painting changed because of the war,” Yoshihara Jirô succinctly
stated in his short autobiography written in 1967.108 In fact, the physical and
intellectual environment during the war and its aftermath had not only affected his
painting but also became catalyst for him to conceive a new aesthetic by
combining materials and human subjectivity. In the immediate and early postwar
years, Yoshihara engaged actively in the activities of various art groups,
organizations, and people – mainly in his native Kansai area. His involvement
was strongly marked by an interest in human subjectivity and a rejection of
preexisting systems, an interest shared by many intellectuals and cultural
proponents. As a successful, active modernist artist of the era, Yoshihara Jirô
was well aware of the issues surrounding the contemporary practice of modernist
art – representation of human subjectivity and national identity; and he struggled
106 Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations, 34-35.
107 Hasegawa Saburô, “Sho wa bi no hôko desu” (Calligraphy is Source of Beauty), Sho no bi no.
31 (November 1950), 12-13.
108 Yoshihara, “Waga kokoro no jijoden, 6,” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 201.
lxviii

to find a way to resolve them. Yoshihara developed a new conceptual model of
modernist art that highlighted the artist’s individual intervention in the materials
and the materiality of the art work. To highlight the raw characteristics of the
materials, his model had to be non-figurative, eliminating all mimetic traces of
reality and meaning attached by the human being. Yoshihara also highly valued
the artist’s individuality in his/her involvement with the materials, and not the
intentions and implications behind the work. By emphasizing the relationship
between objective materials and individuality, he was able to claim that the work
assumed a universal position. His conceptual model of materials and human
subjectivity thus showed one promising exit from the predicament of the
contemporary modernist artist.
Yoshihara Jirô was already a successful modernist painter in the late
1930s. He never had any formal, technical art training; either in schools or in
private; yet he credited the painters Ueyama Jirô (1895-1945) and Fujita
Tsuguharu (1886-1968) with teaching him the importance of originality and
individuality in artistic creation.109 In 1928, at the age of twenty-three, he had his
first solo show at the Osaka Asahi Kaikan (Osaka Asahi Cultural Hall). In 1934,
Fujita, then a prominent Japanese painter living in Paris, suggested that
Yoshihara enter the juried competition of the art exhibition group the Nika-kai.
Yoshihara did, and all five of his entries were admitted. By 1938, Yoshihara was
recommended for membership in the Nika-kai, and nominated to be the
109Yoshihara, “Waga kokoro no jijoden, 3-4,” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten,
198-199. His famous dictum to Gutai members, to “create paintings which have never existed,”
was exactly what he was told by Fujita in the late 1920s. Yoshihara, “Waga kokoro no jijoden 6,”
reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 201.
lxix
representative of the Osaka branch of the group. Around this time Yoshihara
abandoned surrealistic imagery and gradually moved to pure abstraction (Figure
16). In the same year, Yoshihara along with other painters who had shown
abstract painting in the previous couple of years formed the group Kyûshitsu-kai
(the Ninth-room Group).110
Yoshihara’s artistic career as a modernist artist in the abstract style had
been deferred as the war intensified, although he created several paintings of
half-abstracted, ambiguous images which evidently signify the imperial institution
(Figure 17). Yoshihara received the news of Japan’s surrender and the end of the
war in his father’s hometown, Mitaôsawa village, in a rural area of Hyôgo
prefecture, where he had taken refuge from the air raids. After he returned to the
metropolitan Osaka, he quickly rejoined the re-established Nika-kai.
While regaining his foothold in the Tokyo-centered art community through
the Nika-kai exhibitions, Yoshihara became involved in several groups that had
been established in the Kansai region. As in Tokyo, the Kansai saw several
interdisciplinary groups organized in the immediate postwar period. Yoshihara
first joined the Tenseki-kai (Rolling Stone Group), a group of intellectuals and
artists in the region. Established in the fall of 1946, Tenseki-kai was one of the
first groups to appear in early postwar Japan that sought to include people from
110 The name of the group Kyûshitsu-kai (九室会) came from the ninth exhibition room of the
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum had been the site of the Nika-kai group’s
exhibition. At these exhibitions, the ninth room was usually filled with the work of “new currents,”
including abstract painting. The group was officially established at the end of 1938, and had
several indépendent exhibitions. For Kyûshitsu-kai, see Kawakita and Takashina, Kindai nihon
kaigashi, 299. For a more detailed biography of Yoshihara Jirô, see Yoshihara Jirô, “Waga kokoro
no jijoden 1-6,” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 196-201, and “Nenpu”
(Chronology) in ibid., 216-223.
lxx
various fields in art and culture. Members drawn from such fields as painting,
sculpture, ceramics, calligraphy, and philosophy gathered informally for
discussion. The Tenseki-kai would later develop into a group called Gendai
Bijutsu Kondankai (Contemporary Art Discussion Group). In both groups,
Yoshihara was a prominent member.
Yoshihara was also involved in promoting modern art and educating the
public. In the summer of 1946, he became a lecturer for an art lecture series
organized by Ashiya City, where Yoshihara had lived since 1925.111 In April 1948,
he took the initiative in organizing the Ashiya City Art Association (Ashiya shi
Bijutsu Kyôkai), which featured established painters, sculptors, photographers
and craft artists residing in Ashiya City. Two months later in June of 1948, the
association inaugurated their first juried exhibition, the Ashiya City Art Exhibition
(Ashiya shi Bijutsu Tenrankai; often abbreviated as Ashiten). This exhibition was
one of the first public art competitions to be organized and sponsored by a self-
governing local office, a practice which would become popular in the 1960s and
1970s throughout Japan. In the early 1950s, the exhibition became a fertile
ground for experimental works that would influence the organization of Gutai. In
addition, the show had an educational purpose for young artists and ordinary
citizens: it included works by well-known artists in Ashiya, as well as drawings by
Western artists in the collections of Ashiya City residents.112 The exhibition of
111Kawasaki Kôichi, “Yoshihara Jirô to Ashiya” (Yoshihara Jirô and Ashiya City), in Botsugo 20
nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 176.
112 The Japanese artists included Koide Narashige and Ôhashi Ryôsuke; the western artists
included Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Marie Laurencin, and Amedeo Modigliani. See “Daiikkai
Ashiya shi Bijutsu Tenrankai shuppin mokuroku” (List of Works Exhibited at the First Ashiya City
Art Exhibition), reprinted in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History ed., Ashiya Shiten 1948-1997,
51.
lxxi
works by Western artists was quite a rare opportunity in the Occupation era,
when cultural exchange of this sort was restricted and limited.113 The Ashiya City
Art Exhibition provided opportunities not only for young artists to exhibit their
works but also for the public to view Western art not shown for a long time.
Like many modernist artists, Yoshihara was involved in art education for
children, and he served as a juror to national art competitions for children and
youth. As a president of the Ashiya City Art Association, he was responsible for
organizing an annual art exhibition for children, Osaka-Kôbe Region Exhibition of
Children’s Paintings (Hanshinkan Dôga Tenrankai), which started in 1948.114 As
we will see later, his interest in children’s art greatly affected his view of human
subjectivity in art work. It was also at this time that individual young artists began
to visit Yoshihara’s studio seeking his advice. These artists would gradually
coalesce into the group Gutai.
He became even more active in a new interdisciplinary group called
Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Contemporary Art Discussion Group, henceforth
Genbi; 現代美術懇談会／ゲンビ), established in November 1952. Through his
participation in Genbi, Yoshihara came to know the avant-garde calligraphy group
113 A showing of Western art works in Japanese collections in March 1947 at the Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum was very successful and had a big impact on the art world. See Segi
Shin’ichi, Sengo kûhakuki no bijutsu, 33-39. Also, the exhibition of replicas of French paintings at
Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo drew a big crowd in January 1948.
114 The exhibition was renamed Dôbiten (Exhibition of Children’s Art) in 1950. Like the Ashiya
City Art Exhibition, the Dôbiten still continues today after more than fifty years, and many Gutai
members have served on juries to the exhibition. See Yamamoto Atsuo, “Kirin to Yoshihara Jirô:
Fukae shôgakkô Hashimoto gakkyû wo chûshin ni” (Kirin and Yoshihara Jirô: Focusing on
Teacher Hashimoto’s Class at Fukae Elementary School), in Yoshihara Jirô Kenkyûkai ed.,
Yoshihara Jirô kenkyû ronshû (Anthology of Studies on Yoshihara Jirô) (Ashiya: Yoshihara Jirô
Kenkyûkai, 2002), 71, footnote 1.
lxxii
Bokujin-kai (“People of the Ink” Group; 墨人会) and several young artists who
would later become important members of Gutai. His involvement in Genbi was
an important phase in Yoshihara’s artistic career, since it was the predecessor to
Gutai and shared some of the goals that would become important for Gutai
members. He and five other artists founded this Kansai-based group in response
to a call from a journalist of culture and arts at the Asahi Newspaper, Muramatsu
Hiroshi.115 Muramatsu, who was acquainted with many area artists in different
fields, recognized their shared interests in breaking tradition and in abstract art,
and thought of organizing informal meetings where these artists could get to
know each other. Although the founders were all from the field of “fine arts”
(painting and sculpture), other participants included commercial artists, fashion
designers, ceramists, calligraphers, and flower arrangement artists. In this way,
Genbi brought together artists from a wide variety of fields.
Between 1952 and 1955, Yoshihara actively participated in the activities of
Genbi, which involved regular meetings and an annual exhibition. In meetings,
usually a member or a guest speaker gave a lecture on a specific topic, followed
by open, and often lively, discussions among the members. The meetings were
held monthly between November, 1952 and September, 1955, and then several
115 They were Yoshihara Jirô (Nika-kai), Suda Kokuta and Yamazaki Takao (both Kokuga-kai),
Nakamura Shin and Ueki Shigeru (both Modan Âto Kyôkai), Tanaka Kenzô (Jiyû Bijutsu Kyôkai).
Yoshihara once wrote that he started and organized Genbi (Yoshihara, “Waga kokoro no jijoden,
6,” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 201). But according to Hirai Shôichi, who
interviewed former members, Muramatsu was in fact the organizer. Hirai Shôichi, “Gendai Bijutsu
Kondankai (Genbi) – Zen’ei tachi no yume” (Contemporary Art Discussion Group [Genbi] –
Dreams of Avant-garde Artists) in Tsutaka Waichi to Genbi no sakkatachi (Tsutaka Waichi and the
Genbi Artists), Kôbe: Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, 1995), 14. But Yoshihara seemed
to be the leader among the six artists, for his name was written at the top of the invitation card,
which was sent to area artists.
lxxiii
times yearly until August, 1957. The other main activity, an annual show, not only
showcased members’ works from various fields, but also included a juried
exhibition of works by area artists (Figure 18). While the founders of Genbi were
already established artists in the Kansai region, most of the other members were
young artists who had studied under these founders and who belonged to the
same exhibition groups as some of them.116
Although little documentation of the monthly meetings has survived,
Yoshihara eagerly engaged in conversations with other artists at one of these
meetings titled “Modern Art and Calligraphy” (Modan âto to sho; February 1953),
which was transcribed and published in a coterie journal of the avant-garde
calligraphy group Bokujin-kai, Bokujin.117 The meeting began with a lecture by
avant-garde calligrapher Morita Shiryû, followed by a discussion with members.
Yoshihara actively engaged in the discussion, stressing the shared interests
among the different fields of art represented at the meeting. As I will discuss,
Yoshihara also urged avant-garde calligraphers to step out of that conventional
categorization. As one of the founders, he was also a jury member for Genbi’s
annual exhibition. As we will see in Chapter Three, his strong support for the
originality of an artist sometimes caused a commotion among other jurors.
116 Hirai, “Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Genbi) – Zen’ei tachi no yume,” 14.
117 Yoshihara Jirô, et al., “[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu kondankai: Sho to modan âto” ([Roundtable
discussion] Contemporary Art Discussion Group: Calligraphy and Modern Art), Bokujin 12 (March
1953): 9-29. There was also another published record of meeting: “Modan âto to zen’ei ikebana”
(Modern Art and Avant-garde Flower Arrangement) in Ikebana Geijutsu 5, no. 7 (July 1953).
Yoshihara may not have participated in this May 1953 meeting, for his comments were not
recorded in its transcription. See Tsutaka Waichi to Genbi no sakkatachi, 32, footnotes 1 and 2.
lxxiv
The group’s aspiration to establish an interdisciplinary, democratic
organization was clearly demonstrated in the invitation card for the first meeting,
sent to local artists in November 1952:
Recently, we decided to form a group for people whose shared aim is to

create a new forum where they can talk to each other from their individual
points of view, outside the constraints of their respective groups. … At this
moment, exhibitions of George Braque and Primitive Art are on display at
the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art. Thus, at the first meeting, we would
like especially to discuss various artistic issues relating to the works of
Braque. …118
In this text, contemporary readers were immediately reminded that Genbi was an
informal group open to anyone who shared its members’ interests. The invitation
emphasized that unlike so-called exhibition groups, Genbi was a group of
“individuals” (kojin 個人) who shared an interest in creating new forms. The word
“individual” very much reflected the sentiment of the early postwar period of
prioritizing human subjectivity. The term was often used as the opposite of
“group” (shûdan 集団), a word closely linked with the Japanese wartime
mentality, which emphasized the unity of the nation and praised selfless devotion
as a contribution to Japan’s war effort. The word kojin was therefore not only a
theoretical, ideological term but also one that referred to one’s direct action.
Although subtly put, this invitation called for the individual’s subjective decision to
participate in activities outside his/her formal group affiliations.
118Quoted in Hirai, “Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Genbi) – Zen’ei tachi no yume,” 14. The original
card is reprinted in ibid., 33.
lxxv
Joining the interdisciplinary group Genbi was Yoshihara’s first step toward
a break with conventional exhibition practice. Yet it was also clear that Genbi was
intended to supplement, rather than replace, the conventional exhibition-driven
art groups with which its members were affiliated. As the years went by,
Yoshihara would gradually feel frustrated with certain Genbi members’ reluctance
to commit to creating new art. Soon after Yoshihara and his young pupils
established Gutai, they stopped attending Genbi’s monthly meetings, and most
Gutai members did not enter their works in Genbi’s annual shows after 1955.119
In his own art practice, Yoshihara was similarly concerned about the
rejection of hierarchical relations. He was involved in collaborative works, with a
ballet company, for example, or a fashion designer, in which he strove to
overcome the hierarchical relations between “high” and “low” art, as well as
between art professionals (artists and art critics) and their audience. Yoshihara
strongly felt that there should no longer be any significant gaps among art
professionals – especially modernists – or between artists and their audience.
This desire was clearly shown in his debate with other modernist artists over how
painters could approach the general public in a roundtable discussion organized
by the Ashiya City Art Association. In the discussion, Yoshihara mentioned one of
his efforts, his design of a stage set for a ballet piece Amerika (America),
commissioned by the Tokyo-based Komaki Ballet Troup, created with another
painter, Koiso Ryôhei (March 18-19, 1950, at the Osaka Asahi Hall; Figure 19).
119 “Genbi ten shuppin sakka risuto,” in Tsutaka Waichi to Genbi no sakkatachi, 42-44.
lxxvi
He argued that collaborative work with commercial artists provided a good
opportunity for the general public to become accustomed to modern art:
…understanding the characteristic of ballet as an art born out of synthesis,

I think that my ideas were sufficiently realized. … Even people who had
seen the ballet many times said that although they could not make sense
of it, it was beautiful. Using this as an example, I think the general public
can understand the idea of modern painting itself.
In response, a painter and editor of the newsletter of the association, Nonomura
Fujiyoshi, reinforced Yoshihara’s idea:
The example of the ballet production gives us a clue as to how to

fascilitate people’s understanding of modern art. Because the people did
not look at Mr. Yoshihara’s work as painting but as ballet, they said it was
beautiful and interesting, and they understood it. But once it is presented
as painting, bound by conventional concepts, they are no longer able to
understand it. In this sense, if we do away with conventional painting,
there will be only one step left to bring the people to an understanding of
modern art.
Yoshihara agreed with Nonomura:
People told me the ballet was wonderful and beautiful, but in the case of
painting, there is not much general response even [when] we create
something that has never been done before. But [when presented] with
ballet, on the other hand, there was a response. …120
120 Yoshihara Jirô, et al., “[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu ni tsuite,” Ashiya Bijutsu 3 (May 1950), 7 and
10, reprinted in Ashiya Shiten: 1948-1997, n.p. In his later memoir, Yoshihara confessed to having
a hard time making a living as an artist in the immediate postwar period, and it seems that
another motivation for him to engage in different fields was also economic:
…In the period at the financial bottom, I, too, could not live a lazy life. … [I tried
everything] from painting portraits for officers of the Occupation Army, designing
commercial posters and products, to making stage arts for fashion shows and window
displays. When Sankei Newspapers brought fashion models from the United States, I
took charge of the stage art for a fashion show by designer Tanaka Chiyo, and together
we toured the nation. …
Yoshihara, “Waga kokoro no jijoden, 6,” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 200.
lxxvii
What impressed Yoshihara about his collaboration in a ballet production was that
the audience acknowledged the aesthetic value of his stage art and expressed it
sincerely. Moreover, compared to the response to his painting, people seemed to
be more receptive to experimental values. Both Yoshihara and Nonomura saw
the possibility that the general public would come to understand modernist art if
they had a chance to know the works of modernist artists through more popular-
oriented art such as ballet productions. He stressed that collaboration with artists
in other fields – especially popular arts such as theater, fashion, and graphic
designs – would not only enrich painters’ own art, but also help in cultivating a
potential audience for modernist painting.
Yoshihara’s trust of the visual sensibility of the general public was quite
significant among contemporary modernist artists. While the painters at this
roundtable discussion seemed to generally agree with Yoshihara’s view, some
painters showed skepticism about the capacity for artistic sensitivity on the part
of the general public. These painters were concerned that the public might favor
modernist art only because it was fashionable and not necessarily because they
understood “art.” More than once in roundtable discussions with other artists,
Yoshihara criticized the attitudes of artists who tended to dismiss the ability of the
general public to appreciate art. In a roundtable discussion with artists who
participated in the Genbi members’ exhibition Modern Art Fair, Yoshihara
responded to an artist who scorned the taste of “lowbrows” (mîchan hâchan ミー
チャンハーチャン):
lxxviii
Someone has just mentioned the word “lowbrows.” In everyday life, we

look at our visual surroundings with very sensual feelings. What would we
do if there was a circle here or a straight line there. These kinds of feelings
are fully shared by the “lowbrows,” when they organize their environment
in everyday life and when they choose personal goods. They are not
clearly conscious about these feelings. I think everyone has these kinds of
feelings. It is only when things are presented as art that the “lowbrows”
don’t have a frame of reference for judging them with confidence. They
presume that they must understand something differently. Then, they
depreciate themselves by claiming that they don’t understand art at all.
That is why I always feel that ordinary people are to be feared and are not
that mysterious. In our everyday lives from the time we are born, we all
live in a world consisting of forms, lines, and colors, like alphabets. In this
world, any “lowbrow” has developed a variety of tastes in clothing patterns
and in everyday life. I think we should put our faith more strongly in this
point [their abilities].121
At the other end of the spectrum, Yoshihara worked hard to reach the
general public to educate and enlighten them about modernist art. In 1946, he
delivered lectures to non-professionals, and organized the Ashiya City Art
Association with the dual purpose of giving local younger artists an exhibition
venue, and of showing art to the public. Although Yoshihara himself never had a
teacher, he became a dedicated theather of painting to local young people at his
home between 1947 and 1948.122 He contributed to a number of interviews and
essays that appeared in local newspapers where he exhorted the general public
repeatedly to abandon logical explanations (rikutsu 理屈) when looking at
modernist art. He suggested that familiarizing oneself with modernist art through
121
Yoshihara Jirô, et al., “[Zadankai] Modan âto fea wo kataru” ([Roundtable discussion] On
Modern Art Fair), Bokujin 26 (June 1954), 11.
122 Yamamoto Atsuo, “Gutai: 1954-1972,” in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, ed., Gutai I, II,
III (Ashiya: Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, 1994), 7.
lxxix
the commercial arts would prove that one could appreciate it without formal
artistic education:
…we are already surrounded by things in the category of modern art [for
example, machines and craft art]; we cannot call it “living art” if it is
detached from our feeling of life; as long as we live in the twentieth
century, there must be an art of the twentieth century. There are already
myriad experiments underway to grasp the sense of our contemporary
spirit, and some have become well-known, thanks to many geniuses.
People who look at painting also need to remove the barrier of
conventional modes of appreciation. …123
As his activities were more focused in the Kansai region, compared to his pre-
war, Tokyo-centered career, clearly another hierarchy in the Japanese art
community that Yoshihara tried to break was the geographical power relationship
between the center of art world, Tokyo, and Kansai. He was still one of the core
members of the Tokyo-based Nika-kai, but he seemed gradually to distance
himself from that group.124 Also, he was a member of Tokyo-based
interdisciplinary group Japan Avant-garde Artists Club, but did not make any
significant contributions other than entering the group’s exhibitions. While he
often contributed to local newspapers and magazines, curiously he did not often
appear in national art magazines. Since the majority of art magazines were
edited and published in Tokyo, this is further evidence that Yoshihara’s activities
were focused in the Kansai region. Considering the centralization of the nation’s
123
Yoshihara Jirô, “Bijutsu kanshô shijô kôza: modan âto” (Lecture on Paper, Art Appreciation:
Modern Art), Shinkô Shinbun, 7 November, 1951.
124Shimamoto Shôzô, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 368;
and interviewed by the author, July 12, 2002.
lxxx
art world, detachment from Tokyo would have been a significant move for any
artist.
Yoshihara’s shift was not merely symbolic. He considered the art
establishment in Tokyo a hindrance to the advancement of new arts. In 1950,
Yoshihara expressed his frustration:
In my view, those avant-garde artists in the Nika-kai largely like to work

within the framework of an exhibition, rather than to jump in and catch
something new. I myself regret that I was once in that position; however, I
[now] feel dissatisfied with this sort of attitude.125
On another occasion, Yoshihara pointed to the advantage of the Kansai region
over Tokyo in promoting interdisciplinary activities, for there was a variety of
factional conflicts in the art community of Tokyo.126 Clearly, Yoshihara was
dissatisfied with the inflexible structure and resistance to change of the Tokyo-
centered art world. In such exhibition groups as the Nika-kai, members tended to
confine their activities within their respective groups.
As Yoshihara was conceptualizing his model of new modernist art, he saw
the receptiveness to new ideas in the Kansai region as more promising for
promoting his ideas. He was surrounded by many artists and young students
who were open to conversations with people in other areas, including the
stimulating people in Genbi, avant-garde calligraphers, and younger artists in
their twenties who continued to visit Yoshihara’s studio for his advice. Gutai
125 Fujisawa Tsuneo and Yoshihara Jirô, “[Taidan] Osaka no bijutsukai” ([Discussion] The Art
World in Osaka), Kansai Bijutsu, 15 November 1950. Quoted in Yamamoto Atsuo, “Yoshihara Jirô
to Gutai,” in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 190.
126 Yoshihara Jirô, et al., “[Zadankai] Modan âto fea wo kataru,” 47.
lxxxi

emerged from among the young people who met Yoshihara through these
intersections – and these early members were all from the Kansai region. Unlike
Yoshihara’s colleagues in Tokyo, they quickly responded to his innovative
concept of combining materials and human subjectivity. Former Gutai member
Shimamoto Shôzô recalls that when he created a painting with holes in 1950
(Figure 20), Yoshihara enthusiastically praised it. Later, Shimamoto had a chance
to visit Tokyo and show the same piece to several modernist painters, who all
rejected the work because it did not appear to be a painting.127
Yoshihara’s involvement with the local art community, including people
from various fields, and both the professional world and general public, was in
significant contrast to his artistic persona of the pre-war and wartime years – a
quintessential painter of the lone, bohemian type who struggles to create art in
an isolated studio. As he indicated in his short memoir, Yoshihara was acquainted
with and greatly influenced by two Japanese artists, Ueyama Jirô and Fujita
Tsuguharu, who lived the bohemian lifestyle in Paris in the 1920s. Indeed, from
his teen years, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne were like “patron saints” for
him.128 Yet Yoshihara’s direction in the immediate postwar period was the
opposite of the reclusive model – he was instead a painter actively involved in
society. Behind this transformation of his understanding of an artist’s role lay an
interest in rejecting old systems and values while prioritizing the human being, a
view shared by many critical modernist artists in early postwar Japan.
127 Shimamoto, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 367.
128Yoshihara, “Waga kokoro no jijoden, 2-4” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten,
197-199.
lxxxii
Materials and Human Subjectivity: Development of Yoshihara’s Conceptual

Model
In the early postwar period, Yoshihara abandoned his non-figurative work
and produced a number of paintings that mainly utilized human figures to
represent the traumatic experience of wartime. After he started painting in his late
teens, his painting style had developed from figurative (Figure 21) to surrealistic
(Figure 22), and from abstracted imagery of landscape (Figure 23) to pure
abstraction. His painting from circa 1936 is a non-figurative composition of black
lines and colored planes (Figure 16). Although he painted figurative imagery
during wartime due to official pressure on abstract artists (Figure 17), when all
the restrictions were removed at the war’s end, Yoshihara did not return to
abstract and non-figurative images, but continued to paint figures until around
1951 (Figure 24 and Figure 25). In his 1967 memoir, Yoshihara explained this
phase: “I felt that I was not content with mere abstraction; nothing satisfied me
unless the so-called ‘human figure’ (ningen 人間) entered into my painting again.
…”129 Like many other modernist artists who worked in abstract/non-figurative
styles, Yoshihara tried to incorporate the human presence and experience by
depicting figurative images on the picture plane.130
However, despite his desire to paint human motifs, Yoshihara was quite
ambivalent about his return to figurative painting. In the same memoir, right after
he mentions his interest in human figures at that time, Yoshihara confesses:
129 Ibid., 201.
130 Yamamoto Atsuo, “V. Tori to hito no jidai” in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 88.
lxxxiii

However, while I was painting such works [of human figures], I was
thinking that just as something like Dadaism emerged after World War I,
an epochal idea never seen in the prewar period was now to rise in the
field of painting.131
The return to figurative painting was not the direction in which Yoshihara was
inclined to proceed. As an avid reader of modernist aesthetics in contemporary
Western art, he was quite conscious of the historical development of painting.
Yoshihara had a strong conviction that abstract and non-figurative paintings were
the most “advanced,” and thus, the most (perhaps the only) vital type of painting
in the contemporary era. Therefore, there was an apparent contradiction between
Yoshihara’s actual painting and his view of what painting should be. He needed
to find a way to merge the presence of the human being with non-figurative
painting. As we will see, his solution would be to assert the primacy of materials
and the conscious involvement of an artist who intervened with the materials to
bring their materiality “to life.”
There were three significant encounters that shaped Yoshihara’s
construction of a new theoretical model. First, his interest in children’s and
“primitive” art led him to acknowledge the rich space of associations that
abstracted forms could create in a viewer’s mind: this finding became a turning
point in his return to abstraction. Secondly, he encountered contemporary
American painting, especially non-figurative “dripping” painting by Jackson
Pollock, where he noticed the expressive quality of the paint material
independent of elements created by human hands – qualities such as shape,
131 Yoshihara, “Waga kokoro no jijoden, 6,” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 201.
lxxxiv
line, and color. The attention to materiality allowed Yoshihara to turn from
abstraction to non-figurative painting. Lastly, he became intrigued by the strong
presence of the artist as seen in calligraphic works by Nakahara Nantenbô. By
emphasizing an artist’s individual ways of dealing with materials, Yoshihara
believed that human subjectivity could be expressed in non-figurative painting.
These important phases can be traced in numerous discussions and essays in
which Yoshihara was involved between 1947 and 1954. The conceptual model of
the materials and human subjectivity gradually emerged through these personal
revelations, along with his aforementioned involvement in various groups and
organizations.132
While he was still executing paintings with figurative imagery, Yoshihara
exercised this new theoretical framework which enabled him to connect abstract/
non-figurative art with the human presence. Two kinds of art tremendously
affected this development: so-called “primitive art” (genshi bijutsu 原始美術) and
children’s art (jidô bijutsu 児童美術). He became fascinated by these arts for their
often simplified, abstracted forms, a result of their lack of skills and knowledge,
yet fantastically unbound by conventions and styles. In this detachment from
skills and mimetic representations, Yoshihara saw the possibility of connecting
132 Already an established modernist painter in the late 1930s, Yoshihara Jirô was seen as a
good proponent for modernist art. He was often asked to write on the subject for the general
public, and was invited to participate in roundtable discussions hosted by popular magazines and
newspapers. Along with his contribution to groups of professional artists, these media provided
important space for Yoshihara to develop his ideas. See for example, Yoshihara’s “Bijutsu kanshô
shijô kôza: modan âto” and “Anata e hitokoto: Kuro to shiro no kankaku” (A Word for You: Sense
of Black and White), Asahi Shinbun, 20 May 1952, Osaka edition. For roundtable discussions,
see for example “[Zadankai] Zen’ei kadô wo kataru, jô, ge” ([Round-table discussion] Discussion
on Avant-garde Flower Arrangement, first and second half), Shin Kansai, 25 and 26 May 1951;
and “Zen’ei geijutsu wo kataru” (Discussion of Avant-garde Art), Shinkô Shinbun, 4 January,
1952.
lxxxv
abstract forms to both the artist and the viewer. In the late 1940s, he started
studying forms of “primitive” art, such as the clay and terracotta haniwa figures of
the prehistoric and tumulus periods in Japan (Figure 26), and created a number
of drawings based on these figures (Figure 27). Around the same time, he came
to know children’s art through his involvement in children’s art education and art
competitions.133 In a roundtable discussion among modernist artists, titled “The
Ideal Form of Contemporary Children’s Art” (Gendai jidôga no arikata), included
in the special feature on children’s art in the newsletter of the Ashiya City Art
Association, Ashiya Bijutsu (Ashiya Art; November 1949), he stated that as a
professional modernist artist, he hoped to learn from children’s way of painting,
rather than teaching them adult/professional methods.134 At the same time, he
often contributed to Kirin (Giraffe), a new poetry magazine that featured poems
written by children.135
133 Yoshihara was a judge for Jidô Sôsaku Bijutsu ten (Exhibition of Art Created by Children), and
Zenkoku Kodomo Bijutsu ten (National Exhibition of Children’s Art). Yoshihara served as a judge
for Dôbi ten until his death in 1972.
134 Yoshihara Jirô, et al., “[Zadankai] Gendai jidôga no arikata” ([Roundtable discussion] The
Ideal Form of Contemporary Children’s Art), Ashiya Bijutsu 2 (November 1949), 1-4, reprinted in
Ashiya City Art Association and Ashiya City Museum of Art & History eds., Ashiya Shiten:
1948-1997 (The History of Ashiya City Exhibition From 1948 to 1997) (Ashiya, 1997), n.p. He also
frequently wrote about or participated in round-table discussions on children’s art for newspapers
and art magazines. Some of these are: Yoshihara Jirô, “Kodomo no e no arikata: Shido no
kaishaku to hôho no mondai” (How Children’s Picture Should Be: Interpretation of Instruction and
Issues of Methodology), Mainichi Shinbun, 4 December 1949, Osaka edition; Yoshihara Jirô and
Suda Kokuta, “[Taidan] Jidôga no shomondai” ([Discussion] Some Issues on Children’s
Paintings), Kansai Bijutsu 12 (April 1951), 9. For more sources, see “Shuyô bunken mokuroku” in
Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 234-236.
135Kirin was started in 1947 by journalist (and later well-known novelist) Inoue Yasushi and poet
Takenaka Iku. Gutai members also frequently contributed, and the editor of the magazine Ukita
Yôzô later became a Gutai member. See Kawasaki, “Yoshihara Jirô to Ashiya,” in Botsugo 20 nen
Yoshihara Jirô ten, 176 and Yamamoto, “Gutai 1954-1972,” in ibd., 7.
lxxxvi
In Yoshihara’s view abstract painting was historically more advanced
because mimetic representation of the real world impeded the transmission of
the artist’s own ideas and personality. In the December 1949 text “Painting that
Causes a Headache: On the Appreciation of Modern Art” (Atama no itakunaru e:
modan âto no kanshô ni tsuite), Yoshihara asked the viewer to “listen directly with
your feelings to what the artist would like to transmit in this new painting through
colors and shapes, to abandon [conventional] ideas about painting, and to
confront it with an open mind.”136 He explained that unlike conventional,
representational painting, abstract painting (what he called “new painting”) did
not represent the real world as it is. He emphasized the direct connection
between the viewer and abstract painting (or between viewer and painter), where
the beauty of the painting was not disturbed by the appearance of the “real.”
Yoshihara affirmed that this direct relation was at its best in “primitive” and
children’s art,, and this was a large factor in his attraction to their simplified,
abstracted forms. He found in such works a strong psychological relationship
between the art, its creator, and the viewer. In an essay titled “Fragmented
Thoughts” (Dansô), published in November 1950, he described how in “primitive”
art’s simplicity and raw, unsophisticated techniques, a viewer could more closely
feel the presence of a creator than in technically sophisticated works:
A child draws cocks. Their eyeballs are like plates. They are fighting
cocks. The two are facing each other. The roosters with large eyes three-
sun wide (about 2 inches) have very angry faces. The child also glares
while drawing. While I watch this [scene], Jômon earthenwares come to
my mind. With the emergence of Yayoi ware, it seems that because they
136Yoshihara Jirô, “Atama no itakunaru e: modan âto no kanshô ni tsuite” (Painting that Causes a
Headache: On Appreciation of Modern Art), Kôbe Shinbun, 22 December 1949.
lxxxvii
are distanced from their creators, they are complete. But, with Jômon
ware and other kinds of clay figures, somehow the eyes of creators seem
to be staring at us from within the work.137
Yoshihara also acknowledged the richness embodied in the simplified forms of
“primitive” and children’s art. In the same essay, he wrote of the form found in
haniwa (Figure 26):
Put three dots in a circle. It looks like a human face. It is more difficult to
place the dots in such a way as to not resemble a face. Furthermore,
depending on the placement or slight deformation of the dots, multiple
faces appear. The beauty of haniwa provides a striking example of a
delicate display of the functionality of form through extreme simplicity.
While a dot is still a dot, through association it may become an eye or a
mouth; in making connections with reality, we must disregard the
aesthetics of perspective and chiaroscuro.138
A simple dot on a haniwa figure becomes an eye or a mouth when a viewer
associates each dot with parts of a face. To allow this chain of associations to
work, Yoshihara argued, the viewer (and perhaps the artist) has to abandon the
illusionistic method in conventional painting.
Discovery of these abstracted forms which evoked rich and complex
association within the viewer’s mind was helpful to Yoshihara, as he tried to find a
bridge between representation and abstraction. In the same essay, Yoshihara
tried to articulate this form, which, according to the viewer’s subjective
perception, would produce multivalent associations:
137Yoshihara Jirô, “Dansô” (Fragmented Thoughts), Mizue no. 541 (November 1950), 72-73,
reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 202.
138 Ibid., 202.
lxxxviii
The vague image in my mind is like a smudge on a wall. We do not

tire of looking at leaking rain; sometimes it has an extraordinary form that
appears to have a meaning. This extraordinary form, mysteriously, is
somehow connected to a new sense of reality. Few people would not
recognize a mysterious sense of reality in décalcomanie.
Leonardo da Vinci was also a person who gazed at smudges on
walls. It is said that he drew a certain battle scene based on an image he
perceived in a smudge on the wall. … I am interested in the momentary
image da Vinci associated with the battle scene as it flashed across his
mind; that very image already existed as a vision in which the possibility of
association persists, although we may not be able to call it an image in the
strict sense. I want to paint that kind of picture. It’s not that I want to take
hints from a smudge on the wall and paint ordinary pictures; rather I want
to give life to the beauty of the forms assumed by the wall smudges
themselves. In other words, I wish to paint beautiful pictures like the
smudges on the wall. …
Of course it is boring if something which merely resembles some
other form appear on the canvas; but I am surprised when forms, that are
extraordinary and distant from reality are connected with a complex sense
of reality. …“New painting” must demonstrate the psychological function of
form and color.139
In this text, he named this form “extraordinary form” (tohômo nai katachi 途方もな
い形). This form was an “unformed” form; however, it still had a connection to
objects in the real world in the viewer’s perception. Thus, what he meant by
“extraordinary form” had a reference to reality, although it was an abstracted
form. The concept of this rich form was useful for Yoshihara, who was not yet
ready to abandon the connection to reality.
To summarize, Yoshihara’s discovery of the direct relationship between the
artist and the viewer via abstract form was a watershed in the development of his
art theory in two respects. First, by locating art appreciation at a direct person-to-
person level, all intermediaries in artistic creation, such as techniques and skills,
139 Ibid., 201-202.
lxxxix
become trivial. At the time he wrote “Fragmented Thoughts,” Yoshihara was
perhaps concerned with these intermediary aspects only in terms of technical
achievement. However, this highlighting of the direct connection would lead him
to reject other more significant “obstacles” – and this would have a profound
impact on his struggle to find a way to non-figurative painting, with the rejection
of any literal content in painting. While Yoshihara was still interested in creating
paintings that could generate rich associations with the real world in the viewer’s
mind, the awareness of a new relationship between object and viewer was the
first step toward abstract/non-figurative painting.
Secondly, this new relationship emphasized the psychological, perhaps
even mystical, connection between creator and viewer. Thus, even in an
anonymous work of art, such as a terracotta haniwa or a picture by an ordinary
child, the feeling of the presence of the creator was a significant part of the
viewer’s experience. This new notion was of great importance in his search to
combine human presence and abstract/non-figurative painting. With this notion,
he found ways to paint abstract/non-figurative work without relying on a human
motif, but also without compromising and obscuring the presence of the human
being.
It is important to call attention to Yoshihara’s study of “primitive” art, since
many of his modernist colleagues adopted this art to rhetorically claim the
cultural authenticity of Japanese modernist art practice. As observed above,
xc

Yoshihara valued “primitive” and children’s art strictly for their formal qualities.140
In fact, Yoshihara seemed to distance himself from the nationalist rhetoric
surrounding “primitive” art and modernist art. In a roundtable discussion titled
“Gendai bijutsu ni tsuite” (“On contemporary art,” April 1950), he carefully
avoided supporting the rhetoric of a modernist painter Suda Kokuta, who rejected
the non-Japanese art of “technique-oriented cultures in the intermediary stages
between the primitive and modern periods,” such as Buddhist art. In response to
Suda, Yoshihara argued that since the history of representational painting should
be considered in relation to both art historical and socio-historical development,
“we should affirm the arts of intermediate ages in and of themselves.” He further
pointed out the international aspect of the interest in and appropriation of
“primitive” art, as well as pre-Greek or pre-Buddhist art, indicating that reference
was not limited to modernist artists in Japan. Rather, he said, it was important to
understand the emerging new paradigm in the history of painting:
Today we don’t consider the appropriation of primitive art as simply a

historical development [after representational painting]. Rather, the issue
is related to the self-reflective quality of art, especially the direct
connection between human psychology and art.141
In this comment, Yoshihara emphasized that the interest in “primitive” art was
spurred not by the advancement of technique, as in the history of
140 To indicate that the modernist artists’ interest in “primitive” art was voluntary, Yoshihara said
that the source of modernist painters’ interest in children’s art was the same desire: “From long
ago, children have created children’s pictures, but in contemporary times new painters are taking
them up from a new perspective and are surprised [by what they see].” Yoshihara Jirô, et al.,
“[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu ni tsuite,” 5.
141 Ibid., 5.
xci
representational painting, but by the conscious choice of the modernist artists.
He tried to separate his own evaluation of “primitive” art from the positivist
perspective of Suda and others, which tended to put value on the newer styles.
The intensity with which Yoshihara studied “primitive” and children’s arts is
demonstrated in his artwork during this period. In the years 1948-1950,
Yoshihara made a considerable number of drawings of human figures, which
clearly were preparations for his oil paintings between 1949 and 1951, such as
Face (Figure 28).142 As curator Yamamoto Atsuo points out, Yoshihara seemed to
develop his figures by learning simultaneously from Picasso’s Guernica (Figure
13) and the terracotta figures of the Kofun period (Figure 26).143 Picasso’s
Guernica had a great impact on many Japanese modernist artists who aspired to
express the suffering and misery of ordinary people affected by the recent war. In
Yoshihara’s work of this period, the dominant motif was a single figure of a girl,
usually showing her face and upper torso. The girl seems to be in despair or
sorrow. Her facial expression is not a cheerful one; she is either emotionless,
frowning, or in tears. The prototype of unhappy faces can be found in many of his
drawings. Some of these figures were obviously derived from Guernica: the pose
of the suffering woman shows a striking resemblance to the figures in Guernica
who scream and extend their arms to the sky (Figure 29). Yoshihara also referred
to paintings by American painter Joseph Glasco, who was influenced by the
142The Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, which organized Yoshihara Jirô’s retrospective
show, attributed the dates of the drawings to circa 1948. Yet as Yoshihara wrote in “Dansô” in
November 1950, Yoshihara was still drawing reference from “primitive” and children’s art in 1950.
Yoshihara, “Dansô,” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 202.
143 Yamamoto, “V. Tori to hito no jidai” in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 88-89.
xcii
“primitive” art of American Indians (Yoshihara’s drawing: Figure 30; and Glasco’s
painting: Figure 31). Others were derived from his sketches of prehistoric
terracotta figures (Figure 27); a facial expression simplified to the point that the
eyes and mouth become three simple circles, is characteristic of some of his
human figures (Figure 32). These drawings were exercises for Yoshihara in order
to digest the references before creating larger oil canvases.144
Yoshihara’s New Humanism
“Primitive” art and children’s art gave Yoshihara important clues in his
endeavor to combine an abstract/non-figurative style with human subjectivity. At
the same time, they allowed Yoshihara to regain his confidence in abstract forms
capable of creating a rich space of association with the real world. The next
turning point came in 1951, when he encountered non-figurative “drip” painting
by American painter Jackson Pollock (Figure 33). In Pollock’s work, he found the
expressive quality of the paint itself, independent from shapes, lines, and colors–
the elements added by a human artist. This attention to the materiality of painting
prompted Yoshihara to finally return to a non-figurative style. While many of his
colleagues, especially those in Tokyo, paid more attention to contemporary
French painting, Yoshihara was one of the very few to identify the breakthrough
in American painting, which, in his view, “solved the issue of humanism.”145
144 Ibid., 89.
145Yoshihara Jirô and Nakamura Shin, “Amerika no kindai kaiga” (Modern Painting in America),
Kansai Bijutsu 13 (May 1951), 12.
xciii
Yoshihara first saw Pollock’s actual painting in the Third Yomiuri
Indépendent Exhibition in February 1951.146 In May 1951, a Kansai-based art
magazine Kansai Bijutsu (Art in Kansai) published a discussion between
Yoshihara and painter Nakamura Shin (also from the Kansai region) on
contemporary American painting. Although the transcribed discussion is quite
short, probably only a segment of the entire discussion, it is easy to sense
Yoshihara’s excitement in his encounter with the American painting. While he had
already started cultivating a direct relationship between the artist and the viewer
in his study of “primitive” and children’s arts, he felt that his claim had been
validated by this body of wok of contemporary and professional painters working
in an abstract/non-figurative style. For Yoshihara, living, concrete answer to the
question of humanity, which Japanese modernist had been struggling to resolve,
had materialized in these American paintings:
If we deal with the issue of humanity, abstract art in America has to be

discussed from a different angle [in contrast to the contemporary French
painting]. … It might be called psychological realism, but I think
[contemporary American painting] has spontaneously resolved the issue of
humanism, because [it] relates at a deep level to the psychological
experience of the human being. …147
To stress the revolutionary aspect of their approach to the issue of humanity,
Yoshihara strategically contrasted the French paintings, which dealt with the
146 Two paintings of Jackson Pollock were shown at the Third Yomiuri Indépendent Exhibition;
Number 7 (1950) and Number 11 (1949). For other entries by American painters, see Segi
Shin’ichi and Sôgô Bijutsu Kenkyûjo eds., Nihon Andepandan ten Zenkiroku: 1949-1963
(Complete Records of the Yomiuri Indépendent Exhibition: 1949-1963) (Tokyo: Sôbisha, 1993),
54.
147 Yoshihara and Nakamura, “Amerika no kindai kaiga,” 12.
xciv
issue by representing various human experiences, with the American paintings,
which penetrated into a viewer’s mind without representing human motifs.
Considering the fact that most of his Japanese colleagues praised the French
painting exhibited in the Third Yomiuri Indépendent Exhibition, his criticism can
be viewed as deliberate attack upon the Tokyo art community.148
In contrast to his understanding of “primitive” and children’s art, however,
Yoshihara’s appraisal of American painting now went beyond the discussion of
forms. In the following passage, Yoshihara tries to articulate the directness of the
impact of American painting – an impact which was not simply a question of
abstracted, or indeed any other kind of form:
There is a mysterious kind of beauty [to these images], an appeal that is

universally attractive. They possess qualities that do not appeal only to the
pure sense of sight, but which are given expression not only through a
more direct appeal to our senses but also in a clear form. As in Pollock’s
work, the dripping of enamel paint is more beautiful than what is painted
directly on the canvas. In the same way, even sloppy embroidery can be
beautiful when it is turned over. Because we know without a doubt that it is
beautiful, even if we do not know why, we assign a sense of completion to
these works of art, which, in the past, have not been considered
painting.149
148Yoshihara reported that most modernist artists, especially those active in Tokyo, highly
regarded the French works, and dismissed the American works. See Ibid., 12.
149 Ibid., 12-13. In the 1960s, American art critic and historian Michal Fried similarly detected
Pollock’s achievement in his emphasis on pure visuality:
… there is only a pictorial field so homogenous, overall and devoid both of recognizable
objects and of abstract shapes that I want to call it “optical,” to distinguish it from the
structured, essentially tactile pictorial field of previous modernist painting from Cubism to
de Kooning and even Hans Hofmann. Pollock’s field is optical because it addresses itself
to eyesight alone. The materiality of the pigment is rendered sheerly visual, and the result
is a new kind of space.
Michael Fried, “Jackson Pollock,” Artforum 4 no.1 (September 1965), 15.
xcv
As in his earlier text “Fragmented Thoughts,” here Yoshihara addressed a new
“mysterious kind of beauty,” one unknown to the viewer. Yet that which gave the
work its appeal was very different. Before, it was a certain shape that evoked a
rich association in the viewer’s mind. In this comment, he went beyond what the
viewer saw before his/her eyes to arrive at “the pure sense of sight.” Taking
Pollock’s painting as an example, Yoshihara explained the difference: The allure
of Pollock’s painting lies not in “what is painted,” e.g., shapes, lines, and colors,
but in what constituted a painting as an object, the materials with which the
painting has been created. Because the materials – what the painting was made
of – mattered to the essence of the painting the attention to the materials and
their qualities allowed the viewer to relate to the painting in a more direct way.
That was why Yoshihara called the experience of looking at paintings by Pollock
and other Americans as “more direct, ” and talked about their transmittion “in a
clear form.” In other words, in the relationship between the painting (and its
creator) and the viewer, there were no obstacles.
Yoshihara regarded this attention to the materials of painting as a
departure from conventional painting (“these works of art, which have not in the
past been considered painting”) and thus as epoch-making in the history of
painting – a development that directed itself toward “pure painting “ (junsui
kaiga):
We can also say that painting has become more pure. The elements of
painting, such as form, line, and color, were deconstructed. The fruit of this
is the birth of abstract art. Driven still one step further, as we can see in
American painting today, the elements of painting have been replaced: the
lines and forms themselves by the quality of line and form; the intentional
painting of form by the random splattering of paint; color by pigment. We
xcvi
have reached the point where these new elements have come into their
own.150
Yoshihara found that the new American paintings such as Pollock’s were focused
not on the lines were drawn, what sorts of shapes were painted, and which colors
were chosen. Rather, these paintings paid attention to, and forced the viewer to
pay attention to, how the lines, shapes and colors manifested qualities specific to
the materials on canvas. Yoshihara saw in contemporary American painting a
new direction for painting, one which highlighted the various conditions of the
materials, rather than the abstracted shapes of figures and objects in nature. The
new American painting affirmed Yoshihara’s conviction that non-figurative
painting was the most advanced form of painting.
Yoshihara Jirô and Calligraphy
As seen above, the study of abstracted forms in “primitive” and children’s
art allowed Yoshihara to find a direct way of communicating the presence of the
human being. Yoshihara found even more “pure” communication of the artist’s
presence in the emphasis on materiality seen in contemporary American
painting. With his encounter with calligraphy, he was to expand this notion of
human presence. Intrigued by the strong presence of the artist seen in
calligraphic works by Zen monk Nakahara Nantenbô, Yoshihara posited that
150 Ibid., 13.
xcvii
human subjectivity could be expressed in non-figurative painting by emphasizing
the artist’s individual approaches to dealing with the materials of the art work.
In April 1952, Yoshihara was attending the funeral of his younger brother-
in-law at the Kaiseiji Temple in Nishinomiya (a city between Osaka and Ashiya)
when he encountered eight pieces of calligraphy by Nantenbô, mounted on
sliding doors (1913; Figure 34). These sliding doors were mostly hidden by
curtains, so after the funeral ceremony, Yoshihara asked a priest to open up the
curtains. When he saw the entire series of calligraphy, he was immensely
excited, despite the somber context. Soon after this discovery of Nantenbô’s
calligraphy, Yoshihara participated in a roundtable discussion on Nantenbô and
his calligraphy with modern painters and calligraphers.151 At the beginning of the
discussion, Yoshihara described the surprise and joy he felt when he found these
works of calligraphy:
After the ceremony, I raised the edge of the curtain and looked at the
calligraphy, and I was taken aback by this grand work filled by these
splashes of ink, and immediately I thought, “This is it!” More than being
impressed by it as a work of calligraphy, I felt that that which we, the new
painters, had struggled to find – a form, or a painting [be it character or
picture] – had unexpectedly appeared before my eyes. Different from
painting, this work of calligraphy did not demand that we look at it as such.
I felt strongly that it was the manifestation of the form that we had been
seeking. I immediately requested that the priest Harumi remove the
151 Because of the fact that the roundtable discussion was organized in less than one month after
Yoshihara’s dramatic encounter with Nantenbô’s calligraphy, and Yoshihara was asked to begin
the discussion, it was possible that Yoshihara asked other artists and calligraphers to the
meeting. This suggests the close relationship between Yoshihara and the avant-garde
calligraphers, who shared this enthusiasm for creating “new” art. For further details, see Chapter
Three. In the archive of the Gutai group at the Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, there are
twenty-four photographs of these calligraphy works by Nantenbô. Upon close examination, the
images accompanying the roundtable discussion in Bokujin seem to be the same as these
photographs. There is a detail of the word “tiger” (the fifth screen), which was probably cropped
from one close-up photograph in the archive.
xcviii

curtain and show me the calligraphy, which extended the length of the
screen doors.152
In line with his conscious rejection of pre-existing categorizations and systems,
Yoshihara strongly argued that Nantenbô’s calligraphy realized the goal that
every artist, including modernist painters, envisioned. Accordingly, Yoshihara’s
analysis of Nantenbô’s calligraphy was exclusively visual. The written characters
and their meaning were not mentioned in his comments at all. Instead, he paid
attention to visual qualities, such as the vigorous brushstrokes, splashes of ink,
and strong compositions:
The entire work has a quality that strikes the viewer with great power; that
is, the work has not only an intensity that is evident when only sections of
it are seen, but also a dynamic rhythm that pulses throughout the whole.
Furthermore, the splashes of ink traces weave in details like delicate
nerve fibers against the dynamic structure of the entire work. For a while, I
stared at the calligraphy in blank amazement.153
That the attention of Yoshihara (and perhaps other modernist painters in the
discussion) was mainly visual is also evident in the selection of images printed
along with the transcription.154 The overall calligraphy consisted of eight
152Yoshihara Jirô, et al., “[Zadankai] Nantenbô no sho” ([Roundtable discussion] Calligraphy of

Nantenbô), Bokubi 14 (July 1952), 5-6.
153 Ibid., 6.
154 It is very likely that Yoshihara, along with his students, took these photographs. See footnote
99.
xcix
characters, which, as a set, can signify a Zen teaching.155 In the first page of the
text, the entire set was reproduced: four panels on the top and next four on the
bottom (Figure 35). These rather small images reproduced on a single page do
not convey the grandeur of the monumental panels (168x103 cm each). It seems
that the reproduction of the eight serial panels was a matter of convenience. Yet
in the later pages, the four individual panels were reproduced, one panel to a
single page (Figure 36). These close-ups communicate the dynamic movement
and vital brushstrokes as described by Yoshihara, while the meaning of the
images as texts was broken up and obscured.
Furthermore, the series included two detail images of the third and fifth
panels (Figure 37). Now a single character was cropped and totally stripped out
of its context. Yet more importantly, these details removed other qualities integral
to calligraphic works – such as velocity of brushstrokes and sense of space. In
these magnified details, the viewer only sees the spatters of ink. All the viewer
can feel is the presence of heavy black ink and the great force which made the
ink splash. Nantenbô’s calligraphy was framed to highlight the material quality of
the object, with which Yoshihara had been increasingly concerned since seeing
the paintings by contemporary American painters the previous year. Thus, he
continued after the aforementioned comment: “The beauty of flowing ink in
155 The characters read, 竜吟初夜後�虎嘯五更前 (Ryû wa ginzu shoya no nochi, Tora wa usobuku
gokô no mae), which means “Dragon roars after midnight, [in correspondence,] tiger howls before
dawn.” The teaching tells that dragons and tigers correspondingly howl, but not because they
consciously arranged to do so. They cleared any mundane concerns from their minds, and that
state of mind brings the extraordinary effect. It refers to a dynamism that can be created by two
kindred spirits. Dragons and tigers are considered as the symbols of strength and excellence in
Zen Buddhism. Arima Raitei ed., Chaseki no zengo daijiten (Encyclopedia of Zen Quotations in
Tea Ceremony) (Kyoto: Tankôsha, 2002), 657. I thank Professors James Robson and Kevin Carr
for helping me to locate references for the quotation.
Kline’s work, the splash of enamel in Pollock’s painting, and the ink splash in this
work (Nantenbô’s calligraphy), all have a common allure.”156
In his attention to the material quality of Nantenbô’s calligraphy, Yoshihara
saw the strong initiative of an artist in dealing with the materials at the moment of
artistic creation. By contrasting Nantenbô’s calligraphy with a very different style
of calligraphy by the late Edo period Buddhist monk Ryôkan (1758-1831; Figure
38), Yoshihara pointed out the difference in the ways which Nantenbô and
Ryôkan related themselves to calligraphy and materials:
Nantenbô’s calligraphy had an intensity totally different from that found in

the lines in Ryôkan’s calligraphy. … This is due to the differences in the
artist’s personalities as well as to the differences in the way each as a
human being (ningen 人間) relates to calligraphy. In Ryôkan’s calligraphy,
you feel as if an ordinary figure is depicted in the ordinary calligraphy. Yet,
in Nantenbô’s calligraphy, a quality which is particularly suited to the
special occasion, and captured in the large scale of the work, emerges,
and there Nantenbô seems to have thrown everything into it. It is a
masterpiece in which a human being and the materials of the work are
linked together. …157
Although Yoshihara seemed to respect the calligraphy of Ryôkan, it is clear from
this comment that the ways Nantenbô dealt with the material qualities of the work
caused a greater impact on him. The difference lay in Nantenbô’s active, almost
aggressive ways of tackling ink and large pieces of paper. Nantenbô’s calligraphy
showed the fresh traces of the creator actively being involved with his materials,
which struck Yoshihara to a great extent. In his comments, Yoshihara several
times used the term ningen (human being) to discuss the work. Yoshihara’s
156 Ibid., 6.
157 Ibid., 6.
ci

“human being” in the context of Nantenbô possessed strong authority in the
choice and handling of materials. His “human being” had an intense, powerful
will, and rejected conventions and traditions in art making. The quality of the
material ink was strongly manifested, yet the artist’s personality and individuality
were equally present. Yoshihara found an intense presentation of human
subjectivity in Nantenbô’s calligraphy.
Yoshihara’s search for human subjectivity in non-figurative art found
resolution in the creative process, when the artist intervened with the materials.
From here, he established a conceptual model of materials and human
subjectivity, later expressed in the 1956 Gutai Art Manifesto, “In Gutai Art, the
human spirit and the materials shake hands with each other, but keep their
distance.” Thus, he presented an aesthetic concept that showed the central
position of human subjectivity in artwork, a fundamental concern of the Japanese
art community.
The striking point of Yoshihara’s conceptual model was that by rejecting
intermediary meanings and references of the real world and establishing a direct
relationship between the materials and the artist, the problem of cultural
authenticity of an art work could be dismissed. As clearly indicated in his
comments on Pollock, Klein, and Nantenbô, he emphasized the common allure,
transcending cultural distinctions, comprehensible to all human beings.
Elsewhere, he insisted that he became interested in calligraphy not because his
sensibility as a Japanese drew him to it, but because its spontaneous way of
cii
expressing individuality attracted him as a fellow artist.158 Most defiantly,
Yoshihara rejected any “meaningless act of signification” that people attached to
the materials: “The materials never compromise themselves with the spirit; the
spirit never dominates the materials. …” in the Gutai Art Manifesto.159
Thus, by jettisoning cultural baggage and emphasizing the neutral status
of the materials, Yoshihara’s conceptual model overcame the issue of national
identity that haunted Japanese modernist art in the early 1950s. While many
modernist artists tried to resolve the issue by representing Japan’s domestic
conflicts or claiming their stylistic affinities with premodern Japanese art,
Yoshihara’s aesthetic model stood on a different terrain that claimed universality
of the human in the material creations.
Between Figurative And Non-figurative: Painting of Yoshihara Jirô, 1951 -

1954
Between 1951 and 1954, Yoshihara’s theory of painting went through a
dramatic transformation. Through his encounters with “primitive” and children’s
art, contemporary American painting, and calligraphy, Yoshihara found ways to
incorporate human subjectivity into painting regardless of stylistic distinctions and
artistic categorizations. This notion opened up the possibility of locating a human
presence in non-figurative painting. Logically, these views provided a theoretical
foundation for a return to abstraction in his own painting practice. Yet in actuality,
158 Yoshihara, et al., “[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu kondankai: Sho to modan âto,” 22.
159Yoshihara, “Gutai bijutsu sengen,” reprinted in GSDG, 6. English translation included, 8. See
Appendix 1.
ciii
the transition was rather slow: Yoshihara seemed to retrace his steps before
moving hesitantly forward, until he had completely erased all traces of figural
imagery from his painting.
After mainly painting images of human figures throughout the late 1940s
and into 1950, a significant change then occurred. His main subject was still the
human figure; however, the figures were becoming more abstracted, to the point
that it was getting difficult to pinpoint what was actually painted. These images
looked like human figures, birds, or other objects. The painting Girl and Seven
Birds (Shôjo to nanawa no tori; 1950, Figure 39), for example, is a composition of
circular and elongated shapes, most of which could be parts of both the girl and
birds. The two hands of the girl, extending from her body in the center of the
picture, could be at the same time a claw, a wing, or a body of the birds. Also, his
use of color assists in this creation of multivalent images. Yoshihara abandoned
naturalistic colors of his earlier works as well. His palette in this painting is
restricted to three main colors – black, red, and white. These three colors were
applied in such a way that it was difficult to distinguish the features of one subject
from another. Rather, the artist used them in order to create a unified
composition. He counter-balanced the dominant white shapes in the top half
against the black and red colors in the bottom half. Thus, the colors of the
shapes in the upper half do not allow the viewer to distinguish between the girl’s
hand, her hair, the bird’s feathers, or the bill. The interpretation of the work all
depends on how the viewer makes sense of the motifs. The viewer can
recognize a figure or a bird from associations through shapes and their positions.
civ
The titles of the paintings give the viewer clues as to subjects; yet Yoshihara’s
painting has become almost non-figurative. In these paintings, he clearly tried to
create abstracted forms that were able to evoke rich associations to reality –
what he called “extraordinary form.” These “abstracted” representations of the
real were an obvious departure from his earlier paintings of human figures.
Nevertheless, while creating these highly abstracted works, Yoshihara was
also painting images that seemed to resist the painter’s desire to totally erase the
visual clues to the reality. In works like Bird (Tori; Figure 40) and Cat and Fish
(Neko to Sakana; Figure 41), both done around 1950, Yoshihara left the animals’
attributes intact in order to create simplified but strong images. In these paintings,
there is clear reference to the primitive and children’s arts in which Yoshihara was
interested in the early 1950s. There was no intention here to create the ambiguity
present in other of his contemporary works.
In these years, Yoshihara experimented with what constituted abstraction and
figuration. At what point does the image become pure abstraction, and at what
point does the image make connections to the real world? Contrasting images of
figuration and abstraction were the result of this interest. Yoshihara’s
experimentation was most obvious in a series of drawings and smaller paintings
created around the same period. In two drawings done around 1951, he seemed
to be exploring the various possibilities that an assemblage of lines and shapes
could create (Figure 42 and Figure 43). Depending on the directions, positions,
connections, and relations, straight lines and round shapes could summon
figurative or non-figurative images.
cv
Yoshihara was still oscillating between figuration and abstraction in the
following year, but new interests debuted in his works at that time. First, he
apparently tried to express the material qualities characteristic to oil paint, such
as heaviness, impermeability, and also dryness and wetness, depending on the
amount of oil used (Figure 44 and Figure 45). Secondly, the composition of lines
and shapes became more spread out; there was less sense of centrality in the
picture plane. Compare, for example, a drawing of ca. 1951 (Figure 42) and a
painting of 1952 (Figure 46). While both are considered non-figurative works
consisting of lines and shapes, the 1951 drawing more clearly indicates the
center. This development relates to another significant emerging difference.
Yoshihara continuously created works using straight lines, yet the distinction
between these lines and the background became less obvious over time. More
accurately, Yoshihara seemed to erase these distinctions by de-emphasizing
what was foreground and what was background. For example, while there was a
clear distinction between the image and the background in the 1951 painting
Night, Bird, Hunter (Yoru, Tori, Ryôjin; Figure 45), it was difficult to distinguish the
two in the 1952 painting Primordial (Genshi; Figure 46). These shifts in
Yoshihara’s painting can be easily understood in light of his theoretical concerns
between 1951 and 1952. In early 1951, Yoshihara encountered contemporary
American painting and began to speak of his interest in the materiality of the
paint.
By 1953, Yoshihara was creating paintings in which he emphasized the
material quality of oil paint, as well as diffuse compositions and distinctions of
cvi

object/blank space with more confidence. If we compare his 1953 painting Work
B (Figure 47) with his earlier painting Primordial (Figure 46), it is clear that he
was trying to create a picture plane in which no single component stands out. In
the earlier painting Primordial, although the black lines and neutral color planes
are spread out, the black lines have the stronger presence. Yet in his 1953 Work
B, the lines of yellow, white, black, blue colors are intricately layered and meshed
so that the lines in the brightest color (the yellow ones) do not dominate the
composition. Nor can the dominant color (the blue) be perceived as the
background, for the same blue lines obscure the very front of the picture plane. In
the same vein, Work (Figure 48) is composed of numerous lines randomly
running throughout the picture plane. Limiting the use of oil, the artist tried to
foreground the hard quality of the oil paint when it dried. In this painting, the
distinction between what is object and what is background is completely erased.
By this time, motifs associated with the real world had completely
disappeared from Yoshihara’s canvas. His painting did not reflect in any way
objects in reality, and had reached the non-figurative. In response to this shift, the
titles of his paintings became generic, named simply “work” (sakuhin 作品).
Yoshihara Jirô and Clement Greenberg: Toward “Advanced” Painting
Yoshihara presented a new model of Japanese modernist art that
emphasized the artist’s subjective intervention with the materials of painting. His
model was a radical departure from contemporary modernist art practice, which
mostly dealt with the issue of human subjectivity through representation and
cvii

abstracted forms of the real world. Some artists demonstrated an interest in the
expressive qualities of the paint: For example, the aforementioned Suda Kokuta
created a non-figurative work which consisted of broad straight lines drawn with a
comparatively dry paintbrush (Figure 49). Yet Yoshihara was one of a few
members in the Japanese art community who in a clear way conceptualized the
connections between materials and human subjectivity in the early 1950s.
Considering the fact that Yoshihara attributed a great part of his interest in
materiality to Jackson Pollock, one may wonder about the position of his theory
of materials and human subjectivity in relation to contemporary European and
American art. In 1946 Jan Dubuffet, whom Art Informel leader Michel Tapié
regarded highly and included in his movement as one of the pioneers, told of a
creation process similar to Yoshihara’s concept of the relationship:
The point of departure is the surface to bring to life, and the first splash of
color or ink on it: The effect which comes, the adventure which comes. It is
this splash, through the artist’s enrichment and directions, which guides
painting to move forward. … Art is born from materials. Spirituality must
borrow the language of materials. …160
In 1949 Dotremont, a member of COBRA, a group of Western and Northern
European painters, made remarks similar to Dubuffet’s:
… The great big splash of color has a value of its own. It is like a cry of the
artist’s hand, which has been mutilated by formalism. It is like a cry of the
materials which formalism wishes to enslave under the spirit.161
160Quoted in Sylvain Lecombre, “Informel et Compagnie” in National Museum of Art [Kokuritsu

Kokusai Bijutsukan], Kaiga no arashi, 1950 nendai: Informel, Gutai, COBRA (Action et Emotion,
Peintures des Annés 50: Informel, Gutai, COBRA) (Osaka, 1985), 11. French translation included,
115.
161Quoted in Jean-Clarence Lambert, “L’esprit COBRA” in ibid., 7. French translation included,

112.
cviii

Their interest in the relationship between the materials and the artist is clearly
aligned with Yoshihara’s conceptual model.162 Yet it is fair to say that Yoshihara
pushed this relationship to further extremes than these contemporary Euro-
American artists, who worked mostly in an abstract style. Yoshihara thought that
the purest concept of the materials and the artist’s human subjectivity could only
be materialized in non-figurative painting.
Yoshihara’s aesthetic theory was, not surprisingly, close to that of
influential American critic Clement Greenberg, who conceptualized the emerging
interest of young New York painters working on non-figurative painting. In his
assessment of contemporary American painting, Yoshihara emphasized the
artists’ new approach to elements of painting, which no longer considered how
the lines were drawn, what sorts of shapes were painted, and which colors were
chosen. Rather, they were interested in the material qualities manifested in lines,
shapes and colors, independent from the artist’s intentional molding and bending
of these qualities. Painting did not belong to any external referents or
preconceived ideas: it became an object of its own. Thus, as a natural
manifestation of material qualities and the de-emphasis of the manipulations of
human (artist’s) hands, the American painting inevitably rejected one of the most
important principles of conventional compositions: clear distinctions between an
object and blank space. Yoshihara saw in American painting a new possibility for
162 It is very likely that Yoshihara had read these texts before writing the Gutai Art Manifesto.
Dubuffet’s use of contrasts between the materials and spirituality, and Dotremont’s word of “cry”
for the strong presence of the material quality echo in the manifesto. Yoshihara writes:
…When the materials remain intact and exposes its characteristics, it starts telling a
story, and even screaming. To make the fullest use of the materials is to make use of the
spirit. By enhancing the spirit, the materials are brought to the height of the spirit.
Yoshihara, “Gutai bijutsu sengen,” 202, reprinted in GSDG, 6. The entire text is included in
Appendix 1.
cix

creating an even picture plane, where each component of a painting would bear
strength of its own. In an essay titled “The Blank Space of Abstract Painting”
(Chûshô kaiga no yohaku; February 1953), Yoshihara suggested that one should
consider the whole picture plane, created through the painting process, as the
painting, rather than differentiating between an object (jittai 実体) and blank
space (yohaku 余白). He introduced and commented on paintings by four artists,
Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Hans Hartung. In a
passage about De Kooning’s 1950 painting Excavation (Figure 50), Yoshihara
described the neutral relationship between its lines and shapes:
In De Kooning’s picture, the planes are not subordinated to the lines, or

the lines to the planes. So, it is possible to say that in this picture there is
no blank space. Both the lines and planes fully maintain their own position
in relation to each other, and we are presented with a content that is rich
and that we never tire of looking at.163
In the discussion of Pollock’s work, Yoshihara similarly said:
Although black and white colors stand in intense opposition to each other,
here, too, the concept of blank space does not materialize. The black part
of this canvas captured the movement of Pollock’s brush and shows its
rhythm and density. There is only the space created by Pollock. The space
of the entire canvas absorbs this rhythm and is in a state of tension.164
These comments resonate with Clement Greenberg’s famous term, “all-over”
quality, used to describe painting of the late 1940s. In 1948, Greenberg said:
…these painters render every element, every part of the canvas

equivalent; and they … weave the work of art into a tight mesh whose
163Yoshihara Jirô, “Chûshô kaiga no yohaku” (Blank Space of Abstract Painting), Bokubi 21
(February 1953), 12.
164 Ibid., 13.
cx
principle of formal unity is contained and recapitulated in each thread, so

that we find the essence of the whole work in every one of its parts.165
Clearly Yoshihara was standing on theoretical ground similar to
Greenberg’s in his understanding of the diffusion of powers within the picture
plane, as each element expressed its own autonomy. It is difficult to know how
familiar Yoshihara was with the writings of this New York influential art critic.
Probably Yoshihara did not have direct access to Greenberg’s critical texts,
published mostly in American intellectual journals; yet Yoshihara subscribed to
American and European art magazines such as Art d’aujourd Hui, XXe Siecle,
and ARTNews in the early 1950s.166 He also owned several monographs and
exhibition catalogues on abstract art published in New York, including Abstract
Painting: Background and American Phase by Thomas B. Hess (1951), and
Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America (1951) and 15 Americans (1952), two
exhibitions organized by the Museum of Modern Art. It is quite likely that, through
these publications, Yoshihara was indirectly exposed to Greenberg’s theories.167
Thomas Hess, New York critic, ARTNews editor and a friend of Greenberg, for
example, wrote on de Kooning’s painting in his Abstract Painting:
165 Clement Greenberg, “The Crisis of the Easel Painting,” Partisan Review (April 1948),
reprinted in his The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949,
John O’Brian ed., (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 224.
166 According to Irving Sandler, ARTNews was the most sympathetic to Abstract Expressionism
among American art magazines during the 1950s. Quoted in David and Cecile Shapiro, “Abstract
Expressionism: The Politics of Apolitical Painting” in Francis Frascina ed., Pollock and After: The
Critical Debate (New York: Routledge, 1985), 141. French art magazines Art d’aujourd Hui and
XXe Siecle were also eager to introduce Abstract Expressionism in the early 1950s.
167 Yoshihara mentioned in “Chûshô kaiga no yohaku”: “… it is amazing that there appeared a
critic who, in response to these paintings that could not be considered as such in the conventional
sense, boldly asserted that Pollock was the greatest painter in America.” Yoshihara, “Chûshô
kaiga no yohaku,” 13.
cxi

De Kooning rejects inequality in even the most incidental elaborations,

and harmony – except there is no blend, but rather a co-existence of
forces in his work – must exist at the level of every stroke of brush or push
of knife.168
Yoshihara might have taken cues from these texts by Hess, whose theoretical
construction owed very much to Greenberg in terms of his examination of the
new space presented by contemporary American painting.169
We should also be mindful of Greenberg and Yoshihara shared
consciousness at the juncture of a great historical change. Involved as they were
in painting practice during and after World War II, both sought to establish a new
model of painting that would transcend pre-existing styles and isms. However
politically charged Greenberg’s agenda of championing American Abstract
Expressionism and displacing European art might have been; he did try to
historicize the trend and give a clear definition for the emerging abstract and non-
figurative style among New York artists. Yoshihara, on the other hand, aspired as
a teacher to direct young artists in constructing a new definition of painting. What
these two theorists from different cultural backgrounds found and eagerly
promoted was the painter’s self-critiquing process of his or her practice: the
tendency of painting to become pure, and aspire to its autonomy. Greenberg
himself suggested in the same essay cited above that the then current tendency
168Thomas B. Hess, Abstract Painting: Background and American Phase (New York: The Viking
Press, 1951), 103.
169 Sandler notes that Hess’s Abstract Painting was the first general book which featured the
Abstract Expressionists. Quoted in Shapiro, “Abstract Expressionism: The Politics of Apolitical
Painting,” 141. As its subtitle suggests (“Background and American Phase”), Hess’s narrative
basically followed Greenberg’s historical view that Abstract Expressionists developed highly
individual style on the tradition of European modernist experiments, especially Cubism, after the
decline of European modernism. In the acknowledgements, Hess thanked to Greenberg, who
“suggested the idea in the first place.” Hess, Abstract Painting, 163.
cxii
among young painters seemed to be related to “contemporary sensibility. … It
corresponds perhaps to the feeling that all hierarchical distinctions have been
exhausted, that no area or order of experience is either intrinsically or relatively
superior to any other…”170 Thus, the affinities in their theories should not be
discussed in terms of influence: their shared interest in painting’s autonomy and
the common search for a spatially undifferentiated picture plane were embedded
in their contemporary consciousness.
Conclusion
From the mid-1940s through the early 1950s, Japan went through
dynamic changes – defeat, occupation, rebirth as democratic nation, and
renewed independence. These historical developments were mostly brought
about from “above,” yet many Japanese, intellectuals and ordinary citizens alike,
worked eagerly to make their voice heard and have an influence on the course of
Japan.
At the end of World War II, many artists in Japan were concerned with the place
of the human being, whether in society or in artistic practice. Reacting to the
totalitarian ideology of the Imperial wartime state, these artists sought ways to
express their individuality. They severed their ties with the elements of the old
establishment – like exhibition groups and conventional categorizations – and
formed new groups to pursue more democratic, less rigid output in their art. Their
170Greenberg, “The Crisis of the Easel Painting,” in his The Collected Essays and Criticism,
Volume 2, 224.
cxiii
concerns were reflected in their artistic creations, too. Many abstract painters
returned to images of the human being in the early postwar period to express the
misery and struggle of ordinary people. This interest in the human being was,
however, not limited to art. It intersected with the concerns of many novelists and
intellectuals, who also anticipated the rise of the autonomous self in the
construction of the new Japan. This overarching interest I term the discourse of
human subjectivity.
The modernist painter Yoshihara Jirô was one of these artists who actively
engaged in this search for human subjectivity, in institutional, theoretical and
artistic arenas. He was an active member of interdisciplinary groups and he
encouraged artists practicing in areas other than fine arts – calligraphy, flower
arrangement and ceramics – to break with the conventional norms of their
genres. In his own painting Yoshihara, like other modernist painters, first returned
to the image of the human figure. Yet his strong conviction that non-figurative
painting was the most advanced in history posed a dilemma. After encounters
with contemporary American painting and nineteenth-century Zen priest
Nantenbô’s calligraphy, Yoshihara found ways to incorporate human subjectivity
in artistic creations by focusing on the materials of which the art was made, and
placing balue on the state of convergence between the artist and the materials.
By focusing on the relationship between the materials and the artist, those
intermediaries which had been considered integral to art, such as meaning,
association, and technical skills, were stripped away. The essential issues were
cxiv
the qualities of raw materials and the ways that the artist intervened with those
materials.
By rejecting intermediary meanings and references to the real world and
establishing a direct relationship between materials and the artist, Yoshihara was
able to offer one concrete solution to the problem of derivativeness in Japanese
modernist art practice. Yoshihara’s theoretical model was constructed based on
concerns shared with many artists working in the early postwar period in Japan.
However, he was one of the few modernist artists who sought to depart from the
question of subject matter (what to represent as a Japanese) and forms (how to
represent as a Japanese) and to establish a new model of Japanese art that
would represent not specific, but universal culture.
Yet Yoshihara was not a faithful practitioner of his own theory. As seen in
his own painting practice, he was indecisive about whether to pursue abstraction
or non-figurative modes, reluctant to expand the possibilities of his conceptual
model. Young artists, who came to know Yoshihara through his classes and
Genbi meetings, were the ones who adopted and realized his concept of
materials and human subjectivity. They would discover a new paradigm of the
painting practice in Yoshihara’s concept and to execute many unprecedented
works that transcended the conventional notion of the practice. The next two
chapters will discuss these practices of Gutai in greater detail.
cxv

 
Chapter Three
Laboratory of Experiments I: Gutai Exhibitions 1955-1958
Modernist painter Yoshihara Jirô constructed his conceptual model
between the materiality of an art object and human subjectivity in response to
concerns of how to represent human experience and national identity in visual
art, issues common to many artists working in the early postwar period in Japan.
His theoretical model rejected intermediary meanings and references of the real
world and aimed to establish a direct relationship between the materials and the
artist. However, he was not the best practitioner of his own theory. Among artists
he had contacted through his activities in Kansai area, it was the young artists,
mostly Yoshihara’s students, who identified themselves with his theory and boldly
challenged and expanded conventional notions of painting practice. Their
iconoclastic aspirations convinced Yoshihara to form the Gutai Art Association
(henceforth Gutai) in 1954 to facilitate movement independent from the
interdisciplinary group Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Contemporary Art Discussion
Group, henceforth Genbi), and the avant-garde calligraphy group Bokujin-kai in
which he was involved in the early 1950s. Yoshihara’s role as the facilitator of the
movement was crucial: in response to growing interests in the “object-hood” and
process of painting, he organized exhibitions in such unusual places as a public
park and a theater. These exhibition venues led Gutai members to create a
variety of forms of visual art that could be recognized as sculptures, installations,
cxvi
and performance but which transcended the boundaries between many types of
art. His conceptual model of the materials and the artist was materialized in a
most unique, unprecedented way.
In this chapter, we will first follow the development of Gutai as a radical
experimental art group in relation to Yoshihara’s activities and interests in early
postwar Japan, as discussed in the previous chapter. Then, we will examine the
various venues of Gutai exhibitions between July 1955 and April 1958 at outdoor
exhibitions, theaters, and gallery exhibitions. The new interests that developed in
response to the physical challenges of these exhibition venues will be analyzed.
The next chapter, Chapter Four, will look at the three of the most radical Gutai
artists and their works from the start of their careers through the 1950s. We will
see the various ways that Yoshihara’s conceptual model of materiality and
human subjectivity was materialized. These artists, Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga
Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko, developed highly individual styles through their own
theorization of painting practice and were mutually stimulated by Yoshihara’s
conceptual model, and the demanding new environments that he provided.
Establishing Distance from the Kansai Art Scene
We have already discussed in Chapter Two that Yoshihara was actively
involved in the activities of Genbi between 1952 and 1955. Simultaneously, he
had close contact with the Bokujin-kai (“People of the Ink” Group), an avant-
garde calligraphy group inaugurated in 1952. Bokujin-kai’s determination to break
conventional rules and the desire to converse with artists outside of their field in
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both domestic and international art worlds would deeply affect his direction after
the establishment of Gutai. Numerous conversations with Bokujin-kai members
and other artists in roundtable discussions organized by the group became fertile
ground for the development of Yoshihara’s ideas and led him to ultimately
recognize differences in each others’ goals.
Yoshihara first met the leading figure of this avant-garde calligraphy
movement, Morita Shiryû, in 1950 or early 1951, probably through his friend
Hasegawa Saburô, a modernist painter in the Kansai region and a frequent
contributor to the publications of the avant-garde calligrapher group.171 Their
relationship was further developed through their participation in the monthly
meetings of Genbi. Between 1953 and 1955 Yoshihara wrote four essays for
Bokubi and Bokujin and participated in at least five discussions organized by the
group (transcribed and published). Other than short, sporadic contributions to
popular newspapers, Bokubi and Bokujin were the only public outlets for his
opinions.
171 The avant-garde calligrapher group Bokujin-kai was involved in two publications: Bokujin
(People of the Ink; 墨人) and Bokubi (Beauty of Ink; 墨美). Bokujin was a coterie journal among
the Bokujin-kai members, filled with mutual critiques and reproductions of members’ calligraphic
work. On the other hand, Bokubi had a more public character, introducing not only calligraphy but
also other areas of contemporary art. For more details, see Osaki Shin’ichirô, “Morita Shiryû to
Bokubi: Sho to chûshô kaiga wo megutte” (Morita Shiryû and Bokubi: on the Relationship
between Calligraphy and Abstract Painting), in Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Morita
Shiryû to Bokubi (Morita Shiryû and Bokubi) (Kôbe, 1992), 13-18. Hasegawa Saburô was one of
the outside lecturers invited to give talks on modern art to aspiring avant-garde calligraphers. He
also frequently wrote texts on modern art for Bokubi and Bokujin. For his involvement in avant-
garde calligraphy, see Bert Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and
American Artists in the Early Postwar Years (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 77-78.
Through Hasegawa Saburô and Hasegawa’s friend and Japanese-American sculptor
Isamu Noguchi, who stayed in Japan during 1950, the calligraphers came to know the works of
American painter Franz Kline and French painter Pierre Tal Coat. Hasegawa Saburô, “Fransu to
Amerika karano tayori” (Letters from France and America), Bokubi 1 (June 1951), n.p.
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These avant-garde calligraphers were eager to learn about modernist art practice
and its history. They were unsatisfied with the traditional training process,
confined as it was by a strict master-apprentice relationship and a rigid teaching
method which focused on the transmittance of old calligraphic styles. Also, there
was an increasing interest on the part of the contemporary American and
European abstract painters in the works of the avant-garde calligraphers.172
Major exhibitions of contemporary Japanese calligraphy were held at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1952 and again in 1954. In 1953, Morita
Shiryû was invited to the Salon d’Octobre, France’s prestigious annual exhibition
of contemporary art. As their exposure to the international art community
increased, the calligraphers felt a strong need to fortify their theoretical positions
and to create calligraphic works that could emulate the works of contemporary
American and European painters.173 At the same time, they were trying to
understand the historical background of those European and American painters
who were interested in Japanese calligraphy and who had created visual works
similar to calligraphy. They approached modernist artists active in the Kansai
area, such as Hasegawa Saburô and Yoshihara Jirô. The avant-garde
172 Franz Kline’s work, Drifter, appeared on the cover of the journal. Hasegawa Saburô had
corresponded with Kline and Tal Coat, and he translated and published their letters in the first
issue of Bokubi. In his letter, Kline showed great enthusiasm about corresponding with the
Japanese avant-garde calligraphers, and proposed an exchange of drawings. Franz Kline, “Dôshi
yori Hasegawa shi ateno tegami” (Letter from Mr. Kline to Mr. Hasegawa), Bokubi 1 (June 1951),
n.p.
173 Morita Shiryû’s lecture at the monthly meeting of the Genbi, Feburary 13, 1953, Osaka, Asahi
Shinbunsha. See Yoshihara Jirô, et al., “[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu kondankai: Sho to modan âto”
([Roundtable discussion] Contemporary Art Discussion Group: Calligraphy and Modern Art),
Bokujin 12 (March 1953), 10. Bokujin-kai also showed interest in philosophical aspects of art and
calligraphy, and invited philosophers as Ijima Tsutomu and Hisamatsu Makoto, both professors at
Kyoto University and students of famous philosopher Nishida Kitarô. For a detailed discussion of
Bokujin-kai and Morita Shiryû’s activities and theories in the mid-1950s, see Winther-Tamaki, Art
in the Encounter of Nations, 66-89.
cxix
calligraphers were quite attracted to the ideas and vision of Yoshihara, who
championed the commonalities between different disciplines and rejected their
respective categorizations. Beside numerous written contributions, Yoshihara
served several times as a judge for their experimental calligraphic work
competition in their monthly coterie magazine Bokujin (Figure 51).174
On the other hand, from Yoshihara’s perspective, the international aspect
of the journals Bokubi and Bokujin were quite attractive. They provided
opportunities for Yoshihara (and perhaps other modernist painters) to glimpse the
latest paintings of American and European artists, such as Jackson Pollock,
Franz Kline, Willem De Kooning, Pierre Soulage and Pierre Alechinsky. These
artists were rarely covered in popular Japanese art magazines, most of which
were published in Tokyo.175 Also, the popularity of these magazines in the
international art community gave Yoshihara another reason to be involved, for he
strongly desired to engage with people outside Japan. This desire was clear
when he and his students published their Gutai journals with English and later
French translations. Yet most importantly, Yoshihara acknowledged the avant-
garde calligraphers’ strong will to break free from conventional rules and
institutional confinements, and to create art beyond the discipline of calligraphy.
174 The competition section was called “α bu” (Alpha Section; アルファ部) in the journal Sho no Bi.
Hasegawa Saburô was in charge of the selection process for the “Alpha Section” until it was
terminated in August 1953. Later in 1954, a similar section called “Kaiga bu” (Painting Section; 絵
画部) was started in Bokujin, and Yoshihara and Suda Kokuta served as the judges. For a
concise history of the avant-garde calligraphers and their journals (Sho no bi, Bokubi and
Bokujin), see Osaki Shin’ichirô ed., “Morita Shiryû to Bokubi kanren nenpyô” (Chronology of
Morita Shiryû and Bokubi) in Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Morita Shiryû to Bokubi
(Morita Shiryû and Bokubi) (Kôbe, 1992), 103-107.
175 Yoshihara wrote how he was indebted to Bokubi and Bokujin in 1954 for their broad
perspectives on contemporary currents in international art. Yoshihara Jirô, “Morita Shiryû shôron”
(Brief Essay on Morita Shiryû), Bokujin 28 (October 1954), 25.
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Yoshihara was convinced that through their determination, they would be able to
create what he perceived as “advanced” art.
In many discussions and essays, Yoshihara repeatedly attacked certain
aspects of calligraphy, specifically those he considered as defining elements in
calligraphy as a discipline. Yoshihara counted among the “obstacles” for aspiring
calligraphers such elements as literal quality, restriction of materials (paper and
ink), and the emphatic contrast between character(s) and blank space (yohaku
余白). Of these, Yoshihara thought that the decisive element was its literal
content (moji sei 文字性) – as a work of written language. Thus, Yoshihara
argued that avant-garde calligraphers had to abandon this element if calligraphy
was to compete in the art world and to achieve a more universal status. As
already seen in Chapter Two, by 1952 he had made the claim that his conceptual
model of materials and human subjectivity had been arrived at through his
observation of American contemporary painting and the monumental calligraphy
by Nakahara Nantenbô. The emphasis on the relationship between the materials
and the artist did not take into account such intermediaries as meaning and
categorization. Yoshihara used these ideas to exorcise the restrictions on
calligraphic practice.
In a discussion held at the monthly meeting of Genbi in February 1953,
Yoshihara affirmed that the calligraphers, in their pursuit of abandoning literal
quality and emphasizing visual quality, shared an interest in materiality with some
contemporary painters:
From the perspective of character, although a single horizontal line can be

read “ichi (one; 一),” [recent] calligraphers present a kind of piece which
cxxi
allows us to see numerous levels of spirituality (seishin sei 精神性) from

one single drawn line or one vertical line, which do not indicate anything
[in the literal sense]. This attitude [of the new movement in calligraphy]
begins to correspond closely to the new painting, which aspires to find
elements in a very basic way. I think this is an extremely natural
development.
Therefore, it is a natural consequence that calligraphers have a desire to
further pursue [these] values … when even the literal quality is eliminated
and the aesthetic value of calligraphy is appreciated. On this point,
calligraphy and advanced painting are very closely related to each
other.176
After he pointed out the proximity between current painting and calligraphy,
Yoshihara went on to criticize the ambivalent attitude of the avant-garde
calligraphers rather strongly:
But I want to admonish this attitude [among calligraphers] who think their
creation still belongs to the field of calligraphy even when it departs from
literal quality. … From the standpoint of calligraphy [which emphasizes its
literal quality], … calligraphic works such as those in the Alpha Section are
not calligraphy. [Yet] I wonder if the calligraphers consider those works as
something created by calligraphers, or if their attitude is that they are
creating something different from painting, at the least. In my view, this
[attitude] is hard to understand; they should adopt a more decisive attitude
and jump into the world of painting.177
Yoshihara became increasingly frustrated with the calligraphers, who, in his view,
hesitated to go beyond the realm of calligraphy as lexical practice. In truth, the
leader of the avant-garde calligraphers, Morita Shiryû, was ambivalent about the
erasure of the literal content and the move from calligraphy to pure form. Morita
asserted in the same discussion that literal content was one of the three
176 The transcription was published in the March issue of Bokujin. Yoshihara Jirô, et al.,
“[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu kondankai: Sho to modan âto” ([Roundtable discussion] Contemporary
Art Discussion Group: Calligraphy and Modern Art), Bokujin 12 (March 1953), 14-15.
177 Ibid., 15.
cxxii
properties of calligraphy as an art.178 Yoshihara’s criticism toward the avant-
garde calligraphers culminated in his essay titled “The Calligraphy of Poverty and
the Painting of Bell” (Hin no sho to beru no kaiga), which was his last and
perhaps most critical attack on the avant-garde calligraphers.
In this essay, Yoshihara discussed two art pieces originally exhibited at
the annual exhibitions of Genbi. One was a “painting” titled Work (Bell) by Tanaka
Atsuko (Figure 52), who joined Gutai in June 1955. The other was a calligraphy
piece titled Hin (poverty; 貧) by Bokujin-kai member Inoue Yûichi (Figure 53).179
These two pieces were a source of serious consternation during the selection
process, because neither fit, or more appropriately, both threatened the idea of
“modernist” painting in the minds of many judges. Tanaka entered Work (Bell) as
a painting piece, but it contained nothing suggestive of the common idea of
“painting.” Work (Bell) consisted of twenty bells, wired together and placed on the
floor around the edges of the exhibition room. There was a switch on the wall,
and the viewer was invited to turn it on – after which the twenty bells rang one by
one. According to Tanaka, she intended to “wrap” the exhibit room with a
“painting” of sound (so that the whole exhibition room would become one
“painting”), as well as to give the edges of the imagined “painting” some
movement (the moving sound). Yoshihara was profoundly impressed with
Tanaka’s original conception and use of materials. Although other judges rejected
178 The other two properties, according to Morita, were time (the duration of reading and of
creating a work with the brush) and space (the formal qualities of composition, line quality, and so
on). Ibid., 10. Also see Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations, 82.
179Hin was shown at the Second Genbi Exhibition in 1954 (Matsuzakaya Department Store,
Osaka, November 13-18; Kyoto City Museum, November 22 – 26; Kôbe: Asahi Building Hall,
Kôbe, December 10 – 16).
cxxiii

this work, Yoshihara pushed strongly for its acceptance.180 Work (Bell) passed
the selection process and was exhibited in the show.
The other work in question, Inoue Yûichi’s Hin was problematic because
this calligraphy work suggested, from the perspective of the Genbi judges, a
return to the literal. Genbi had been originally formed in 1952 to provide informal
settings for Kansai region artists concerned with abstract/non-figurative art.
Avant-garde calligraphers such as Morita Shiryû, an active member of Genbi,
were creating calligraphy of unintelligible characters, close to abstract painting
(Figure 54). Some calligraphers were actually experimenting with oil paint and
producing abstract paintings which were submitted to the Genbi Exhibitions.
Therefore, the obvious literal reference of the calligraphy Hin was quite a shock
to the judges.
Yoshihara used these two examples to make clear the necessity of
rejecting restrictions attributed to each art category – painting or calligraphy – so
as to create arts for the contemporary era. With a stronger tone than ever, he
contrasted these two works of art: praising Tanaka’s Work (Bell) as highly original
and strongly challenging of people’s preconceptions, as opposed to Inoue’s Hin,
which he disparaged as “not an art of the avant-garde.” He wrote that Inoue’s
work disappointed him because “it does not leave the convention of the literal,
even one step. The line, space, and materials do not directly speak to the
180 See the comments of Yoshihara Jirô and Ueno Teruo, Professor of Kyoto University, in “Ihyô
tsuku Nijû no beru: ojôsan no sakuhin Genbiten ni buji nyûsen” (The Surprising Work Twenty
Bells: A Work by a Young Lady Was Successfully Accepted in the Genbi Exhibition), Asahi
Shinbun, 24 November 1955, Osaka edition, reprinted in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History ed.,
Gutai shiryôshû: Dokyumento Gutai, 1954-1972 (Anthology of Gutai Documents: Document
Gutai, 1954-1972; henceforth GSDG) (Ashiya: Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, 1993), 33.
cxxiv

viewer.” Yoshihara wrote unequivocally that a modern art show such as the
annual Genbi Exhibition, was “the place for us to ponder where current art is
headed in view of the gains it has made.” In other words, work like Inoue’s did
not deserve to be shown there.
Toward the end of the essay, Yoshihara’s tone sharpened even more,
becoming almost ethical. The determination to break conventions and embrace
an incessantly challenging spirit, according to Yoshihara, was the most important
condition of being an artist in the contemporary era. He wrote:
To be a fine artist may be important, but I think that what is more important
is to live in the contemporary era. The artwork ought to provide new
excitement to people who live in the contemporary era and who reflect on
our times. People look forward to what strikes their heart, what makes
them feel the life force, what shakes them with sympathy. This kind of art
definitely must possess something unknown. These qualities can be found
only in the unknown territory shown through the existence of the individual
… I am interested only in those people who challenge the wall face on.
Untrodden (zenjin mitô no; 前人未踏の) art is the very thing I like to see. It
is too lazy to stay comfortably on this side of the wall, content with the
admiration of others who call your work genuine.181
It was obvious to whom the phrase “It is too lazy to stay comfortably on this side
of the wall” referred. However, it was also clear that Yoshihara did not just
hopelessly abandon the avant-garde calligraphers. Scolding but encouraging, he
suggested that modernist painters like him were also groping to find this
unknown territory. Although very critical, his language indicates he was indeed
181 Yoshihara Jirô, “Hin no sho to beru no kaiga” (The Calligraphy of Poverty and the Painting of
Bell), probably written in 1955-1956, in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 203. The date is
presumable since Tanaka Atsuko’s Bell, discussed in the essay, was exhibited as Work in the
Third Genbi Exhibition (Kyoto City Museum, November 24 – 28; Asahi Building Hall, Kôbe,
December 1 – 5; Osaka City Museum, December 13 – 19). See the editorial note attached to the
essay, ibid., 203.
cxxv

still hoping that the calligraphers would challenge the conventions which limited
their art.
Yet this essay was never published in Bokujin and was returned to
Yoshihara by its editor, Inoue Yûichi.182 It was a clear sign of the calligraphers’
determination to go their separate way. Indeed, the focus of Bokujin and Bokubi
shifted around this period – although they still published work by contemporary
European and American artists, they provided equal space to classic works of
calligraphy from premodern Japan and China. Yoshihara stopped contributing to
the experimental painting section of Bokujin after November 1956.183
Between 1954 and 1955, Yoshihara gradually withdrew from
interdisciplinary activities in Kansai area. He made no further contributions to the
journals of the avant-garde calligraphers, and stopped showing his work at the
annual Genbi Exhibitions. By the fall of 1955, he was fully occupied with planning
and participating in Gutai’s activities, and critiquing the massive amount of work
created by its young artists. In the essay “The Calligraphy of Poverty and the
Painting of Bell,” Yoshihara wrote that he was “interested only in those people
who challenge the wall face on.” For Yoshihara, it was the Gutai members who
represented his ideal of artists who did not hesitate to challenge conventions in
artistic practice.
182 Yoshihara Jirô, “Hin no sho to beru no kaiga,” 202-203.
183 Yoshihara Jirô, “Kaiga sakuhin senpyô” (Comment on Monthly Painting Competition), Bokujin
43 (April 1956).
cxxvi

Foundation of Gutai
Yoshihara’s pursuit of advanced art through his concept of the materials
and human being met with resistance from area modernist artists and avant-
garde calligraphers who rather preferred to work within their own fields.184
Indeed, it was the new types of works by young painters which responded to his
vision and boldly expanded preexisting notions of painting. These painters –
some Yoshihara’s students since the late 1940s, others pursuing artistic careers
in other exhibition groups – were producing tableaus unimagined in the traditional
practice: a painting that had holes all over it (Figure 20) or a painting produced
through chemical reaction (Figure 55). Yoshihara gathered these artists and
established the Gutai Art Association in the summer of 1954. Although in the
beginning the group was loosely organized, Gutai gradually sharpened its
direction as an artistic group of experimental works, especially after radical
members of group Zero-kai joined in June 1955.
While Yoshihara was occupied with artist groups like Genbi and Bokujin-
kai and administrative work at the Ashiya City Art Association, he simultaneously
184In 1963, Yoshihara wrote:

“Genbi” … became a sort of united front of self-appointed avant-garde artists in Kansai.
However in the end, we came to simultaneously and firmly realize each artist’s
differences in his/her opinions and attitudes; after two years, it just disappeared. After all,
our group [the Gutai] was extraordinarily passionate in our determination to secede from
conventions and to pursue originality in contrast to other Genbi members. That
awareness, “we are little different than others,” made our group more strongly solid.
Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai gurûpu no jûnen, 1” (Ten Years of the Group Gutai, 1). Bijutsu Journal 38
(March 1963), reprinted in GSDG, 324.
cxxvii

taught several aspiring young artists in the Kansai area.185 He was impressed
with their strong desire to create new painting and their receptiveness to non-
figurative painting. In contrast to Genbi and Bokujin-kai members, the young
artists coming to his studio were responsive to his advice and critiques, and were
not afraid to move forward. Shimamoto Shôzô was the best example. When
Shimamoto first brought his painting to Yoshihara in 1947, Yoshihara told him that
his work was unique but had influences from existing painters, despite
Shimamoto’s protest that he never saw anything like his own. Yoshihara went on
to say that although he would not want to accept any students, he would make
an exception if Shimamoto could create “painting that no one in the world has yet
seen.”186 Over the next few years, Shimamoto continued to visit, bringing unusual
paintings such as a “large canvas roughly painted using only yellow paint” and a
painting of red, blue, yellow circles on asphalt roofing material (Figure 56). Then,
Shimamoto presented his signature series, Painting with Holes (Figure 20),
which Yoshihara greatly praised. Yet when Shimamoto brought more variations of
Painting with Holes, Yoshihara warned his student that Italian painter Lucio
185Shimamoto Shôzô and Yamazaki Tsuruko were two of the first students of Yoshihara.
Shimamoto began to visit Yoshihara’s studio in search of the painter’s advice as early as 1948.
See Shimamoto Shôzô, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in GSDG,
366-367. Yamazaki, also a former Gutai member, first encountered Yoshihara around 1946, when
she attended an art class taught by Yoshihara. She later frequented to Yoshihara’s studio. See
Yamazaki Tsuruko, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 387.
cxxviii
Fontana was doing something similar. Soon after, Shimamoto started creating a
new series of Painting by Cannon (Figure 9).187
In the late 1940s, Shimamoto and others among Yoshihara’s students
individually visited with him and sought his critique. Soon they began to
communicate with each other, and this relationship resulted in a group show of
seven artists at the Kintetsu Department Store in Osaka in either 1950 or
1951.188 In February 1954, twelve artists organized a show titled Avant-garde Art
Show by Young Artists (Wakai sakka ni yoru zen’ei bijutsu ten) in Kôbe and
Osaka.189 In May, many of these same artists showed their works at the Modern
Art Fair (Modan Âto Feâ), an exhibition organized by Genbi.190 Before making
submissions to these exhibitions, they gathered at Yoshihara’s residence, asking
him to select from among their works.191
187 This extraordinary exchange of Yoshihara’s instruction and Shimamoto’s quick response was
quite famous even outside the small community of Yoshihara and his students. Murakami Saburô,
who would join Gutai around June 1955, knew of this intimate teacher-student relationship and
confessed that he was envious. Murakami recalled that Yoshihara at that time kept saying that
Shimamoto was a genius. Murakami Saburô, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki
Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 378.
188Shimamoto, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 367. According to Shimamoto,

everyone except Shimamoto stopped visiting Yoshihara soon after the show.
189 Sakka (“person in production”; 作家) was often used in the postwar period to generally refer to
artists working in visual art, rather than specifying categorical professions, such as painters,
sculptors, ceramists, and calligraphers. In the 1960s, as more artists crossed boundaries
between different types of art, this term and “gendai sakka” (“person in contemporary production”)
became widely used.
190Avant-garde Art Show by Young Artists (Wakai Sakka ni yoru Zen’ei Bijutsu ten): Shinkô
Shinbunsha Gallery, Kôbe, January 18-24; Osaka City Museum of Art, February 15-21, 1954.
Modan Âto Fea (Modern Art Fair): Daimaru Department Store, Osaka, May, 1954.
191They began to call the group a generic name, Zen’ei Bijutsuka Kyôkai”(Association of Avant-
garde Artists). For details on the pre- and early history of Gutai, see Yamamoto Atsuo, “Gutai:
1954-1972,” in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, ed., Gutai I, II, III, (Ashiya: Ashiya City
Museum of Art & History, 1994), 6-10.
cxxix

As these artists had more chances to work together, they came to realize
their shared interest in experiments and aspired to publicly promote their works.
The enthusiastic artists among them, especially Yoshihara’s old student
Shimamoto Shôzô, started preparing to publish a catalogue of their works; and at
the same time, persuaded Yoshihara to form a new group. In August 1954,
Yoshihara and his sixteen students founded Gutai Bijutsu Kyôkai (Gutai Art
Association).192 The word “gutai” (具体 “concrete,” “embodiment”) was adopted
as a title for the introductory catalogue, and it also became part of the official
name of the group.193 Although the members shared a desire for iconoclasm, the
nascent group was not a close-knit or exclusive organization. In the forward of
the first issue, Yoshihara described the purpose of publishing this catalogue,
writing that “we wish to present in a concrete way (gutai teki ni; 具体的に) the
proof that our spirit (seishin; 精神) is free. We cannot stop seeking new
excitement in all kinds of artistic creation.” Thus, he continued, the group hoped
to “find friends in the all areas of visual arts, such as calligraphy, flower
arrangement, decorative arts, and architecture,” and to cooperate with other
fields such as “children’s art, literature, music, dance, film and theater.” He
concluded with “we encourage everyone to submit photographs [of works] and
192 Original members included: Yoshihara Jirô, Higashi Sadami, Iseya Kei, Ueda Tamiko, Uemae
Chiyû, Okada Hiroshi, Okamoto Hajime, Shimamoto Shôzô, Sekine Yoshio, Tsujimura Shigeru,
Fujikawa Tôichirô, Funai Hiroshi, Masanobu Masatoshi, Yamazaki Tsuruko, Yoshida Toshio,
Yoshihara Hideo, and Yoshihara Michio.
193For details on the naming of the group, see Uemae Chiyû. Jigadô (My Way of Painting)
(Kôbe: Kyôdô shuppansha, 1985), 142-143.
cxxx

comments.”194 Clearly, Gutai was open to anyone who could share this
sentiment. His tone was very much akin to that of the interdisciplinary group
Genbi, which called for the participation of artists from diverse genres and
organized a juried competition.195 The forward did not suggest in the slightest
that Gutai was a group of Yoshihara’s students.
Despite the openness, Gutai lost nearly half of its original members in the
next twelve months. This was due mainly to the strong exhortations and
uncompromising critiques of Yoshihara, who considered originality as the highest
criteria and a crucial part of his construct of human subjectivity in the creation of
advanced painting. Members Higashi Sadami and Iseya Kei left the group
because they did not wish to abandon literal connotations.196 Yoshihara never
discussed many elements traditionally considered central to the painting practice,
such as colors, values, or techniques, as one might have expected, which no
doubt prompted some members to depart. Other members questioned his
dictatorial leadership; Yoshihara pushed for the publication of the group’s
catalogue despite the reluctance of some members.197 The hierarchical
194Yoshihara Jirô, “Hakkan ni saishite” (On the Publication of Journal), Gutai 1 (January 1, 1955),
195 See the invitation card sent to area artists on the occasion of Genbi’s establishment in 1952.
“An’naijô” (Invitation card), November 1952, reprinted in Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern
Art, Tsutaka Waichi to Genbi no sakkatachi (Tsutaka Waichi and the Genbi Artists) (Kôbe, 1995),
33.
196Typically, Yoshihara glanced at a work and said, “This painting has the figure of butterfly,” and
brushed it aside. Uemae, Jigadô, 143. Uemae also mentioned that some people were reluctant to
eagerly participate in Gutai and still continued to send their works to Nika-kai. These members
eventually left the group. Ibid., 168.
197Member Yoshihara Hideo argued that artists should prioritize the showing of their artworks
over the publication of journals. Wakayama Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Tsutaka Waichi,
Izumi Shigeru, Yoshihara Hideo ten (exhibition) (Wakayama, 1983), 12.
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relationship between Yoshihara and the other members went against the grain of
the contemporary wave of democratizing old, conventional systems in the art
world. In a public discussion held in February 1955, Izumi Shigeru, a young
painter of a leftist artist group Demokurâto Bijutsuka Kyôkai (the Association of
Democratic Artists), attacked Gutai members for blindly following Yoshihara and
lacking their own subjective stance. Soon after the discussion, Funai Hiroshi and
Yoshihara Hideo (unrelated to Yoshihara Jirô) quit Gutai, and by the summer of
1955, a total of eight people had left the group.198
Thus, although Gutai had published a catalogue, for the first eight months
after its foundation the group was rather loosely organized. Moreover, they did
not have their own exhibition; instead, individual members participated in various
juried exhibitions in the Kansai area, such as the annual Genbi Exhibitions and
the Ashiya City Art Exhibitions. Gutai’s direction as radical experimental group
finally began to appear around early 1955: the members participated in the
Yomiuri Indépendent Exhibition (Yomiuri Anpan), titling all the works Gutai. The
original members who did not fall in line with Yoshihara’s strict instructions and
attachment to non-figurative painting had mostly left by this period. Most
decisively, four artists from Zero-kai (Group Zero), a radical faction of young
artists who belonged to the exhibition group Shin Seisaku Kyôkai (New Creation
198 Four other people who left Gutai were: Tsujimura Shigeru, Fujikawa Tôichirô, Okamoto
Hajime, and Ueda Tamiko. For the complete list of members throughout Gutai’s history, see “Kaiin
zaiseki kikan ichiran” (List of Members, Their Periods in the Group) in GSDG, 404-405. Also see
Uemae, Jigadô, 168-169.
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Association), joined Gutai around June of 1955.199 These artists, Shiraga Kazuo,
Kanayama Akira, Murakami Saburô, and Tanaka Atsuko, were in their way
already creating non-figurative works, some of which we will discuss later. Their
strong presence greatly contributed to Gutai’s further radicalization.200
Yoshihara by that time became determined to foster Gutai’s development
as to be a serious artistic movement. After seeing the Gutai members’ works
which transcended conventional notions of painting in the eighth Ashiya City Art
Exhibition in June, he quickly organized two groundbreaking exhibitions, the
outdoor exhibition Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun Exhibition in Ashiya Park at
the end of July, and the First Gutai Art Exhibition at the Ohara Kaikan Hall in
Tokyo in October. Gutai also serialized the introductory catalogue as a printed
documentation of their activities in an attempt to publicize their innovative
movement. The identity of the group, that of highly experimental painters, was
199 Shin Seisaku Kyôkai was a Tokyo-based group established in 1951, after the merger of two
groups Shin Seisaku ha Kyôkai (Association of New Creation Sect) and Sôzô Bijutsu (Creative
Art). The stylistic feature of the members’ works varies from figurative to abstraction and non-
figurative. See Bijutsu Kenkyûjo ed., Nihon bijutsu nenkan, Shôwa 22 - 26 nen ban (Art almanac
of Japan, Shôwa 22 – 26 [1947-1951] edition) (Tokyo: Insatsuchô, 1952), 211. Although Zero-kai
originally included fifteen members, according to Shiraga Kazuo, only four members were
strongly motivated. Quoted in Yamamoto Atsuo, “Gutai: 1954-1972,” in Ashiya City Museum of Art
& History ed., Gutai I, II, III, 9. Originally in Shiraga Kazuo and Haryû Ichirô, “[Taidan] Kamigata
Akushon Dangi” ([Discussion] Chat on Kansai-style Action), in Tokyo Garô (gallery) ed., Shiraga
Kazuo (Tokyo: Tokyo Garô), 1973.
200 Around June of 1955, Yoshihara sent Shimamoto to a Zero-kai meeting at Shiraga’s house,
and officially asked the Zero-kai members to join Gutai.
Before the official invitation, there was at least one informal meeting of Zero-kai and Gutai
members. On April 19th, original member Uemae Chiyû reported that there was a meeting held at
Shiraga’s house. See Uemae, Jigadô, 168. Upon inviting Zero-kai members, Shimamoto brought
some “souvenirs,” which surprised and fascinated Zero-kai members. They were a “number-200
sized, two-colored canvas which resembled a waterfall” and a “moving abstract picture” where
Shimamoto put a kaleidoscope in front of a slide projector. For stories of this meeting, see
Shiraga Kazuo, “Bôken no kiroku: episôdo de tsuzuru Gutai gurûpu no jûninen, 1” (Document of
Adventure: Writing on Episodes from Twelve Years of Gutai, 1), Bijutsu Techô no. 285 (July
1967), reprinted in GSDG, 373.
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shaped by the end of the fall of 1955.201 In late 1956, Yoshihara wrote and
published the Gutai Art Manifesto, which outlined the movement’s theoretical
positions.202
Inside the group, Yoshihara directed the members to push their originality
to the limit. We have already discussed the intense interaction between
Yoshihara and Shimamoto Shôzô, who responded to Yoshihara’s critique by
creating a series of painting that captured his teacher’s attention. As further
stimulus, Yoshihara also set up such unusual venues as a public park and
theater to show Gutai members’ works. Originally trained as painters, they had
not experienced an outdoor venue, or the theater space, and were forced to
consider such factors as weather change, lack of walls, various types of viewers
(who were not necessarily interested in art appreciation), position of viewers, and
limited time of presentation. Each artist had to find creative ways to
accommodate these conditions. Yet in these early exhibitions, Yoshihara’s idea of
the relationship between materials and human subjectivity was practiced in
exceedingly radical ways. Yoshihara mercilessly rejected works and work plans
which he considered as not sufficiently rigorous, original or innovative, detecting
any outside influences on the work. For example, large ship-shaped wooden
structures that members Uemae Chiyû, Sekine Yoshio, and Okada Hiroshi
201 There was also a unified sense among the group members that they were developing an
artistic movement. Words like “Gutai Art” and “Gutaian” (people of Gutai) began to appear in the
members’ essays. See for example, Ukita Yôzô, “Gutai sa” (Chain of Gutai), Gutai 4 (July 1,
1956), reprinted in GSDG, 282; and Shiraga Kazuo, “’Ningen wa ikiteiru’: Gutai bijutsu wa
shizenshugi bijutsu ka?” (‘Humans are alive’: Is Gutai Art naturalist art?), Gutai 5, reprinted in
GSDG, 288.
(December 1956), 222-224, reprinted in GSDG, 6-7. English translation included, 8-9. For the
entire text, see Appendix 1.
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created for the Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun Exhibition did not satisfy
Yoshihara, perhaps because he thought the use of materials lacked originality: he
ordered the artists to bury them in the ground.203
Pursuing individuality in their works, the members mutually stimulated
each other. In those early years, Gutai members gathered weekly at Yoshihara’s
residence in Ashiya, bringing their latest work and asking for his critique (Figure
57). From the Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun Exhibition in July 1955 until April
1958, Gutai held an exhibition at least every five months, often at intervals of only
three months. Despite this incredibly fast pace, the members were expected to
create works that would meet Yoshihara’s expectation. At these critique sessions,
Yoshihara single-handedly selected works for each exhibition, in front of all the
members.204 Placements for each work at exhibitions were decided by him as
well. Furthermore, Yoshihara wrote critiques and comments of members’ works
for Gutai journals and sometimes for outside submission, including the
aforementioned “The Calligraphy of Poverty and the Painting of Bell” in which
Yoshihara highly praised Tanaka Atsuko’s work with bells (Figure 52). Yet as
many former members remembered, there was not much jealousy among
members. There was however genuine competition based solely on artistic
creativity. The members’ relationship remained generally amicable even at such
emotional occasions as exhibitions, when one’s long effort was tested in front of
other members. That congenial atmosphere was, as the former members agreed,
203Uemae, Jigadô, 174-175 and Shiraga Kazuo, “Bôken no kiroku, 2,” Bijutsu Techô no. 286
(August 1967), reprinted in GSDG, 338.
204For “exhibitions” at theaters, only ten works were selected. Other members helped the
production and participated as supporters in the selected pieces.
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because Yoshihara’s judgment seemed to be fair and was clear to everyone.205
Murakami Saburô said that Yoshihara always chose the best work by a member
who was in his or her prime.206 Yoshihara’s dictatorial leadership was criticized by
people outside the group, but the group’s structure of a single, authoritative figure
helped each member to concentrate on their pursuit of originality. Yoshihara’s
clear direction gave a strong base upon which the group could build a rigorous
art movement.
Painting as Object and Process
Yoshihara ‘s conceptual model of materials and human subjectivity was
originally constructed within the practice of painting. Yet its departure from
mimetic representation and emphasis on the other aspects of painting opened up
two new possibilities. One was that as the materials of painting were highlighted,
the painting inevitably became conceptualized as an object as a whole.
Secondly, the attention to individual and personal ways to engage the materials
led one’s eyes to the process of artistic creation itself. Yoshihara, through his
choice of such unusual exhibition environments as an outdoor park and a theater,
encouraged Gutai members to pursue these new possibilities.
Yoshihara’ interest in the “object-hood” of painting began as early as
February 1951, when he saw Jackson Pollock’s painting at the Third Yomiuri
Indépendent Exhibition (Figure 33). In Pollock’s paint drippings, he found that the
205Motonaga Sadamasa, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, GSDG, 396
and Shiraga, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, GSDG, 386-387.
206 Murakami Saburô, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, GSDG, 376.
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painting’s aesthetic value did not lay in “what is painted,” such as its shapes,
lines, and colors, but in what constituted the painting as an object, the materials
with which the painting itself had been created. He called Pollock’s painting a
“two dimensional object created by a human being.”207 Yet Pollock was not the
only artist who was exploring this new direction of painting. Around the same
time, Yoshihara’s student Shimamoto Shôzô presented him paintings with holes,
which went even further than Pollock in clearly highlighting the “object-hood” of
the painting (Figure 20 and Figure 58). In Shimamoto’s 1951 work, for example,
the bold contrast of white and black paint might attract the viewer at first sight.
However, the real allure of this painting lies in its randomly punctured holes, in
which the heaviness of the industrial paint as compared to the thin newspaper
beneath is exposed (Figure 58). The cracks and crusts of the paint on the
surface strikes the viewer with the expressiveness of the paint material.
As already discussed in Chapter Two, Yoshihara considered this painting’s
transformation to an object as an advanced stage in painting history, because in
it the painting as a whole, not a representation on the picture plane, was able to
appeal to the viewer. By 1955, he was witnessing more paintings which strongly
indicated their “object-hood.” At the eighth Ashiya City Art Exhibition, future Gutai
member Tanaka Atsuko showed “paintings” consisting of square, rectangular,
207Yoshihara Jirô and Nakamura Shin, “Amerika no kindai kaiga” (Modern Painting in America),
Kansai Bijutsu 13 (May 1951), 13.
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and circular pieces of patched yellow fabric (Figure 10).208 Yoshihara told a
newspaper reporter that he was impressed that Tanaka’s “painting” enriched the
wall where they were hung.209 Another future Gutai member Shiraga Kazuo
entered a painting which he had painted using his feet, where thick oil paint was
smeared all over the picture plane (Figure 59). At that point, Yoshihara decided to
nurture this interest in the “object-hood” of painting. He hastily organized under
the auspices of the Ashiya City Art Association, an outdoor exhibition, Challenge
the Mid-Summer Sun, just one month after its eighth exhibition. 210
Yoshihara made the requirements for the entries as minimal and as open-
ended as possible, to encourage contestants to expand the notions of painting
practice. The Ashiya City Art Exhibition already had quite liberal requirements
and judging standards as a city-run juried art competition. Aspirants were
required to categorize their works as western-style painting, Japanese-style
painting, sculpture, decorative arts, or photography. They were also limited to
entering up to three pieces, yet there were no other requirements, such as age or
208 “Ashiya shiten no kawaridane wo hirou: Nuno wo tsunaida yôga” (Highlighting Strange Works
from Ashiya City Art Exhibition: Western Painting of Patched Fabric [Tanaka Atsuko, Kanayama
Akira, et al.]), Mainichi Shinbun, 9 June 1955, Hanshin edition, reprinted in GSDG, 32. This article
observed that the achievement of the members of Gutai, led by Yoshihara Jirô, was remarkable,
as some members were recommended for official membership in the Ashiya City Art Association,
and others were awarded prizes. Tanaka, Shiraga, Kanayama were entered as members of Zero-
kai, not Gutai. This indicates that it was a transitional period for them between Zero-kai and Gutai.
Zero-kai was disbanded upon their participation in Gutai in the early summer of 1955.
209 Yoshihara Jirô et al., “[Zadankai] Ashiya shiten wo kataru” ([Roundtable discussion] On Ashiya
City Art Exhibition), Yomiuri Shinbun, 12 June 1955, Kansai edition. Cited in Katô Mizuho,
“Nenpu” (Chronology) in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino
tankyû, 1954-2000 (Tanaka Atsuko: Search for an Unknown Aesthetic, 1954-2000) (Ashiya,
2000),
194.
210Gutai was not officially an organizer of Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun, and some entries
were by non-Gutai members. Yet the exhibition was Yoshihara’s idea, and most Gutai members
submitted works.
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entry size.211 The Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun exhibition was even more
liberal than Ashiya City Art Exhibition in its requirements. Categorizations, such
as painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, were totally removed. The entry
should be “an abstract or non-figurative artistically constructed object (zôkeibutsu
造形物)” and preferably the size should be more than three shaku (about three
feet). No requirements were given for materials, but the work needed to be
strong enough to bear sunlight, wind and rain.212 As we will see later, many of the
submitted works explored the new possibilities of painting as an object in their
use of materials and formats.
Along with the “object-hood” of painting, Yoshihara’s conceptual model
also encouraged the possibility of highlighting the very process of painting, as it
emphasized individual and personal ways to engage the materials. Yoshihara
found the element of process to be an integral part of Nakahara Nantenbô’s
calligraphy work, in which the lines showed fresh traces of how the calligrapher
dynamically grappled with the materials, ink and paper (Figure 34). After he went
to photograph Nantenbô’s large calligraphic work at the Kaiseiji Temple in
Nishinomiya in the early summer of 1952, he told Shimamoto Shôzô, who
accompanied him, that there was a sense of time in Nantenbô’s calligraphy
which could surpass the geometric abstract painting of Piet Mondrian. According
211 For the requirements of the Eighth Ashiten, see “Ashiya Shiten shuppin kitei” (Requirements
for Entering the Ashiya City Art Exhibition), 1955, reprinted in Ashiya City Museum of Art &
History ed., Ashiya Shiten 1948-1997 (Ashiya City Exhibition: 1948-1997) (Ashiya: Ashiya City
Museum of Art & History, 1993), 90. Shiraga Kazuo recalled the enormous popularity of the
Ashiten among young artists in the Kansai region, because “whatever strange pieces you entered
the Ashiten, good ones would be recognized and given prizes.” Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 1,”
212 Osaki, “Seisei to jizoku, 2,” 43.
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to Shimamoto, Yoshihara had considered Mondrian’s painting as the most
advanced abstract painting in terms of composition, color tones, and texture, but
he told Shimamoto that it lacked the sense of time — the lines in Mondrian’s
painting did not reveal how fast they were drawn. As touched briefly on already,
Shimamoto promptly responded to Yoshihara’s comment and created a painting
with dashing strokes (Figure 56). After the first outdoor exhibition Challenge the
Mid-Summer Sun, this interest in process blossomed among the Gutai members,
taking many different forms including Tanaka Atsuko’s Work (Bell) which
consisted of the traveling sound made by actual bells (Figure 52), and Murakami
Saburô’s Breaking Papers series, in which he assaulted papers mounted on
wooden frames with his body (Figure 60). Shiraga Kazuo also created
Challenging Mud, in which the artist grappled with a pile of mud using his entire
body (Figure 61). Seeking a more appropriate venue to showcase Gutai
members’ growing interest in the process, Yoshihara went on to set up Gutai’s
exhibition on stage.
Thus, Yoshihara provided these unusual exhibition venues as interest in
the “object-hood” and process grew among Gutai members.213 Yoshihara
considered these exhibitions as experimental environments in which Gutai artists
could freely and creatively contemplate, conceptualize, and work to expand these
new interpretations of the painting practice. He evaluated the artists’ originality in
finding, utilizing, and adopting the materials and materiality of the art objects. As
213 Yoshihara wrote in 1958 that although he did not teach much to the young artists, “one after
another, almost to the point of being brutal (kakoku na madeni) I incessantly created various ways
of exhibiting works.” Yoshihara Jirô, “Ôsaka Kokusai Geijutsusai: Atarashii kaiga sekai ten kaisai
ni kanshite” (On the Opening of the Osaka International Art Festival: International Art of New Era),
Gutai 9 (April 12, 1958), reprinted in GSDG, 305.
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we will see later, Yoshihara also strategically organized more orthodox types of
exhibitions in between these experimental exhibitions. At indoor gallery
exhibitions, artists showed paintings as well as those works that emphasized
“object-hood” and process.
There were nine major Gutai exhibitions between its establishment in the
summer of 1954 and April 1958: three outdoor exhibitions, two stage shows, and
five gallery exhibitions.214 In approximately three and half years, the group held
an exhibition at least every five months, often at intervals of only three months.
As each exhibition venue posited new challenges to Gutai members, their
interpretations of “object-hood” and process transformed painting into amazing
range of formats, materials, and aesthetics.
Outdoor Exhibitions
Two outdoor exhibitions, Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun in 1955 and
Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition in 1956, were held at Ashiya Park, located on the
214 For complete list of exhibitions of Gutai’s early years, see Appendix 2. Scholars have
considered Gutai’s participation to the exhibition International Art of A New Era: Informel and
Gutai (Atarashii kaiga sekaiten: Anforumeru to Gutai) in April 1958 as a joint organizer with the
Informel movement leader Michiel Tapié was the end of Gutai’s early experimental years. With
this exhibition Gutai became one of the most important destinations on the international map for
the Informel movement. See Osaki, “Seisei to jizoku: Gutai bijutsu kyôkai saikô, 5,” 40. The
exhibition traveled around Japan. The venues included Takashimaya Department Store, Osaka
(April 12 – 20); Okamasa Department Store, Nagasaki (May 27 – June 2); Fukuya Department
Store, Hiroshima (June 24 – July 6); Takashimaya Department Store, Tokyo (September 2 – 7);
Marumono Department Store, Kyoto (September 13 – 18). For details, see “Nenpu” (Chronology)
in GSDG, 38 and Osaki, “Seisei to jizoku: Gutai bijutsu kyôkai saikô, 5,” 40. Besides Gutai
members, the selected artists included Karel Apel, Lucio Fontana, Georges Mathieu, Antoni
Tapies, Franz Kline, Willem De Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and members of
Tokyo-based experimental group Jikken Kôbô, Fukushima Hideko, and Yamaguchi Katsuhiro.
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bank of Ashiya River, very close to the point where the river runs into the sea.215
Thus, like usual seaside areas in Japan, there were pine trees planted for
protecting inland areas from the strong winds (Figure 62). These pine trees
spread all over the park. As it was a public space, neighbors and visitors, adults
and children, constantly came and went, night and day. During the day, many
children played in the park under the hot sun, since the exhibitions were held in
the midst of a summer recess. At night, people came to the park looking for a
place to cool off from the summer heat. Compared to an enclosed gallery space,
the park in mid-summer provided an open-air space, shadows at nightfall, strong
sunlight, dirt and wind, playful and mischievous children, and a busy background
of houses, but no walls.
Before the 1955 outdoor show, many artists had already started using
unconventional materials, such as newspapers, vellum papers, fabric, wooden
boards, and industrial paint, often times out of lack of resources.216 Yet to
accommodate the harsh conditions of the park, they greatly expanded their use
of industrial and waterproof materials. Shimamoto Shôzô, Tanaka Atsuko and
Yamazaki Tsuruko used metal sheeting: Shimamoto and Tanaka for two-
dimensional pieces (Untitled; Figure 63 and Work; Figure 64) and Yamazaki for a
hanging piece (Danger; Figure 65). Sculptural works composed of scrap metal
were created by many artists including Yoshihara Jirô, Yoshihara Michio
215 The other outdoor exhibition, One Day Outdoor Exhibition (Ichinichi Dake no Yagaiten) or
Exhibition at Ruins (Haikyo ten), was held on April 9th, 1956, at the ruins of an oil refinery in
Amagasaki City. It was a one-day show exclusively organized for Life magazine. See the
discussion below. The pictures they took at the exhibition were never published.
216 Shimamoto started using newspapers because he could not afford canvas. Shimamoto
interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, GSDG, 369.
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(Yoshihara Jirô’s son) and Ukita Yôzô (Figure 66). Murakami Saburô tore asphalt
sheets and spilled paint out onto them (Figure 67). Motonaga Sadamasa used
clear polyethylene sheeting for his hanging pieces (Figure 68), while Tanaka
Atsuko spread a ten-meter square of pink synthetic fabric (Figure 69).217 The
group’s position in rejecting mimetic representation and exploring expressive
qualities of the materials was very clear. Many works emphasized the materiality
of these industrial materials: flexibility and expandability of fabric in Tanaka’s
work, transparency of plastic sheet that strikingly exposed bright colors as in
Motonaga’s piece, and malleability and the shiny quality of sheet metal that was
utilized in various forms by Yamazaki, Shimamoto, and Tanaka.
The lack of firm physical supports naturally led exhibited works to highlight
their “object-hood.” Some artists created freestanding works, which as result
adopted a three-dimensional format. Shiaraga Kazuo built a cone-shaped
structure with eight wooden poles and hacked at it from inside (Figure 2). The
aforementioned metal works by Yoshihara Jirô, Yoshihara Michio and Ukita could
be seen as sculptures. Other artists tried to support their two-dimensional works
using wooden posts. Shimamoto’s punctured metal sheet Untitled (Figure 63),
Yoshida Toshio’s Untitled (Figure 70), and Tanaka Atsuko’s red standing piece,
Work (Figure 64) were supported by two posts on the side. Yet even in these
tableau-like works, because they stood by themselves and exposed both sides of
the works bare to the viewer, their materials and materiality were strongly
highlighted. Also, there were quite a few two-dimensional works displayed on the
217Some artists felt pressure to create three-dimensional works, rather than two dimensional, in
order to qualify for the outdoor exhibitions. See Shiraga, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki,
GSDG, 380.
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ground or close to the ground. Tanaka’s work mentioned above was spread
twenty centimeters above the ground (Figure 69); Murakami Saburô and
Kanayama Akira’s works were placed directly on the ground (Figure 67 and
Figure 71). Perhaps the most site-specific works were the ones that used pine
trees, such as Sumi Yasuo’s gigantic 30-meter long piece Work (Figure 72),
Tanaka Atsuko’s long yellow belt combined with wooden pieces (Figure 73), and
Yamazaki’s aforementioned Danger (Figure 65). Motonaga Sadamasa’s hanging
sack of water was also a brilliant example of using pine trees (Figure 68).
Motonaga expanded the use of pine trees the following year as supports for his
Work “Water” (Figure 74), in which he hung plastic sheets between trees and
poured in colored water. Those works that were suspended from trees utilized
flexible materials, such as the wire screens of Sumi’s Work, the plastic sheeting
of Motonaga’s Work “Water,” and the fabric of Kanayama Akira’s Footsteps
(Figure 75). In these works, the natural force of wind and sunshine affected the
physical presentation – the outdoor environment removed works from their
normally static position (as in traditional gallery presentation) and exposed them
to changeable circumstances. As a result, their expressiveness as object was
emphasized.
The outdoor setting, with its lack of permanent lighting, posed another
problem to the artists. When electric light bulbs came to be installed for nighttime
viewing, many artists in fact took advantage of them by adopting electric lights in
their work. Only a few work used light in the first show, as in Yoshihara Jirô’s light
sculpture (Figure 76) and Yoshihara Michio’s Untitled, which the artist buried a
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light bulb in the ground. In the second show, however, light from both electric
bulbs and candles became one of the most prominent “materials.” Yamazaki
placed a light fixture inside a huge box made of red fabric (Figure 77). Tanaka
Atsuko embellished seven enormous human and cross-like figures with
numerous light bulbs (Figure 78 and Figure 79). Motonaga Sadamasa floated
lanterns in a pool of water (Figure 80).
To withstand the harshness of sunlight and heat and enhance their
presence in an open space, the colors of the exhibited works tended to be bright
and loud. The cotton-candy pink color of Tanaka Atsuko’s Work (Figure 69) was
described by Ukita Yôzô as if “grinding my retina, reflecting sunlight.”218 Pink also
appeared with bright green color in Shiraga Kazuo’s (indicating
the shape of the work; Figure 81). Bright crimson was used by several different
artists as well. Shiraga painted wooden logs with red for his Please Come In
(Figure 2). Kanayama Akira placed a single red ball in a field of white wooden
panels (Figure 71). Motonaga Sadamasa’s Liquid filled vinyl sheets with water
dyed red, yellow, and blue (Figure 68). The outdoor environment definitely
affected the choice of colors of some artists in their subsequent works as well.
For example, if we compare pieces by Tanaka Atsuko, prior to and after the
Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun show, it is clear that flamboyant colors became
conspicuous in her later works. Usually, these artists chose to use a single color,
or to contrast strong tones, such as in Kanayama’s red ball and white panels.
Accordingly, the viewer’s attention was drawn to each work as a whole.
218 Ukita Yôzô, “Manatsu no taiyo ni idomu: Modan Âto yagai jikken ten” (Challenge the Mid-
Summer Sun: Modern Art Outdoor Experimental Exhibition), Gutai 3 (October 10, 1955),
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Along with the interest in “object-hood,” the large space and openness of
the public park also made Gutai artists a chance to broaden their interest in
process. Since many works were large in size, the artists inevitably created them
at the site, rather than in their studios. Thus, even before the opening of the
show, viewers came to the park and watched the creative process. A photograph
of Shiraga Kazuo, standing and hacking inside at the red-painted wooden logs to
create Please Come In, shows a mother and a child warily watching the scene
(Figure 2). Three months after the first outdoor show, Shiraga made another work
which further highlighted the process of creation. At the First Gutai Art Exhibition
held in Tokyo (October 1955), Shiraga piled up a concrete and mud mixture in
the courtyard of the exhibition site, and grappled with the mound (Figure 61).
Although the resulting pile was presented as a “painting” later, the process itself
became a significant part of this work.219
After the Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun show, some artists took this
direction further, and created works that invited viewers’ actual participation. For
the First Gutai Art Exhibition, Shimamoto Shôzô made two long rectangular
boxes (Figure 82). This work, with the inviting title, Please Walk On This, had
steps which moved down as a person walked along. As each step sank to a
different depth, the participant felt insecure, since he or she could not predict how
far the step would sink. Taniguchi Saikô’s Untitled also engaged the viewer’s
sense of touch (Figure 83). Two wooden boards, arranged parallel to each other,
219 Shiraga said that at that time he was intending to create “painting” in the case of Challenging
Mud. Yet evidently many viewers were interested in the performative aspect of the work. See
Shiraga, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, GSDG, 381, and Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 3,”
reprinted in GSDG, 341-342.
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were fitted with numerous bamboo dowels with ping-pong balls on the end. A
participant walked between these two lines of balls, as the balls touched his/her
body. Murakami Saburô’s Sky invited the viewer to enter inside the work (Figure
84). The work, made of a white cloth and a cone-shaped metal piece on the top,
enclosed the viewer and forced him/her to look up at the sky through the single
opening on the top.
One prevailing characteristic of these participatory works was a sense of
entertainment and humor. Many provided a surprise and even fun for the viewer.
Yamazaki Tsuruko reported in Gutai 5, which featured the Outdoor Gutai Art
Exhibition (1956), that every day many children were coming and “running
around all day, touching, grasping and pulling one work after another, as they
enthusiastically devoured the sense of touch.”220 In fact, the sense of humor was
not limited to participatory works. Kanayama Akira exhibited a long sheet of fabric
(more than hundred meters long; Figure 75), on which footsteps were stamped.
The footsteps made their way around the whole park and finally climbed up into
the trees and faded away. Sakamitsu Noboru hung gloves with elastic strings.
The gloves bounced up and down created a surrealistic, yet amusing scene
(Figure 85).
In summary, the outdoor environment forced Gutai artists to reconsider
their art practice and explore new materials and formats outside of their familiar
visual vocabularies. They subsequently began to utilize industrial materials and
to create three-dimensional works more frequently. The exhibitions also
220Yamazaki Tsuruko, “Matsubayashi no nakano rakuen” (Paradise in Pine Woods), Gutai 5

(October 1, 1956), reprinted in GSDG, 289.
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prompted them to investigate bold colors, larger format, a sense of humor, and
the entertainment quality in their work. That was an intense challenge for many
young artists who had exclusively worked on painting before the first outdoor
exhibition; as Ukita Yôzô appropriately said, the environment was “to a degree
cruel, pushing a person into a corner.”221 Shiraga Fujiko, Gutai member and the
wife of Shiraga Kazuo, wrote that the outdoor site shattered her confidence. She
had created a work which was supposed to break through conventional
techniques and compositions without explicitly showing her intentions, yet once
she brought it to the site, the work looked contrived and clearly showed
conventionalities. She said, “…I needed to reconsider the path I was going to
take.”222
The best works by artists who critically engaged in exploring the rich
possibilities of painting practice, once acknowledged as objects, were not just
simple adaptations of the three-dimensional format. As we will see in detail in
Chapter Four, works like Tanaka Atsuko’s various “flat” objects assumed the
guise of sculpture, yet were created as an outgrowth of Tanaka’s interest in
painting support. In other words, as the notions of painting expanded, their
“painting” bordered on sculptural practice. As curator Osaki Shin’ichirô argues,
the outdoor exhibitions, especially the first Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun, were
a direct vehicle for swift change in Gutai, from a moderately advanced group of
painters in the Kansai region to one of the most radical avant-garde group in the
221 Ukita, “Manatsu no taiyô ni idomu Modan Âto yagai jikken ten,” reprinted in GSDG, 273.
222Shiraga Fujiko, “Yagaiten zengo no watashi” (Myself Before and After the Outdoor Exhibition),
Gutai 3 (October 20, 1955), reprinted in GSDG, 275.
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world.223 The idea of the outdoor exhibition perhaps started as Yoshihara’s fairly
moderate vision of iconoclasm, but the specificities of the unique environment of
an outside park led to the birth of many unprecedented works which challenged
the notions and conventions of painting practice.
Theaters
Gutai held two theater “exhibitions” before 1958. The first Gutai Art on
Stage (Butai wo shiyô suru Gutai bijutsu) was shown in Osaka on May 29th and
Tokyo on July 17th, both in 1957. The second Gutai Art on Stage was shown in
Osaka on April 4th, 1958. The plans for the theater performance had been in
Yoshihara’s mind since the group’s establishment three years earlier, and grew
as he saw more examples of Gutai members’ works that engaged the aspect of
process in painting. He first indicated to the members his idea for a theater
exhibition in late 1955, when after the two outdoor shows and three gallery
shows, the artists’ development of process itself had showed rich varieties, from
automatic painting using a variety of tools and machines by Shimamoto Shôzô
and Shiraga Kazuo (Figure 9 and Figure 59), to paper work created instantly by
the artist’s bodily thrust by Murakami Saburô (Figure 60). Yet the new
environment of a theater stage posed new challenges for Gutai members.
Unlike a fixed space, in which finished art pieces can be observed for as
long as the viewer wishes, in the theater production time is limited and the viewer
is bound by the performance in time. Thus, the theater offered another significant
223 Osaki, “Seisei to jizoku, 2,” 44.
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challenge concerning the presentation of work for the Gutai artists. From among
the plans of the members, twelve pieces were selected for the first Gutai Art on
Stage in 1957, and eleven for the second production in 1958. Inevitably, the
issue of time, not the finished piece, itself became an important factor in each
entry. In the first theater performance, Sumi Yasuo and Nakahashi Kôichi
demonstrated the process of painting, which was perhaps the most orthodox
presentation (Figure 86). Shiraga Kazuo performed a dance wearing a red
costume (inspired by a kabuki performance) that he called Ultra-modern
Sanbasô Dance (Chôgendai Sanbasô; Figure 87). It was a highly theatrical
piece, yet at the end, he and collaborators threw black-colored arrows into a
white background board, and Shiraga called this “an abstract painting.”224
Kanayama Akira gradually blew up a huge white balloon and illuminated it with
primary color lights (Figure 88). At the end, he cut the balloon with a knife – as it
was leaking air, the balloon gradually shrunk. In the second show, Yoshida Toshio
presented a “wedding ceremony” in which Yoshida and his real-life bride were
wrapped with long cloth belts, leaving the two were tightly bound together (Figure
89).
The theater also made Gutai artists expand their repertoire of materials.
They had already experimented with a wide range of “hard” materials, such as
wood, metal, plastic, mud, and stone, but in theater production they focused
more on formless materials, such as light, sound, and smoke. These materials
had been used before the theater shows, yet as Yoshihara pointed out in his
224 Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 4,” reprinted in GSDG, 345.
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report on the first show, they were more appropriate for theater presentation, and
because of their transient nature, their “materiality” was more effectively
highlighted. Light was the most frequently used material; in the first show,
Yoshihara, Kanayama, Tanaka Atsuko, Yamazaki Tsuruko and Yoshihara Michio
created performances in which light was the crucial element (Figure 90, Figure
88, and Figure 91). At the finale of the first show, Motonaga used smoke to
partially obscure a large cross-like figure adorned with colorful electric lights by
Tanaka Atsuko. The light and smoke created a fantastical atmosphere in the
theater (Figure 92). Shimamoto Shôzô and Yoshihara Michio made “music” that
rejected conventional compositions and used it as background music in the first
Gutai Art on Stage. In the second exhibition, Yoshihara Michio collaborated with
other members, playing hand-made instruments on stage. Yoshihara called this
“sound art” (onkyô geijutsu 音響芸術).225
The element of entertainment that some artists explored in the outdoor
shows also became integral to many pieces in Gutai on Stage, in which the
passing of time was the most important element. Yet each piece was quite short
in duration. In such a short time, the members tried to bring maximum surprise
and entertainment to the audience. Shimamoto Shôzô struck and destroyed first
several light bulbs into pieces, and then similarly attacked a slender rectangular
box, from which numerous ping-pong balls emerged and bounced all over the
stage (Figure 93). The audience is said to have gasped at this violent, seemingly
225Yoshihara Michio, “Sakuhin 9: Onkyô Ensô,” Dainikai Butai wo shiyôsuru Gutai bijutsu” (The
Second Gutai Art on Stage: Exhibition Program), April 4, 1958, reprinted in GSDG, 127.
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painful act.226 Tanaka Atsuko, standing in front of a gigantic pink dress in the
background, undressed herself one piece at a time (Figure 94). Each of the
layers of clothes was different in shape and color, so that the audience was
mesmerized as if each time a different person appeared on the stage (Figure 95
and Figure 96). After a short blackout, Tanaka and two other members appeared
wearing dresses adorned with electric bulbs, walking aimlessly on the stage. The
background pink dress was then replaced by a cross-shaped white dress with
lights (Figure 91). Tanaka’s entry was overlapped by the last entry, Motonaga
Sadamasa’s smoke, which poured from a machine out into the audience (Figure
92). Shiraga reported that the whole theater became full of smoke and the
audience started coughing and running toward the exits.227
By emphasizing the process of artistic creation, works presented at Gutai
on Stage moved into new territory. Each artists’ individuality came to light in the
process, as Yoshihara had conceptualized. Shimamoto’s piece showed his
penchant for destruction in essential form, more clearly than his painting had. In
even such a static piece as Kanayama’s balloon, the process of expanding the
balloon more eloquently expressed the artist’s interest in the space than had the
already inflated balloon placed in a room, the work he showed at the First Gutai
Art Exhibition in fall of 1955. This attention to the process and performativity of
artistic creation, but not its result, clearly moved Gutai members from
conventional practice of painting and into theater.
227 Ibid., 346.
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While it seemed quite natural for the group to extend their interest in
process to theater performance, there was a great ambition on Yoshihara’s part
to deliverately nurture this new type of visual art that bordered fine art and
theater. In the beginning of the introductory essay for the journal Gutai 7, which
featured the first Gutai Art on Stage, Yoshihara wrote that although visual art had
an important role on the theatrical stage, it was always treated as subservient.
Yet in this theater production, Yoshihara claimed:
[the artists of Gutai Art Association] tried independently to move one step
beyond artistic conventions and to challenge face to face the special
constraints of theater space and its functions, such as the issues of sound
effects, lighting, and the passage of time. The Gutai Art Association has
bravely driven the avant-garde art movement, and proposed new ideas. I
think that this show again presented another new challenge to the fields of
both visual art and theater.228
Yoshihara was quite conscious of the distinction between visual art and theater in
theatrical production. As mentioned in Chapter Two, he had designed
background and props for a ballet dance performance in March 1950 and later
expressed some frustration that he did not have control over his art, and also that
his art was treated as secondary to the dance. In Gutai Art on Stage, Yoshihara
228 Yoshihara Jirô, “Butai wo shiyô suru Gutai Bijutsu ni tsuite” (On Gutai Art on Stage), Gutai 7
(July 15, 1957), reprinted in GSDG, 297.
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obviously sought to remove these unnecessary boundaries by approaching the
challenge from the artists’ side.229
Indoor Gallery Exhibitions
Yoshihara clearly indicated that the aforementioned exhibitions in outdoors
and theaters were experimental. He organized more orthodox gallery exhibitions
between the experimental ones, and considered the former as “official”
presentation of Gutai art.230 At the gallery exhibitions, which were mostly held in
Ohara Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, Gutai members showed works that were less
experimental – more two-dimensional works, with sporadic presentation of three-
dimensional works (Figure 97).231 However, the artists effectively utilized this
opportunity and expanded their results. In turn, new interest arose from the
229 In his memoir, Yoshihara recounted that Takechi Tetsuji, playwright and producer, praised
Gutai’s performance as “pure theater” (junsui engeki 純粋演劇). He also wrote that avant-garde
musicians and artists in the United States showed great interest in Gutai’s theater shows. See
Yoshihara, “Gutai gurûpu no jûnen, 2,” reprinted in GSDG, 325. On the other hand, their theater
shows seemed to be largely ignored by the art establishment, except Nakahara Yûsuke, who
bitterly criticized the artists in the show as being “mechanically moving rats.” Nakahara Yûsuke,
“[Tenrankai geppyô] Gutai bijutsu kyôkai” ([Monthly exhibition review] Gutai Art Association),
Bijutsu Techô no. 130 (September 1957), reprinted in GSDG, 119. For more discussion, see
Chapter Five.
230 Only these indoor gallery exhibitions were given serial numbers, as the First or Second Gutai
Art Exhibition. Furthermore, as we will discuss in detail in Chapter Five, Yoshihara held gallery
exhibitions mainly in Tokyo, the center of the Japanese art community, where most critics and
many artists resided and where most important and prestigious art competitions were held. Also,
many popular art magazines, such as Mizue, Atorie, and Bijutsu Techô were published in Tokyo.
231 Between 1954 and April 1958, the first, second and fourth gallery exhibitions were held at
Ohara Kaikan Hall in Tokyo in fall. The third exhibition was at the Kyoto City Museum of Art in
Kyoto in March 1957. After 1958, Gutai had gallery exhibitions usually once a year in spring or
fall, and their locations were either in Osaka or Tokyo. Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai daiikkai ten no
kiroku” (Report of the First Gutai Exhibition), Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956), reprinted in GSDG, 276. Both
the First (1955) and the Second Gutai Art Exhibitions (1956) were held less than three months
after the outdoor exhibitions at Ashiya Park. Because of the short preparation time, several work
from the outdoor exhibitions, such as Shiraga’s Please Come In, were recreated and exhibited.
Many two-dimensional works were also sent from the Kansai. However, some new works were
conceived and created at the site.
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experimental works they presented at gallery exhibitions. The interest shown in
“object-hood” and process continued to appear in the indoor gallery exhibitions
and subsequently underwent further development for the next exhibition.
As mentioned above, Gutai Art on Stage was the climactic showcase of
Gutai’s interest in process. Yet at indoor gallery exhibitions, too, there were
remarkable works which highlighted the process of creation and presented it in
front of an audience. At the first outdoor exhibition Challenge the Mid-Summer
Sun, because of the nature of a public park, the artists unintentionally exposed
the process to viewers. In the First Gutai Art Exhibition, Shiraga Kazuo and
Murakami Saburô expanded this notion and created pieces that were intended to
be a sort of spectacle – Shiraga grappled with a pile of mud (Figure 61) and
Murakami broke through large pieces of paper (Figure 98). These works were
shown as “tableaus” after the performance, yet the performative aspect was the
significant part of these objects.232 After this performance, Jean Launois, a
photographer from Pana News Service, and William Payne, a reporter with Life
magazine’s Singapore Bureau, asked Gutai to show their art creations
exclusively for the magazine. The group had a one-day show, called the One Day
Outdoor Exhibition (Ichinichi Dake no Yagaiten) or Exhibition at Ruins (Haikyo
ten), held on April 9th, 1956, at the ruins of an oil refinery in Amagasaki City
bombed by the US military during the war. Looking at the records of this special
exhibition, it was obvious that the reporters were particularly interested in the
232 Shiraga made a total of three pieces during the exhibition. In a later memoir, he said that one
after another newspaper and news film reporters requested reenactments of the performance.
Both Shiraga and Murakami wished to do so only once, as the performance consumed lots of
energy. Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 3,” reprinted in GSDG, 342.
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process.233 Although the finished works were exhibited at the ruins, Gutai
members were asked to demonstrate the process of creation, which was done at
a storage site owned by Yoshihara’s oil company (Figure 99, Figure 100 and
Figure 101).234
How the environmental aspect of outdoor and theater exhibitions affected
Gutai artists’ presentation at indoor gallery exhibitions and their overall artistic
development will be examined in the discussion of Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga
Kazuo and Tanaka Atsuko in the next chapter; here, the works of Kanayama
Akira, can be highlighted as outstanding examples of how Gutai members
actively and critically engaged in conceptualizing artwork in relation to changing
environments.
Before joining Gutai, Kanayama Akira was painting geometric abstractions
reminiscent of Piet Mondrian (Figure 102 and Figure 103). In these stern
paintings, Kanayama showed his deep interest in the placements of lines and
geometric shapes within a picture plane, carefully composing them on the white
canvas. At the 1955 Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun exhibition, he was given a
chance to explore this interest in a large scale and outdoor environment. He
created Work B, a work consisting of seven-meter square white painted wooden
233 Launois specifically requested the recreation of Challenging Mud and Please Come In by
Shiraga and Breaking Paper by Murakami. See Kanayama Akira, “Raifu sha no Gutai bijutsu
satsuei” (Photographing Gutai art by Life magazine), Gutai 5 (October 1, 1956), reprinted in
GSDG, 289.
234 Yoshihara was conscious of the relations between art works and the environment in the
choice of the site for this exhibition. He said that he hoped to use ruins of the war, which were
ubiquitous at that time, as a possible exhibit site. He said that “…just by placing minimal numbers
of art works, we hoped that the surrounding space would be one unified piece of work.” See
Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai gurûpu no jûnen, 2,” reprinted in GSDG, 325. For the details of the One
Day Only Exhibition, see Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 4,” reprinted in GSDG, 344.
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boards and a freely moving small red ball (Figure 71). Contrasting the vast white
plane and the red sphere, Work B continued to illustrate Kanayama’s penchant
for strict geometric abstraction. However, he went further in his interest in
composition. Work B remarkably highlighted the relationship between blank
space and what was put or drawn on it. Specifically it exposed the arbitrary
nature of this relationship. Since the ball was not fixed in any one position and
was movable, the artist could create any kind of composition, and one
composition could be altered by unexpected force like the wind or a mischievous
child at the park. For the First Gutai Art Exhibition, Kanayama tried to further
explore this relationship between object and space. This time, Kanayama used
the entire exhibit space as “canvas,” and put a huge balloon in the middle (Figure
104). The size and position of the ball was determined by the space, which was,
unlike the outdoor setting, enclosed and shared by other objects. He also created
a piece titled Ball, a circular red globe, containing two electric bulbs, hanging
from the ceiling of the room (Figure 105). This red ball shone electrical light which
cast red reflections on all the other pieces shown in the room. It was said that
because of the strong light from the ball, other members’ works were all tinted a
shiny red.235 In these two works, Kanayama applied his experiments in two-
dimensional composition into three-dimensional space. Furthermore, the two
works, especially Ball, with its strong light, invaded the territories of works by
other artists, and thus problematized the nature of “exhibition” as a shared space.
235Tanaka Atsuko and Kanayama Akira, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki
Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 397. Also, see Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 3,” reprinted in GSDG, 342.
Shiraga pointed out that already in 1956 that Kanayama had rejected the conventional notion of
composition with these two three-dimensional pieces. See Shiraga Kazuo, “Kotai no kakuritsu”
(On the Establishment of Individuality), Gutai 4, reprinted in GSDG, 278.
clvii
Kanayama further developed his interest in the relationship between art
pieces and their exhibited space in the Second Gutai Outdoor Exhibition in the
summer of 1956 by showing two works that again invaded the space of other
works. One work, mentioned above, was Foot Steps, which was a white vinyl
sheet more than one hundred meters long with stamped foot steps, freely moving
between the ground and numerous trees in the park (Figure 75). The sheet ran
between, next to, and above other works in the park. He also exhibited Signal, a
real railroad crossings signal (Figure 106). This, too, had an invasive character
with its continuously blinking light and loud alarms. This invasive nature of a work
into its surrounding space was internalized in his new series of painting, in which
he used a toy car with paint running randomly on picture plane (Figure 6). These
paintings, with their numerous lines automatically drawn all over the plane in
these paintings connote the amplified the effect of his three-dimensional objects
shown at the First Gutai Art Exhibition and the 1956 outdoor exhibition. The
chaotic trajectories of the toy car invaded and mercilessly stained and erased the
great white space of the large canvas. The large size of some of these paintings
clearly showed the impact of the outdoor exhibitions as well. These paintings
were stark contrast to his ascetic geometric abstractions of 1954.
Thus, Kanayama Akira remarkably developed his interest in the
relationship between an object and its surrounding space through changing
environment – from studio to outdoor venue, to indoor gallery, back to outdoors,
and then indoors again. For Gutai Art on Stage in the spring of 1957, he tried to
incorporate the sense of time into the relationship between an object and its
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space. In Large Balloon, he inflated an enormous balloon that filled the whole
stage, shined it with changing, multi-colored lights, turned it around and
punctured it in front of the audience (Figure 88). As curator Osaki Shin’ichirô
points out, understanding of surrounding space critical artists such as Kanayama
had become sharpened because of their experience at the first outdoor exhibition
Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun. He argues that the harsh outdoor environment
worked as a decisive factor in determining the nature of their artworks. When
they moved into the confined gallery space at the First Gutai Art Exhibition, they
created artworks that could actively and boldly involve the surrounding space.236
The remarkable development of Kanayama’s work constitutes one of the best
examples of this development.
Kanayama’s development illustrates that even while creating works which
deviated from traditional painting practice, Gutai members considered two-
dimensional work as an integral part of their work. In addition to Kanayama,
Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga Kazuo, Murakami Saburô, and Motonaga
Sadamasa, all of who created eye-catching three-dimensional pieces, constantly
presented tableaus using canvas and paint at the indoor gallery exhibitions.
Although such spectacles as Shiraga’s Challenging Mud and Murakami’s
Breaking Papers received lots of attention at the First Gutai Art Exhibition, it was
in fact dominated by two-dimensional tableaus. Both Yoshihara and Shimamoto
reported in the Gutai journal that the presence of oil paintings was rather
reserved, but judging from the photographs, in terms of quantity, in the first
236 Osaki, “Seisei to Jizoku, 3,” 43.
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exhibition the number of tableaus surpassed the three-dimensional objects
(Figure 97). In the second and third indoor Gutai Art Exhibitions, this tendency
toward two-dimensional and oil-based paint became even more conspicuous.237
Shimamoto, Kanayama, and Shiraga all presented mainly two-dimensional works
in the Third Gutai Art Exhibition in Kyoto in April 1957 (Figure 107). Yet at the
same time, these two-dimensional works in the second and third Gutai Art
Exhibitions clearly showed the impact of the outdoor exhibitions, especially in
terms of size. Many of them were far bigger than the works that Gutai artists had
painted before 1955, or compared to those painted before the second outdoor
exhibition (the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition). Shiraga, Shimamoto, Murakami and
Yoshida Toshio each presented large pieces that were created at the site (Figure
108, Figure 1, Figure 109 and Figure 110).238
Conclusion
The mutual interest in abstraction and non-figurative art was a strong
impetus for modernist artists in the Kansai area in the early 1950s to pursue
interdisciplinary activities in such groups as Genbi and the avant-garde
calligrapher group Bokujin-kai. Yoshihara introduced to these groups his concept
of materiality and human subjectivity and encouraged them to reject conventional
237Yoshihara, “Gutai daiikkaiten no kiroku,” reprinted in GSDG, 277, and Shimamoto Shôzô,
“Kurushimanai sakuhin” (Work Made Without Hardship), Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956), reprinted in
GSDG, 282.
238 Large-size pieces, conspicuous in Gutai painting, were unusual in this period. Uemae Chiyû in
his diary compared the Third Gutai Art Exhibition and exhibition group Modan Âto Kyôkai (Modern
Art Association) Kyoto exhibition, which happened to be held simultaneously at the Kyoto City
Museum. Uemae said that his painting of number-100 size (162.1 x 112.1 cm) in the Modan Âto
exhibition “looked good,” but in comparison his several paintings looked diminutive next to
Shimamoto Shôzô’s huge pieces in the Gutai exhibition. Uemae, Jigadô, 232.
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notions in their fields in order to create a universal art. However, these groups
showed a reluctance to totally reject conventions, leading him to turn to a group
of young painters who had already started to depart from conventional painting
practice. They responded to the aspects of “object-hood” and process in painting
that Yoshihara’s concept opened up, and Yoshihara encouraged their radical
aspirations by providing unusual and challenging exhibition venues. Responding
to the changing environments at a public park and a theater, Gutai artists
expanded the painting practice into their areas of sculpture, site-specific
installation, and performance. At the outdoor shows, they learned to use durable
– industrial, especially waterproof – and malleable materials. The lack of walls
and supports forced them to experiment to find new ways to exhibit their works.
Size and colors became bigger and bold. The open environment made them
expose the creative process to the public eye. At theaters as well, new materials,
particularly formless ones, such as light, smoke, and sound were used. In various
ways Gutai artists selected and utilized materials, and consequently interacted
with and left traces of their involvement in materials, Yoshihara’s vision of
“advanced” art – subjective involvement of artists with materials – was colorfully
and “concretely” (gutai teki ni 具体的に) materialized.
The new, challenging conditions and physical environment greatly
contributed to Gutai’s use of new materials and formats. However, these new
interpretations of painting practice reinvigorated the artists as they returned to
more orthodox, two-dimensional works, as in the many works at the indoor
gallery exhibitions show. As Kanayama Akira’s example has suggested, the
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outdoor and theater presentations enriched the artists’ conceptualization and
practice of their two-dimensional work.
Yoshihara highly valued this creative “feedback” from experimental work to
painting. Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko, were the three
most productive members in terms of radical experimentation to expand the
horizon of painting practice while creating more “orthodox” painting. In the next
chapter, we will examine their artistic development in more detail, focusing
especially on how Yoshihara’s conceptual model of the materials and human
subjectivity was given form by each artist through their individual theorizations of
painting practice and the new environments that Yoshihara had provided.
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Chapter Four
Laboratories of Experiments II: The Works of Three Gutai Artists,

Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko
… each Gutai member had a dialogue, face to face, with the teacher
[Yoshihara], and that made us work. We could then create things up to our
own potential. It was our responsibility to nurture things we received from
the teacher. …
––––– Murakami Saburô239
I think there are as many Gutai as Gutai members. I have my Gutai.

Shimamoto has Shimamoto’s, and Shiraga has Shiraga’s.
––––– Motonaga Sadamasa240
The young painters of the Gutai Art Association (hereafter Gutai) eagerly
embraced the group’s leader, Yoshihara Jirô’s concept of materials and human
subjectivity, and aspired to expand the aspects of “object-hood” and process that
his concept opened up. Yoshihara encouraged their radical experiments by
providing unusual and challenging exhibition venues such as a public park and a
theater. Responding to these challenges, the Gutai artists created a wide range
of artworks, which transcended the conventional notion of the painting practice
and intersected with the areas of sculpture, installation, and performance.
Within the group, the interpretations and approaches to Yoshihara’s
conceptual model were greatly varied. This was because his model operated on
239Murakami Saburô, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in Ashiya City
Museum of Art & History ed., Gutai shiryôshû: Dokyumento Gutai, 1954-1972 (Anthology of Gutai
Documents: Document Gutai, 1954-1972; henceforth GSDG), 378.
240 Motonaga Sadamasa, interviewed by the author, July 13, 2002.
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the premise of each individual’s subjective interaction with materials – through
that interactive dynamism, Yoshihara argued, truly innovative artwork would
emerge. Yoshihara put the highest value on each individual’s way of dealing with
the chosen materials and their materiality; he despised any trace of influence
from others in the artists’ works. While Gutai members shared interests in
“object-hood” and process in painting practice, the ways in which each member
materialized these interests turned out to be quite different. As discussed in
Chapter Three, their exhibitions were a great amalgam of two and three-
dimensional objects made using a variety of materials, tools, and methods. Some
of these works might have synergistically emerged as dynamic spectacles, as in
Tanaka Atsuko’s Stage Clothes and Motonaga Sadamasa’s Smoke at the finale
of the Gutai Art on Stage (Figure 92), yet each work at Gutai exhibitions meant to
be the distinctive outcome of an individual artist’s own conceptualization and
practice. What bonded them as a group was the centripetal direction of Yoshihara
as a leader and teacher – each member interacted with Yoshihara individually,
interpreted his critique, and created works in their own studios, as former
members Murakami Saburô and Motonaga Sadamasa have commented.241
Three Gutai artists, Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka
Atsuko, created the most individualized works among the members. Their two-
and three-dimensional art objects and performance pieces adopted a remarkable
241Interestingly, when Michel Tapié encountered Gutai in 1957, he pointed out the irony of the
oxymoronic term “active group” which he used to describe Gutai:
I had truly believed for a long time that we could not think of an ‘active group’ in today’s
world – I believed that ‘group’ was nothing more than a herd of skinny sheep gathered
around a self-appointed shepherd. But it is indeed an era of contradictions.
Michel Tapié, “Gutai-ha raisan” (In Praise of Gutai), Gutai 8 (September 29, 1957), reprinted in
GSDG, 302.
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range of materials and methods, almost to the point that they looked haphazardly
conceived. However, these three artists had their own, distinctive interests in
their approach to visual art, interests which persisted over time in their diverse
works: Shimamoto desired to break down definitions of what constituted
“painting” through his violent acts, while Shiraga rigorously worked to eliminate
conventions of composition and color tonality from painting, using his body parts.
Tanaka was intrigued by the flexibility and expandability of the actual painting
support. They all started their pursuit of “new” art by challenging conventional
notions of painting practice, yet each artist developed in his/her individual way to
materialize the vision. Through this individual, intensive theorization and
interpretation of the concept of materials and human subjectivity, they reached a
new territory in art.
In previous studies of Gutai, continuity in the work of an individual artist
has been often dismissed in order to locate certain coherent styles in Gutai.
There was admittedly some coherency, as many Gutai artists produced non-
figurative painting characterized by the automatic method. But since each artist
developed distinctive approaches and their outcomes were quite different. Even
in automatic painting, there is rich variety, from canvases with violent paint
splashes by Shimamoto, created by cannons (Figure 9), to the static yet vibrant
pictures of Motonaga Sadamasa, created by tilting the canvas and letting the
paint flow (Figure 111). In order to highlight some of the distinctive elements, we
will examine the continuous career of three individual artists, moving from the
pre-Gutai period (before 1954), the experimental period (1954-1957) and on to
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the painting period (after 1957/1958). Shimamoto, Shiraga, and Tanaka, along
with other critical artists, began their theorization of painting practice before
Gutai; for some artists, even before they met Yoshihara. After joining Gutai, their
interests continued to dictate their development – they were only encouraged by
Yoshihara, who offered them very open-ended critiques and unusual exhibition
environments. Gutai member Motonaga Sadamasa aptly said that “Gutai” art was
different for each member.242 The documentations and personal accounts of
former Gutai members tell us that while Gutai was a group, each member
experienced a distinct course of artistic development driven by distinct interests.
Yoshihara initially thought that the unrestrained, automatic motion of the
artist was the best way to make the materials come alive on the picture plane. As
discussed in Chapter Two, his concept of materials and human subjectivity had
germinated in 1952, after he encountered works by American painter Jackson
Pollock and Meiji period Zen calligrapher Nakahara Nantenbô. He found in their
gestural expression a strong manifestation of the artists’ presence confronting
their materials. He clearly stated in the manifesto that the automatic method was
the way to connect an artist’s individuality and materials:
When the individual’s quality and the selected materials melt together in
the furnace of automatism, we are surprised to see the emergence of a
space unknown, unseen and inexperienced. Automatism inevitably
transcends the artist’s own image. We endeavor to achieve our own
method of creating space rather than relying on our own image.243
242 Motonaga Sadamasa, interviewed by the author, July 13, 2002.
(December 1956), 222-224, reprinted in GSDG, 6. English translation included, 9. For the entire
text, see Appendix 1.
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Thus, automatic painting formed a continuous thread in Gutai’s various activities.
Many Gutai members, most of whom had already experimented with various
methods and “tools” other than the paintbrush, followed up with Yoshihara’s
concept of materials and human subjectivity and began creating gestural
painting. Shiraga Kazuo used his own feet; Shimamoto Shôzô painted with
cannons and smashed glass bottles; Sumi Yasuo painted with various, strange
“tools” such as abacuses, combs, and vibrators; and Yoshida Toshio used
watering cans. Usually “painted” quickly (Shimamoto’s works could be made in a
few seconds), their works appear as a chaotic amalgam of colors and materials
that fit Yoshihara’s famous phrase in the Gutai Art Manifesto: “the scream of
materials.” The three-dimensional objects, installations, and performance pieces
that these artists created were often times extensions of their interests in
automatic movement. For example, Shiraga’s dynamic piece Challenging Mud
(Figure 61), in which the artist grappled a mixture of mud and cement with his
body, was developed from his painting practice with his feet. Sumi Yasuo’s
Drawing by Automatism, shown at the Gutai Art on Stage exhibition in 1957,
aimed to reveal the part of automatic painting process using a transparent plastic
sheet (Figure 86).
When he started critiquing works brought by young artists, however,
Yoshihara found that some were the opposite of automatic painting and lacked a
strong sense of materiality, yet they boldly challenged the preconceptions of
conventional art. Yoshihara negotiated his understanding of the materials/human
relationship to embrace this different strain of work, evaluating their original ways
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of dealing with materials as a manifestation of the artist’s autonomous self.
Although these artists did not exactly meet his penchant for automatic painting,
Yoshihara highly regarded their individuality in theorizing the painting practice.
Tanaka Atsuko, Kanayama Akira, and Murakami Saburô belonged to this group.
Tanaka was attracted to flexible plasticity; she deployed on amazing range of
materials to realize her idea to the full. Kanayama was interested in the relational
positioning of artworks and their environment, using expandable materials such
as balloons and long sheets of fabric. Murakami, on the other hand, created
highly conceptual works that offered viewers a new way of looking at surrounding
space, using torn papers, an empty frame, and an enclosed structure with an
opening to the sky (Figure 84). Although Kanayama and Murakami eventually
created magnificent automatic painting, such as Kanayama’s painting with a toy
car (Figure 6) and Murakami’s ingenious “exfoliating painting” in which the
surface of picture gradually peeled off over time (Figure 112), these three artists
mainly focused on exploring their individual interests. Yoshihara’s criteria for the
evaluation of these artists focused heavily on original concepts and selection of
materials.
The first section of this chapter will focus on the two artists whose
interests most closely intersected with Yoshihara’s idea of the relationship
between materials and artist’s subjectivity: Shimamoto Shôzô and Shiraga
Kazuo. Although their paintings share a strong sense of materiality, their
processes were significantly different. Shimamoto used mechanical power, while
Shiraga used his own body in the creative process. Later, the works of Tanaka
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Atsuko will be discussed as a remarkable example of Gutai artists who presented
the non-automatic tendency of the group.
Faster Than Action: Shimamoto Shôzô
One of the oldest students of Yoshihara, Shimamoto Shôzô was the
central figure in Gutai. His zealous aspiration and tireless efforts in making “new”
art, and his motivation power in organizing the group and promoting Gutai’s
publication of the first catalogue, propelled Gutai forward as an art movement. It
is not an exaggerating to say that Yoshihara’s faith in Shimamoto’s ability and
creativity formed the initial base of the group.244 Despite his influential position,
however, Shimamoto’s work and achievement have not been thoroughly
studied.245 This is arguably due to the relentless change and inconsistency of his
styles during his early career. Shimamoto constantly changed his styles between
1952 and 1958, and this restlessness has given scholars much difficulty in
discussing his works in a coherent way.
From his early series Painting with Holes to the later Painting by Throwing
Bottles, however, there was one consistency. It was his penchant for destruction
– Shimamoto always found ways to “assault” the painting. Yet destruction was
244Murakami Saburô said in his interview:

… Gutai started when Yoshihara Jirô began a dialogue with Shimamoto Shôzô. The
teacher [Yoshihara] was intense [as was Shimamoto]: sometimes [Yoshihara] was
delighted to see these works brought by Shimamoto, and other times cruelly rejected
them while praising some part of them. A crazy war, that was. We were all attracted
naturally to that [intense dialogue]. …
Murakami Saburô, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, GSDG, 378.
245 Paul Schimmel’s text for the catalogue of 1998 exhibition Out of Actions: Between
Performance and the Object, 1949-1979 was one of a few studies which highlighted Shimamoto’s
work. Paul Schimmel, “Leap into the Void: Performance and the Object,” in his Out of Actions:
Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979 (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles, 1998), 16-119. Especially see 18-25.
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not his goal; he always aimed to create “new” art out of his destructive acts.246
His teacher Yoshihara interpreted these destructive acts as expressions of the
artist’s creative force and considered them a significant part of Shimamoto’s
artistic persona. He demanded Shimamoto reject even his own works and move
forward.247 In each phase of Shimamoto’s work, Yoshihara was astounded by
Shimamoto’s bold approaches in challenging the painting practice, and provided
him a theoretical framework. Through this intense dialogue with his teacher,
Shimamoto was able to effectively destroy conventions of painting practice, such
as picture plane, usage of oil paint and the paintbrush.
Painting with Holes
Shimamoto met Yoshihara through an acquaintance in 1947, when he was
still a student at Kansei Gakuin University, and began offering his works and
asking for Yoshihara’s critique. Before his encounter with Yoshihara, Shimamoto
had been painting figurative/half-abstract pictures influenced by a surrealist
painter he had been introduced to by his relatives.248 After meeting Yoshihara,
Shimamoto quickly switched to non-figurative imagery which reflected no trace of
reality, such as those with only yellow paint (not extant) and geometric shapes
246Shimamoto Shôzô, “Sakuhin 3: Buttai no dakai” (Work 3: Hitting and Destructing Object),
Gutai 7 (July 15, 1957), reprinted in GSDG, 298.
247 In an interview recorded in 1985, he recalled how Yoshihara told him “Even if you quit making
[painting with] holes, your brain can indefinitely produce other kinds of paintings. So I replied to
him, ‘Yes, it can do so indefinitely.’” Shimamoto Shôzô, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and
Osaki Shin’ichirô, 15 June 1985, in GSDG, 369.
248 Shimamoto, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 366-367.
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drawn on a monotonic color field titled Work (ca. 1950; Figure 113).249 Despite its
monotonous appearance, upon examination, the oil paint of Work has a subtle
but rich texture. These intentionally visible brushstrokes seem to indicate that
Shimamoto was exploring the material texture of the paint, perhaps reflecting
Yoshihara’s interest in materials around this period, as seen in works like Girl and
Seven Birds (1950; Figure 39) and Cat and Fish (ca. 1950; Figure 41).
Yoshihara urged Shimamoto to create painting that Yoshihara had never
seen. As already discussed in Chapter Three, many young painters stopped
visiting Yoshihara’s studio because of his strong exhortations and
uncompromising critiques, which emphasized originality as the highest criteria
and a crucial part of his construct of human subjectivity. Shimamoto did not yield
to Yoshihara’s pressure, and was determined to win his approval. At every
critique session he usually presented him with at least five or six large paintings,
even more if the pieces were smaller. Yet as a nascent painter immediately after
the war, he was so poor that he could not afford cloth canvases. He therefore
improvised by pasting newspapers onto wooden frames using laundry starch and
flour. One day, as he was hastily painting on one of these makeshift surfaces, his
brush accidentally punctured the paper. The result, the now well-known Painting
with Holes was first brought to Yoshihara’s attention in 1950.
One of these Painting with Holes series, Work (1951; Figure 58), was a
painting contrasting white and black industrial paint. The punctures are random;
the layers of newspapers can be glimpsed at the torn edges of these holes.
249 On the back of Work, a Gutai member Sekine Yoshio painted similar geometric shapes.
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These edges indicate the heavy weight of the industrial paint as compared to the
thin newspapers, and the cracks and crusts of the paint on its surface suggest
the paint’s thick consistency. In another painting, Work (Holes) (1950; Figure 20)
the holes were more spread out and appeared rather like scratches. The artist
also added pencil drawings, which amplified the scratchy quality of the holes.
Although the Painting with Holes series came out of an accident for
Shimamoto, they broke one of the most fundamental and seemingly transparent
notions of what had constituted painting to that point. Until then, painting had
been evaluated for what was drawn or painted. When Shimamoto punctured
holes on this “sacred” surface, he forced the viewer to pay attention to the
support of the painting and exposed its own quality (layers of papers; the edge of
paper hanging down because of the weight of paint); the support became the
object to be seen. A fundamental definition of painting – figurative or non-
figurative, a painting was something that has been drawn or painted – thus came
into question.
Yoshihara immediately recognized the subversive nature of Shimamoto’s
painting, challenging as it did the notion of painting as something to be drawn,
and moving into new territory which highlighted its “object-hood”. As discussed in
the previous chapters, around the same period Yoshihara found the same
direction in American painting, especially Pollock’s (Figure 33), which
emphasized a component of painting that was more essential than what was
drawn – its own materials and the materiality of what constituted a painting as an
object. Shimamoto’s Painting with Holes series even more clearly highlighted the
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“object-hood” of the painting than Pollock, by unreservedly exposing the quality
of both paint and paper. Shimamoto initially expected that his teacher would be
incensed by Painting with Holes, but Yoshihara instead enthusiastically praised
the painting.250 Shimamoto recalled that Yoshihara said to him “You are a
genius,” when he first showed him the painting in 1950.251 Shimamoto’s
accidental work was framed by Yoshihara as one of the most innovative works in
painting practice at that time.
For the Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun exhibition in 1955, Shimamoto
expanded on the possibilities that Painting with Holes had opened up for him. He
punched numerous holes in a sheet of iron coated with zinc and installed it
between two wooden posts (Figure 63). No drawing or painting was added to the
metal sheet; it was simply presented as it was. All traces of “painting” on the
surface were removed, thus emphasizing the raw materiality of the surface even
more strikingly than in his earlier works. Enlarged detail photographs of the work,
published in Gutai 3, powerfully showed the hard yet malleable quality of the
metal through the curled edges of the holes (Figure 63). It is clear that the
numerous punctures were not intended to be viewed as drawn on the surface.
They instead literally gouged out and exposed the material quality of the surface.
Although it retained two-dimensional format, the “object-hood” of this work was
more remarkably evident than in his previous Painting with Holes series.
250 For more detail on the story, see ibid., 369 and Shimamoto Shôzô, Geijutsu towa, hitowo
odorokaseru kotodearu (Art Is to Surprise People) (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1994), 79-81.
According to Shimamoto, although Yoshihara praised his paintings with holes, other painters did
not take them seriously. See Shimamoto, inverviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, GSDG, 367.
251 Shimamoto, Geijutsu towa, hitowo odorokaseru kotodearu, 80.
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Painting by Cannon and Painting by Throwing Bottles
Shimamoto achieved a breakthrough and won Yoshihara’s approval by
creating Painting with Holes. However, when he later brought several variations
on Painting with Holes, Yoshihara warned his student that Italian painter Lucio
Fontana was doing something similar, and ordered him to explore other
possibilities.252 Soon after, Shimamoto started creating a new series of Painting
by Cannon (Figure 9), in which he blasted bottles and bags of paint onto large
canvases.
Shimamoto already had been experimenting with expressive, gestural
brushstrokes before his innovative Painting with Holes. Around 1952, he
abandoned the precise geometric drawings that he had been working since the
late 1940s, and followed up with a series of paintings roughly executed with fast
brushstrokes. In some of these paintings, circular shapes of red, yellow, and blue
were painted on the surface of asphalt roofing materials (Figure 56).253 On each
rectangular surface, Shimamoto smeared industrial paint using quick
brushstrokes as if violently erasing a message or a picture drawn underneath.
Using crude roofing materials and low-quality paint, these paintings denied the
aestheticism surrounding the painting practice.
252Shimamoto, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, GSDG, 369. According to Shimamoto,

Yoshihara said that there was no competition between Shimamoto, who lived in a remote Osaka,
Japan, and Fontana, a western European painter.
253 Shimamoto seemed to have created this series in the span of two to three years. See
Shimamoto, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 368. The documented photograph of
this work is from the Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun, Gutai’s first outdoor exhibition held in July
1955.
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Shimamoto’s apparent stylistic shift was greatly affected by his exposure
through Yoshihara to the bold brushstrokes of calligraphy works. As seen in
Chapter Three, Yoshihara had a close relationship with the calligrapher group
Bokujin-kai between 1951 and 1955, and as his student, Shimamoto had many
occasions to see calligraphic works by the Bokujin-kai members (Figure 54). He
also accompanied Yoshihara to view Nakahara Nantenbô’s calligraphy at the
Kaiseiji temple in Nishinomiya in the early summer of 1952 (Figure 34).254
Commenting on Nantenbô’s calligraphy, Yoshihara pointed out to Shimamoto that
it contained the sense of time as an important element – a new direction of
painting that could surpass the geometric abstract painting of Piet Mondrian
which Yoshihara had thought to be the most advanced abstract painting. Upon
hearing this, Shimamoto promptly began experimenting with fast, bold
brushstrokes in his painting.255
Attentive to Yoshihara’s demand for originality, Shimamoto soon realized
that if he painted by physically manipulating the brush, it would be just a variation
of what Nantenbô had done in his calligraphy. Thus he came to the conclusion
that “There was nothing to be done other than to use a machine of some sort.”
The method he chose was to use a small cannon, which allowed paint to be
applied to the surface with superior power and speed. In 1955, the same year as
the Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun exhibition, Shimamoto started a new
254 Shimamoto mentions the visit with Yoshihara in his interview. Ibid., 368.
255 Ibid., 369. Shimamoto even studied calligraphy and entered his work in a calligraphy
exhibition around 1952 and 1953. See Yoshihara Jirô, et al., “[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu
kondankai: Sho to modan âto” ([Roundtable discussion] Contemporary Art Discussion Group:
Calligraphy and Modern Art), Bokujin 12 (March 1953), 20.
Shimamoto, inverviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, GSDG, 370.
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painting series, Painting by Cannon (Taihô Kaiga). He put industrial paint in glass
bottles or plastic bags, and shot them against a canvas cloth using a cannon
powered by acetylene gas. The only extant painting in this style, Work (1955;
Figure 9) was of modest size (161.5 x 127.0 cm), characterized by layers of bold
splashes of red, black, and ochre. The powerful force of the cannon can be seen
in the twisted, wrinkled lines of a canvas. It is said that the canvases were
sometimes torn from the force of the blast. Also, one could discern shards of
glass stuck to the surface, left after they were shattered by the cannon.
For the 1956 outdoor exhibition, Shimamoto created a gigantic Painting by
Cannon (Figure 114). Onto a red vinyl sheet ten meters square, the artist shot
plastic bags containing enamel paints using a four-meter long, thirty-centimeter
diameter cannon of his own design. It was hung from a pole lashed horizontally
between two tall pine trees in Ashiya Park.256 In one photograph of the
installation, a girl standing in front of the work looked as if she were about to be
swallowed by a big wave of paints. The wrinkles made by the weight of the sheet
amplified the rippling effect. Although the black and white photograph does not
reveal the colors used, the overwhelming power of this work surpassed his
previous Painting by Cannon.
Shimamoto reached this new method of “painting” through his individual
pursuit of fast, bold brushstrokes. As a consequence, he rejected the use of the
paintbrush, the most fundamental tool in painting practice of in both Western and
256 Shiraga Kazuo noted that this painting was so big that parts of it were torn quite often and
sometimes it fell on the ground. Shimamoto had to mend it every day during the exhibition.
Shiraga Kazuo, “Bôken no kiroku: episôdo de tsuzuru Gutai gurûpu no jûninen, 2” (Document of
Adventure: Writing on Episodes from Twelve Years of Gutai, 2), Bijutsu Techô no. 286 (August
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Japanese art. Shimamoto tried to connect this rejection of the paintbrush with
Gutai’s innovative emphasis on materials and materiality, and historicize this
change as a new phase in painting practice. In his polemical essay titled “On the
Execution of the Paintbrush” (Efude shokei ron), published in the journal Gutai 6
(April 1957), he strongly claimed that rejection of the paintbrush was a way to
free the paint materials from its subjugation by the paintbrush. He condemned
the paintbrush as manipulating and killing the materiality of paint throughout
history for the sake of literal content (he cited the most brutal artists in this regard
as Poussin, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Surrealists). He continued:
We do not want to manipulate the material quality of the paint, be it oil or

enamel. As I repeated many times, there are no colors without material
quality; castrated by the paintbrush, the beauty of its material quality was
always kept [secondary] in all sorts of painting, whether in the
representation of nature or the expression of image. I think that first of all,
paint should be emancipated from [the yoke of] the paintbrush. [New art]
production requires that the paintbrush be broken and abandoned;
otherwise, there will be no emancipation for paint. When the paintbrush is
abandoned, paint will be revived for the first time.
To replace the paintbrush, we should actively explore the use of all
sorts of tools. Take the things that Gutai members are utilizing – starting
from bare hands and palette knives, there are watering cans, vibrators,
abacuses, oil-paper umbrellas, rollers, toys, bare feet and cannons – the
examples are abundant. ….257
As Shimamoto explained here, between 1955 and 1957, he was one of several
Gutai members who experimented with various tools and devices to paint in the
automatic method: Shiraga Kazuo painted with his feet, Sumi Yasuo used
abacuses and vibrators, Yoshihara Michio used bicycles, and Yoshida Toshio
used watering cans (Figure 101, Figure 115, Figure 116 and Figure 117,
257Shimamoto Shôzô “Efude shokei ron” (On the Execution of the Paint Brush), Gutai 6 (April 1,
1957), reprinted in GSDG, 293-294. Oil-paper umbrellas are traditional umbrellas used in Japan.
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respectively). Yoshihara’s Gutai Art Manifesto, published in December 1956,
emphasized the artist’s individual choice of materials, methods, and tools as the
expression of human subjectivity. While Shimamoto’s text followed the basic
argument of the Gutai Art Manifesto, it also emphasized the historical
significance of abandoning the paintbrush as a destructive act which
simultaneously aimed for new possibilities. Among these diverse methods,
Shimamoto’s cannon had superior power and speed, which fit his original goal of
surpassing the physical ability of the human being.
Although it had unparallel force, Painting by Cannon unfortunately raised
questions of public safety. After several works in 1956, Shimamoto shifted to the
method of throwing and smashing bottles containing paint against cloth
canvases, either hanging on walls or laying flat (Figure 1 and Figure 118).258 The
blasts of paint in these Painting by Throwing Bottles (Bin nage no kaiga) showed
a similar quality to Painting by Cannon. In the 1957 piece Work, the black, red,
and white paint was mixed with “strange stuff,” such as fruit skin, ash, paper
trash, sand, cigarette butts, and dead insects. These paints and additives
remained unevenly encrusted on the surface (Figure 119).259 Perhaps because it
was easier to control the direction of the paint compared to the cannon method,
258 The two outdoor exhibitions were Ichinichi dake no Yagaiten (One-Day Outdoor Exhibition),
on April 4, 1956, at the bank of Muko River, Amagasaki City, Hyôgo; and Yagai Gutai Bijutsuten
(Outdoor Gutai Exhibition), July 27 to August 5, Ashiya Park, Ashiya City. Shiraga Kazuo details
the public demonstration of Shimamoto’s Painting by Throwing Bottles at the Second Gutai Art
Exhibition in Tokyo in 1956. Shiraga Kazuo, “Bôken no kiroku: episôdo de tsuzuru Gutai gurûpu
no jûninen, 3” (Document of Adventure: Writing on Episodes from Twelve Years of Gutai, 3),
Bijutsu Techô no. 287 (September 1967), reprinted in GSDG, 343.
259 For the description of the process, see Yoshida Toshio, “Dainikai Gutai bijutsuten no sakuhin
ni tsuite” (On the Works in the Second Gutai Art Exhibition), Biiku Bunka 6, no. 11 (November
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Painting by Throwing Bottles was more coherent, and to a certain degree lacked
the rawness of Painting by Cannon. The paint on this Work was centered on the
picture plane. In his later work, he tried to incorporate the force of gravity in
addition to the blasting power of the smashing action. In his magnificent painting
Work, created in 1960, Shimamoto smashed multiple colors (white, blue, yellow,
green, black, red) and let each drip before smashing the next bottle (Figure 120).
The intricate layers of the multiple colors showed that this simple method could
create very complex and powerful pictures.
Yoshihara praised the intensity and raw energy of the paint splashes
appearing in Shimamoto’s Painting by Cannon and Painting by Throwing Bottles.
In his critique for the Second Gutai Art Exhibition (October 1956), he said:
“[Shimamoto’s] mechanical works, instantly produced using motorized power or
gas explosion, represent the most intense state of the materials. He is a
magician who can make the materials scream.”260 Furthermore, Yoshihara
commented in a similar way on Shimamoto’s Painting by Cannon, shown at the
Third Gutai Art Exhibition in Kyoto (April 1957): “the appeal [of the painting] lies in
260 Yoshihara Jirô, “Dainikai Gutai Bijutsuten” (The Second Gutai Art Exhibition), Gutai 6 (April 1,
1957), reprinted in GSDG, 291. Although Yoshihara mentioned “motorized power” in the context
of Shimamoto’s art making, I could not find any examples of Shimamoto having used motors. Art
historian Tatehata Akira points out that Yoshihara theorized Shimamoto’s use of tools as
mechanical, thus successfully distinguishing the “mechanical” automatism of Shimamoto and
other Gutai members from the psychological automatism of the Surrealists. See Tatehata Akira,
“Seisei suru taburô: Gutai Bijutsu Kyôkai no 1950 nendai” (Generating tableau: the 1950s of
Gutai Art), in National Museum of Art [Kokuritsu Kokusai Bijutsukan], Kaiga no arashi, 1950
nendai: Informel, Gutai, COBRA (Action et emotion, peintures des annés 50: Informel, Gutai,
COBRA) (Osaka, 1985), 16.
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its violent ferocity. Unknown residues are encrusted [on the surface]; the cloth is
torn; the paint left flowing naturally. …”261
In these literal explosions of paint in Shimamoto’s works, Yoshihara saw
one of the best executions of the materials and materiality that came forward
through the artist’s subjective engagement with them. Yoshihara’s praise for
Shimamoto’s works was the reiteration of the gist of Gutai Art Manifesto, which
he wrote in October 1956:
In Gutai Art, the human spirit and the materials shake hands with each
other, but keep their distance. The materials never compromise itself with
the spirit; the spirit never dominates the materials. When the materials
remains intact and exposes its characteristics, it starts telling a story, and
even screaming. …
At the end of the manifesto, Yoshihara also states:
We hope that there is always a fresh spirit in our Gutai exhibitions and that
the discovery of new life will call forth a tremendous scream in the
materials.262
In the manifesto, he used the term “screaming” in a very specific and significant
sense: the “scream” that the materials anthropomorphically uttered upon
acquiring true liberation from its subjugation by the “meaningless act of
261 Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai Bijutsu Daisankai ten” (The Third Gutai Art Exhibition), Gutai 7 (July 15,
1957), reprinted in GSDG, 300. It was often the case that Gutai members exhibited their older
works on later occasions. For example, Shiraga showed his Please Come In (1955; Figure 2)
again as a two-dimensional “painting” at the Third Gutai Art Exhibition in 1957. See Shiraga,
interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, GSDG, 380.
262 Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai bijutsu sengen,” reprinted in GSDG, 6-7. It is possible that Yoshihara
simultaneously or in a short interval wrote the Gutai Art Manifesto and critiques of works exhibited
in the Second Gutai Art Exhibition (Ohara Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, October 3-8). The original Gutai Art
Manifesto, published in Geijutsu Shinchô, accompanied the photographs of public demonstrations
and works presented at the exhibition.
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signification by a human.”263 Since seeing Jackson Pollock’s painting in 1951, a
continuing issue for Yoshihara was to raise the status of materials to the level of
the artist. He must have felt ecstatic seeing the literal explosions of paint in
Shimamoto’s work.
While problematizing two conventional notions of what constituted
“painting” – something to be drawn and drawing by physically manipulating the
brush – Shimamoto also experimented outside the category of “painting.” For the
first official Gutai exhibition in Tokyo, Shimamoto created a three-dimensional
piece Please Walk On This (Kono ue wo aruite kudasai): a wooden box with
several inserted blocks (Figure 82). According to Shimamoto, he intended to
create an art piece which explored the sense of touch, an area that had not been
examined in visually-centered, conventional art.264 Shimamoto also tried to
create a music piece without a definite beginning or ending. He made electronic
sounds of very long or short duration, and randomly recorded them. The
experimental music piece was used as background for the two Gutai Art on
Stage exhibitions in 1957 and 1958. As he put it, Shimamoto intended to “end the
long history of structure dominating sounds, of music consisting of sounds as
[subservient elements of] story-telling.”265
As in his approach to painting, Shimamoto tried to be involved in the act of
destruction on both theoretical and physical levels in the creation of these various
263 Ibid., 6.
264 Shimamoto Shôzô, “Kono uewo aruite kudasai” (Plese Walk On This), Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956),
265Shimamoto Shôzô, “Sakuhin 3: Buttai no dakai” (Work 3: Hitting and Destroying Object),
Gutai 7 (July 15, 1957), reprinted in GSDG, 298.
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art forms. For example, in his three painting series (Painting with Holes, Painting
by Cannon, and Painting by Throwing Bottles), Shimamoto literally attacked the
picture plane by puncturing and beating, thus challenging the conventional
notions of painting. Yet it should be noted that his penchant for destruction did
not focus on the act of destruction itself. In the end, the creation of tangible
“original” and “new” art was always on his mind. Thus, even Hitting and
Destroying Object (Buttai no dakai; Figure 93), a performance piece for the Gutai
Art on Stage in 1957, which essentially showed the process of destruction,
Shimamoto emphatically talked about the “constructive” aspect of destruction:
In the area of art, destruction and creation generally stand in opposition.

Despite this, the thrill and excitement of destruction equally call upon
people’s empathy. We experience this everywhere in our daily life. Although
destruction is the opposite of creation, in this age, there are no borders
between them. Creation based upon automatism already contains an
element of destruction. We seek to promote to more a constructive level this
empathy for destruction, which tends to be negated [in art].266
By continuously renewing his style, Shimamoto broke through some of the
most fundamental conventions in painting practice, such as the picture plane and
the use of oil paint and paintbrush. In such series as Painting with Holes,
Painting by Cannon and Painting by Throwing Bottles, he explored the materiality
of paint and support through his violent, destructive acts. Yoshihara highly
266 Ibid., 298. In this performance work, Shimamoto, using a bat, hit and broke an electric bulb
and tube (about 80 cm) in a single strike. Next, he smashed a large box suspended above him.
Hundreds of ping pong balls started falling from the box as he continued to strike it. Viewers were
mesmerized by the incredible speed of destruction and the impressive number of balls, falling like
a shower over the artist and bouncing all over the stage. See Shiraga Kazuo, “Bôken no kiroku:
episôdo de tsuzuru Gutai gurûpu no jûninen, 4” (Document of Adventure: Writing on Episodes
from Twelve Years of Gutai, 4), Bijutsu Techô no. 288 (October 1967), reprinted in GSDG, 345.
clxxxii

regarded Shimamoto’s works as excellent examples of the dynamic interaction of
materials and human subjectivity.
Yoshihara’s advice and critique greatly contributed to Shimamoto’s
remarkable achievements. In the beginning, Yoshihara pushed Shimamoto to test
his creativity, to constantly explore new expressions. When Shimamoto
presented these innovative works, Yoshihara gave them a theoretical framework,
indicating how they were innovative in the history of painting. Once Yoshihara
concluded that Shimamoto had found an approach of his own with Painting by
Throwing Bottles, Yoshihara encouraged the artist to continue in that direction.
Shimamoto’s rich and complex expression of Painting by Throwing Bottles
reached a pinnacle in 1960 (Figure 120).
Yet the dialogue between Yoshihara and Shimamoto was mutual.
Shimamoto’s bold ways of assaulting painting practice inspired Yoshihara in
theorizing his views on advanced art. The strong emphasis on materials and
materiality as seen in Painting with Holes helped Yoshihara conceptualize his
model of materials and human subjectivity in the art object, along with works by
Jackson Pollock and Nakahara Nantenbô. The powerful tableaus created by
Shimamoto’s automatic methods of Painting by Cannon and Painting by
Throwing Bottles confirmed Yoshihara’s conviction that his concept could explore
the new terrain of non-figurative art. Shimamoto was the best practitioner and
collaborator in Yoshihara’s search for advanced art.
Shimamoto’s pursuit of power and action was an inspiration for other Gutai
artists. His fearless attitude in trying new experiments was followed by many
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artists; members Sumi Yasuo, Yoshida Toshio, Yoshihara Michio tried various
tools and techniques in their automatic painting. He was also a force in bringing
in new members from the Zero-kai, when Yoshihara’s strict leadership threatened
Gutai’s existence. Radical young artists from the Zero-kai were impressed with
Shimamoto’s non-figurative painting when he visited the group’s meeting for the
first time, and that led to the participation of the Zero-kai artists, Kanayama Akira,
Murakami Saburô, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko.267 Shimamoto was
indeed the backbone of Gutai.
Nature Contesting Materials: Shiraga Kazuo
Shiraga Kazuo was another leading artist among those Gutai members
who pursued automatic ways of painting. His paintings using his own feet were
considered by Yoshihara as one of the best manifestations of an artists’ presence
confronting the materials. While Shimamoto aimed to surpass physicality in his
Painting with Cannon series, Shiraga instead sought ways in which the artist
could use the maximum power of his own body. Because of the directness of his
method – using different parts of his body to paint – Shiraga seemed to embody
the ultimate state of unconsciousness in art making. However, his seemingly
impulsive methods were in part the consequences of his theorization of the
painting practice. Aspiring to achieve an advanced form of painting, Shiraga
proceeded by logical steps to deconstruct some of the fundamental aspects of
painting practice; composition and color tonality. In this process, Shiraga
267 Murakami, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 373.
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developed an intense self-consciousness, which he later positioned at the core of
creation, and worked on the elaboration of his own subjectivity that contested the
“materials.”
Remarkably, Shiraga developed his individual style of Foot Painting before
meeting Yoshihara, who was similarly working on the new relationship between
the object’s materials and the artist’s human subjectivity as represented in
original, individual ways of engaging with the materials. Yet his encounter with
Yoshihara and his participation in Gutai greatly affected the course of Shiraga’s
artistic career. Yoshihara not only acknowledged the innovative aspects of
Shiraga’s works and encouraged him to pursue them, he also gave him chances
to explore new forms of visual art. The unusual exhibition venues and the
challenges of these new environments made Shiraga contemplate the aspects of
“object-hood” and process, and his subjective position within painting practice.
The three-dimensional objects and performance pieces that Shiraga created as a
result were some of the most remarkable Gutai works, and they exemplified the
concept of materiality and human subjectivity.
Painting with the Body
During the war and its immediate aftermath, Shiraga studied Japanese-
style painting at the Kyoto Municipal School of Painting (Kyoto Shiritsu Kaiga
Senmongakkô, later the Kyoto City University of Arts [Kyoto Shiritsu Geijutsu
Daigaku]).268 He chose Japanese-style painting because the Kyoto Municipal
268The Kyoto Municipal School of Painting was renamed the Kyoto Municipal School of Fine Arts
(Kyôto shiritsu bijutsu senmongakkô) in April 1945.
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School of Painting, a stronghold of Japanese traditional art, had only two
departments: Japanese-style painting and textile design. Shiraga was adamant
about studying oil painting, however, for he liked the immediacy and the fluid
“feeling” of oil paint. He was extremely frustrated with the slowness of paint
preparation in Japanese-style painting, which requires a time-consuming mixing
of powder pigment and glue. Shiraga later said, “I am not fond of the way of
using paint in Japanese-style painting ways of using paint… yet I put up with the
process.”269
After graduation, Shiraga went back to practice oil painting at the Art
Institute of the Osaka City Museum of Art (Osaka Shiritsu Bijutukan Fuzoku
Bijutsu Kenkyûjo). While painting figurative, surrealistic images inspired by his
own dreams, he writes, he had a strong desire to create a “new” painting that
could alter the history of painting. Shiraga said that he was aware of the non-
figurative work of French painters Pierre Soulage and Hans Haltung and anxious
to discover “the painting that could go even further than those considered the
most advanced. I thought that if I could create something like that, I could forge a
path to the future in art history.”270 In 1952, he and other radical young artists of
the exhibition group Shin Seisaku Kyôkai (New Creation Association) formed
Zero-kai (Group Zero), and started critiquing each other’s works.
Around 1953, Shiraga drastically changed from his moderately abstract
pictures of the same year (Figure 121) to non-figurative imagery consisting of
269 Shiraga Kazuo, interviewed by the author, July 13, 2002.
270Shiraga Kazuo, “Shojo yukino uewo kassô suru” (Skiing Over Virgin Snow), in Hyôgo
Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Akushon peintâ: Shiraga Kazuo ten (Action painter: Shiraga
Kazuo retrospective exhibition) (Kôbe, 2001), 10.
clxxxvi

series of wavy lines. Not really knowing which direction he should take, one day
while he was working on a figurative painting, Shiraga suddenly found an
interesting “picture” which accidentally emerged when he erased the figures with
a palette knife. He then began to deliberately scrape the paint and draw a series
of lines using only the knife.271 One of the paintings created in this method,
Flowing Vein 2 (Ryûmyaku 2, 1953; Figure 122) consisted of layers of wavy lines,
using a mixture of white, gray, blue and purple. The lines seem to be divided by
crooked, vertical black lines – yet in fact these lines were formed as Shiraga
stopped the spread of one paint and started another. They were not black lines,
but were chains of gaps between successive paint applications.
Shiraga’s controlled movement of repetitive lines gradually became
automatic. Inspired by art historian Toyama Usaburô’s discussion of oppositional
currents in the history of abstract painting, Shiraga found his interest aligned with
the “passionate” (jônetsuteki na 情熱的な) current which Toyama said underlay
Fauvism, Expressionism, and Absolutism (the other is the “intellectual” current of
Cubism, Pure Abstraction, and Surrealism). He said,
…as I produced [many painting] in an automatic way, I found interesting that

the speed of changes in my styles became accelerated and dramatic; I
started concentrating on [producing as many painting as possible in short
period of time]. …272
271 Shiraga Kazuo, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 379.
272 Shiraga, “Shojo yukino uewo kassô suru” in Akushon peintâ: Shiraga Kazuo ten, 10. Shiraga
said that according to Toyama’s book Junsui Kaigaron (On Pure Painting), there were
“intellectual” （理知的な）and “passionate,” paintings, both derived from the painting of Paul
Cezanne. After he started creating non-figurative painting, he soon realized that he was more
intrigued by the latter.
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Embarking on this new path, Shiraga experimented with the various qualities of
oil paint, which earlier he had found fascinating. The use of the palette knife in
Flowing Vein 2 revealed the fluidity and sticky quality of the oil paint, which could
be vigorously spread without resistance.273 Although looking like waves, what
actually appeared on the picture plane was the repetition of spreading the oil
paint, not any particular imagery. In other work, such as Wriggles (Zen, 1954;
Figure 123), Shiraga’s knife tracks were more freely executed, highlighting the
fluid quality of the oil paint even more than in his earlier work.274
Although he shifted to non-figurative painting, he had not yet found an
advanced form of painting that he thought he could surpass works by Soulage
and Hartung, the contemporary painters in what Shiraga regarded as the
“passionate” current of abstract art. After intense study of the history of abstract
painting, Shiraga decided to eliminate two of the main components that abstract
painting still clung to: composition and color tonality:
… I wanted to inject more heat and explosive energy into my expression.

Therefore, I decided to completely ignore my own previous work and art
historic trends and start over from the beginning with an empty slate, to
discard all formal elements and start from zero. … Abstract painters had
already rejected the attempt to depict three-dimensional space with light and
shade, which had been emphasized in previous representational paintings.
But there was still the knotty problem of eliminating composition and a
sense of color.275
273 Shiraga, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 379.
274 It is quite significant that before knowing Yoshihara and his emphasis on materiality, Shiraga
in his own way had begun to focus on the material quality of oil paint. Shiraga first met Yoshihara
at one of the monthly meetings of the Contemporary Art Discussion Group (Genbi), some time in
1953. But he did not seem to know of Yoshihara’s idea of materiality, even for sometime after
joining Gutai. In fact, Yoshihara rarely discussed theoretical issues with Gutai members.
See Ibid., 385.
275 Shiraga, “Shojo yukino uewo kassô suru,” in Akushon peintâ: Shiraga Kazuo ten, 11. English
translation included, 13. I modified some parts of the English translation.
clxxxviii

To break from these elements, Shiraga tried various methods. In seeking more
directness in the act of painting, he abandoned the paintbrush and began to paint
with his fingers. To eliminate the contrived elements of composition, he used a
square canvas, and painted it starting from the center to the periphery. His 1954
piece Work was an example of this method – the artist scooped paint with his
finger and applied it in a radial movement from the center toward the four sides of
the canvas (Figure 124). In other cases, he painted using triangular or
rectangular movements. He also tried to disregard composition by painting from
one corner, again using his finger, and fill the entire canvas with continuous lines
of paint, as in Hand (1954; Figure 125). Shiraga said of this series of painting, “In
this way, the painting looked like a pattern and there was not much clear sense of
a fixed composition. So I thought it was successful.”276 Furthermore, he made a
sustained effort to reject his artistic training: to mentally block the act of
“composing,” Shiraga sometimes forced himself to close his eyes and not to look
at the canvas. Even when he looked at the canvas, he was trying to paint as
unconsciously as possible, abandoning the paintbrush and using his hands,
fingers, or fingernails. To negate any sense of color tonality, the artist picked a
clxxxix
single color for certain compositions: Work (Figure 124) was painted with bright
red paint, and Hand (Figure 125) with crimson red paint.277
By filling the canvas with a single color, these pictures were more
thoroughly divorced from the figurative. This shift was clearly indicated in
Shiraga’s titling of these works: the title Flowing Vein 2 (1953; Figure 122) was
evidently derived from the patterns of layers of lines that resembled water
currents, while the titles of the 1954 works are simply “Work” or indicate the
“tools” used in painting, such as Hand, Finger, Nail – i.e., parts of his body.
Moreover, as Shiraga moved away from composition and color tonality, the
material quality of the oil paint was further highlighted. In Hand, for example, one
can sense not only the smooth quality but also the shininess of the oil paint – to
the point that the paint seemed to embody a sense of life. In terms of his
attempts to deal with materiality, the shift from Flowing Vein 2 to his 1954
paintings using parts of his body was quite significant. In Flowing Vein, Shiraga
was “consciously” attesting to the textuality of the oil paint. In painting using parts
of his body in the following year, the artist was more “unconsciously” applying the
paint. As a result, the materiality of the oil paint was further heightened.
277 Shiraga has been fond of using red color throughout his career. He created the three-
dimensional piece Please Come In (1955), using wooden poles painted bright red (Figure 2), and
also the performance piece Ultramodern Sanbasô, featuring Shiraga himself wearing a red
costume with elongated sleeves and feet (Figure 87). Asked why he favored red, Shiraga said
that he liked things that were bloody, crimson. Shiraga, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in
GSDG, 380. Shiraga once said that his works were influenced by bloodshed and deadly incidents
that the artist saw during the infamous summer festival Kenka Danjiri in his native Amagasaki,
Hyogo. Cited in Hirai Shôichi, “Shiraga Kazuo no kaiga: ‘Uchinaru ryôkyokusei’ wo megutte”
(Inner Bipolarity: The Painting of Kazuo Shiraga), in Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art,
Akushon peintâ: Shiraga Kazuo ten (Action Painter: Shiraga Kazuo Retrospective Exhibition)
(Kôbe, 2001), 136-137.
cxc

In the summer of 1954, after experimenting by painting with his fingers,
hands, and nails, Shiraga moved into a more dynamic way of painting. He put the
canvas on the floor and started using his own feet – which became his signature
method (Figure 126).278 Although the idea of using feet came to him suddenly
when he saw his friend and fellow Zero-kai member Murakami Saburô’s creation
of Work Painted by Throwing a Ball (Tôkyû Kaiga, 1954; Figure 127), it was for
him a logical step. As he increased the amount of paint to bring out the
expressive nature of its fluid materiality, he found it was difficult to position the
canvas on an easel, as the wet, loose oil paint constantly dripped downward. He
therefore laid the canvas on the floor. Once he had moved to the floor, he then
began to use bigger canvases, and found that reaching to the center was quite
difficult. Thus, “I had no choice but to get inside the picture.”279
The transition from hands to feet, although both parts of human body, had
an important implication in his search for advanced painting. Once the picture
plane was laid on the floor, he found that if he looked down at the canvas, he
could not escape from his previous habit of thinking about the composition. Thus,
he began to paint by holding onto a rope hanging from a beam, keeping his
278 There have been some variants over the course of years, yet Shiraga practices this technique
even today. In his studio, he has a rope (soaked with oil paint) hanging from a beam beneath the
ceiling. His right foot, the one he paints with, is now slightly bent, because of the pressure he put
on it over many years.
279 Cited in Hirai, “Shiraga Kazuo no kaiga: ‘Uchinaru ryôkyokusei’ wo megutte,” in Akushon
peintâ: Shiraga Kazuo ten, 139. I modified the English translation, 147. For the story of his
encounter with Murakami’s Work Painted by Throwing a Ball, see Murakami Saburô and Shiraga
Kazuo, “Gutaiteki na hanashi: Murakami Saburô vs. Shiraga Kazuo” (Concrete “Gutai Style” Talk:
Murakami Saburô vs. Shiraga Kazuo), January 24, 1993, in Hyôgo: Ashiya City Museum of Art &
History ed., Gutai I, II, III, (Ashiya, 1993), 209.
cxci

balance, all the while not looking down at the canvas (Figure 128). In this way, he
could even more successfully eliminate composition from his painting.280
More than eliminating composition, however, laying a canvas on the floor
and using his feet as a painting tool had significant implications for Shiraga, who
was trained as western-style painter. He broke through one of the fundamental
conventions of the history of European painting, the use of easel. His approach
perhaps was intended to carry the same degree of subversiveness as Jackson
Pollock, who in the mid 1940s similarly laid his canvas on the floor. Rosalind
Krauss, in her discussion of Pollock’s painting, contrasts horizontal and vertical
positioning of the picture plane and argues the subversive nature of the former
against the latter:
In the name of the unconscious, Pollock wished to strike against form, and
thus against the axis of the human body. But equally in the name of the
unconscious, Pollock needed to strike against culture. And the move he
went on to make … was to sweep the horizontal field of writing off the
table that made it a surrogate for “culture,” and dump it – as so much trash
– onto the floor of Siqueiros’s anticultural revolt. The floor, Pollock’s work
seemed to propose, in being below culture, was out of the axis of the
body, and thus also below form.281
According to Krauss, horizontality challenges the “culture” and “form” that the
vertical axis has come to embody: the axis of “the easel of the artist’s studio, or
the wall of the bourgeois apartment, or the high-cultural ideals of the museum.”282
This horizontality can be retained even after the painting is hung on the wall and
280 Later he began to paint more “consciously,” by planning which direction he would move his
body. But he added, “when I actually start painting, nothing goes as I planned.” Shiraga,
interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 383.
281Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind E. Krauss, Formless: A User’s Guide (New York: Zone books,
1997), 94-95.
282 Ibid., 93.
cxcii

thus requires viewers to see it vertically, for Pollock’s “mark” on the canvas
indicates its horizontal origin as in the thinned oil leaching out into the weave of
the canvas or in the paint which can be seen to “puddle up and dry unevenly, its
crusty surface pulling into scummy-looking scabs.” Krauss continues:
The power of Pollock’s mark as index meant that it continued to bear

witness to the horizontal’s resistance to the vertical and that it was the
material condition of this testimony – the oily, scabby, shiny, ropey
qualities of the self-evidently horizontal mark – that would pit itself against
the visual formation of the Gestalt, thus securing the condition of the work
as formless.283
For Shiraga, what he wished to eliminate was composition and color tonality, the
fundamental elements of representational and abstract painting. The foot painting
was an ideal way to reach this goal, because the artist’s upright position against
the horizontally laid canvas forced him to maintain a distance, both physically
and mentally, from the picture plane. Furthermore, the use of the foot as
“painting” tool blocked the skills and techniques that Shiraga had acquired in his
training as a representational painter. For him this breaking of conventions was a
revealing experience that “suddenly opened [my] eyes, and [made me] feel
cheerful, fun and refreshed,”284 after the long years of feeling unsatisfied first with
Japanese-style painting, then struggling to accomplish his individual style in
Western-style painting. One might say that “dumping” the picture on the floor may
have not been a significant event for Shiraga, since he had practiced Japanese-
style painting and knew calligraphy, where the “drawing” was traditionally done
283 Ibid., 97.
284 Shiraga, “Shojo yukino uewo kassô suru,” in Akushon peintâ: Shiraga Kazuo ten, 11. English
translation is by the author.
cxciii
on floor. However, considering his long training in Western-style painting and his
conscious effort to break through conventions, one can argue that like Pollock,
Shiraga fought against and succeeded in setting himself free from the yoke of the
culture of painting practice.
In addition, Shiraga’s foot painting, like Pollock’s work, was not intended to
disguise its subversive status as “being below culture,” its horizontal origin. From
the beginning, his method of painting was always clear in the titles, which
explicitly indicated that they were painted with parts of his body.285 Furthermore,
the material condition of his foot painting, like Pollock’s painting, testified to the
horizontal positioning and the method. The fluidity, malleability and slipperiness
of the oil paint could be seen in a single, long, extended sweeping line, for
example, in a dynamic painting Work II (1958; Figure 129). The mushy quality of
the paint was clear in the spots that were spread with the heels. Some of the
lines run off from the canvas, indicating the powerful force of Shiraga’s foot
strokes. The oil paint’s resistance to mixing was evident in the ways in which two
or more colors were smeared yet non-integrated, as in the red, ochre, and black
paints in Work II.
Discovery of Self
285 Shiraga’s Foot Painting was an object of curiosity among the public, and was reported many
times in local newspapers. For example one newspaper reports:
A young painter from Amagasaki is creating a picture, relying on a rope from a ceiling,
stamping like treading barley plants, on a picture entirely covered with paint, to enter the
Ashiya City Art Exhibition starting from the 6th. This story … surprised even those master
painters who are used to seeing abstract paintings. … .
“Tsunani sugari ashide egaku chûshôga ‘Jiko wo sunaoni hyôgen…’ to seinen gaka” (Abstract
Painting, Hanging from a Rope, Painting with Feet, “Expression of true self…” Says a Young
Painter [Shiraga Kazuo]), Mainichi Shinbun, 3 June 1955, Hanshin edition, reprinted in GSDG,
33. The exhibition was actually opened to public from June 8, 1955.
cxciv

Foot Painting brought Shiraga a new way to interact with the materials. By
hanging from a rope, swinging back and forth, side to side, with full physical
force, smearing, touching and feeling the materials with his feet, Shiraga found
himself engaging with the materials in an even more direct way than using his
fingers and hands. This physical interaction made him realize at a more profound
level the presence of the artist in the act of working with materials. In an
interview, Shiraga recalled the experience:
…this is something that only people who had tried it could understand –
there was a significant difference between the things I painted previously
and the things I painted with my feet in terms of what I got. [Painting with
feet] is something equal to physical labor or one’s own gesture. That
understanding would relate to one’s spirit (seishin 精神) – I gradually came
to realize that.286
This revelation was so powerful that after he found the method of foot painting,
Shiraga gradually became more interested in the act, and in the subject that
created the artwork, than in the finished piece itself.
Shiraga’s interest in the subjective interaction between artist and materials
expanded greatly when he joined Gutai in the early summer of 1955, along with
other Zero-kai members Kanayama Akira, Murakami Saburô, and Tanaka Atsuko.
He was pressured to conceive works for the outdoor exhibition, Challenge the
Mid-Summer Sun at Ashiya Park, and then, just two months later, the First Gutai
Art Exhibition at the Ohara Kaikan Hall in Tokyo. As discussed in Chapter Three,
the setting of the Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun placed the participating artists,
who were all painters, in a very difficult situation. There were no supports from
cxcv

which to hang their works, and orthodox painting materials, such as watercolor or
oil paint, did not have much impact under the scorching, bright sunlight. Working
exclusively with painting, Shiraga had to seriously consider these problems.
What he came up with was a free standing piece which boldly extended the
physical aspect of the Foot Painting series. He built a scaffold-like, cone-shaped
wooden structure painted bright red (Figure 2). Standing firmly inside the
structure, the half-naked artist started to work:
… with an axe with a 20-centimeter-long blade, suddenly, as if going crazy,

he started cutting into the wooden logs around him. Each time the axe cut
through, the red surface of the logs split, revealing inner white flesh.
Although the numbers of tragic cuts were rapidly multiplying, the man never
rested; he kept axing the logs – sweating, his breath rasping. Around the
structure, a crowd of people gathered to watch this site of madness, while
camera lights flashed.287
When this spectacle was over, Shiraga titled it Please Come In, and invited the
viewer to observe the piece not from the outside, but the inside. What he
intended to do here was to create “a single, continuous picture plane, when a
person comes inside and sees [the inside of the logs] all around.”288
For the First Gutai Art Exhibition in Tokyo, Shiraga again created a piece
that involved physical strength. The piece titled Challenging Mud (Figure 61) was
a three-dimensional work; Shiraga had piled up a one-ton mixture of mud and
cement, with which the artist literally fought by pushing, beating, digging, and
cxcvi

scooping using his whole body.289 The creation process was open to the public,
upon a request from American journalist Jean Launois. After the performance,
Shiraga presented it as a work of “painting,” just as he intended to create a
continuous tableau in Please Come In. The photographs of Challenging Mud in
the journal Gutai 4 included the whole “painting” along with details. In these
photographs, the traces and marks of his actions – holes, smears, bumps – were
blown up, much like enlarged details of brushstrokes from a conventional
painting, to show the rich expressive qualities of this unusual materials (Figure
130).290
Shiraga’s physically strenuous experience with creating these two pieces,
Please Come In and Challenging Mud, changed his relationship to the materials.
The experience of literally tackling the physical materiality of wood and mud
made him even more aware of the strength of his own body than had the
spreading of oil paint with his feet in his studio. In Gutai 2, published in October
1955, Shiraga wrote an essay in which he described the heightened state of his
mind in the act of creation:
I would like to paint as if running around a battlefield with all my energy until
I fall down… I paint the canvas, scratching and hitting with my bare hands,
the most direct utensils that can express man’s physical action. I think that
that feeling can be expressed only by sliding and running on the muddy pile
289 He said in his interview that the idea of Challenging Mud had germinated from his foot
painting:
After painting with my feet, I began to think of the possibility of using my whole body. I
thought that it could be possible to use oil paint and the body, but the cleanup afterward
might be very messy; if I used water paint, it would be difficult to acquire the fluidity. So I
got the idea of using mud mixed with cement. The exhibition duration was about ten
days; I thought that it would be nice if the piece could stay intact for the period. …
Shiraga, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 381
290Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956), 5-9. This observation can be seen by comparing these photographic
details and those of Yoshihara Jirô’s painting on page 19 of the same issue (Figure 131).
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of paint. To tell the truth, I would like to throw away a well-poised,

convenient but wimpy easel, to nail a picture on a wall and hack it into
pieces with an axe, until I am soaked with sweat, feeling dizzy, until my
heart is just about to burst, and until I fall down on an arm chair – I would
like to paint to experience this refreshing feeling.291
While Shiraga still intended to create a work to be hung on an exhibition wall, it is
clear in this comment that he was more interested in his own act of creation than
the art object. As action came to have more importance for him, materials and
materiality became less emphasized. Before Foot Painting and these two three-
dimensional pieces, Shiraga had intended to highlight the essential qualities of
the material – fluidity, shininess, and malleability of oil paint. Now, he became
more fascinated with the evidence of his act embedded within the materials. In
another essay “Only Action” (Kôi koso), published in the same issue of Gutai,
Shiraga said that materiality, or even materials themselves, could vanish as long
as the memory of his act survived:
…How can the action of myself, being of flesh and blood, defy lifeless
materials? I would choose materials that is lifeless, to leave clear traces of
my action. Even if the materials are unlike rocks [impermanent], but like ice
that will melt away, my deed and action will burn a mark and remain in my
mind.292
291Shiraga Kazuo, “Omou koto” (What I Think), Gutai 2 (October 10, 1955), reprinted in GSDG,
270.
292 Shiraga Kazuo, “Kôi koso” (Only Action), Gutai 3 (October 20, 1955), reprinted in GSDG, 274.
Shiraga later said that at that time he thought that the process and act of creation were more
important than the finished works. Many other Gutai members shared the same idea. In the One
Day Only Exhibition for Life magazine, several artists presented processes which were recorded.
Shiraga remembered, “These series on the creating processes were so rich in variety and
enjoyable to see that that really surprised us.” Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 4,” reprinted in GSDG,
344. Curator Hirai Shôichi points out that Shiraga’s emphasis on his act made him use
inexpensive velum papers; as a consequence, there were few extant works from his early period
of Foot Painting. Hirai, “Shiraga Kazuo no kaiga – ‘Uchinaru ryôkyokusei’ wo megutte” in
Akushon peintâ: Shiraga Kazuo ten, 140.
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Through these intense experiences of an almost ecstatic, heightened state
of self-consciousness, Shiraga developed a theory that each artist was born with
his/her inherent characteristic, and that as an artists, it was his/her responsibility
to find and hone those character through artistic creation. Shiraga wrote a series
of essays for Gutai journals on the significance of these inherent characteristics –
which he termed “disposition” (shishitsu 資質) – between 1955 and 1957.293 In
these essays, Shiraga repeatedly claimed that one’s disposition should be
trained in various conditions and environments and enriched with the artist’s
earnestness and vigor.294 In this process, the artist would gain “acquired” (kôten
teki 後天的) characteristics which, together with one’s inherent disposition, would
grow and progress. As Shiraga emphasized the importance of disposition in
artistic creation, his expression began to take on ethical tones; he argued that the
individualistic (which might be regarded as “egoistic”) pursuit of “disposition”
would enrich society as a whole:
293 These essays are: “Kotai no kakuritsu” (To Establish Individuality) and “Taisetsu na shinkei”
(Important Nerve) in Gutai 4 (July 1956), reprinted in GSDG, 277-278 and 278-279; “Shishitsu ni
tsuite” (On Disposition) and “Ningen wa ikiteiru: Gutai bijutsu wa shizenshugi bijutsu ka” (Humans
Are Alive: Is Gutai Art Naturalist Art?) in Gutai 5, (October 1, 1956), reprinted in GSDG, 287-288
and 288; “Seishin no seiritekina hyôgen (keishijôteki hyôgenni kawarumono)” (Physiological
Expression of Spirit [Against Hypothetical Expression]) in Gutai 6 (April 1957), reprinted in GSDG,
294-295; “Kankaku no ryôkai” (Territory of Sense) in Gutai 7 (July 15, 1957), reprinted in GSDG,
300. The word shishitsu consists of two Chinese characters: 資 (shi) and 質 (shitsu). Shi means
that which a person inherently possesses, and shitsu means characteristics. In combination,
shishitsu implies characteristics that a person is inherently born with.
294 When Shiraga published these essays, physical and performative elements were already
quite significant among other Gutai members: Murakami Saburô’s Breaking Papers series was
inaugurated in the First Gutai Art Exhibition in October 1955 (Work [At One Moment Opening Six
Holes], 1955; Figure 98), at which Shiraga showed Challenging Mud. Satô Seiichi enclosed
himself in a cloth bag and wriggled around on the ground (Figure 140). The selection of methods
for executing painting became colorfully varied in this period, too. Shiraga later said that he and
his fellow Gutai members started to feel the significance of “action” in the creation process,
although the quality of the finished pieces was quite important. See Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 3,”
reprinted in GSDG, 343. The variety of methods and ways to engage with the materials seen in
Gutai perhaps affected Shiraga to develop his theory of an inherent, unique disposition behind
individual artistic creation.
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… the differences in individual dispositions make human beings aware of

their special position as different from other animals and makes them
capable of living a social life. Moreover, individual disposition nourishes
itself from its social environment, grows and progress, and in turn changes
the condition of society. … The progress of society was advanced thanks to
many efforts of truly free human beings; doesn’t the true, free human being
mean the one who has found his own disposition and is able to act
responsibly with an understanding of his disposition? …
Now, returning to the topic of art, I wonder if current art is in fact
alive. Are many artists truly concerned with individuality and expressing their
own disposition? … Why don’t they put themselves in a free position from
the beginning? If you start from the naked self, there will be no problem;
original creativity only lies in the honest expression of the responsible self.
…295
Shiraga’s strong tone of condemning the majority of those in contemporary art
supported his claim that he found his own disposition in his own artistic creation.
Shiraga’s long-time friend, Kanayama Akira, mentioned in the summer of 1956
that Shiraga, upon seeing artworks by others often uttered, “I have seen this sort
of work in other places;” in other words, “He does not see originality in these
works.”296
Yet by late 1956, the significance of the materials had returned to occupy
Shiraga’s mind. After using his whole body and exhausting himself in the process
of creating Challenging Mud, Shiraga began to ponder the “creation” of a work in
which the chosen materials were presented as it was – presenting in the
materials unaltered as opposed to physical inscription of the act of the artist. Yet
the finished work would still be closely tied to the artist’s inherent disposition:
295 Shiraga, “Shishitsu ni tsuite” (On disposition), Gutai 5 , reprinted in GSDG, 288.
296 Kanayama Akira, “Shiraga Kazuo kun” (Mr. Shiraga Kazuo), Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956), reprinted
in GSDG, 279.
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[For this type of work] I try to find certain qualities (kankaku 感覚) among the
various materials in the world, ones which fit the disposition I found in
myself. In other words, by using my own senses, I will smell and recognize
the uncombined materials that most closely correspond to my feeling … and
I will process it to make it even closer to that feeling. …
If I proceed further this direction, I may be able to find an
expression in which even the slightest processing is unnecessary. In the
end, an expression may be possible if I choose one material in the real
world and present it [as it is] – it may be a single, decent work of art. … 297
In the end, Shiraga predicted that the materials and the self would become
identical, and that that creation process would not require the act of “creating” in
the common sense; yet the pureness of the work would be incomparable (the
work would be yourself).
Shiraga created several three-dimensional pieces in line with this idea.
The quality that he considered the closest to his own disposition was soft and
sticky, a quality which he found in animal organs. For the second Outdoor Gutai
Art Exhibition in the summer of 1956, Shiraga presented two pieces, each
consisting of a mound of earth covered with plastic sheets and ropes (Figure 81
and Figure 132). One of the pieces was reconstructed for Outdoor Exhibition
Revived (Yomigaeru Yagaiten) in 1992. Titled (indicating the
shape of the work), this piece was covered with a pink plastic sheet; there was a
slit in the middle, from which a number of coiled green threads hung down to the
edges. The combination of pink and green was eerie enough, but the crinkled
threads dyed over the pink mound brought to mind the image of a kind of living
creature. Shiraga was deliberately trying to express the quality he found in
297Shiraga, “Seishin no seiritekina hyôgen (Keijijô hyôgen ni taisuru mono),” reprinted in GSDG,
294.
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animal organs through these pieces. The pieces mimicked not only their
appearance, but also the tangible feeling associated with such organs. The
viewer was invited to actually touch and feel these pieces, which were soft and
mushy. It was a drastic change from his previous works; no physical trace of the
human body was indicated. In addition, he used real animal organs and created
pieces such as Red Liquid and Stuffed Red Bottle, in which he filled a glass
container with cow organs in a formalin solution (Figure 133 and Figure 134).
After making these three-dimensional pieces of “found” materials close to
his own disposition in the summer and early autumn of 1956, however, Shiraga
seemed to have lost interest in this direction, concentrating instead on his Foot
Painting series. For the Second Gutai Art Exhibition in Tokyo (October, 1956), the
only pieces Shiraga showed were two large Foot Painting works, which he
created in front of an audience (Figure 101). He again entered a series of Foot
Painting and a three-dimensional construction of timbers, a variation of Please
Come In, in the Third Gutai Art Exhibition in Kyoto in April 1957 (Figure 135).298
Furthermore, his performance piece Ultramodern Sanbasô, shown at the first
Gutai Art on Stage, was characterized by a fast-paced, fiery dance performed by
the artist dressed in a red costume with elongated sleeves and legs (Figure 87).
The dance was followed by an equally dynamic scene, in which several people
298 The work consisted of six red rectangular pieces of lumber, laid on the floor, and was intended
to hang on the wall. Shiraga said that like Please Come In (Figure 2), he planned to create a
“picture” where the viewer could observe cuts on the lumber as a continuous tableau. Yet
because of the weight of the piece, he was forced to lay them on the floor. See Shiraga,
interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 380.
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shot black arrows onto a big white wall on the stage (Figure 135).299 Shiraga did
not create any more “quiet” works of found materials after 1957.300
Shiraga’s Foot Painting after 1956 shows significant changes from his
early works using the same method. In his 1954 painting Work I (Figure 126), it is
clear that Shiraga’s concern was mainly to eliminate composition and color
tonality; the circular movement of his feet, as clearly seen in the mounds left by
his heels, was an extension of earlier paintings using his fingers (Figure 125).
The feet “strokes” extended to the entire surface, yet they were carefully confined
inside the picture plane. Clearly Shiraga was conscious of the edges of the
canvas, because his goal was to fill the entire canvas with a single color. The
fluid materiality of the paint was explored in the strong but careful push of his
heels. By contrast, Shiraga’s feet strokes in the 1956 piece Work BB21 (Figure
137) were more bold and carefree. There were still smears and spatters of paint,
but the dominant markers were sweeping lines that extend from one edge to the
other, sometime beyond the edges. Using a rope and swinging his body, Shiraga
let his painting “tool” freely move on the picture plane. Work BB21 is much more
gestural than the 1954 Work I, suggesting the dynamic action of Shiraga’s body.
The size of the paintings became larger, too. Work I and other early works of
299 Shiraga wrote on the performance: “The value of my work lies in the degree of how much
power a human being possesses. …” Shiraga Kazuo, “Sakuhin 1: Chôgendai sanbasô” (Work 1:
Ultramodern Sanbasô), Gutai 7 (July 15, 1957), reprinted in GSDG, 114.
300 AfterMichel Tapié came to see paintings by Gutai members and encouraged them to show
them in Europe in 1957, Shiraga did not pursue the works of “found” materials. He did not
incorporate materials other than paint after this, except those in which Shiraga glued boar skins
on canvases (Figure 139). Yoshihara reluctantly allowed Shiraga to show one of them in the
Thirteenth Gutai Art Exhibition in 1963. Yoshihara told Shiraga that he was disgusted with the
boar skin, but the painting itself had a strong appeal. Shiraga, interviewed by Yamamura and
Osaki, in GSDG, 386.
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Foot Painting measure 112 x 77.5 to 79.5 cm, while Work BB21 is 182 x 243 cm
and oil paintings after 1958 are mostly about that size or larger. His experience of
physical exertion in making Please Come In and Challenging Mud greatly
contributed to this change. Especially in Challenging Mud, Shiraga grappled with
the materials with his whole body, unconcerned with the picture “plane.” Later, he
added more colors, and created more intricate tableaus (Figure 138). Shiraga’s
rich and bold sweeping lines of oil paint are the result of his physical exertion; the
sheer force impresses the viewer.
Shiraga Kazuo and Yoshihara Jirô
Shiraga had developed a theory of materials and subjectivity on his own,
by rejecting the conventions of painting practice, before meeting Yoshihara and
learning of his theories. Yet there are commonalities between their respective
theories and approaches. Once Shiraga joined Gutai, he quickly responded to
Yoshihara’s challenge to find new ways to apply the concept of materials and
human subjectivity in unusual environments, and created Please Come In and
Challenging Mud, two remarkable three-dimensional pieces. How did Yoshihara
react to this precocious student?
Yoshihara knew of Shiraga’s non-figurative painting and had given him
some advice before he joined Gutai.301 For Shiraga’s Please Come In and
301 Ibid., 385. Shiraga first showed his non-figurative paintings, created with his fingers and
hands to Itô Tsuguo and Koiso Ryôhei, both well-known painters in the Kansai area (Modernist
painter Itô Tsuguo, also a member of the Ashiya City Art Association, was Shiraga’s teacher
before he met Yoshihara Jirô). Feeling unsatisfied with their unenthusiastic responses, he brought
the work to Yoshihara. See Shiraga, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 385.
Shiraga said that he first attended a Genbi meeting in 1953. See Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 1,”
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Challenging Mud, he did not give many comments; those published in Gutai 4
(July 1956) merely described the unusual materials (wooden logs and mud and
cement mix) and tools (axe and his body) used in these works. His first
substantial critique of Shiraga’s work was on Foot Painting, exhibited in the
Second Gutai Art Exhibition in October 1956:
… [in his Foot Painting] there is nothing comparable to the strength and
specialty (tokui sa) of these lines in other methods. The organic, corporeal
qualities of the lines have commonalities with young children’s finger
painting. In fact, he applied oil paint with his nails and fingers, his palms, his
feet. At last using his whole body, he created a piece by grappling with
earth. Instead of children’s fingers, he revealed an adult’s wisdom and
physical power, and pioneered a new art of literally “smashing” himself.
There is no comparison to his vigorous sense of life.302
Clearly in this comment, Yoshihara considered Foot Painting a staple of
Shiraga’s career as a painter, just as he admired Jackson Pollock’s dripping
method. Even Shiraga’s ambitious Challenging Mud was positioned by Yoshihara
as a variation of, or path to, Foot Painting. For the five Foot Paintings Shiraga
exhibited in the Third Gutai Art Exhibition (April 1957), Yoshihara continued to
evaluate Shiraga’s signature work and highly praised Shiraga’s artistic
development:
In these paintings, Shiraga painted two or more layers, compared to just

one layer in his previous works. A sense of depth has been added to those
pieces, which makes the painting more complex. It seems as if he has
mastered what he has acquired. Rather than expanding outward, they seem
to focus inward. There is a significant progress in his work.303
302 Yoshihara, “Dainikai Gutai Bijutsuten,” Gutai 6, reprinted in GSDG, 291.
303 Yoshihara, “Gutai Bijutsu daisankai ten,” Gutai 7, reprinted in GSDG, 300.
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According to Shiraga, when he limited himself to creating tableaus, the only
words Yoshihara uttered to him were “well done, well done!” Unlike the case of
Shimamoto, Yoshihara did not press him to reject his previous work and create
something new; Shiraga assumed that he was to continue to work with Foot
Painting.
Thus, when Shiraga shifted from physical automatic painting to creating
three-dimensional pieces of “found” materials close to his own disposition in the
summer of 1956, Yoshihara showed skepticism. For the two mound pieces in the
1956 outdoor exhibition, Yoshihara questioned their “weird” and “eerie” shape,
the appearance of which had strong associations with living objects.304 For Red
Liquid, Yoshihara was disgusted with its grotesqueness; he told Shiraga that he
would not allow Shiraga to exhibit the piece in Gutai exhibitions.305 Shiraga
returned quickly to work on Foot Painting by October 1956; he said that the main
reason for his quick return to physical work was a lack of support for this new
direction on the part of Yoshihara Jirô.
The concept of the artist’s subjectivity contesting the materials was at the
core of Shiraga’s painting using his body. He tried to find individual ways to reject
the conventions of painting practice, composition and color tonality; in his quest,
materiality was of greatest importance, as he actually touched and felt the oil
paint. When he expanded his physical involvement with materials through Foot
Painting, Please Come In and Challenging Mud, his interest in the artist’s
autonomous action came to have more importance, yet action and process never
304 Yoshihara, “Gutai Dainikai Yagai Bijutsuten ni tsuite,” Gutai 5, reprinted in GSDG, 286.
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became wholly independent from his exploration of the materials; in his works,
his action was always left inscribed in “concrete” form in the materials. Even
when the question of materials became almost secondary to the artist as in
Challenging Mud (Figure 61), the materials were the sole medium through which
the artist presented himself.
In contrast to Shiraga, Yoshihara seemed to position the materials and the
artist on a more equal level. He wrote in the “Gutai Art Manifesto” that the
materials and the subjectivity (what he called “spirit”) of the artist were more
mutually involved in each other’s “lives”:
… The materials never compromise itself with the spirit; the spirit never
dominates the materials. … To make the fullest use of the materials is to
make use of the spirit. By enhancing the spirit, the materials are brought to
the height of the spirit.306
However, Yoshihara’s understanding of this relationship was not in fact totally
equal. Yoshihara regarded the individual ways in which each artist dealt with
materials more highly than his/her presentation of the materials as they were. In
Yoshihara’s critical terrain, the individual’s expressive input in an artwork was of
greater significance than materials. His rejection of Kanayama Akira’s “painting”
of a blank canvas, saying it could not be called “painting,” but just a “white
space,” indicated this inclination.307 Also quite suggestive of this view was his
dislike of Shiraga’s works using found materials.
306
Yoshihara, “Gutai bijutsu sengen,” reprinted in GSDG, 6. English translation included, 8. I
modified some parts of the translation.
307Kanayama Akira and Tanaka Atsuko, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki
Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 401.
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Thus, Yoshihara and Shiraga had much in common in their construction of
the relationship between materials and artist. Yet the two did not engage in
substantive conversation on the theoretical issues behind their artistic practice.
According to Shiraga, Yoshihara was not fond of those who talked of theories and
logical explanations (rikutsu 理屈), and frequently scolded them, saying, “Stop, I
don’t have patience to listen to such [intricate] explanations. I understand
[whether it has worth or not] by just looking at a painting.” Shiraga said he never
dared to talk to Yoshihara about his theories on artistic practice, but he vigorously
wrote on the importance of the artist’s individuality for Gutai journals.308 As was
the case with Shimamoto, “dialogue” between Yoshihara and Shiraga was strictly
limited to practice. Yet unlike Shimamoto, Yoshihara considered Shiraga to have
achieved his own individual approach to the materials and was already
proceeding as a matured artist when he joined Gutai, and accordingly he did not
comment much on Shiraga’s works. In the “Gutai Art Manifesto,” Yoshihara’s
assessment of Shiraga’s work matched his praise for Jackson Pollock and
Georges Mathieu, the two artists outside of Gutai whose works Yoshihara highly
respected:
… in contemporary art, we pay respect to Pollock’s and Mathieu’s works.

These works emit the loud cry of the materials, of the very oil or enamel
paints themselves. These two grapple with the materials in a way which is
completely appropriate to it and which they have discovered because of
their own dispositions. …
Shiraga Kazuo made this strange method [of Foot Painting] to
acquaint the public with it. He found a method which enabled him to
confront and join with whatever materials his disposition, guide by his own
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spiritual dynamics, had chosen. In doing so, he achieved an extremely

convincing result.309
With grandiose ambition to create advanced form of painting, Shiraga
unflinchingly challenged some of the fundamental aspects of the painting
practice, composition and color tonality, by using his own parts of body. In his
hallmark series Foot Painting, Shiraga violently broke through these formal
conventions, and in addition, problematized high culture of painting practice and
brought the viewer’s attention to the very practice of artist’s creation. Just like
Jackson Pollock’s dripping, the bold, sweeping marks of paint were the
trajectories of his act in his studio. After joining Gutai, Shiraga expanded his
physical automatism from two-dimensional to three-dimensional works and
performance. His experiments with these non-tableau formats made him greater
aware of his own subjective involvement with the “materials.” Yet Shiraga did not
seek further elaboration with this inclination to subjectivity. After experimenting
with objects “found” according to the artist’s own disposition, Shiraga returned to
work almost exclusively on Foot Painting and tried to deepen the expression.
Yoshihara greatly contributed to the process through which Shiraga
determined his own individual style. Acknowledging early on his shared interest
in the artist’s autonomous interaction with materials and his effectiveness and
dedication in putting the interest into practice, Yoshihara simply gave Shiraga a
chance to explore new possibilities in different environments. Yet Yoshihara
always made it clear when he thought Shiraga had detoured too far from his
309
Yoshihara, “Gutai bijutsu sengen,” reprinted in GSDG, 6-7. English translation included, 8-9. I
modified some parts of the translation.
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signature Foot Painting. Yoshihara’s interaction with Shiraga was quite different
from that with Shimamoto: He did not insist Shiraga reinvent his style after each
stylistic change, because he thought Shiraga had already established his own
method at an early stage. This difference attests to the one-on-one, individualistic
aspect of Yoshihara’s teaching. Shiraga later said that Yoshihara was pushing
Gutai members to find original methods, however:
…once you find it, you have to work hard to make it more appealing. In
other words, make it a higher quality work. When [Michel] Tapié told us to
paint works of better quality, and the teacher [Yoshihara] told us that no
matter how your methods have changed, the bad stuff is bad, we accepted
their advice without any defensiveness.310
Shiraga’s Foot Painting, as Yoshihara recognized, was a dramatic achievement
of the concept of materials and human subjectivity. The dynamism largely came
from Shiraga’s extraordinary way of executing the painting, literally grappling with
the materials using his own body. This eccentric method was often the focus of
public curiosity; even in the art world much critique centered on his use of feet.
Yoshihara and other Gutai members warned people not to focus on the method,
but to look at the actual painting. Nevertheless, Shiraga’s physical automatism
was the result of his ambitious project to break through conventional painting
practice in order to establish a new mode of expression in the history of art. His
aspiration was very much in tune with the ongoing interest in the rejection of
ideologies, theories and abstracted ideas. This interest was widespread among
Japanese in the immediate and early postwar period, as vividly expressed as the
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veneration of the bare human body and desire in popular culture.311 As seen in
Chapter Two, Yoshihara’s innovative concept, along with his rejection of
hierarchical systems in the Japanese art world, was also the product of this
general desire to grasp reality in direct and “concrete” (gutai teki 具体的) ways.
Shiraga’s Foot Painting truly embodied – as one of the meanings of gutai is
“embodiment” – Yoshihara’s concept of materials and human subjectivity.
Infinite Possibilities: Tanaka Atsuko
Works by Gutai members Shimamoto Shôzô and Shiraga Kazuo
represented the mainstream of the group, that is, automatic, gestural painting
which dynamically epitomized Yoshihara Jirô’s concept of materials and human
subjectivity. There was also a conspicuous group of artists, however, whose
works did not rely on automatic methods and lacked a strong sense of materiality,
yet boldly challenged the preconceptions of painting practice. Tanaka Atsuko was
one of the most radical artists in this group; early in her career she perceived of
painting as a two-dimensional object, and developed this notion in her creation of
a remarkable series of various “paintings.” Later, she expanded the expression of
painting as object into three-dimensional and performance pieces. Her
relationship with materials was quite different from that of artists working in
311Shiraga’s painting and three-dimensional work using physical automatism were dubbed in
popular journalism as “art of bodily-action (taiatari geijutsu 体当たり芸術).” Shiraga’s physical
automatism was considered a visual version of “carnal literature” (nikutai bungaku 肉体文学), a
popular literature genre in the immediate postwar period, and one art magazine called Shiraga
and other Gutai artists’ public performances at the Second Gutai Art Exhibition “carnal art” (nikutai
no geijutsu 肉体の芸術). “Zen’ei Karasawagi” (Avant-garde Much Ado about Nothing), Geijutsu
Shinchô 8, no. 4 (April 1957), 180.
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automatic painting. In her work, chosen materials served to realize her concepts
and visual images; materiality and the presence of materials were usually
subordinate to overall visual images.312 Unlike Shimamoto and Shiraga’s
untrammeled automatism, Tanaka’s conceptualization and creation process
followed careful planning. She always made detailed, precise plans for intricate
pieces such as Work (Bell) and Electric Dress.
Although Tanaka’s intellectual approach – both painting and three-
dimensional – did not exactly conform to his conceptual model of materials and
human subjectivity, Yoshihara admired her use of unusual materials and
incomparable energy and rigorousness in realizing her ideas.313 In his evaluation
of Tanaka’s works, as well as other artists in this strain, Yoshihara negotiated his
understanding of the materials/human being relationship to embrace her original
ways of selecting and utilizing materials, deeming them a manifestation of the
artist’s autonomous self.
Like Shiraga, Tanaka already had begun to question the conventional
notions of painting practice before she joined Gutai. Even after becoming a
312Katô Mizuho, “Kyôkai no Tansaku” (Searching for a Boundary), in Ashiya City Museum of Art
& History, Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000 (Tanaka Atsuko: Search for an
Unknown Aesthetic 1954-2000) (Ashiya, 2000), 13.
313Yoshihara and many Gutai members have talked about episodes that demonstrated her
persistence in pursuit of her ideas. Yoshihara wrote in the introduction to Tanaka’s one-person
show at the Gutai Pinacotheca in 1963:
…Tanaka Atsuko’s violent acts (bôryoku kôi) often made us terrified. At the Outdoor
Exhibition [Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun, 1955] we had to acrobatically hang wooden
pieces high up in the branches of pine trees, in order to fulfill her request. At the Gutai Art
on Stage, because of the mechanics for her program, rehearsals of all the other
programs were ruined. Then, when she brought a huge forty tatami-mat sized painting,
where did she think she could hang it?! At the Kyoto City Museum, she came with a piece
of more than 4 meters in diameter, made of cement and wires; when we were trying to
put it inside the gallery, some people got injured.
Yoshihara Jirô, “Tanaka Atsuko ni tsuite” (On Tanaka Atsuko), Tanaka Atsuko koten (Solo
Exhibition of Tanaka Atsuko) (Osaka: Gutai Pinacotheca, February 1963) reprinted in GSDG, 242.
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member of the group in June of 1955, Tanaka was not limited by Yoshihara’s
concept of materials and human subjectivity and his penchant for gestural
painting, and pursued her own theory. As curator Katô Mizuho pointed out in a
text accompanying Tanaka’s first retrospective exhibition in 2001, the unique
position of Tanaka within Gutai may have made research on her works difficult to
discuss in the context of Gutai, and went on to suggest the need to contextualize
them within the artist’s continuing career.314 However, it is also true that, as was
the case with Shiraga, Tanaka’s artistic development expanded greatly through
her participation in Gutai. Yoshihara acknowledged her highly individual vision
and great artistic caliber in praising for each of her works. The environmental
constraints and challenges of the unusual exhibition venues no doubt contributed
to Tanaka’s adoption of new materials and technologies, but a much clearer view
may be obtained by examining Tanaka’s artistic career continuously, from the
early years through her Gutai years, highlighting her responses to Yoshihara’s
critiques.
“Painting of Support”
Tanaka entered the Department of Western Painting at the Kyoto
Municipal School of Fine Arts (Kyôto Shiritsu Bijutsu Senmongakkô, later the
Kyoto City University of Arts [Kyoto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku]), to study figurative
314 Ibid., 6.
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painting in 1951.315 Yet within a year, she became dissatisfied with classes and
lectures there, quit the school, and continued studying art at the Art Institute of
the Osaka City Museum of Art (Osaka Shiritsu Bijutukan Fuzoku Bijutsu
Kenkyûjo), where she had previously studied in preparation for her art school
entrance exam. There, Tanaka met Kanayama Akira, who would become an
influential figure in her career and a future partner, and Kanayama’s close friend
Shiraga Kazuo. Kanayama suggested that Tanaka leave figurative painting and
pursue a new type of artistic work.316
In 1953, Tanaka suffered an extended illness that led to her
hospitalization. While recovering, she traced the edges of the numbers on a
calendar, an item which she believed constituted a “real picture.”317 After being
discharged, she combined collage and drawing, and created the works titled
Calendars (Figure 141 and Figure 142). Tanaka pasted “found” materials such as
tracing paper and architectural plans on the earlier Calendar (based on a
calendar from April, 1954; Figure 141), and shipping documents on the latter
Calendar (based on a calendar from May, 1954; Figure 142), then applied some
paint and drew (in some places, scratched) numbers. Unlike the early Cubist
collages, Tanaka’s Calendars were not intended to create illusionistic image of
315 Shiraga also studied at the same school intermittently in the 1940s. At that time, there were
only two departments; Japanese-style painting and textile design. Thus, although aspiring to
study Western-style painting, Shiraga reluctantly applied to the department of Japanese-style
painting. By 1951, when Tanaka actually entered the school, a department of Western-style
painting had been added. This testified to the sweeping change in the curriculum in the
immediate postwar period at even this stronghold of Japanese traditional art training.
316Katô Mizuho ed., “Nenpu” (Chronology), in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000,
194.
317 Katô, “Kyôkai no Tansaku,” in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 9.
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real objects and figures. They were compositions restricted to strictly two-
dimensional planes. Tanaka came to realize that painting was an utterly flat, two-
dimensional object, what she called a “real picture.” Tanaka perceived that the
reality of a “picture” did not lie in what was drawn or painted on the surface, but in
the “object-hood” of the painting.
After Calendars, Tanaka created “paintings of numbers” that even more
acutely emphasized the “object-hood” of painting, works of collaged fabric with
superimposed drawn numbers (Figure 143 and Figure 144). Tanaka thought that
even though a calendar was flat object, the drawn numbers still signified a
calendar, an object in reality. The viewer would recognize that it was a “picture” of
a calendar, based on the inclusion of numbers 1 through 30 or 31, and on the
alphabetical letters that implied the days of the week at the top. In Calendars, like
conventional painting, the support and the surface (what was drawn) are almost
intact. However in the series of “paintings of numbers” Tanaka destabilized this
relationship. In one of the series, Work (c. 1954; Figure 143), she cut a piece of
hemp fabric (used for padding clothes) into fragments, glued them together, and
then drew segments of the number 2 or 3 in each fragment. The artist
intentionally made the lines of the numbers staggered at the joints, so the
numbers look jagged, wobbly, and sometimes not coherent (see the farthest left
and right of the number 2). In effect, this work suggests to the viewer the
unstable status of what was drawn, an image that is dependent on the status of
its support. In another piece Work (c. 1954; Figure 144), the composition of the
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hemp cloth became even more intricate; now the numbers no longer had any
cohesiveness, and were in fact unintelligible.
In her next series of paintings, Tanaka pushed the issue of “object-hood”
in a further. She created “paintings” with only what constituted the two-
dimensional object, the supports, and totally eliminated painterly elements. In the
Eighth Ashiya City Art Exhibition, an art competition run by the Ashiya City Art
Association, Tanaka showed three “paintings” which consisted of only pieces of
cotton cloth (Figure 10). They were a square cloth 100 x 100 cm, a circular shape
of diameter 100 cm, and a rectangular shape 80 x 150 cm. She later showed four
more variations of this concept at the First Gutai Art Exhibition in Tokyo (October
1955): three larger rectangular shapes (measuring 100 x 208 cm, 100 x 202 cm,
and 101 x 377 cm) and one absurdly long piece (80 x more than 1000 cm).318 To
create these “paintings” of cloth, Tanaka followed the same method as in her
previous paintings of numbers. Although they looked unworked, these sheets of
fabric had minuscule fragments attached.319 By presenting these pieces of
“painting of support” as a group, Tanaka explored the possibility of artistic
expression after “what is drawn” was totally eliminated.320 Tanaka later said that
after she created the paintings of numbers, she still did not feel satisfied with
318 Sizes are all approximate.
319 We can see this in the three extant works: in one piece, the artist made a 25 cm long cut and
pasted the hems together (6 mm wide), then pasted a piece of the same fabric 1 x 25 cm long
over the hem; in the second piece, two vertical lines were cut in the middle part (9.5 cm and 5 cm
long) and pasted the hem with increments of 3 cm and 1 cm each, and in the third piece, a
horizontal line was cut on the left corner, the hems pasted together with a 1 cm hem, and a 2.5 x
5.5 cm patch of the fabric was pasted on the back. See Figure 10.
320Shiraga Kazuo, her fellow Zero-kai member, remembered that Tanaka said that painting on
canvas was an out-of-date mode and was making very simple works using cloth in 1955. Shiraga,
“Bôken no kiroku, 1,” reprinted in GSDG, 336.
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them because the numbers still held some meaning. Thus, she created works
consisting of only “crevasses” (wareme 割れ目), by which she meant joints
between cloth pieces.321
In June 1955, Tanaka joined Gutai with other Zero-kai members,
Kanayama Akira, Murakami Saburô, and Shiraga Kazuo. In her first Gutai
exhibition, Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun Exhibition (July25 – August 6,1955),
she exhibited five cloth pieces of varying shapes and sizes that demonstrated the
remarkable flexibility inherent in her “painting of support.” In response to the
challenges of the outside environment, Tanaka experimented with new materials
and formats. These five pieces included a 1000 x 1000 cm pink synthetic satin
cloth with a five cm wide hem of neon blue, suspended horizontally 30 cm above
the ground with four posts at the corners (Work, Figure 69); a 200 x 200 cm
square piece of galvanized metal sheet, painted with bright red industrial paint,
mounted vertically between two poles (Work, Figure 64); a chain of seventeen
wood panels, 30 x 180 cm each, painted yellow, suspended from a six-meter
high pole (Yellow Tree, Figure 73); a chain of thirty-five wooden pieces, painted
Prussian blue, attached perpendicularly to a three meter-high wooden pole
(Work, Figure 145); and several 25 cm diameter wire rings pasted with cloth,
painted light blue, hung five meters above the ground (title unknown, not
documented).
Like other central Gutai members, Tanaka responded creatively to the
challenge of the outdoor environment of the park. The biggest problem for the
321 Tanaka Atsuko and Kanayama Akira, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 398.
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painters was that there were no walls for hanging two-dimensional works, just
randomly spaced crooked pine trees (Figure 62). Tanaka took advantage of this
challenge to test the flexibility of the format of supports to the limit: for one piece
she chose a conventional method of erecting two poles and hanging the work in
between them (Work, Figure 64); she also spread another work horizontally
above the ground (Work, Figure 69). Utilizing the enormous space of the park,
which posed virtually no limit on height, she created works of unprecedented
scale. Her pink cloth work was approximately 100 square meters, and, according
to Shiraga Kazuo, cast a pinkish hue over all its surroundings as soon as it was
placed.322 Her chain of seventeen yellow wood sheets exceeded thirty meters in
length and rose to six meters high at its highest point (Figure 73). Ukita Yôzô
reported that this work descended from the pole all the way to the northeast
corner of the park. He called it an “artificial Milky Way.”323
It is evident too that in seeking ways to create “painting of support” in an
outdoor environment, Tanaka carefully considered her choice of colors. In the
earlier cloth “painting” pieces, Tanaka used plain cotton fabrics without dye or
paint. For the outdoor exhibition pieces, Tanaka chose bright colors, such as
pink, red, yellow, Prussian blue and light blue. Tanaka told a newspaper reporter
that by using these unusual (iyô-na 異様な) colors, which would hopefully
unnerve the viewer, she hoped to break through conventional, static notions of
323Ukita Yôzô, “Manatsu no taiyo ni idomu: Modan Âto yagai jikken ten,” Gutai 3 (October 10,
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beauty.324 In an environment like Ashiya Park, miscellaneous things and colors
coexisted, and art pieces in subtle and darker hues were less able to establish a
sense of presence than they would in a typical gallery.325 After the Challenge the
Mid-Summer Sun Exhibition, she continued to work on the impact of bright colors
on the viewer and later expanded her interest, using multiple colors in her works
with electricity.
Tanaka created an extraordinary range of works in the “painting of
support” series, from patch-works of fabrics to large pieces using industrial
materials and various colors. Her works testified the totally new possibilities of
“painting” after the painterly expression was eliminated. Tanaka’s
conceptualization of painting as two-dimensional object was clearly more radical
than the theoretical terrain of other Gutai artists in 1955, including Shimamoto
Shôzô and Shiraga Kazuo. Although Shimamoto created the Painting with Holes
series, it was an accident motivated by his penchant for destructiveness until
framed by Yoshihara as an object. Shimamoto did not pursue the “object-hood” of
painting beyond Painting with Holes, and became more concerned with the issue
of process in painting. Shiraga, too, was struggling to eliminate composition and
color tonality, both elements of painting within the realm of painterly expressions.
324 Tanaka Atsuko, “Mochîfu wo kataru” (On My Subjects), Sangyokeizai Shinbun. 26 July 1955.
Cited in Katô, “Nenpu,” in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 194.
325 Tanaka later said that even the bright pink color of the fabric, which she found after she
looked all over Osaka to get the most “disgusting” one, faded almost instantly under the scorching
sunshine of midsummer in Ashiya. See Tanaka Atsuko, “Seisaku ni atatte” (When I Make My
Work), Kokuritsu Kokusai Bijutsukan Geppô 81 (June 1993), reprinted in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no
bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 165. For English translation of the text, see “When I Make My Work” in
Katô Mizuho and Ming Tiampo, Electrifying Art: Tanaka Atsuko, 1954-1968 (Vancouver: The
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2004), 104-106.
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Yoshihara accurately acknowledged Tanaka’s radical approaches on
painting quite early on. Tanaka had joined Zero-kai in 1954 along with Kanayama
Akira, Shiraga Kazuo, and Murakami Saburô, and the group was absorbed into
Gutai by the spring of 1955.326 Yoshihara was perhaps familiar with Tanaka’s
works by then, yet his first recorded comment on them was in the Eighth Ashiya
City Exhibition in June of that year. Tanaka’s cloth “paintings” were first rejected
by the jury of the exhibition, but Yoshihara insisted that they be accepted. He told
to a newspaper reporter that the jury of the Ashiya City Art Exhibition valued
experimental works, like Tanaka’s, which were usually rejected by other juried
shows. Then he continued: “These pieces show a true essence (honshitsu 本質),
or one might say a true taste, of painting; they enlivened the wall on which they
are exhibited. That amazes us.”327 In this short comment published in a
newspaper article targeting the general public, Yoshihara described how
Tanaka’s cloth “painting” pieces concerned the very definition of “painting.” As
discussed in Chapter Three, Yoshihara had already recognized the direction of
painting as object in Jackson Pollock’s dripping and Shimamoto’s Painting with
Holes in 1951. Thus, it was quite understandable that Yoshihara could appreciate
the significance of Tanaka’s works.
His comments also indicate that Yoshihara paid attention to
expressiveness in Tanaka’s simple, fabric works. In his understanding of the
“object-hood” of painting, it was essential to have a tangible quality that
326 Gutai was organized in the summer of the previous year, 1954.
327 Yoshihara Jirô et al., “[Zadankai] Ashiya shiten wo kataru” ([Roundtable discussion] On Ashiya
City Art Exhibition), Yomiuri Shinbun, 12 June 1955, Kansai edition. Cited in Katô, “Nenpu,” in
Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 194.
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expressed the artist’s persona and the trace of his/her interaction with the
materials. In this regard, it is interesting to compare Tanaka’s cloth painting with
contemporary work by Kanayama Akira and Yoshihara’s associated remarks. In
1954, Kanayama was creating painting that seemed to simplify the geometric
abstraction of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. In some of his simplest paintings,
Kanayama painted only a few lines on the edges of a canvas in the ratio of the
vertical and horizontal length of the canvas (Figure 102). Then in early 1955
Kanayama went so far as to “create” a painting which was just a blank canvas
painted white. Yoshihara rejected this “painting,” saying that it was not a
painting.328 Yoshihara’s negative reaction to Kanayama suggests that he
considered that a certain handling of materials and methods which would
express the personality of an artist was an important part of the artwork, even if it
emphasized its “object-hood”. While Kanayama’s nihilistic canvas rejected any
room for the viewer to contemplate the creator’s personality and brought
“painting” to a dead end of artistic expression, Yoshihara found that Tanaka’s
expressive richness could engage the viewer. As seen in Shiraga’s section,
Yoshihara similarly disapproved of Shiraga Kazuo’s series of found objects,
which connoted eerie senses, but not the artist’s persona.
Painting of “Bells”
The second exhibition for Gutai members was at an indoor site, the Ohara
Kaikan Hall in Tokyo. The transition from outdoors to a more traditional indoor
328 Kanayama and Tanaka, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 401.
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space significant for Tanaka, and allowed her to expand her interest in painting
as two-dimensional object. She had learned an important lesson from showing
her works in an outdoor environment. At Ashiya Park, when trying to attach a
corner of Work, the pink cloth piece suspended over the ground on posts, Tanaka
was fascinated with the wave-like movements caused by the sea breezes. That
motivated her to want “to make a painting which can move.”329 In the First Gutai
Art Exhibition, Tanaka created Work, which consisted of twenty bells, each
interconnected by two meter-long electric wires (Figure 52). The wire was
attached to a switch on the wall. Once the switch was activated, a motor rang
each bell one after another, moving from the one closest to the switch to the
furthest, and then came back to the first bell. At the Ohara Kaikan Hall, the switch
was located in the gallery space on the first floor; the wires went through the bells
on the first floor, of the staircase, and onto the second floor.330 Therefore, the
viewer, or rather the listener, could hear the sound of bells that were not even
visible. A similar version of Work was exhibited at the Third Genbi Exhibition in
November, 1955, as Work (Bell). This time, all the bells were placed on the floor
of a single exhibit room (Figure 52). Instead of a motor wired to each bell, this
version had notches, each of which was connected to a bell; as a wooden
329Tanaka, “Seisaku ni atatte,” in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 165. Also,
see Tanaka and Kanayama, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 398. In the interview,
she mentioned that at the time of the outdoor exhibition, she was first contemplating creating a
work “consisting of only a hem.” This idea led her to conceive of a work which extended from the
boundary of the exhibit space.
330 Kanayama Akira said that it was about 40 meters between the position of the closest bell,
placed just underneath where the viewer stood, and the furthest bell in the room on the second
floor. Kanayama Akira, “Beru sakuhin ni tsuite” (On Work [Bell]), Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956), reprinted
in GSDG, 281.
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circular board was turned by an electric motor, each bell rang in turn (notches:
Figure 146; and plan: Figure 147).
In these works with bells, Tanaka remarkably adopted new materials and
technology to maximally materialize her idea of “moving” painting. Inspired by the
waving hem of the cloth piece at the outdoor exhibition, Tanaka came upon the
idea of painting of a “hem” which would wrap around an exhibition space. To
evoke the movement of the pink cloth, she used electric power to make bells
sound instantly and endlessly. As Katô Mizuho points out, the brilliance of the
adaptation of electric power and sound in works with bells was that the “hem”
was not made of tangible materials; rather, it allowed a viewer to experience the
“hem” in an insubstantial way, namely through sound.331 Earlier, Tanaka had
already been testing and challenging the flexibility and plasticity of the support in
her earlier series of “painting of support,” by using a wide range of materials and
forms.332 The bell pieces further expanded the idea of the flexible format of the
“painting of support.” As Katô points out, the structure of works with bells, which
employed cords of variable length, could be adopted for any size constraints, or
any demands of location.333 In this matter, again, the lessons of the outdoor
venue were quite important in the development of Tanaka’s work. At the
Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun Exhibition, she made works of great size to
engage the almost infinite outdoor space. When confronted with the problem of
331 Katô, “Kyôkai no tansaku,” in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 10.
332 It should be noted that Tanaka considered Work (Bell) as a piece of painting. She entered it in
the painting section of the Third Genbi Exhibition.
333 Ibid., 10. The flexible structure of Work (Bell) was quite significant at the first location, the
Ohara Kaikan hall, where the work was “exhibited” both in the first and second floor of the
building.
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expressing infinity inside a limited, confined space at the Ohara Kaikan Hall, her
decision was to use electricity and sound, both ephemeral and both, it seemed,
infinite.
Tanaka’s new approach in the context of the “object-hood” of painting
immensely impressed Yoshihara Jirô. Just as he had done at the Eighth Ashiya
City Art Exhibition earlier in the year, Yoshihara overcame the opposition of other
jury members and forced acceptance of Tanaka’s Work (Bell) for the Third Genbi
Exhibition.334 Later that year, he wrote a lengthy text titled “The Calligraphy of
Poverty and the Painting of Bell” (Hin no sho to beru no kaiga), in which he
greatly praised the ability and determination of Tanaka in pioneering new territory
in art. As examined in detail in Chapter Two, this text was written for Bokujin, the
journal of the avant-garde calligraphers’ group Bokujin-kai, to criticize their
ambivalent attitude in rejecting the literal quality of calligraphy in favor of non-
figurative painting.335 Yoshihara focused on the attitude of contemporary artists,
not on Tanaka’s specific contributions. Yet he emphasized that this unexpected,
strange work was not merely an eccentric attempt to surprise people, but was
instead a product of rigorous thinking on the part of artist:
I wrote this essay for Tanaka Atsuko’s extraordinary spirit, her willingness to
break down all the barriers. In spite of the fair amount of criticism of her
work, there are reasons why I greatly admire her accomplishments. I think it
334 Asahi Shinbun (Osaka edition) cited a comment of one jury member, Ueno Teruo, professor of
Kyoto University, who questioned the artistic value of Tanaka’s Work (Bell). “Ihyô tsuku Nijû no
beru: ojôsan no sakuhin Genbiten ni buji nyûsen” (Surprising Work Twenty Bells: A Work of Young
Lady Was Successfully Accepted for the Genbi Exhibition), Asahi Shinbun, 24 November 1955,
Osaka edition, reprinted in GSDG, 33. Another article reported that there was a debate among
the jury whether Tanaka’s Work (Bell) was an artwork or not. “Daisankai Genbi ten” (The Third
Genbi Exhibition), Asahi Shinbun, 17 December, 1955, Osaka edition. Cited in Katô, “Nenpu,” in
Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 195.
335 For more details, see Chapter Two.
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has been said that I prefer eccentricity. But the world we live in is not at all a
place where mere “claptrap” (hattari はったり) and eccentricity are
recognized. If there is “claptrap” that gains approval, then it cannot be called
“claptrap”. New art can be distinguished from “claptrap” both by the
resistance which inevitably attaches to the new and the sympathy which
accompanies it.336
In 1956, yet another of Yoshihara’s suggestions for exhibition space fueled
Tanaka’s creativity in expanding the potential of electricity. After the first outdoor
exhibition, Yoshihara started contemplating another experimental show, using a
space not conventionally thought of as suitable for the visual arts. Looking at the
new outdoor experiments of the young Gutai members, Yoshihara realized that
the process of creating artwork had come to the forefront; this suggested the
possibility of using a theater stage as an exhibition venue. Yoshihara introduced
this idea to Gutai members as early as the winter of 1955.337 Tanaka was
intrigued and began to contemplate what might be appropriate to show on stage
in early 1956.338 For the next one and half years, until the stage performance
Gutai Art on Stage finally materialized in May and July of 1957, Tanaka was
mainly occupied with creating multiple pieces aimed for theatrical presentation –
a gigantic red dress, various stage clothes, and her most impressive piece,
Electric Dress.
336 Yoshihara Jirô, “Hin no sho to beru no kaiga” (The Calligraphy of Poverty and the Painting of
Bell) (Probably written in 1955-1956), in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Botsugo 20 nen
Yoshihara Jirô ten (Retrospective Exhibition of Yoshihara Jirô) (Ashiya, 1992), 203.
337 Shiraga Kazuo mentioned that Yoshihara suggested a plan for the stage performance in his
text, “Kotai no kakuritsu” (On the Establishment of Individuality) which was perhaps written in the
winter of 1955 –1956. Shiraga, “Kotai no kakuritsu,” reprinted in GSDG, 278.
338Tanaka, “Seisaku ni atatte,” reprinted in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000,
165.
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Butaifuku (Stage Clothes)
Tanaka first showed a part of her theatrical series in early April 1956, at a
factory owned by Yoshihara’s oil company. A reporter from the American
magazine Life, William Pane, and Jean Launois, a reporter from Pana Press,
visited the Kansai area to document presentations of Gutai members for Life.339
Tanaka made a dress piece titled Work which she herself wore. In her
performance, she changed its appearance as she ripped, unwrapped, and tore
layers and parts of the dress. The colors and shapes dramatically and quickly
changed from moment to moment, from yellow to blue, blue to red; from a short
dress to long fluffy dress. Moreover, subsequent manifestations could appear
from unexpected places: a red fluffy dress unfolded from a hem of the previous
yellow dress; yellow and red fabric sheets were drawn from long gloves and then
became a single gown (Figure 95 and Figure 96). At the end, Tanaka appeared in
a black body suit.
According to Tanaka, after she learned of Yoshihara’s plan for an art
exhibition on stage, she began to think of the orientation of the viewer as different
from that in a conventional exhibition – she/he had to remain stationary and
observe the artwork on stage. That brought her to consider a piece which would
include an element of time, one that changed from moment to moment.340 This
realization prompted her to conceive of Work, a clothing piece which could
339 This performance was held in part for the three-day documentation of Gutai by these two
reporters. On April 9th the One Day Only Exhibition was quickly organized as an exclusive
exhibition for these reporters. In it, Tanaka showed Work (Figure 69), the sheet of synthetic fabric
originally shown at the outdoor exhibition in the summer of 1955.
165.
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change its appearance. In Gutai, an art form that encompassed both a human
body and a process was not limited to her Work. Tanaka herself had already
incorporated the element of time in her earlier Work, in which multiple bells
turned on in succession (Figure 52). Shiraga Kazuo created an intensely physical
perfomative piece Challenging Mud (Figure 61) and Murakami Saburô was
working on his signature series Breaking Papers (Figure 100). However, the
ways in which Tanaka deployed the physical element in her art was quite different
from those artists. In the works of Shiraga and Murakami, their bodily gestures
left clear traces in the materials. In Tanaka’s work, her body was used primarily to
give movement to transitory visual images. Katô Mizuho argues that what
became salient in Tanaka’s work was “irregularly flashing images of clothes and
the visuality of a body transforming itself in quick succession. In a word, the
visual surface of a body which alters minute by minute.”341 In Tanaka’s work, the
overall visual image was clearly prioritized over her bodily gestures.
Yet the speed of changing clothes in Work did not satisfy Tanaka; she
thought it was not interesting enough to appeal to the viewer. For several months
she contemplated what would surprise an audience. While sitting at a train
platform in busy Osaka Station, she noticed a drug advertisement, illuminated
brilliantly with neon lights. This was the moment that brought her to conceive of
dresses adorned with electric lights.342
341 Katô, “Kyokai no tansaku” in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 8. English
translation included, 18.
165.
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Initially, her vision brought her to create seven huge doll-like figures with
electric bulbs, some unpainted and others painted with seven different colors, for
the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition in July and August of 1956 (Stage Clothes:
Figure 78), and one big cross-shaped figure adorned with electric tubes (Work;
Figure 79).343 Electricity had already been used in her earlier work with bells,
ample evidence of her sophisticated knowledge of design and wiring. Yet these
Stage Clothes and Work were even more demanding. Using a motor, gears and
pulleys, the light tubes in the seven figures were lit consecutively starting from
bottom to top. In the cross-like Work, the one hundred and five electric bulbs
flashed simultaneously but slowly.
In the Second Gutai Art Exhibition at the Ohara Kaikan Hall in Tokyo
(October 11 – 17, 1956), Tanaka exhibited her Electric Dress (Denki fuku) and
associated drawings (Figure 148). Unlike the clothes that Tanaka created and
showed for the Life magazine reporters, or the large figure pieces at the second
outdoor exhibition, this piece was designed to actually be wearable. It consisted
of electric cords, joined at the top and falling to the floor, to which about a
hundred electric tubes and about a ninety electric bulbs were attached (Figure 3).
The cords and electric tubes were attached to a body suit made of electric cords
343 Because of its shape, this figure has always been referred to as a “big cross.” Yet as Katô
Mizuho points out, the electric bulbs of the figure were arranged to correspond to different parts of
the body: head, torso, arms, and feet. It was difficult to recognize this distinction during the day,
but when the lights were lit at night, the piece appeared as a standing human figure with two feet
and both arms out to the side. Katô Mizuho, “Sakuhin kaisetsu” (Description of Works), Atsuko
Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 61. We should also note the large size of these pieces.
In the outdoor exhibition of the previous year, Tanaka exhibited large pieces that had developed
from her interest in supports. These figures at 1956 Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition were high and
wide: the seven figures at the Stage Clothes each measured 436 x 364 cm, and the cross-like
Work was 614 x 519 cm. It may be that the size was due partly to the outside location, but as
Tanaka herself named the seven figures Stage Clothes (Butaifuku), they were obviously intended
for presentation in a theater. And at the time of the second outdoor exhibition, she was already in
the process of making her Electric Dress.
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so that a person could wear this suit, which weighed about fifty kilograms, over
his/her head. About a half of the bulbs were colorfully painted – dark red, pale
red, dark green, pale green, purple, dark blue, pale blue, yellow and orange –
and each tube was painted in two separate colors, dividing the tube vertically in
half. When the Electric Dress was lit, each tube and bulb flashed at random. As
the wearer slowly moved in the dark at Gutai Art on Stage, the whole piece
appeared as a great mass of colorful lights. For it to flash randomly, Tanaka again
used a motor and gears, which made a loud noise when working.344 Because of
the complex mechanism, Tanaka said she hired a professional electrician and
spent almost one year with him to create it.345 She made two other versions of
Electric Dress, and showed all three dresses at Gutai Art on Stage in 1957.
With the production of her magnificent Electric Dress, Tanaka’s program of
Stage Clothes was complete. As described in Chapter Three, these Stage
Clothes captured the viewer’s attention, both in a quick transformation of
Tanaka’s clothes in the first part, and the later eerie scene of three Electric
Dresses wandering around the stage (Figure 91). Considering the fact that it took
almost a year to create her first Electric Dress, Tanaka was clear about this final
program from the start of the project. She was working on Electric Dress while
making and adjusting the previous three sets of pieces – the ever-changing
clothes shown for the Life magazine reporters in April, the huge clothes for the
background in the Kobe Indépendant Exhibition (Figure 94), and Stage Clothes
344 Katô, “Sakuhin kaisetsu,” in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 63.
165.
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and Work, the seven figures and the cross-like figure shown at the second
outdoor exhibition in summer of 1956. Further evidence of her continuing work on
Electric Dress comes from her notebook for the years 1955 and 1956; there are
drawings for the first Work along with drawings of body suits that resembled
Electric Dress and the cross-like Work (Figure 149).
In these pieces for the Stage Clothes performance, Tanaka expanded the
use of electricity that she had adopted to create the infinite and invisible
“painting” of bells in 1955. As discussed in Chapter Three, electricity was a novel
materials that many Gutai artists utilized – from Kanayama Akira’s Red Ball
(Figure 105), which filled the entire exhibit room with shiny light, to Sumi Yasuo’s
painting series created using electric vibrators (Figure 115). In these works, the
emphasis on electricity as the material was evident, in invasive light of
Kanayama’s Red Ball and in the systematic lines of Sumi’s painting. Yet in
Tanaka’s Electric Dress series the interest in the material (electricity) was
transcended as soon as the switch was turned on. As Kanayama Akira pointed
out in his discussion of Work (Bell), “the expression (hyôgen 表現) quickly
devoured the materials.”346 Indeed, the mesmerizing visual images arising from
the use of electricity overpowered the viewer’s interest in the novelty of the
materials. Even though the intricacy of the design and wiring was clearly visible,
the electric generator was noising, and the preparatory drawings were
simultaneously exhibited, the viewer of Electric Dress was no doubt mainly
346 Kanayama Akira, “Beru sakuhin ni tsuite” (About the Bell Work), Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956),
reprinted in GSDG, 281. For English translation of the text, see “About the Bell Work” in Katô and
Tiampo, Electrifying Art: Tanaka Atsuko, 1954-1968, 106-107.
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intrigued by the flashes and brilliance of the lights. Tanaka herself wrote of her
intention in adopting lights in Stage Clothes and Work shown at the Outdoor
Gutai Art Exhibition:
unlike the conventional stage clothes that need to be externally illuminated

[on stage], these clothes can emanate and flash lights from within –
accordingly, I intended to create a sense of high speed, and interesting
shapes, colors, and movement.347
Initially, Yoshihara Jirô had some reservation about Tanaka’s Stage
Clothes. In her Stage Clothes pieces, whether wearable or not, Tanaka had
adopted the shape of clothes, and consequently, the human shape. Tanaka’s use
of this shape perplexed Yoshihara, who consistently demanded that his students
eliminate figurative images. Although he had always admired Tanaka’s work, for
the first time he was hesitant in his appraisal, commenting in his review of the
Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition that “I must say that they are exceptional pieces
among Gutai art, [where our] position has been to deny the figurative.”348 Indeed,
it is curious that she returned to figurative images, since she had abandoned
them two years earlier. Katô Mizuho, in her discussion of the history of Tanaka’s
work, argues that her interest in “clothes” was an extension of her earlier
investigation into the periphery. From the cut pieces of fabric sheets to her Work
involving bells, the artist was preoccupied with the borders between art pieces
and the outer world. “Clothes,” in that sense, were situated on the border
347 “Yagai Bijutsu ten kara” (From Outdoor Exhibition), Yomiuri Shinbun, 3 August 1956, Kansai
edition. Cited in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 196.
348 Yoshihara, “Gutai Dainikai Yagai Bijutsuten ni tsuite,” Gutai 5, reprinted in GSDG, 286. In this
essay, Yoshihara also referred to Kanayama Akira’s Footsteps (Figure 75), which featured series
of footsteps on a long belt of fabric.
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between one’s self and his/her surroundings and others. Thus, “clothes” became
a site of negotiation in how the self hoped to be understood and how others
understand the person. Katô concludes that in the Stage Clothes series, by
showing clothes of ever-changing appearance, Tanaka tried to reveal the nature
of the role of clothes in our consciousness.349
However, we should be also mindful of the fact that the Stage Clothes
series was designed for a show on stage. Tanaka herself related how the flexible
nature of clothing, and the speed with which its appearance could be altered, first
brought its expressive potential to her attention.350 In other words, the particular
demands of a stage performance – especially the audience’s fixed viewpoint –
made her adopt a form of clothing. Thus, the human shape of the clothing was
not so much a representation of a real human figure, but a useful shape for the
purpose of creating movement on stage. Yoshihara had by now understood the
obvious lack of connections between Tanaka’s Stage Clothes series and the
figurative. In his critique of the Second Gutai Art Exhibition (October 1957),
Yoshihara praised Tanaka’s Electric Dress:
Its [Electric Dress’s] extraordinary beauty made my eyes open. Colorful light
bulbs flashed simultaneously but randomly. No other work possesses such
easily recognizable beauty, while simultaneously defying conventional
definitions. Also, there is no other example of clothing that is more
impractical than this work. …351
349 Katô, “Kyokai no tansaku” in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000, 7-8.
165.
351 Yoshihara, “Dainikai Gutai Bijutsuten,” Gutai 6, reprinted in GSDG, 292.
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As if to prove that the Stage Clothes series and Electric Dress were exclusively
designed for the stage, Tanaka did not return to the use of clothing or the human
shape after she showed a similar version of changing clothes in the second Gutai
Art on Stage in April 1958 (Figure 150).352
Return to “Painting”
After the Stage Clothes series, Tanaka underwent a significant change in
her preferred media. She started mainly working on painting, and what was
more, she returned to painterly expressions. In the beginning of her career,
Tanaka eliminated the element of drawing and created a series of “painting of
support” made up of fragments of fabric (Figure 10). From 1955 till the first half of
1957, she had expanded the expression of “paintings of support,” using various
materials and formats, and worked on three-dimensional pieces, works with bells
and the Stage Clothes series. Yet in the Fourth Gutai Art Exhibition held in Tokyo
(October 1957), she exhibited ten pieces, all two-dimensional, including a work in
which she recycled electric bulbs and cords from Electric Dress (Figure 151).
All of these two-dimensional works, not to mention the recycled piece,
were clearly derived from Electric Dress. Against a white background, circular
shapes in various colors were interconnected by multiple lines. The circular
352 Ming Tiampo argues that despite Tanaka’s claims to the contrary, the Stage Clothes and her
earlier work with fabrics incorporated a gendered body into painting practice. Tiampo suggests
that by stripping clothes off on the stage, Tanaka shifted formal issues of her work to “social
concerns such as the role of women in art, the (in)visibility of feminine sexuality, and the
feminization of modern consumer culture.” Ming Tiampo, “Gutai & Informel: Post-War Art in Japan
and France, 1945-1965,” Ph.D. Dissertation (Evanston: Northwestern University, 2003), 198-199.
Tanaka publicly stated once that her works had nothing to do with politics or gender. Tanaka
Atsuko, Symposium at UCLA, February 8, 1998, recorded in Atsuko Tanaka: Another Gutai, prod.
and dir. Okabe Aomi, Ufer films, 1998, videocassette.
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shapes were all similar in size; in some cases the circles en masse created the
shape of a cross (Figure 152 and Figure 153), but in most cases they were
spread all over the picture plane (Figure 154). There was not much overlapping
of the circles: they looked as if they were floating freely in an empty space. In two
larger pieces, Tanaka used plastic sheeting, a novel material for her; yet the
overall structure was similar to her other paintings. Even in her Work, with its
recycled electric bulbs and cords, the bulbs and circles were connected by real
cords (Figure 151). Seeing this recycled Work and other paintings together in a
gallery setting, the viewer would conclude that circles indicated electric bulbs,
while the lines were cords.
Considering her approach in eliminating the conventions of painting in
1955 and 1956, her return to painterly expression was quite puzzling. There were
some external reasons that prompted this return to mainly two-dimensional work.
In the fall of 1957, the theorist and leader of Informel movement Michel Tapié had
contact with Gutai and encouraged the members to create paintings for the
European art market. Yoshihara Jirô also told the members to concentrate on
tableaus, rather than experiments in three dimensions.353
Yet perhaps just as crucial as these external pressures were Tanaka’s
internal motivations. For one, the artist did not completely ignore the two-
dimensional medium between 1955 and 1957, even while expanding her
repertoire of materials and formats. Preparatory drawings and plans were a
353Shimamoto, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 371. Kanayama Akira also
mentioned that after the second Gutai Art on Stage (1958), Yoshihara suggested that Gutai
members concentrate on painting. See Tanaka and Kanayama, interviewed by Yamamura and
Osaki, in GSDG, 398.
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significant part in her earlier work with bells and the Stage Clothes series. In
Gutai journals, they were published along with the objects (Figure 155). At the
Second Gutai Art Exhibition, preparatory drawings and Electric Dress were
shown together (Figure 148). These drawings were clearly prototypes for future
paintings; moreover, at this stage, it was already evident that the artist intended
to create two-dimensional pieces independent from the three-dimensional piece
Electric Dress. Unlike her Work with bells and its drawing plans, these drawings
no longer functioned as blueprints; rather, they were representations derived
from images of Electric Dress. Thus, she gradually shifted her emphasis to the
two-dimensional media.
Perhaps the most decisive factor was her experience with the creation of
Electric Dress. In her comment on Stage Clothes for the Gutai Art on Stage
Exhibition, Tanaka talked about the visual intensity that Electric Dress struck her:
What I find most interesting is the flashing of the electric bulbs. When the
flashing device is turned by an electric motor, the electric bulbs that I myself
installed, can actually create extraordinary beauty, one that could never be
created by human hands.354
As this comment shows, the visual impact of the dress captured her creative
output in full force. Because the electric bulbs were programmed to flash
randomly, the variation of images of the Electric Dress were infinite. Tanaka later
tried to capture the ever-changing image of Electric Dress. Regardless of their
common features, her paintings after Electric Dress were never the same –
colors, sizes, and placements of circles were all variable. Just as Electric Dress
354Tanaka Atsuko, “Sakuhin 11: Butaifuku” (Work 11: Stage Clothes) in Gutai 7 (July 15, 1957),
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had appeared as a mass of lights on a pitch-dark stage, the outline of circles was
amorphous. Like the instant flashes of electric bulbs against black, the image on
the canvas lack depth.
This comment also suggests that she was fascinated by the power and
potential of electricity, which both surpassed that of human beings. This
realization probably caused her to reconsider her role as an artist and changed
her understanding of the physical craft of the artist. Despite her eagerness in
exploring new ideas and materials, Tanaka was consistently interested in
detailed, labor-intensive works, from her early work in “painting of numbers,” and
“painting of support” to Electric Dress. In painting of numbers and “painting of
support,” Tanaka carefully and laboriously patched fragments of fabrics (Figure
10). In the pieces with bells and Electric Dress, Tanaka spent hour after hour
assembling and wiring complex electrical circuits (Figure 3). When she saw
Electric Dress emanate its cascading lights, she was even more impressed with
its visual impact than she had imagined. That experience led Tanaka to return to
the medium of “craft” which was most accessible to her – namely, painting.
So it was these internal motivations, along with encouragement from
Yoshihara and Michel Tapié, that prompted Tanaka’s return to painting. Yet her
painting after Electric Dress was markedly different from her earlier “painting of
numbers” at a methodological level. As the size of her paintings became larger,
Tanaka put the canvas directly on the floor, and literally entered inside the picture
plane when painting (Figure 156). Earlier, Tanaka had shown an on-going
interest in the flexibility of materials, which resulted in her producing works of
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increasing size, and ultimately of theoretically infinite size, as in the pieces with
bells. In Electric Dress, Tanaka was actually enwrapped by a work, and this
experience undoubtedly contributed to her desire to be within the canvas. This
desire intensified in 1958 – she created an absurdly large painting for the
International Art of New Era: Art Informel and Gutai, the first joint effort of Gutai
and Michel Tapié. The painting titled Work was so big (430 x 900 cm) that it had
to be exhibited on the floor (Figure 157). After 1957, Tanaka created only a few
pieces in three-dimensional format.355 She almost exclusively worked on two-
dimensional representations of images derived from Electric Dress. In the infinite
variation of circles, colors, and complex networks of cords, the artist aimed to
capture the transient beauty of flashing lights and transform it into fixed images.
Tanaka Atsuko created a series of iconoclastic works based on her
perception of “painting” as a two-dimensional object. In her pursuit of original
ways to interact with materials, she proved faithful to Yoshihara’s conceptual
model of human subjectivity and materials. However, she did not take the same
route as many Gutai artists, who worked using automatic methods and a strong
sense of materiality; instead, she chose or made materials to realize her own
visual images. In most of her works materiality and the presence of the materials
became subordinate to the overall visual images. Her radical direction in rejecting
preconceived notions of painting practice, conspicuous even before joining Gutai
355 Tanaka created two three-dimensional pieces of plastic materials (1959 and 1961). The
cocoon-like shapes, circular patterns and cords (the 1959 work had actual electric codes), were
three-dimensional versions of her painting based on the imagery of Electric Dress. See Katô
Mizuho ed., “Sakuhin mokuroku” (List of Works) in Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû,
1954-2000, 172 and 174.
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and contacting Yoshihara, was enriched after she became a member of Gutai,
There she expanded the notion of “object-hood” into both three-dimensional
objects and performance pieces in her remarkable “painting of support,” works
with bells and Stage Clothes.
Yoshihara Jirô recognized her new ideas in her early works of “painting of
support,” and continued to give critical support to her works. Her radical, original
approach in realizing these ideas greatly impressed him, and often times
impelled him to promote and publicly defend this prodigious student. The volume
of Yoshihara’s writings and comments on Tanaka’s works surpassed those of
other Gutai members. Her works were great inspiration for other Gutai members,
too, and they were often critiqued in detail and published in Gutai journals.
Although her intellectual works do not present Yoshihara’s vision of the dynamic
amalgamation of materials as expressed in his Gutai Art Manifesto, the
“tremendous scream in the materials,” Tanaka established herself as one of the
best arbiters of Gutai’s search for the autonomous self.
Conclusion
Gutai members Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko in
their own ways challenged the prevailing conceptions of painting practice in
Japan and elsewhere. Shimamoto punctured holes into the conventional notion
of the picture plane, and revealed its “object-hood”; later, he blasted cannons and
threw bottles of paint onto canvas to exceed the speed and power of human
physicality. Shiraga adopted physical automatism, dynamically using his own feet
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to reject conventions of composition and color tonality in painting. Tanaka took
her understanding of painting as two-dimensional object into the creation of
radical works using painting supports and ringing bells.
The encounter with Yoshihara Jirô and participation in Gutai became the
catalyst for these artists to expand their individual practices in painting.
Yoshihara’s recognition of their critical importance and offers of unusual
exhibition environments prompted these artists to produce works that
emphasized on the issues of “object-hood” and process of painting, and moved
the practice into the areas of sculptures, installations, and performance.
Shimamoto’s Hitting and Destroying Object (Figure 93), Shiraga’s Please Come
In and Challenging Mud, and Tanaka’s Stage Clothes series were all conceived
from each artist’s experiments in painting practice, but never could have been
achieved without Yoshihara’s theoretical and practical directions. For Yoshihara,
these artists’ works presented an advanced form of painting, what he conceived
as the new beginning of Japan and Japanese art. Their uncompromising efforts
and executing abilities greatly expanded the horizon of Yoshihara’s concept of
materials and human subjectivity.
Yet their experiments in other areas of art were part of their theoretical
terrain, and were practiced within the “category” of painting. From a certain
perspective, the strong emphasis on “object-hood” and process of painting seen
in both Shimamoto and Shiraga’s works did not become totally independent from
painting; although Shiraga thought that after the production of his performative
piece Challenging Mud he had almost attained the elimination of materials and a
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pure performance of his physical strength, he never abandoned practicing Foot
Painting. The mesmerizing visual impact of Tanaka’s Electric Dress was
converted into visual images of intricate networks of circles and lines in her
painting after 1957. As curator Osaki Shin’ichirô argues, Gutai’s various
experiments were all directed toward enriching the expression of painting.356
After 1958, Gutai stopped producing experimental works and entered into an era
of producing mostly painting.
Should Gutai’s abandonment of experimentation and return to painting be
evaluated as a positive or a negative change? As discussed in Chapter One, this
question has long been a point at issue in Gutai scholarship. In terms of the
enrichment of painterly expression, it was indeed a positive change. The vibrant
spatters and splashes of paint in Shimamoto’s Painting by Throwing Bottles and
the dynamic sweeping lines and markers of Shiraga’s Foot Painting series testify
to the enhancement made possible by their radical experiments between 1955
and 1957. On the other hand, the rejection of any interests in “object-hood” and
the process of painting practice, so acutely problematized in their experiments,
can be considered a negative change. It was specifically these interests, derived
from Yoshihara’s concept of materials and human subjectivity, which constituted
the remarkable achievements of Gutai as a “painting” movement. Considering
the fact that the materiality and performativity of Jackson Pollock’s painting were
356 Osaki Shin’ichirô, “Seisei to jizoku: Gutai bijutsu kyôkai saikô, 1” (Generation and Duration:
Re-examination of the Gutai Art Association, 1), Art and Critique (Kyoto Junior College of Art), no.
1 (July, 1987), 48.
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critically expanded through the works of Robert Morris, Allan Kaprow and other
artists in the United States, Gutai’s return to painting seems regrettable.357
As the leader of Gutai, Yoshihara controlled sites of presentation and
expression for Gutai members. Yoshihara encouraged the members’ interests in
“object-hood” and process by offering outdoors settings and on stage, yet in
some sense discouraged them after 1958 by organizing shows only in indoor
galleries.358 At the same time, as discussed in Shiraga Kazuo and Tanaka
Atsuko’s sections, even the most radical artists were motivated to return to
exclusively work on painting, and did not object to Gutai’s general shift to a two-
dimensional medium. Former members and previous studies have suggested
two main factors contributed to this shift, as on touched briefly above: Yoshihara
certainly feared that Gutai members would deviate from “proper” painting practice
into a creation of a Frankenstein version of visual art, neither painting, sculpture
nor performance.359 Also, Art Informel leader Michel Tapié exhorted Gutai
members to concentrate on tableaus for possible sale in the European market.
Yet as another significant factor, the reception of the art community in Tokyo
toward Gutai – which was mostly negative – should also be taken into
consideration. The reception on the part of the center of the Japan’s art world,
357Bois and Krauss, Formless: A User’s Guide (New York: Zone books, 1997), 97-103. Also see
“The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” ARTNews 57, no.6 (October 1958).
358 One exception was the International Sky Festival in 1960 (Takashimaya Department Store,
Osaka, April 19-24). In this show, paintings of thirty artists from Japan and abroad were copied
and expanded and then hung using balloons above the rooftop of the department store. However,
the exhibited works were all paintings and the outdoor setting was intended to provide a large
space for these floating works.
359 Shimamoto, Interview by Yamamura and Osaki, GSDG, 371.
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which Yoshihara had despised, framed the course of Gutai. In the next chapter,
we will examine how Tokyo perceived and reacted to Gutai.
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Chapter Five
Creatures from Mars: Reception of the Gutai Art Association among the
Japanese Art Community
In response to modernist artists’ concerns with the representation of
human experience and national identity in the early to mid-1950s, painter
Yoshihara Jirô presented a concept that emphasized the materiality of art
objects, and the artist’s individual ways of engaging with them. Members of the
Gutai Art Association (hereafter Gutai) materialized his concept in their two-
dimensional paintings; some of them were characterized by dynamic
automatism, while others showed a quiet, highly intellectual approach to
revolutionizing painting practice. Gutai artists further expanded Yoshihara’s
concept into highlighting “object-hood” and the process of painting, which
resulted in a variety of three-dimensional objects, installations, and performance
pieces.
Yoshihara had great confidence in the achievements of the young Gutai
members, which, he believed, could persuasively address the Japanese art
community, especially that of Tokyo – the center of art activities in Japan. In order
to promote Gutai’s works and approaches, he adopted various strategies, from
the publication of group journals and the use of personal contacts, to well-
planned exhibitions and public demonstrations. However, despite these strategic
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presentations, Gutai met with either negative responses, or in some exhibitions,
almost no critical reception. Even after Yoshihara’s Gutai Art Manifesto was
published in December 1956, no one recognized the new direction of painting
presented by the group, and most critics disregarded the three-dimensional and
performance experiments as “play” and “destructive actions derivative of
Dadaism.”
Why did Gutai receive no major critical response in the mid-1950s? Why
did contemporary critics mostly ignore the group and its activities? Art historian
Inui Yoshiaki points out that Gutai’s strong emphasis on untrammeled,
spontaneous practice looked too improvisational, accidental, and childish. Thus,
Gutai did not seriously appeal to contemporary critics who mainly valued form
and composition in painting.360 Inui’s opinion has been shared by scholars and
curators in Gutai studies in the past, yet the major problem lies more in the fact
that Gutai’s conceptual approach failed to appeal to young, emerging critics in
mid-1950s. In this period of great historical change – Japan’s renewed
independence in 1952 and economic recovery after the devastation of the nation
during war – the Japanese art community was exposed to increasingly frequent
instances of international cultural and artistic exchange in the forms of exhibitions
and migrating artists. It was these young critics who took the initiative in defining
Japan’s cultural identity and subjective position in this changing climate. Like
Yoshihara, they emphasized the material aspect of art objects and tried to relate
360 Inui Yoshiaki, “Gutai bijutsu no jûgonen: Dai 19kai/1967-ten (Sentoraru bijutsukan 10.1-14) wo
mite” (Fifteen Years of Gutai Art: Review of its 19th exhibition/1967 [at the Central Museum,
October 1-14]), Mizue no. 754 (November 1967), reprinted in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History
ed., Gutai shiryôshû: Dokyumento Gutai, 1954-1972 (Anthology of Gutai Documents: Document
Gutai, 1954-1972; henceforth GSDG) (Ashiya: Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, 1993), 354.
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it to the issue of human subjectivity. However, they considered figuration as the
fundamental expressive mode in painting. Given this conceptual difference in
mapping the relationship between materials and human subjectivity, it is not
surprising that Gutai’s potential for breaking through Western painting practice in
Japan was not properly recognized by the Tokyo art community. Even worse,
Yoshihara’s established position in the mainstream art world tainted Gutai’s claim
of individuality.
After three group exhibitions and one theater presentation between 1955
and 1957, Gutai abandoned much of their interdisciplinary approaches and
began concentrating on the two-dimensional media. Yoshihara Jirô, who had
earlier encouraged the members to go beyond the categorical constraints of
painting practice, by 1958 openly told them to enrich expressions within the area
of the picture plane. As we will argue, the negative reception of the Tokyo art
community to Gutai played a significant role in Yoshihara’s shift as regards
Gutai’s focus on painting.
Presenting Gutai: Gutai Journals and Tokyo Exhibitions
As discussed in previous chapters, at the onset in 1954 Gutai was a rather
casual group, consisting of leader Yoshihara and his seventeen young students.
However, by early 1955 the group was more determined to promote Gutai as a
radical experimental group, targeting especially the center of the Japanese art
community, Tokyo. In March, the members entered their works, all titled Gutai, in
the Japan Indépendant Exhibition (Yomiuri Anpan) at the Tokyo Metropolitan
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Museum of Art. Soon after, in October, Yoshihara quickly organized the First
Gutai Art Exhibition at the Ohara Kaikan Hall in Tokyo, only two and a half
months after the outdoor exhibition Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun Exhibition in
Ashiya Park. Gutai also serialized its introductory catalogue as printed
documentation of their activities to publicize their innovative movement.
The journal Gutai took an important role in publicizing the group’s various
activities and their innovative works and concepts. The journal’s first issue was
published in January 1955 to show the members’ non-figurative paintings (Figure
158).361 The character and format of Gutai changed significantly once it was
serialized in the second issue and more drastically from the third issue on. While
the first issue was intended to be a catalogue of members’ paintings, the second
and third issues, which included texts by members, aimed to promote new
concepts and ideas behind the visual presentations. From the third issue, each
issue became a source of documentation for successive exhibitions; as Gutai’s
exhibition schedule intensified between 1955 and 1957, the publication of Gutai
accelerated – between October 1955 (second and third issues) and July 1957
(the seventh issue featuring Gutai’s first Gutai Art on Stage), six issues were
published.362
361 From the title page and content structure, it is obvious that the first issue of Gutai was not
initially intended to be a serial; rather it was a catalogue. The title was simply “Gutai”; and other
than Yoshihara’s introduction, there were no texts. Inside, the works of the members were shown
simply with the creators’ names in roman characters.
362 AfterGutai 8, the journal was published only occasionally. Between 1958 and 1965 only four
issues were published. Gutai 10 was not published due to the loss of original scripts. Gutai 13
was planned as a special edition commemorating the opening of Gutai’s permanent exhibit
space, Gutai Pinacotheca, but was never published. See GSDG, 310. Gutai published a total of
fourteen issues; the last issue was published in October 1965.
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These journals were devoted largely to critiques, reports and documentation of
the exhibitions along with members’ essays on their individual works and ideas.
Generally, Yoshihara surveyed important works in the beginning, followed by a
given artist’s statement and fellow members’ critiques. Yet perhaps the most
important part of the journal was the visual documentation which accompanied
the texts. In Gutai 4, published after the First Gutai Art Exhibition, Shiraga
Kazuo’s Challenging Mud was featured for five pages, along with Shiraga’s essay
and Kanayama Akira’s critique; it included a series of photographs of Shiraga
writhing in mud (one is a full-page close-up) and detailed images of the finished
work (Figure 61 and Figure 130). There was a strong interest in revealing the
artistic process and providing a sense of immediacy for readers who were not at
the sites.363 In Gutai 5, which featured the Second Gutai Outdoor Exhibition,
Motonaga Sadamasa’s Water was captured in a breath-taking moment, backlit by
sunlight through dark pine foliage (Figure 74; bottom image). Physical contexts of
art works were also often highlighted.364
363 Ming Tiempo argues that Yoshihara was greatly influenced by stills from Hans Namuth’s
documentation of Jackson Pollock, published in the May, 1951 issue of ARTNews, which shows
Pollock performing his famous dripping method in his studio. Ming Tiampo, “Gutai & Informel:
Post-War Art in Japan and France, 1945-1965,” Ph.D. Diss., (Evanston: Northwestern University,
2003), 114-115.
The format of Gutai, square and printed on glossy paper, was perhaps directly influenced
by Bokujin, the bulletin of the avant-garde calligraphy group Bokujin-kai. Bokujin’s format
changed from the customary rectangular to a square shape from Bokujin 22, published in
February 1954. In addition, following Bokujin, the artists’ names are all romanized. As mentioned
in Chapter Two, Yoshihara was closely involved in Bokujin-kai from 1951 to 1956. Another source
of reference may be the French art magazine Art d’aujourd hui, to which Yoshihara subscribed in
the 1950s. The magazine includes abundant photographs, and its daring layout design, mixing
texts and images is visually appealing; Gutai had more affinities with Art d’aujourd hui than other
Japanese and American magazines to which Yoshihara had subscribed at that time.
364Scholarly research on Gutai has greatly benefited from the large body of documentary
photographs left in the Gutai Archive in the collection of the Ashiya City Museum of Art & History.
Those photographs were taken by both Gutai members and hired photographers.
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Gutai issues were sent to influential critics and modernist artists both in
Japan and abroad. After the death of Jackson Pollock, copies of Gutai 2 and 3
were reportedly found in his book collection.365 The theorist of the Art Informel
movement, Michel Tapié first recognized Gutai’s work through Gutai copies given
to him by two Japanese painters in Paris, Dômoto Hisao and Imai Toshimitsu,
both acquaintances of Yoshihara Jirô.366 Gutai’s high international reputation in
the mid-1950s can be largely attributed to the effective presentation of visual
images in Gutai journals.367 Yet Yoshihara also sought close contacts with the
Japanese art world; copies of Gutai in the library of the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Tokyo, were originally owned by Toneyama Mitsuto, one of the
active modernist painters in the 1950s.
The major site of presentation for Gutai, however, was a series of
exhibitions organized mainly in Tokyo. The first, second, and fourth exhibitions
were held at the Ohara Kaikan Hall, the Tokyo headquarters of a major ikabena
(flower arrangement) school, the Ohara-ryû. According to Yoshihara himself, the
first exhibition was “a sort of accident” – his friend, the head of Ohara-ryû, Ohara
Hôun was impressed with Gutai’s outdoor exhibition Challenge the Mid-Summer
Sun. Yoshihara said that Ohara suggested he organize a show similar to the
outdoor exhibition in Tokyo. Yet considering the fact that this Tokyo exhibition was
365 “Jackson Pollock shi no fuhô” (Obituary of Jackson Pollock), Gutai 5 (October 1, 1956),
366“Shôsoku ran” (Recent News), Gutai 6 (April 1, 1957), reprinted in GSDG, 297. Also,
Kanayama Akira and Tanaka Atsuko, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in
GSDG, 400.
367Gutai included little translation of written texts, while the names of artists were almost always
romanized.
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not a one-time event, Yoshihara must have considered Tokyo as the location of
Gutai’s official exhibitions even before Ohara’s invitation. Yoshihara was very
conscious of the need for exposure not only in their home ground of Kansai, but
in the center of the Japanese art world as well, and considered these exhibitions
“official” presentation of Gutai’s works. Only these indoor gallery exhibitions were
given serial numbers, as the First or Second Gutai Art Exhibition.368 Tokyo was
where most critics and many artists resided and where most important and
prestigious art competitions were held. Also, many popular art magazines, such
as Mizue, Atorie, and Bijutsu Techô were published there.
Yoshihara strategically planned the schedule of Gutai’s Tokyo exhibitions
to be held in fall. As in the United States, fall is the prime season for art
exhibitions in Japan. In mid-1950s Tokyo, the arrival of September and October
heralded major art competitions sponsored by various exhibition groups, large art
exhibitions, and numerous group and one-person shows. Holding a group show
in the midst of the fall season testified to the group’s determination to make a
statement in the art world. Moreover, their exhibition schedule fell in accordance
with art competitions for four exhibition groups which were considered bastions of
modernist art at that time; Shinseisaku Kyôkai, Dokuritsu Kyôkai, Jiyû Bijutsu
368 For a list of the exhibitions, see Appendix 2.
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Kyôkai, and Niki-Kai.369 The corresponding dates of Gutai exhibitions and annual
exhibitions sponsored by these modernist art groups in 1955 and 1956 were:
1955370
First Gutai Art Exhibition October 19 – 28371
Nineteenth Shinseisaku Kyôkai Exhibition September 21 – October 7
Twenty-third Dokuritsu Exhibition October 9 – 26
Nineteenth Jiyû Bijutsu Exhibition October 9 – 26
Ninth Niki Kai Exhibition October 9 – 26
1956372
Second Gutai Art Exhibition October 11 – 17
Twentieth Shinseisaku Kyôkai Exhibition September 21 – October 7
Twenty-fourth Dokuritsu Exhibition October 9 – 26
Twentieth Jiyû Bijutsu Exhibition October 9 – 26
Tenth Anniversary Nikikai Exhibition October 9 – 26
From this list, it is clear that Gutai Art Exhibitions were scheduled to
coincide with three of those of the modernist art groups. Yoshihara was hoping
for the critical audience of the Tokyo art world – critics, reporters, artists, and art
enthusiasts – to critically compare Gutai works with those of the other modernist
groups. Since it was common for art magazines to publish reviews of exhibitions
369 Although Shinseisaku Kyôkai had a conservative Nihonga division, the oil painting division
was dominated by surrealistic and abstract imageries, the two currents considered “modernist” in
the mid-1950s. Gutai members Shiraga Kazuo and Kanayama Akira were members of
Shinseisaku Kyôkai; their Zero Group was started as an inner-group within Shinseisaku. One of
the most active members of Jiyû Bijutsu Kyôkai was painter Hasegawa Saburô, Yoshihara Jirô’s
friend who introduced Yoshihara to Isamu Noguchi. Hasegawa tried to recruit Yoshihara for Jiyû
Bijutsu Kyôkai in the late 1930s, but Yoshihara declined. Yoshihara Jirô, “Waga kokoro no jijoden,
5” (Autobiography from My Heart 1-6), Kôbe Shinbun, 2 July 1967, reprinted in Ashiya City
Museum of Art & History, Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten (Yoshihara Jirô: Two Decades after
His Death) (Ashiya, 1992), 199-200.
370The data are from Tokyo Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyûjo Bijutsubu ed., Nihon bijutsu nenkan,
Shôwa 31 nen ban (Art Almanac of Japan, Shôwa 31 [1956] edition) (Tokyo: Tokyo Kokuritsu
Bunkazai Kenkyûjo, 1957).
371 Nihon bijutsu nenkan mistakingly listed the date of the First Gutai Art Exhibition as October 24
to 28. See Nihon bijutsu nenkan, Shôwa 31 nen ban, 132.
372The data are from Tokyo Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyûjo Bijutsubu ed., Nihon bijutsu nenkan,
Shôwa 32 nen ban (Art Almanac of Japan, Shôwa 32 [1957] edition) (Tokyo: Tokyo Kokuritsu
Bunkazai Kenkyûjo, 1958).
ccl
of similar directions as a set, Yoshihara’s scheduling was quite calculated.373 In
his critique of works shown at the First Gutai Art Exhibition in journal Gutai 4,
Yoshihara wrote that he was intending “to present the best opportunity
[exhibition], which naturally should have deserved the most heated
discussions.”374
Yoshihara and Gutai members also made a considerable effort to publicize
their appearances in Tokyo. They created an attractive poster for the First Gutai
Art Exhibition (Figure 159), designed by Shimamoto Shôzô, in simple black and
white with a door-like hole. Invitations were also created for each exhibition,
usually with some sort of amusing twist (Figure 160, Figure 161 and Figure 162).
They are all eye-catching for their strong graphic appeal and sense of
playfulness. Reflecting their strict practice-centered approach, these posters and
invitations do not provide much information about the group’s theoretical
positions other than date and place. Like Gutai journals, the invitations were sent
to influential critics, reporters in cultural sections of major newspapers, and artists
373 Art magazines customarily featured exhibition reviews of two to three groups in a roundtable-
style discussion of two to four critics, each critic reviewing all of them, or one critic assigned to
each exhibition. For example, Bijutsu Techô’s December 1954 issue featured reviews of Jiyû
Bijutsu Kyôkai, Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyôkai, and Niki-kai’s exhibitions, by three young critics Haryû
Ichirô, Tôno Yoshiaki, and Segi Shin’ichi respectively. Haryû Ichirô, Tôno Yoshiaki, and Segi
Shin’ichi, “Shûki Tenrankai sono ni” (Fall Exhibitions, Part Two), Bijutsu Techô no. 89 (December
1954), 3-30.
In the issue of December 1955, Mizue has reviews of Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyôkai, Niki-kai,
and Jiyû Bijutsu Kyôkai exhibitions by two critics Imaizumi Atsuo and Haryû Ichirô in a discussion
style. Imaizumi Atsuo and Haryû Ichirô, “Dokuritsu, Niki, Jiyû, Nitten wo miru” Mizue no. 605
(December 1955), 32-51. (Haryû also wrote a review of Nihon Bijutsu Ten [Nitten].) In the same
issue, another critic Segi Shin’ichi wrote a review of the First Gutai Art Exhibition in the
magazine’s section of solo exhibition reviews. Segi Shin’ichi, “Kotenhyô: Gutai ten” (Review of
Solo Exhibitions: Gutai Exhibition), Mizue no. 605 (December 1955), 66, reprinted in GSDG, 77.
374 Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai daiikkai ten no kiroku” (Report of the First Gutai Exhibition), Gutai 4
(July 1, 1956), reprinted in GSDG, 277.
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in Tokyo. Yoshihara and the members also made phone calls to some critics.375
In addition, the group took advantage of journalism’s interest in Gutai’s
performative pieces. They responded to requests from reporters to have Shiraga
present his strenuous and painful performance of Challenging Mud (Figure 61)
twice. For the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, the group set up a special public
performance for newspapers and magazine reporters and photographers.376
Shimamoto Shôzô’s Painting by Throwing Bottles, Yoshida Toshio’s Painting by
Watering Can, Shiraga Kazuo’s Foot Painting, and Murakami Saburô’s Breaking
Papers were also performed in front of the press (Figure 1, Figure 117, Figure
108, and Figure 109).
Critical Response to Gutai: Exhibition Reviews by the Tokyo Art

Community
Haryû Ichirô, who started his career as an art critic in 1953, wrote in the
mid-1970s on the First Gutai Art Exhibition at Ohara Kaikan Hall:
For a while afterward, everyone everywhere was talking about this strange
exhibition, but all were perplexed with it and hesitated to evaluate it. … At
that time, bound by ideas of ‘form,’ we did not have the concepts and
375 Haryû Ichirô, Sengo bijtusu seisui shi (The Rise And Fall of Postwar Japanese Art) (Tokyo:
Tokyo Shoseki, 1979), 97. They also personally contacted Life magazine before the First Gutai
Art Exhibition. Photographer, Jean Launois’s visit to the exhibition and his subsequent request to
the group to organize the One Day Outdoor Exhibition (Ichinichi Dake no Yagaiten) and the
Exhibition at Ruins (Haikyo ten) on April 9th, 1956, was the result of Gutai’s vigorous self-
publicity. See Kanayama Akira and Tanaka Atsuko, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki
Shin’ichirô, GSDG, 400.
376 Shiraga Kazuo, “Bôken no kiroku: episôdo de tsuzuru Gutai gurûpu no jûninen, 3” (Document
of Adventure: Writing on Episodes from Twelve Years of Gutai, 3), Bijutsu techô no. 287
(September 1967), reprinted in GSDG, 343.
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perspectives to process these [Gutai] works; it was as if we had

encountered creatures from Mars.377
Despite Haryû’s claim that the Tokyo art world could not process the new visual
language presented by Gutai, there was not total silence. There were critics,
writers, and artists who responded, some positively, most negatively, to the
group’s presentations at the First and Second Gutai Art Exhibitions and Gutai Art
on Stage between 1955 and 1957. These critical reviews, though not many,
showed great interest in Gutai’s unusual three-dimensional objects and bold
presentation, yet regarded two-dimensional works as objects for serious critical
concern. They also reflected Tokyo’s ambivalence toward peripheral Kansai-area
artists. Generally, the reviewers were deeply skeptical about Gutai’s claims of
artistic originality.
Although Yoshihara carefully planned the schedule of Gutai’s
presentations in Tokyo to encourage the art community to critically evaluate Gutai
works with those of major modernist art exhibition groups, Gutai’s three
exhibitions were critically reviewed in only five articles. Of the five reviews, three
were quite short, and one review was published in a journal for art educators.
This is in stark contrast to the plethora of reviews on the major modernist art
groups Nika-kai, Shinseisaku Kyôkai, Dokuritsu Kyôkai, Jiyû Bijutsu Kyôkai, and
377 Haryû, Sengo bijtusu seisui shi, 98. Although Haryû wrote on Gutai’s first exhibition in Tokyo,
he said in his review of the Fourth Gutai Art Exhibition (October 8 – 10, 1957), that it was his first
time seeing Gutai works, except the Small Pieces of Gutai Art exhibition of the previous year
(Gutai shôhin ten, October 3 – 8, 1956). Haryû Ichirô, “Jihyôteki bijutsu ron: Gutai ten”
(Journalistic discussion on art: the [Fourth] Gutai Art Exhibition), Mizue no. 628 (November 1957),
It is hard to assess which memory is correct, yet it seems that Haryû actually saw the first
exhibition. He said in the section prior to the above quotation, “… newspapers reported the
exhibition as scandalous, and they [Gutai members] called to inform me [about the upcoming
exhibition]. So, I went to see the exhibition.” Haryû, Sengo bijtusu seisui shi, 97.
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Niki-Kai, with which Yoshihara intended to compete. Reviewers included Segi
Shin’ichi and Nakahara Yûsuke, two active young critics who both started their
careers in the early to mid-1950s; an anonymous reviewer, perhaps an art writer;
Murai Masanari, a young modernist painter; and Sanami Hajime, an established
art critic of the older generation.
Judging from Haryû’s quote above, Gutai’s unusual exhibitions did have
an impact on the Tokyo reviewers, regardless of whether they had positive or
negative general views on the group. Modernist painter Murai Masanari was
struck by the grand scale of the First Gutai Art Exhibition, which filled the whole
building and an outside courtyard of the Ohara Kaikan Hall with their “strange”
works. He regarded the large scale as Gutai’s open embrace of capitalism,
which, according to Murai, was viewed as problematic by one of his artist friends.
Yet to Murai, this was rather a healthy approach; he suggested that Tokyo artists
ought to learn from Gutai members’ commercial interests, and be more eager to
sell their works. In his utterly negative review of Gutai Art on Stage, young critic
Nakahara Yûsuke judged the performance as successful as a theatrical show in
the large, elaborate setting of a commercial theater, yet criticized it as unfit for the
presentation of visual art.378
Gutai’s non-painting and performative works intrigued many reviewers.
Young art critic Segi Shin’ichi mentioned in his review of the First Gutai Art
Exhibition several three-dimensional pieces, including Motonaga Sadamasa’s
378The involvement of a visual art group in the area of theater drew significant attention: more
than any of Gutai’s previous exhibitions, it provoked a number of related articles in both the
popular and art media. Yet they were mostly short introductions to the exhibition accompanied by
some photographs.
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Liquid (“hanging vinyl sacs filled with colored liquid”; Figure 68), Shimamoto
Shôzô’s Please Walk On This (“scraggy, drain-board-like object”; Figure 82) and
Kanayama Akira’s Balloon (“large rubber ball”; Figure 104). In this short review,
he provided more space for the explanation of three-dimensional works than for
painting.379 Murai Masanari also showed genuine interest in those works as eye-
catching, fascinating examples of Gutai art, and wrote a detailed description of
the exhibit space chaotically populated by a “mass of strange objects” such as a
“series of large boxes with torn papers” (Murakami Saburô’s Breaking Paper [Six
Holes]; Figure 98), “bells wired around the entire exhibition, which rang one by
one and returned to the first bell” (Tanaka Atsuko’s Work; Figure 52), and “a large
balloon forcibly crammed into a rather small room” (Kanayama Akira’s Balloon;
Figure 104).380 Reviewing Gutai’s Second Gutai Art Exhibition, established art
critic Sanami Hajime recognized that the element of surprise in the three-
379 Segi Shin’ichi, “Kotenhyô: Gutai ten” (Review of Solo Exhibitions: Gutai Exhibition), Mizue no.
605 (December 1955), 66, reprinted in GSDG, 77. Segi’s review was published in the review
section for solo shows in the December 1955 issue of what was a leading art magazine of the
time, Mizue. Segi, who started his career as an art critic in 1953, was a regular contributor to the
magazine. Mizue (Watercolor), one of the oldest art magazines that time, was launched in 1905.
The name was changed to Bijutsu (Art) and later Shin Bijutsu (New Art) in the interwar and
immediate postwar years, but renamed as Mizue in September 1946. Other major art magazines
in the 1950s were Atorie (Atelier), Sansai (Three Colors), Bijutsu Techô (Art Notebook), Geijutsu
Shinchô (New Current of Art), and Bijutsu Hihyô (Art Criticism). Mizue’s publication company,
Bijutsu Shuppansha, also published Bijutsu Techô and Bijutsu Hihyô. The company had been the
center of the art community in the 1950s and 1960s; it started an art criticism competition in 1954,
and young writers such as Tôno Yoshiaki, Nakamura Giichi, and Miyakawa Atsushi started their
careers by entering the competition.
380 Murai Masanari, “Kansai bijutsuka no kôsei” (The Attack of the Kansai Artists), Geijutsu
Shinchô 6, no. 12 (December 1955), 264-267, reprinted in GSDG, 79, 81. Geijutsu Shinchô was
started in January 1950, as a popular magazine that covers diverse fields of art. Compared to
Mizue, which mainly deals with traditional categories of visual art, such as painting and sculpture,
Geijutsu Shinchô also encompasses popular and diverse forms of culture, including literature,
music, film, and theater. One salient feature of the magazine is its abundant use of photographs –
it is described as a “magazine covering general arts, that are fun to look and which make you
think.” Kôno Toshio, et al., Tenbô sengo zasshi (Overview of Postwar Magazines) (Tokyo:
Kawade shobô shinsha, 1977), 265. Their targeted readers were younger generations who were
becoming increasingly media and visually savvy.
cclv
dimensional and performative pieces greatly appealed to the general public. In
another review of the same exhibition, a writer under the pseudonym “FANFAN”
expressed interest in the earnest passion of four Gutai members who gave
physical demonstrations of their “new” art in a special preview for the press. The
writer’s use of a popular word, taiyôzoku (gang of the sun; 太陽族), indicates that
the writer suggested that their youth was the source of their “bodily-action
(taiatari 体当たり)” presentations.381
However, while these reviewers acknowledged the uniqueness of Gutai’s
three-dimensional and performance works, they generally considered Gutai’s
non-painting pieces as meaningless play and mere destructive acts, and were
doubtful of their experimental value in the serious pursuit of art. Murai considered
the inclusion of these non-painting pieces as an attempt to diversify the variety of
works at the exhibition for commercial purposes, and did not see any connection
between these works and two-dimensional pieces simultaneously exhibited at the
show.382 As we will discuss further, both Segi and Murai found automatic painting
to be the operating mode in Gutai, and their adherence to that fixed view limited
their discussion of the three-dimensional works and kept them from interpreting
Gutai’s “strange works” in relation to painting practice.
381 Taiyôzoku was the term coined from a popular novel Taiyô no kisetsu (Seasons in the Sun)
written by Ishihara Shintarô. The novel depicts the life of the young generation unconstrained by
old morals and ethics. The depiction of their sex life was considered especially scandalous at that
time. The novel was adapted as a film in the same name; the author Ishihara’s younger brother
Ishihara Yûjirô played the protagonist and became a star. The word taiyôzoku was used to refer
to the young generation in their late teens and early twenties. The novel was published in 1955,
the year Gutai basically started their activities. Incidentally, Ishihara Shintarô later became a
politician, and as of September 2005, he is a mayor of Tokyo.
382 Murai, “Kansai bijutsuka no kôsei,” 266-267, reprinted in GSDG, 81.
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In contrast to Murai, Sanami correctly pointed out, in his review of the
second exhibition that the variety of media in the exhibition was a result of
Gutai’s focus on the artists’ individual choice of and approach to various
materials. He wrote that “[Gutai’s approach] can manifest itself as free form. In
some cases they [their works] are paintings, while in other cases they are varied
creations which boldly incorporate their environment.”383 Based on this
understanding of Gutai’s artistic goal, Sanami expressed admiration for their
energy in pursuing the new art which filled the exhibition: “The exhibition space
as a whole appears as if one large ‘moving art’ and appeals to all of our senses.”
Then he lamented that the common view of Gutai works had to date been “simply
an immature group of works that barely adhere to conventional categories of
painting and sculpture.” In fact, he stated that Gutai’s work was highly
intellectual.384 Yet Sanami cast doubt on the quality of these non-painting works,
383 Sanami Hajime, “Gutaibijutsu no hitobito to sono shigoto” (Artists and Works of the Gutai Art
Association), Biiku Bunka 6, no. 11 (November, 1956), 30, reprinted in GSDG, 315. This text was
written as one of several feature articles on Gutai in Biiku Bunka (Art Education and Culture;
November 1956), a journal for art educators. Sanami Hajime, “Gutaibijutsu no hitobito to sono
shigoto” (Artists And Works of Gutai Art Association), Biiku Bunka 6, no. 11 (November, 1956),
30-32, reprinted in GSDG, 315.
Editors of Biiku Bunka explained the reason why an educational journal took an interest
in Gutai:
…at least we should recognize their sprit of resistance against conventions, and at the
same time, keep in mind that many of the members pursue in their own ways art
education for children in their individual studios. Thus, for these reasons, we would like to
introduce Gutai to our readers, along with their movement, their own art work and ideas
on children’s art…
“[Tokushû] Wakai geijutsu: Gutai gurûpu no shigoto” ([Special Feature] Youthful Art: Work of Gutai
Group), Biiku Bunka 6, no. 11 (November 1956), 17. Other articles include Murakami Saburô and
Motonaga Sadamasa, “Gutai bijutsu no shushi” (Principles of Gutai Art); a brief chronology of the
group, “Gutai bijutsu no ayumi” (History of Gutai Art); two articles describing Gutai’s involvement
in children’s art, Kanayama Akira, “Gutai to jidô bijutsu” (Gutai and Children’s Art) and Shimamoto
Shôzô’s “Kodomo rashikunai e no hôga yoi” (It’s Better Not to Appear as a Children’s Picture) and
an overview and description of works exhibited in the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, Yoshida Toshio
“Dainikai Gutai bijutsuten no sakuhin ni tsuite” (On the Works in the Second Gutai Art Exhibition).”
All texts are reprinted in GSDG, 312-315.
384 Ibid., 32, reprinted in GSDG, 315
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writing that in his view they merely aimed to “surprise with their non-conforming
and strongly reject conventional aesthetic notions and traditional art,” and that
they had not achieved the “depth, strength, and density. It must fashion itself with
artistic logic and order of its own [persuasive enough] to compete with
masterpieces in the past.”385
Generally, the critical focus of the reviewers centered on two-dimensional
media. Writing mainly on Gutai’s painting, Segi Shin’ichi found automatism to be
the prevailing basic method of the group, and said he believed that it was
characteristic of the group to seek new artistic expression born out of the
automatic method. Yet Segi argued that automatism was fundamentally collective
(shûdanteki 集団的) and in fact, as seen in the exhibition, only yielded “works
which all resemble each other.” He wondered whether Gutai’s method would
yield any individual outcome. At the end, Segi questioned the genuineness of
Gutai’s automatism:
… why is it that, while these works were [created through] the automatic
method, the artificial (kôgeiteki 工芸的) effects were obvious? Although
they loudly claim to be new, my impression is that most of the techniques
had already been experimented with. Even from an artistic point of view,
they mostly bore a conservative, artificial characteristic.386
As mentioned in Chapter Four, the use of the automatic mode in dealing
with materials was a major current in Gutai, as seen in paintings by Shimamoto,
Shiraga, Sumi, and Yoshida. Segi was correct, but by generalizing Gutai’s
methodology and limiting it to painting, he failed to see such issues as “object-
385 Ibid., 31, reprinted in GSDG, 315.
386 Segi. “Kotenhyô: Gutai ten,” 66, reprinted in GSDG, 77.
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hood”, salient in Tanaka’s Work (Bell) (Figure 52), and in Kanayama Akira’s acute
conceptualization of work and its environment in his Balloon and Red Ball (Figure
104 and Figure 105). Moreover, his assessment of Gutai’s automatism as
“collective” and “artificial” showed Segi’s ambivalence to non-figurative painting.
As we will see later, Segi and other young critics considered that non-figurative
painting was insufficient to reflect the life and reality of human beings. To Segi’s
eyes, Gutai’s non-figurative paintings all assumed a similar appearance, and
gave no concrete manifestation of the artist’s individuality.
That the Gutai’s stage performance critically extended their interest in the
performative aspect of painting was not properly understood by its reviewer
either. In his review of Gutai Art on Stage, Nakahara Yûsuke strongly rejected the
potential that Gutai’s interest in the process of painting posed on the stage.
Referring to what he saw as meaninglessness in Gutai’s performance
experiments, he cited a story of a mechanized maze-solving mouse invented by
American scientist Claude Edwood Shannon (1916-2001) at Bell Telephone
Laboratories. In Shannon’s experiment, the mechanized mouse was put in
random positions inside a maze. There were various paths and processes, but
for the mouse there was only one exit (result). What Nakahara meant by this
metaphor was that, in Gutai Art on Stage, Gutai artists merely presented many
variations of processes. Nakahara drew a distinction between the process of
“drawing” and “drawing” itself, and he argued that what was important was the
latter. He says:
… In the area of visual art, [Gutai artists] consider the free choice of an
artist as essential to their art. [Yet] as a result, they are exploring inside the
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maze of a canvas. I think what is important is not this kind of mentality,

that of the seeker, but the sound of a ringing bell at the exit.387
Like Segi Shin’ichi and Murai Masanari, Nakahara’s view was confined to the
category of painting (he uses “canvas” in his text). While Nakahara recognized
“variations” in the processes, he too considered the finished works to be targets
of criticism. In this case (theater presentation), the finished works did not exist,
and thus, Nakahara concluded that Gutai’s direct presentation of movement
might be effective as theatrical art, however, they were a failure as fine art
(bijutsu).388
Sanami Hajime, who wrote a rather favorable review of the Second Gutai
Art Exhibition, also believed that Gutai should concentrate on enriching painterly
expression. Sanami questioned Gutai’s overuse of the element of surprise, which
was effective in attracting the attention of the general public, yet which
contributed nothing to the quality of painting. Sanami acknowledged that some
abstract painting – including painting pieces by Yoshihara Jirô, Motonaga
Sadamasa and Kanayama Akira – had a quality that emitted an inner strength.
While admitting that Gutai’s program encompassed artistic formats that were not
confined to painting, he dismissed these non-painting works as “an excess of
intellect or intellectual play,” and argued that Gutai’s ultimate goal should lie in
cultivating new territories of abstract painting.
387 Nakahara Yûsuke, “[Tenrankai geppyô] Gutai bijutsu kyôkai” ([Monthly Exhibition Review]
Gutai Art Association), Bijutsu Techô no. 130 (September 1957), reprinted in GSDG, 119.
Nakahara uses the term iriguchi (entrance) instead of deguchi (exit) at the end of the original text.
Yet in the beginning of the text, where he introduces the story of a maze-solving mouse, he uses
deguchi, the exit where the mouse finally gets out. I use “exit” in my translation for it is more
appropriate in this context.
388 Ibid., 119.
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As both Segi and Nakahara’s reviews suggest, the reviewers generally did
not recognize these experiments in non-painting as aiming to expand the notion
of painting practice. As I discussed before, Yoshihara and the group members
themselves regarded the two outdoor exhibitions and theater presentations as
“experimental” and the gallery exhibitions as “official.” Thus, the exclusion of non-
painting work in their criticism was in fact understandable. Yet at the same time,
Yoshihara and the Gutai members made clear in both the presentations and
Gutai journals that these “experiments” were organically related to painting.
Moreover, the “two-dimensional” works of Gutai artists like Shiraga Kazuo and
Tanaka Atsuko consciously problematized what constituted “painting.” No
contemporary critics or artists touched upon or examined these issues.
The Tokyo art community’s most acute attack was directed at Gutai’s claims that
they were presenting advanced, original art. Many reviewers questioned and
some even rejected Gutai’s drive for individual creativity. In the aforementioned
quote, Segi Shin’ichi pointed out that the automatic techniques that Gutai artists
claimed as original had already been experimented within the past. Murai
Masanari also stated that Gutai’s fanfare about their creativity was problematic.
He argued that at a time when painting practice had evolved into multiple styles,
and when there was a general consensus that stylistic experimentations had
already been exhausted, Gutai’s claim might well have sounded hollow:
Whether abstraction or figuration, the artistic styles gradually change and

shift, yet eventually they become stereotypes. These days there is a
strange tendency for the artist to adopt various stereotypes simultaneously
and non-judgmentally. In other words, he can paint any type of painting
and that is just fine. A diligent mind can finish a painting of any stereotype
to match a sponsor’s wishes. Because of this, we find ourselves slightly
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distant from the creative spirit. In our current situation, dominated by this
infectious tendency, Gutai’s drive for creativity is very ironic.
…although this exhibition fashions itself as bold, the exhibited
works look a little shabby 389
Gutai’s automatic method and destructive approach to art practice were
often considered derivative of Dadaism, an influential movement which emerged
after World War I in Europe and spread to Japan in the early 1920s.390
Responding to the unstable political and social climates of that time, Dadaism
aimed to break conventions and preconceived notions of art through destructive
activities. Murai reported that one of his artist friends said, “Gutai is a new
manifestation of Dadaism.”391 The writer FANFAN pointed out that Gutai’s
aesthetics – the direct, physical way of engaging with materials – was already
389 Murai, “Kansai bijutsuka no kôsei,” 265, reprinted in GSDG, 79.
390 Dadaistic tendency was indirectly introduced to Japan through the provocative activities of
several artists in the Taishô period (1911-1925), such as Russian Futurist David Burliuk and a
Japanese artist who studied in Germany, Murayama Tomoyoshi. See Omuka Toshiharu, Taishôki
shinkô bijutsu undô no kenkyû (A Study of the New Art Movements of the Taishô Period) (Tokyo:
Sukaidoa, 1995), 34-41.
cclxii
practiced by Dadaists (he also mentioned Informel artists) and warned Gutai’s
young artists not to mistake their eccentric methods as original.392
One more notable sentiment shared by some of these reviewers was their
ambivalence toward Kansai area artists. Murai Masanari saw Gutai’s commercial
pursuit as being behind the large scale of the First Gutai Art Exhibition, compared
to the small, ordinary group exhibitions held in Tokyo, and highlighted the group’s
eagerness for publicity. But drawing on examples from Genbi’s Modern Art Fair
and Panriaru, which was a group of young Japanese-style painters in Kyoto, he
praised the confidence and motivation of Kansai artists in their pursuit of “new
art”:
… the issue lies in the significant characteristic difference between the

Kansai and the Kantô [greater Tokyo area] -- how much more eager
Kansai artists are than Kantô artists to start new art, being confident in
their own culture, which is different from Tokyo. … in the Modern Art Fair, I
might say, they [Kansai artists] try to unify and popularize new sensitivity.
In Gutai, one is to destroy [mundane] sensitivity and to discover a new
creative direction. I think that in the end the Kansai artists are ahead of us
in their efforts to renew their sensitivities and make them step forward.393
392 FANFAN [pseud.], “Seikan na wakasa no hyôgen: Gutai bijutsu ten” (Energetic Expression of
Youth: Gutai Art Exhibition), Bijutsu Techô no. 118 (December 1956), 105, reprinted in GSDG, 97.
The reference to Informel in this review was rather new. As Yoshihara related in the “Gutai Art
Manifesto,” the term and reports of Michel Tapié’s Art Informel movement started to appear
frequently in art magazines during the summer and fall of 1956. Although the element of surprise
was an important factor in Tapié’s idea of Art Informel, it was largely a painting movement. Thus,
the writer perhaps did not have accurate information on Informel at that time.
Katô Mizuho points out that the works and concept of Art Informel were introduced to
Japan earlier than summer-fall of 1956. Works of Art Informel artists, such as Hans Hartung and
Pierre Soulage, were shown at Salon de Mai in Japan (February 1951). In 1955, journalist Kaitô
Hideo and art critic Segi Shin’ichi mentioned the new interest in automatic, gestural mode of
abstraction in Europe. In summer-fall 1956, a Japanese Art Informel painter in Paris Dômoto
Hisao wrote report on the movement, and art critic Tominaga Sôichi published a series of texts, in
which he fervently supported the movement. Thus the concept of the Art Informel movement was
about to become more widely known in the Japanese art community. Katô Mizuho, “Nihon ni
okeru Anforumeru no juyô” (Acceptance of Informel in Japan), in Ashiya City Museum of Art &
History and Chiba City Museum of Art, Sôgetsu to sono jidai: 1945-1970 (Sôgetsu and its era:
1945-1970) (Ashiya and Chiba, 1998), 88-91.
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Regardless of Murai and his fellow artists’ mixed views on Gutai’s
commercialism, this comment suggested what he saw as problematic in the
Tokyo art community: not enough financial backers existed for modernist art (so
that large- scale exhibitions like Gutai’s were impossible). Then he pointed out
that young Kansai artists, including Gutai members, had been given an
opportunity to exhibit their works in “the most visible show windows at a
department store.” Yet at the same time, Murai showed a slight sense of
contempt and jealousy – he thought that the quality of Gutai’s finished works did
not match their “capitalist spirit” (shôkon 商魂) -- the term was usually used
scornfully in regard to visual art.394
In contrast to the mostly negative responses from the critical art
community, Gutai captured substantial positive attention from the mainstream
media. Gutai’s radical three-dimensional pieces, which often invited the viewer’s
participation and contained elements of entertainment, and their two-dimensional
works characterized by energetic physical automatism, greatly appealed to those
in popular journalism. Popular newspapers such as Yomiuri, Mainichi, and Asahi
reported on their exhibitions. Most notably, the Mainichi Newspapers featured a
series of articles introducing six artists after the first exhibition.395 Articles on
Gutai were usually published in local news sections, not in the culture and arts
sections, where art reviews usually appeared. One newspaper reported in its
local news section on Gutai’s demonstration for American Life magazine,
394 Ibid., reprinted in GSDG, 81.
395 “Gutai shijô ten, 1-6” (Gutai Art on paper, 1-6) and “Gutai shijô ten (shû)” (Gutai Art on paper,
final), Mainichi Shinbun (Osaka edition), November 22-28, 1955.
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describing how an eccentric ultramodern Japanese “art of bodily-action” had
been proudly introduced to the world audience.396 At public demonstrations,
which Gutai set up for the press at the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, reporters and
photographers packed the exhibit space. Shiraga described in his memoir the
excitement of journalists witnessing Gutai’s live actions:
During my demonstration [of Foot Painting], one photographer, who was

standing on a chair to take photos, couldn’t keep his balance and fell to
the floor. I remember the scene of his expensive German-made Leica
camera as it smashed loudly to the floor.
… [Shimamoto Shôzô] threw the first bottle to the stone. Paint splashed in
every direction, as if a yellow flower had just bloomed; a picture of
splendor emerged. Cheers and a stir arose in the crowd.397
Another medium which showed great interest in Gutai’s activities was the
English newspapers and magazines that catered to the foreign community in
Tokyo. The Mainichi, an English-language newspaper published by the Mainichi
Newspapers reported on many Gutai exhibitions, including the two outdoor
exhibitions and Gutai Art on Stage in 1957. Pacific Stars & Stripes, a newspaper
for American military personel in Japan, published a report and a rather long
essay on the First Gutai Art Exhibition.398 In the essay “Art is a Hole in the
Ground,” Sergeant I. G. Edmonds jokingly commented on some of the “strange”
396“Kyakkô abiru ‘Taiatari geijutsu’ Nippon no chômodan sekai ni hirô” (“Art of Bodily-Action”
Spotlighted: Ultramodern Japanese-style Introduces Itself to the World), Shin’Osaka, April 9,
1956, cited in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû,
1954-2000 (Tanaka Atsuko: Search for an Unknown Aesthetic 1954-2000) (Ashiya, 2000), 195.
397Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 3,” Bijutsu techô no. 287 (September 1967), reprinted in GSDG,
343.
398 “They Call It Art,” Pacific Stars & Stripes, 22 October 1955, and Sergeant I. G. Edmonds, “Art
is a Hole in the Ground,” Pacific Stars & Stripes, 11 November 1956. Gutai 4 reprinted the latter
article as “Bijutsu towa jimen no ana nari,” translated by Yoshida Toshio. Yoshida commented in
the preface “the article in Stars & Stripes, which reported on the Gutai Exhibition, was
interestingly written through a foreigner’s perspective. That is the reason we published it here.”
Yoshida Toshio, preface for “Bijtusu towa jimen no ana nari’,” Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956), reprinted in
GSDG, 285.
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works, such as Murakami Saburô’s Work Painted by Throwing a Ball (Tôkyû
Kaiga; Figure 127) and Shimamoto Shôzô’s Please Walk On This (Figure 82).
Yet the writer also genuinely admired Gutai’s works, writing that through their
admittedly strange works the artists were freely expressing their feelings.399 In
addition, although not a media outlet originating in Japan, the New York Times
published two articles on Gutai in 1957 – one was a report on Gutai Art on Stage
in July and the other was a more extensive introduction to Gutai’s works at both
Gutai Outdoor Exhibition (summer of 1956) and Gutai Art on Stage. In these
articles, possibly written by the same person, Gutai’s experiments using
unconventional spaces were highly acclaimed: “It is a new art form which may
take the viewer to a gallery, to a pine forest, or to a theatre.”400
The State of the Tokyo Art World in the Mid-1950s: The Issue of Human
Subjectivity
As the examination of the five reviews on three Gutai exhibitions suggests,
the achievements of Gutai’s program and practice generally went unrecognized
in the Tokyo art community of the mid-1950s. Gutai leader Yoshihara Jirô bitterly
attacked their ignorant attitude in 1958:
399 Edmonds, “Art is a Hole in the Ground,” 1956.
400 Ray Falk, “Japanese Innovators,” New York Times, December 8, 1957, D24. The earlier
article is The Night Owl [pseudo.], “Tokyo After Dark,” New York Times, July 1957. In her detailed
study of Gutai’s interaction with the art communities of Paris and New York, Ming Tiampo argues
that Gutai’s critical reception in New York was largely framed by these two articles’ introduction of
Gutai based on Gutai Art on Stage. Thus, when Gutai works were shown at the Martha Jackson
Gallery in the fall of 1958, their paintings disappointed most of the viewers as derivative of
Abstract Expressionism. Tiampo, “Gutai & Informel,” 83-84. Tiempo also speculates that “The
Night Owl” was a pseudonym for Ray Falk, based on the fact that Falk was in Japan and saw
Gutai Art on Stage when the first article was written, and obvious stylistic similarities between the
two articles. Ibid., 83, footnote 64.
cclxvi
… the series of our exhibitions, including some in an orthodox style,

emanated a quite special sort of ambiance. … Art critics repeatedly
criticized us as being Dadaist, but I did not consider ourselves simply
“Dadaist.” And I thought Japanese critics’ attitude strange, because they
did not take the lead in picking the bunch of fresh, innocent, untouched
fruit that we were presenting.401
The lack of critical support of Gutai, however, was the curious outcome of
the dynamic era of art criticism in the 1950s when the generational shift between
old and young critics became obvious. Young critics such as Haryû rose to take a
significant role in the field of criticism, which had been dominated by the older
generation active since the pre- and inter-war years. Their tendency in support of
individual artists and their works, rather than exhibition groups, and their critical
viewpoint which emphasized human aspects in art production had great appeal
to the Japanese, especially young artists and art enthusiasts. The young critics’
efforts to find and establish a new Japanese art based on the reality of Japan fit
well with the sentiment of a Japan searching for its artistic identity. Young artists
themselves also actively engaged in art criticism by presenting views from the
production side. The younger generation became a significant force in the Tokyo
art community; they generated lively discussions in round-table forums, exhibition
reviews and critical writings, published in such newly launched art magazines as
Bijutsu Techô, Geijutsu Shinchô, and Bijutsu Hihyô. Reviews of Gutai exhibitions
were mostly written by these young critics and artists.
The examination of the critical texts of the two most active young critics,
Haryû Ichirô and Segi Shin’ichi, reveals the surprising confluence of interest
401 Yoshihara Jirô, “Ôsaka Kokusai Geijutsusai: Atarashii kaiga Sekai ten kaisai ni kanshite” (On
the Opening of the Osaka International Art Festival: International Art of New Era), Gutai 9 (April
12, 1958), reprinted in GSDG, 305.
cclxvii
between the younger generation and Yoshihara’s Gutai, on such issues as
human subjectivity, its relation to the materiality of the art object, and cultural
identity. Yet their convergence did not yield fruitful results – while both were
concerned with these crucial issues, the gap between their theoretical
approaches was indeed significant.
As we already examined in Chapter Two, the younger generation of critics
and artists began to occupy important position in art criticism as Japan gained
exposure in the international art world in the early to mid-1950s. Japanese
painters, the established and the rising, moved and traveled to Europe and the
United States, as many Japanese artists had done in the prewar period. Large
exhibitions of Western modern masters were brought from abroad and drew
significant audiences. In particular, an exhibition that featured a group of
contemporary French painters belonging to the Salon de Mai (May Salon) –
Salon de Mai in Japan [Saron do me (mei)] Nihon ten; February 1951) – was
received with great enthusiasm. Once Japan became independent in 1952, the
Japanese art community increasingly received invitations to international art
exhibitions.
Although many Japanese artists and art critics enthusiastically embraced
the artistic exchanges made possible again by Japan’s independence, they
inevitably became more aware of Japan’s position in the international art
community. As seen in Chapter Two, Imaizumi Atsuo, art historian and future
assistant director of the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art, delivered blunt criticism on
the derivative nature of Japanese modernist painting presented at the 1952
cclxviii

Salon de Mai exhibition in Paris. His comments stirred a considerable sensation
in the art community and posed serious questions regarding national identity and
Japanese contemporary art.402 The “old guard” critics, Imaizumi included, who
had played significant role in introducing newer styles from European art since
the prewar period, seemed perplexed by this question. Their responses to
Imaizumi’s accusation were generally pessimistic and defensive, and seemed
incapable of aiding in the definition of national identity.
The indecisive attitudes of the “old-guard” critics on the issue of the
cultural identity of Japanese art indicated that they were no longer the vanguard
in contemporary aesthetic, and were incapable of effectively directing the art
community. Yanagi Tôru, himself a member of the older generation, argued that
the current crisis among authoritative art critics (referring to Imaizumi and others)
was rooted in the crisis of “modernism” (kindai shugi 近代主義) that these critics
were embracing. Yanagi said that since prewar period these critics had
spearheaded the importation of the latest modernist styles from the West and
had encouraged artists to adopt them. Thus, there was an inherent contradiction
when they said “be creative” and “be new”: In France, “being new” was a
synonym of “being creative,” yet in Japan, where new styles were all borrowed,
these two words might have sounded rather more like antonyms.403
402Imaizumi Atsuo, “Nihon no bijutsukai ni uttaeru” (Protest to the Japanese Art Community),
Tokyo Shinbun, 1-2 August 1952, reprinted in Imaizumi Atsuo Chosakushû 2: Yôgaron, Kindai
nihon (Collected Essays of Imaizumi Atsuo 2: On Western-style Painting, Modern Japan), Tokyo:
Kyûryûdô, 1979, 258-261.
For more detail on Imaizumi’s report and other critics’ responses, see Chapter Two.
403 Yanagi Tôru, “Bijutsu hihyô no kanô to genkai” (The Possibility and Limitation of Art Criticism),
Bijutsu Hihyô 20 (August 1953), 10.
cclxix
As Yanagi aptly pointed out, the old critics faced a logical dilemma. When
Imaizumi expressed his despair with Japanese painting’s poor quality and its
inability to create an original style, he unknowingly revealed the ineffectiveness of
an art criticism that had encouraged the appropriation of Western styles by
Japanese artists and had yet failed to nurture art with significant cultural identity.
Reviewing contemporary abstract paintings, Takiguchi Shûzô, another critic of
the older generation, lamented,
[The reason why contemporary abstract painting in Japan does not give a
solid impression] is partly because these paintings do not have a strong
presence. But at the same time, it is because there have been no intimate
critiques or appreciations [toward these works], which I poignantly regret
myself. In this situation, the works could do nothing but go anywhere.404
Consequently, attacks on art critics and their art criticism exploded among
Japanese artists and art lovers. Many artists decried the aloofness and self-
congratulatory attitudes of art critics.405 Okamoto Tarô, one of the most polemical
artists of the time, pointed out that the critics tended to just criticize, and ended
up being merely negative; their art criticism did not wrestle with the realities of
Japan and consequently sounded very abstract.406 Art criticism written by the old-
guard critics was also attacked as superficial. Particular scorn was given to the
404Takiguchi Shûzô, “Chûshô to gensô” (Abstraction and Illusion), Bijutsu Techô no. 78 (February
1954), 4.
405 For example, painter Komai Tetsuo: “The thing I would like to ask critics is that I want them to
think together (with us painters) about the direction we are heading. …”; painter Inokuma
Gen’ichirô: “I think the right way is for critics to seek a close relationship with painters and for both
sides to encourage each other. …” Both in “Raundo Têburu: Saron do Me’e Nihon shuppin sakka
wa kô kangaeru” (Roundtable: Japanese Participating Artists for the Salon de Mai Think This
Way), Bijutsu Hihyô 9 (September 1952), 2-15. This article consisted of opinions and defense
expressed by the nineteen painters who participated in the Salon de Mai exhibition in May, 1952,
on which Imaizumi Atsuo wrote his controversial essay.
406 Okamoto Tarô in ibid., 5.
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short but influential exhibition reviews published in major newspapers and
magazines. They were called “a neat arrangement of arbitrary words and
professional jargons” or “single-word art criticism … artists are lined up and
graded like contestants in beauty pageants.”407
Thus a younger generation of critics emerged from the mid- to late 1950s
as a new and persuasive voice to replace the “old-guard” critics, whose
ambiguous attitudes frustrated many members of the art community. These
young critics, including Haryû Ichirô (b. 1925), Segi Shin’ichi (b. 1928), Tôno
Yoshiaki (b. 1930) and Nakahara Yûsuke (b. 1931), were aware of their position
in the art community, and from the start they affirmed the generational differences
between themselves and the “old-guard” critics, who continued to have
considerable power in the art establishment.408 They tried to break the boundary
between “critics” and “critiqued,” so evident in the aloof attitudes of the “old-
guard” critics who tended to evaluate art works mainly at exhibitions of
established groups, and sought close ties with artists, visiting their studios and
forming interdisciplinary groups with them.409 They paid special attention to
young artists who refused to belong to exhibition groups, instead opting to show
their work in solo or group shows outside of the regular exhibition system, or at
407 Takahashi Yoshitaka, “Hihyô wo hihyô suru” (Criticizing Criticism), Bijutsu Techô no. 68 (April
1953), 34, and Haryû Ichirô in “[Zadankai] Shimohanki bijutsukaii wo hihan suru” ([Roundtable
discussion] Criticizing the art world of the latter half of 1953), Bijutsu Hihyô 23 (November 1953),
18.
408In addition to Imaizumi Atsuo, many “old-guard” critics held administrative positions at public
museums. Tominaga Sôichi became the first director of National Museum of Western Art, which
opened in 1959 and Hijikata Teiichi took the position of assistant director at the Museum of
Modern Art, Kamakura, in 1951.
409 Artcritics Segi Shin’ichi and Haryû Ichirô were active participants in an interdisciplinary group
Night Group (Yoru-no-kai) organized in 1948. For further discussion, see Chapter Two.
cclxxi
the two Indépendent exhibitions.410 They also tried to avoid writing the short,
superficial reviews for which the “old-guard” critics were so notorious, and did not
resort to discussing only the technical aspects of artists’ work. Rather, they tried
to incorporate artists’ works and lives and to grasp their aesthetic ideas and
goals.
In their approach to art criticism, the young critics thought that it was
crucial to hold their individual beliefs and judgment and to take responsibility for
their own words on the question in which direction of Japanese art would be
constructed. Their approach, which strongly reflected the contemporary concern
with the issue of human subjectivity, was the direct antithesis of the opportunistic
criticism of the “old-guard” critics, who tended to evaluate diverse styles and
artists without theoretical consistency. Haryû Ichirô discussed how his position as
a critic required responsibility: “as a representative voice of the contemporary
people…after all, critics must look into the subjectivity (shutai 主体) of the critic
himself. …”411 Through their eagerness to engage in real conversation with artists
and their serious efforts to digest works, they were able to create an art criticism
that was more concrete and reflective of Japan’s reality. Segi, in the same
410 Inspired by the ideals of Salon des Artistes Indépendants in France, Nihon Bijutsu Kai (Japan
Art Association) started annual exhibitions, the Nihon Indépendent Exhibitions, in 1946, showing
entries with some fees, but without a selection process or prizes. In 1949, the Yomiuri Newspaper
Company organized a similar exhibition under the same name. Due to the obvious confusion, the
latter was changed to Yomiuri Andepandan Ten (Yomiuri Indépendent Exhibition; often
abbreviated as Yomiuri Anpan). Indépendent exhibitions, such as the Nihon Indépendent
Exhibition and the Yomiuri Indépendent Exhibition became alternative venues for showing the
works of artists who refused to belong to exhibition groups and conform to their ideological
constraints.
411 Haryû Ichirô in “[Zadankai] Shimohanki bijutsukaii wo hihan suru,”18.
cclxxii
roundtable discussion with Haryû, said that art critics had to point not merely to
superficial phenomenon, but to “dig into the essence of artwork.”412
Even as they cautioned their own profession by emphasizing critics’
subjective involvement in art, they were just as insistent that artists take a
subjective position in their artistic practice. In his 1953 essay “Return to the Real:
The Destiny of Modernist Art” (Jitsuzai eno fukki: Kindai kaiga no unmei), Haryû
urged artists to recognize the reality surrounding human beings as opposed to
the self and to represent reality in their own terms. Although this was a hard path,
artists then could grasp the “real” (jitsuzai 実在), fundamental, and universal
existence of being.413 Segi Shin’ichi also wrote in 1953 on the significance of
artists’ subjective engagement with reality in his essay titled “The Issue of the
Human in Painting” (Kaiga ni okeru ningen no mondai). In his essay, he argued
that contemporary art required the artist’s strong will to reconstruct the world of
“materials” (busshitsu 物質) or reality. In that way, Segi believed that artists could
successfully present universal humanism beyond individual experience on the
picture plane, and change/revolutionize reality for all humankind.414
As seen in their interchangeable use of “reality” (genjitsu 現実), “real”
(jitsuzai 実在) “materials” (busshitsu 物質) and “thing” (mono 物), their “reality”
was not simply equivalent to real events and social issues, as in the socialist
412 Segi Shin’ichi in “[Zadankai] Shimohanki bijutsukaii wo hihan suru,” 18-19.
413
Haryû Ichirô, “Jitsuzai eno fukki: Kindai kaiga no unmei” (Return to the Real: The Destiny of
Modernist Art), Bijutsu Hihyô 17 (May 1953), 23.
414 Segi Shin’ichi, “Kaiga ni okeru ningen no mondai” (The Issue of the Human in Painting),
Bijutsu Hihyô 23 (November 1953), 38-39, 44.
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realists’ definition of “reality.” Their “reality” was more general than specific events
and issues; it encompassed all existences in the outer world, the “other” of the
artist’s inner self. As the term “thing” (mono 物) suggests, they could be mundane
objects, yet through the artists’ subjective engagement in the representation of
the “thing” in the picture plane, they would turn into a “reality” or a “real” that
could universally appeal to the human being. Haryû cited French painter Andre
Marchand’s words, “The artist, through his personal and lone pursuit, enters the
inside of the materials, or we might say the universe. Only this process enables
us to grasp the eternal meaning.” He continued, saying “the return to the real is,
regardless of styles and schools, a major characteristic of contemporary
painting.”415
In the pursuit of reconstruction of reality, Haryû and Segi did not see any
need to differentiate between the two major currents, the figurative and abstract
modes of painting. However, whether abstracted or not, they considered that
some sense of figuration of reality was crucial. In these two aforementioned
essays, they argued that convincing representation should be characterized by
the artist’s pursuit of forms and abstraction drawn from reality. Both critics
emphasized the need for the artist’s strong ability in drawing, or “figuration” of
reality through the artist’s own creativity. Citing French painter Fernand Leger’s
words “…unless an artist takes serious consideration of three essential points –
volume, drawing, and color … any return to subject matters and abstraction is of
no use,” Segi argued that drawing was especially fundamental in the
415 Haryû, “Jitsuzai eno fukki,” 23.
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“construction of the human being” in painting.416 Haryû wrote that he strongly
supported young French painters, such as Andre Minaux and Bernard Buffet,
who had aspired to represent the human experience by way of figurative
depiction of things and people.417
Thus, to these young critics, the erasure of “figuration” in non-figurative
painting went against the grain of contemporary art’s pursuit of the reconstruction
of reality. Both Haryû and Segi harshly criticized Dutch painter Piet Mondrian,
who developed pure-abstract composition of lines and color planes. Haryû wrote:
… the approach [non-figurative painting’s pure construction of pictorial

elements represented by Mondrian] became rationalized by the abstract
school, which was derived from Cubism. Their attitude corresponded to
the amazing progress of mechanized civilization fueled by the
advancement of capitalism, and handed the subject (shutai 主体) of artistic
creation itself, which had been severed from the outside world, to the
mechanical system.418
Segi similarly argued:
The person of Mondrian, who had the view [that three-dimensional objects
and architectures look two-dimensional], is someone who has been laid
down horizontally and remains in that position – in other words, he is a
creeping animal, but not a human being.419
In other words, both Haryû and Segi claimed that the rejection of the figuration of
reality and the emphasis on the autonomy of pictorial elements was equal to the
death of the human being, who should instead subjectively reconstruct his/her
416 Segi, “Kaiga ni okeru ningen no mondai,” 42-43.
417 Haryû, “Jitsuzai eno fukki,” 22.
418 Ibid., 24-25.
419 Segi, “Kaiga ni okeru ningen no mondai,” 42.
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reality; in non-figurative painting, the artist abandons his/her human subjectivity
in order to be subservient to the pictorial.
In their critical terrain, therefore, Gutai’s total rejection of figuration and
their strong emphasis on materials and the materiality of painting and art objects
were regarded as following the same path as Mondrian. They did not consider
Gutai as presenting an advanced form of painting, but something which had
regressed to a pre-war state of art, just as Mondrian’s pure abstraction was the
optimistic embrace of the mechanical age, which eventually went bankrupt at the
tragic end of the war. In his 1998 book Nihon, Gendai, Bijutsu (Japan,
Contemporary Era, Art), art critic Sawaragi Noi points out that the “human being”
(ningen 人間) was at the core of artistic creation for the new generation of critics
of the mid-1950s. For these critics, Gutai seemed to have abandoned their
humanity too easily in favor of the properties of materials, tools and machines:
The reason why Haryû Ichirô could not actively embrace Gutai was not a
question of “form” (zôkei 造形). It was because Haryû could not find in
Gutai a modern individual in any sense, namely the human being. Instead,
there he saw something close to the purely physical, automatic movement
of things, such as explosions, mechanical motion, bodily movement,
floating, and sound.420
Just like Yoshihara and Gutai members, the young critics aimed to
construct a new model of contemporary Japanese art, and called for an artistic
practice based on the relationship between materials and human subjectivity. Yet
their approach to materials was fundamentally different. While Gutai artists tried
420 Sawaragi Noi, Nihon, Gendai, Bijutsu (Japan, Contemporary Era, Art) (Tokyo: Shinchôsha,
1998), 272. As mentioned in Segi’s critique on the First Gutai Art Exhibition, the non-figurative
style of painting which Gutai was producing was often criticized as too “formalist” (keishiki shugi
teki 形式主義的) and “decorative” (sôshoku teki 装飾的) and thus considered lacking in
humanistic depth.
cclxxvi
to bring out the very essence of materials and materiality by rejecting figuration,
the young critics saw figuration as the critical way to bring human subjectivity
forward into the world of materials. Despite Yoshihara’s effort to convince the
young critics, this theoretical difference, which was clearly tied to a difference in
their art historical views, hampered Gutai’s acceptance by the Tokyo art
community.
Yoshihara Jirô’s Position in the Japanese Art Community
An equally influential factor in the Japanese art community’s evaluation of
Gutai and its activities was Yoshihara Jirô’s position within that community. In the
mid-1950s, Yoshihara was the leader of Gutai, but more importantly, he was an
established modernist painter and a prominent figure in the modernist exhibition
group Nika-kai. He represented Japan at some of the most important
international exhibitions, such as the aforementioned Salon de Mai and also the
Pittsburg International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture (known
as the Carnegie International Exhibition; both in 1952). At Nika-kai, Yoshihara
was so trusted by its leader, Tôgô Seiji, that he was appointed as the
representative of the group’s Kansai office. Yoshihara’s influential position within
Nika-kai and the Japanese art community significantly contributed to the negative
assessment of Gutai. As seen above, the young critics were inclined to support
individual artists who defiantly objected to the conventional exhibition system.
Unfortunately, Yoshihara’s continuing presence in the Nika-kai generated mixed
feelings and resulted in their increasing resistance to Gutai.
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On the surface, Gutai was a bunch of young, unknown artists. However,
critics, artists, and art lovers in the Tokyo art community considered it an
exhibition group led by Yoshihara Jirô, even though the presence of Yoshihara’s
works in exhibition galleries was not particularly prominent. In the invitation card
to the First Gutai Art Exhibition, Yoshihara wrote an introduction praising the
group, in which he clearly indicated that “I am a part of the group.”421 In Gutai
journals, Yoshihara usually wrote the main critiques of members’ work exhibited
in each exhibition. His essays were always published in the beginning of journals.
Haryû Ichirô later confessed that Gutai had an uninviting aura because of
Yoshihara’s strong presence:
… Inside Yoshihara’s mind coexisted the characteristics of an explorer

who led young artists and explored unknown territories, the characteristics
of difficult and cool art critic, and also the characteristics of a bold
producer and promoter. Gutai was like Yoshihara’s private school, and that
was one reason we hesitated to get involved with the group.422
In addition to his position in Gutai, Yoshihara was also one of the most
prominent members of the exhibition group Nika-kai. He had entered five
paintings in Nika-kai’s annual exhibition in 1934, and had since been very active
in the group. Tôgô Seiji, the leader of Nika-kai in the postwar era, befriended
Yoshihara through painter Ueyama Jirô in 1928, when Yoshihara was just 23
years old.423 As discussed in Chapter One, when Nika-kai was quickly
421 Yoshihara Jirô, “An’naijô” (Invitation [for the First Gutai Art Exhibition]), reprinted in GSDG, 76.
422 Haryû, Sengo bijtusu seisui shi, 99.
423 Yoshihara never had any official painting training, but he named Fujita Tsuguharu and
Ueyama Jirô as the most influential figures in his painting career. According to Yoshihara, they
taught him an important philosophy behind being a modernist artist: never imitate others, be
original. See Yoshihara Jirô, “Waga kokoro no jijoden, 3-4,” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen
Yoshihara Jirô ten, 198-199.
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reorganized in the fall of 1945 after its brief disappearance due to wartime
restrictions, Yoshihara was asked by Tôgô Seiji to revitalize the activities of the
Nika- kai group in the Kansai area.424 A long letter from Tôgô to Yoshihara,
perhaps written in the early 1950s, reveals that Tôgô frequently consulted
Yoshihara regarding administrative problems, display plans and organization of
exhibitions, and recommendation of new members.425 Although Yoshihara did not
participate in 1955 and 1956 (when Gutai was incessantly organizing
exhibitions), he faithfully sent his works to the Nika-kai’s annual exhibition every
September. The “Gutai Art Manifesto,” written by Yoshihara in November 1956,
introduced him as a member of “Nika-kai and the Gutai Art Association,” although
this manifesto had nothing to do with Nika-kai.426 Gutai member Shimamoto
Shôzô, who was very close to Yoshihara in the early 1950s, often heard
Yoshihara say “Nika-kai is not interesting at all.” However, he guessed that
Yoshihara felt obliged to stay in the group because of his intimate connection with
Tôgô Seiji and Okamoto Tarô, another active modernist painter and Nika-kai
member, and because of his important position in the group.427
Thus, in the mid-1950s Yoshihara was primarily known as a prominent
painter associated with Nika-kai, and naturally, Gutai’s reputation was very much
424 “Nenpu” (Chronology) in Yoshihara Jiro ten, 216. Also see Yoshihara, “Waga kokoro no
jijoden, 3,” reprinted in Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten, 198.
425 Letter of Tôgô Seiji to Yoshihara Jirô, undated. Yoshihara Jirô Archives, Ashiya City Museum
of Art & History, Ashiya.
426Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai bijutsu sengen” (The Gutai Art Manifesto), Geijutsu Shinchô 7, no. 12
(December 1956), 204.
427Shimamoto Shôzô, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 368.
Also Shimamoto Shôzô, interviewed by the author, July 12, 2002.
cclxxix

influenced by people’s views of that group. With such active, influential modernist
painters as Okamoto Tarô, Tôgô Seiji, Saitô Yoshishige and Yamaguchi Takeo,
the Nika-kai was considered the center of the new Japanese art. Yet at the same
time, the group’s flamboyant publicity and enterprising spirit provoked many
people’s antipathy. In particular, the group’s disturbing annual pre-exhibition night
festival (zen’ya sai 前夜祭) – including a march to the exhibition gallery with
several cars occupied by a naked “goddess of beauty” (a hired stripper),
surrounded with similarly naked “indigenes” (dojin; the Nika-kai members) –
caused an uproar in the art community (Figure 163). The Nika-kai was also eager
to include “new” trends; in addition to its traditional line-up of paintings and
sculptures, in 1954 the group had sections for photography, commercial art,
comics and children’s art.428 Due to these blatant strategies the Nika-kai was
often criticized for its “entertainment-ism” (kôgyô shugi 興行主義).429
In addition, Nika-kai’s preference for large canvases was seen as
undesirable, and was criticized as large work-ism (taisaku shugi 大作主義). In
1948 photographer Domon Ken documented the selection process for the Nika-
kai’s annual exhibition, and observed that the juries always picked the largest
painting from among works by a given painter.430 The old-guard critic Uemura
Takachiyo questioned this preference, since many of the large paintings seemed
428Haryû Ichirô, “Shûki tenrankai sono ichi: Nika kai” (Fall Exhibitions, Part One: the Nika-kai
Exhibition), Bijutsu techô no. 87 (November 1954), 38.
429For example, see “Ari no tawagoto” (Ant’s Silly Talk), Bijutsu Techô 37 (December 1950), 3;
and Haryû, “Shûki tenrankai sono ichi: Nika kai,” 38.
430 Domon Ken, “Nika ten shinsa ruporutâju” (Report of the Nika Exhibition Jury Selection),
Bijutsu techô no. 11 (November 1948), 30.
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to be stretched unnecessarily and consequently lacked integrity.431 Painters
Hasegawa Saburô and Miyamoto Saburô also agreed that large paintings at the
Nika-kai exhibition seemed to have lost formal integrity due to enlargement. They
took Yoshihara Jirô’s Work (Figure 48) as an example of their point, and said that
the work would be stronger if it were of smaller size.432
The ethos of these criticisms against the Nika-kai were evident in the
negative views concerning Gutai. Member Shiraga Kazuo remembered that the
public performance in the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, attended by many
reporters from newspapers, magazines, and news film production companies,
was attacked as a “publicity stunt” (baimei kôi 売名行為) by many people in the
art community.433 Motonaga Sadamasa recalled that the group was criticized as
“a tool of capitalists,” who engaged in “bourgeois play.”434 Gutai’s penchant for
flamboyant public performance was easily targeted as frivolous in artistic
practice, which had to be a serious pursuit. That sentiment was especially strong
among the young critics; they preferred artists, especially of the younger
generation, who were working outside the conventional exhibition system and
who showed their works mainly at one-person shows, small-scale group
exhibitions, and/or the Indépendent exhibitions. The young critics’ interest in
431Tanabe Kenzô and Uemura Takachiyo, “Shûkiten hiraku: Nika, Kôdô” (Opening of Fall
Exhibitions: the Nika-kai and Kôdô Bijutsu Kyôkai Exhibitions), Bijutsu Techô no. 35 (October
1950), 42.
432Hasegawa Saburô and Miyamoto Saburô, “Nika, Kôdô ten wo mite” (Reviews of the Nika-kai
and Kôdô Bijutsu Kyôkai Exhibitions), Bijutsu techô no. 74 (October 1953), 80.
433Shiraga, “Bôken no kiroku, 3,” Bijutsu techô no. 287 (September 1967), reprinted in GSDG,
343.
434Motonaga Sadamasa, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in GSDG,

394.
cclxxxi

human subjectivity made them more attracted to these young artists, who chose
to pursue their art “subjectively” outside of the system. Although no obvious
connections were made between Gutai and Nika-kai in the critical reviews of
Gutai exhibitions, it was inevitable that members of the Tokyo art community
would associate Nika-kai’s reputation with Gutai’s bodily actions, public
demonstrations, interdisciplinary approach, and large-scale presentations and
pieces.
Gutai Painting: Impact of Negative Responses
In September 1957, French critic and leader of the Informel movement
Michel Tapié arrived Japan. Having developed an interest in Gutai and its
activities through Gutai journals between 1955 and 1956, he visited Yoshihara’s
house to view Gutai paintings, and excitedly wrote in Gutai 8, “… the high
qualities of these paintings are sufficient for participating in the highest
competitions of the international art world… .”435 Gutai leader Yoshihara Jirô
praised Tapié as “in fact the first art critic, either internationally or nationally, who
seriously considered the work of Gutai,” and bitterly criticized the views of the
Japanese art critics.436 After Gutai hosted flamboyant Informel painter Georges
Mathieu’s one-person show in Osaka, the group closely collaborated with Michel
Tapié in many projects, organizing exhibitions in Japan, Europe, and the United
States, and inviting Informel artists to Japan. Some of the Gutai members had
435 Michel Tapié, “Gutai ha raisan” (In Praise of the Gutai School), Gutai 8 (September 29, 1957),
436 Yoshihara, “Ôsaka Kokusai Geijutsusai: Atarashii kaiga Sekai ten kaisai ni kanshite,” reprinted
in GSDG, 305.
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contracts with galleries with which Tapié had close connections, and regularly
sent their paintings to Europe.437 Their collaboration lasted until Gutai had
disbanded, soon after Yoshihara’s death in 1972.
Tapié’s interaction with Gutai brought fundamental changes in the group’s
practice and presentation. By the Fourth Gutai Art Exhibition at the Ohara Kaikan
Hall in September 1957, Gutai had abandoned much of their interdisciplinary
approach to focus instead on painting. Tapié pointedly told Gutai members to
focus on painting because it was easier to transport to and market in Europe.438
Also, as facilitator of the painting movement Informel, he mainly valued painting
and was interested in organizing shows exclusively in that genre. Gutai members
did not object to Tapié’s encouragement in this regard. As discussed in Chapter
Four, the Gutai artists, even those who created the most radical three-
dimensional objects and performative works, had all along had a sense that they
were practicing within the field of painting practice. Their experiments in their
view did not establish themselves as separated from painting: the lessons and
achievements of the experiments indeed served to enrich their two-dimensional
works.
The collaboration with Tapié’s Art Informel movement motivated Yoshihara
to support the Gutai members’ return to the two-dimensional medium. Another
437 Shiraga Kazuo had a contract with the Stadler Gallery in Paris, as did Motonaga Sadamasa
with the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. Works of other Gutai members were also
occasionally shown at these galleries.
438 See Shimamoto, interviewed by Yamamura and Osaki, in GSDG, 371; Murakami Saburô,
interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 375; Motonaga, interviewed
by Yamamura and Osaki, GSDG, 394. Prior to Tapié’s comments, many Gutai members had used
materials of greater fragility than regular canvases and oil paints, such as paper, newspaper,
cotton fabric, industrial paint, and watercolors. As discussed in the previous chapters, they were
inexpensive and more readily available to many Gutai artists.
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significant factor that underlay Yoshihara’s return to painting – after the end of
outdoor exhibitions and theater performance in1958 – was the reviews and
responses of the contemporary art community in Japan. As demonstrated above,
reviewers of Gutai exhibitions wrote mainly on painting, despite their interest in
the various bodies of work. Sanami Hajime, who wrote a rather favorable critique
of the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, properly recognized that Gutai’s program of
prioritizing materials yielded artistic formats which were not confined to painting.
However, Sanami said that Gutai’s ultimate goal should have been to cultivate
new territories of abstract painting. Sanami called some abstract paintings in the
exhibition “paintings in the midst of an experimental room” (jikken shitsu no kaiga
実験室の絵画).439
Around the time of Tapié’s visit in the fall of 1957, Yoshihara told some of
the Gutai members of Sanami’s review verbatim. Shimamoto Shôzô remembered
Yoshihara’s comments:
… in addition to Tapié’s visit, Yoshihara was very worried about our

activities, which were becoming increasingly distant from painting. He said
that to become distant might yield some new meaning; if we stop and
reflect back, that might mean creating a totally different genre. For
example in the area of theater, there is a new genre of pantomime. Yet
pantomime is not new, but one part of theater. We don’t want to be like
pantomime. Teacher always felt that way. Then Tapié came to us, and
[Yoshihara thought that] these excellent Gutai artists might be able to
create sufficiently new painting. … we [Gutai members] thought glibly that
we had done outdoor exhibitions and then stage performance; now as a
new experiment, let us try painting. …440
Shiraga Kazuo also reminisced:
439 Sanami, “Gutaibijutsu no hitobito to sono shigoto,” 31, reprinted in GSDG, 315.
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… we had done so many experiments and each of us had found our own
way. So, [Yoshihara] thought that we ought to make our work of higher
quality.441
Therefore, in spite of the fact that the negative responses from the Tokyo art
community frustrated and antagonized Yoshihara, they did spur him to turn
Gutai’s focus on experimentations to tableaus.
Conclusion
Through journals and exhibitions Yoshihara Jirô and Gutai promoted
themselves to the center of Japanese art community, Tokyo. Despite these
efforts, Gutai did not receive much response; their voice for establishing a new
model of Japanese modernist art was mostly rejected by the young generation of
critics and artists. The young critics, who emerged as a powerful critical force in
the mid-1950s, shared concerns with Gutai on subjectivity and national identity in
Japanese artistic practice. Like Yoshihara, they emphasized the material aspect
of the art object and tried to relate that to the issue of human subjectivity.
However, they considered figuration to be the fundamental expression mode to
reconstruct Japan’s reality in painting. In addition, Yoshihara’s established
position in the leading modernist art group Nika-kai led them to resist accepting
Gutai’s many experiments, instead interpreting them as flamboyant and trivial.
After the Fourth Gutai Art Exhibition in September 1957, Gutai began to
concentrate on the production of painting. For one thing, Michel Tapié’s concern
with the marketability of Gutai works gave a strong impetus to Yoshihara and
441 Shiraga Kazuo, interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô, in GSDG, 387.
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Gutai to shift their medium. Equally important, Yoshihara decided to direct Gutai
members to focus on painting in response to critical receptions of the art
community in Tokyo. Because their critiques mostly concerned painting, despite
their interest in various bodies of work, Yoshihara was anxious about Gutai
members’ experiments, which moved away from the conventional categorization
of painting as painterly expression utilizing canvas and oil paint.
Since Gutai’s “discovery” by Tapié was so sudden and dramatic, it has
been commonly accepted that Gutai’s renewed interest in painting was due
mostly to this incident. Also, Gutai’s defiant attitude to the Tokyo art community
gave the impression that Gutai did not pay much attention to the critiques of the
young critics. However, Yoshihara was quite concerned with the reception of
Gutai by the community. The fact that no critics seriously regarded the group’s
exhibitions made him frustrated, whether he should have encouraged the
members to expand the notions of painting practice. As curator Osaki Shin’ichirô
demonstrates, Gutai’s early experiments organically related to their dynamic two-
dimensional works produced after 1957.442 Yet it is also crucial to acknowledge
that the disappearance of experimental works and subsequent focus on painting
was done to conform to the Tokyo art community’s critical vocabularies, which
mostly concerned painting.
442 Osaki, “Seisei to jizoku: Gutai bijutsu kyôkai saikô 1,” 47-48.
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Chapter Six
Conclusion
In the eighth issue of the journal Gutai, which featured a long essay on the
Informel movement by French critic Michel Tapié, the leader of the Gutai Art
Association, Yoshihara Jirô, dedicated a short essay titled “Michel Tapié,
Together with Us” (Misheru Tapie, warera to tomo ni). In it, Yoshihara proudly
said, “Mr. Michel Tapié walks along with us. It is our pleasure to announce here
that Mr. Tapié is now part of our group. …” It was around this time that Gutai for
the most part abandoned its three-dimensional and performance works and
moved to concentrate on painting. From then on, Gutai became an important
partner for the international Informel movement.
Gutai’s participation in the Informel movement and the new focus on
painting did not result in any reconciliation with the young critics in Tokyo, the
major force in the contemporary art community. The young critics’ insistence on
the figuration of reality as essential to the reconstruction of the human being was
in direct opposition to Gutai’s negation of figuration and literal content. Although
Tapié did not totally reject figuration in his theory of Informel – he included the
figurative works of French painters Jean Fautrier and Jean Dubuffet, American
painter Willem De Kooning, and others – the movement was known primarily for
its expressionistic non-figurative paintings, emphasizing as they did the
cclxxxvii
materiality of paint and gestural style, as seen in Georges Mathieu’s works
(Figure 4). The young critics were therefore quite critical of Informel. But more
importantly, they considered the arrival of Tapié and Informel a rebuff of human
subjectivity and a revival of a colonialistic mentality wherein Japanese artists
would accept Western concepts and styles without resistance. Segi Shin’ichi, one
of the most active young critics, wrote in 1958: “in result [Tapié’s] Informel yielded
another, new, Fauvism among us [Japanese].”443 Gutai’s participation in the
Informel movement provoked antipathy among young art critics and was seen as
a part of the “Informel Whirlwind” (Anforumeru senpû アンフォルメル旋風), a
phenomenon of the quick spread of the Informel style among Japanese
modernist.
Although Gutai’s critical reception did not improve at home, its activities
did expand greatly through collaboration with Tapié’s Informel movement. Gutai
participated in several exhibitions overseas; the group organized shows at the
Martha Jackson Gallery in New York (1958), and was represented by a
significant number of works in several European shows of Informel artists.
Furthermore in 1962, the group opened the Gutai Pinacotheca, a permanent
exhibit gallery for Gutai members and Informel artists in a renovated old
warehouse (Figure 164).444 The site was frequently visited by foreign journalists,
artists, musicians and critics, and rapidly established itself as the center of
443Segi Shin’ichi, “Anforumeru wo meguru sukyandaru (Scandals Surrounding Informel),”

Geijutsu Shinchô, 9: 2 (February 1958), cited in Katô, “Nihon ni okeru Anforumeru no juyô”, 95.
444 According to Yoshihara, “pinacotheca” is an English word derived from Classical Greek
language. The name was proposed by the leader of the Informel movement, Michel Tapié.
Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai Pinacoteka kaisetsu ni atatte” (On the Opening of the Gutai Pinacotheca),
signed August 14, 1962, reprinted in GSDG, 236.
cclxxxviii
contemporary art in Kansai.445 Yet the foundation of the Gutai Pinacotheca
accelerated the institutionalization of the group. While in the early years a group
of painters of similar age and status, Gutai in the 1960s became hierarchically
divided into two factions: the older, more established artists and the younger,
aspiring artists. With a permanent gallery space, Gutai became a group of
professional artists producing high-quality work at a regular pace.446 This
institutionalization of Gutai manifested symbolically by its participation in the
Osaka World Exposition in 1970. Gutai produced a spectacle the Gutai Art
Festival (Gutai Bijutsu Matsuri; Figure 165), which was largely a reenactment of
performative pieces from the group’s earlier First and Second Gutai Art on Stage.
With abundant funding from the government and corporations, Gutai utilized
advanced technologies to recreate some memorable work, such as Shiraga
Kazuo’s Ultramodern Sanbasô (Figure 87 and Figure 135) and Murakami
Saburô’s Breaking Papers (Figure 109).447 However this sophisticated replay of
the group’s early experiments showed the inertia and decline of Gutai as a
modernist movement. Gutai subsequently disbanded soon after Yoshihara Jirô’s
sudden death in 1972.
If we ask whether the early activities of Gutai left any significant legacy,
directly or indirectly, in later Japanese art, the answer would probably be no. The
445These visitors included Robert Rauchenberg, John Cage, Jasper Jones, Willem de Kooning,
Clement Greenberg, Laurence Alloway, and Pierre Restany.
446 Osaki Shin’ichirô, “Seisei to jizoku: Gutai bijutsu kyôkai saikô, 6” (Generation and Duration:
Re-examination of the Gutai Art Association, 6), Art and Critique (Kyoto Junior College of Art), no.
6, 38.
447
For example, Shiraga Kazuo showed Aka Ningen (Red Person), a variation of Ultramodern
Sambasô (1957).
cclxxxix
group’s activities were almost solely based on practice. In the beginning the
overarching concept of materials and human subjectivity encouraged the
expansion of conventional notions of painting practice, but there was no
corresponding theoretical support for Gutai’s shift from experimentation to
painting after 1958. As Gutai became institutionalized as the leading modernist
group in Kansai in the early 1960s, its members produced many highly skilled,
sophisticated abstract paintings. Gutai did not hide their legacy of energetic
interdisciplinary works of the mid-1950s – as seen in the Gutai Art Festival in
1972, the early pieces were reenacted in spectacular fashion – but they were
presented as the works of the past.
At Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibitions in the late 1950s, a new wave of
painting, assemblages, installations, performative pieces began to appear. In
their approaches to disintegrating notion of painting practice, these works
resembled Gutai’s pre-1958 activities. This happened, ironically, just when Gutai
began collaborating with Tapié’s Informel movement. Young artists, including
Sakurai Takami and Kikuhata Mokuma of Kyûshû-ha (Kyûshû School), Kudô
Tetsumi, Shinohara Ushio, and Nakanishi Natsuyuki, had started creating
gestural painting, utilizing industrial paints, and chaotic installations of found
objects (Figure 5). Yet neither these emerging artists nor the critics referred to
Gutai’s earlier experimentations shown in Tokyo. As discussed in Chapter One,
Miyakawa Atsushi, one of the new art critics to emerge in the early 1960s,
attributed the impetus behind these radical young artists to French Informel
paintings. Miyakawa argued that the untrammeled “gesture” of these Informel
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painters greatly moved young Japanese artists in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
inspiring them to create wild, violent, and chaotic objects and installation
works.448
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a distinctive group of artists began to
create art works composed of natural materials, such as rock, paper, wood,
earth, and water. The group came to be known as the Mono-ha (School of Thing)
and included artists Sekine Nobuo, Li U-han, Suga Kishio, and Yoshida Katsurô
(Figure 167). These artists were interested in showing natural materials – raw,
unmodified, and “as they are” – and their works are often simple, geometric
compositions using the materials. Their emphasis on the natural state of
materials was similar to Gutai’s approach. Gutai was still in existence when
Mono-ha rose to dominance in the contemporary art scene in the early 1970s,
but artists and critics did not mention any connection between the two. The
notable exception was Hikosaka Naoyoshi, who started his artistic career in the
late 1960s and wrote the first critical analysis of Gutai’s early experimental period
in 1972. In his ground-breaking essay, “Beyond the Closed Circle: What to Learn
from Gutai’s Trajectory,” Hikosaka wrote that he first came to know of Gutai’s
early experiments through Shiraga Kazuo’s autobiographical essay “Document of
Adventure: Writing on Episodes from Twelve Years of Gutai,” published in the
popular art magazine Bijutsu Techô in 1967.449 According to Hikosaka, Gutai’s
448Miyakawa Atsushi, “Anforumeru ikô” (After Informel), Bijutsu Techô (May 1963), cited in Chiba
Shigeo, Gendai bijutsu itsudatsushi 1945-1985 (A History of Deviation in Contemporary Art
1945-1985) (Tokyo: Shôbunsha, 1986), 38-39.
449Shiraga Kazuo, “Bôken no kiroku: episôdo de tsuzuru Gutai gurûpu no jûninen” (Document of
Adventure: Writing on Episodes from Twelve Years of Gutai), Bijutsu Techô no. 285-291 (July-
December 1967), reprinted in GSDG, 335-353.
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early experiments inspired him at a time when he himself was struggling to find
“originality” in his artwork while his college classmates confined themselves to
making art objects which resembled contemporary artists or early Gutai pieces.
In Gutai’s early experiments, Hikosaka saw a separation between the art “object”
and “practice” (jissen 実践), and considered the latter as the only area left where
one could seek new possibilities of “expression as sensitive, humanist
activities.”450 Hikosaka’s solution was to execute a series of “events”; for
example, his Delivery + Floor Events was the combination of two “events”
repeated over and over by the artist. He “delivered” the contents of his own room
to a gallery space, then put them back in his room. In Floor Event, he spread
liquid latex all over his room and furnishings and allowed the viewing public to
watch as the latex hardened (Figure 166).
This dissertation has examined the artistic achievements of the Gutai
group in its early years, when its members tried to establish a new model of
Japanese modernist art by focusing on material and the materiality of an art
object and the artist’s engagement with the materials as an expression of human
presence. This endeavor started when the group’s leader Yoshihara critically
engaged the issues surrounding Japanese modernist artists in the immediate
and early postwar period: how to incorporate human experience into art, and how
to challenge criticisms of modernist art practice as being derivative of Western
art. Yoshihara had produced works of geometric shapes in the late 1930s, and as
450 Hikosaka Naoyoshi, Hanpuku, cited in Chiba, Gendai bijutsu itsudatsushi, 174.
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a result considered non-figurative painting, which rejected figuration of tangible
objects in reality or any intermediary meanings, as the most advanced form. To
incorporate the presence of the human being in non-figurative painting,
Yoshihara emphasized the artist’s individual, subjective ways of engaging with
the materials. The exclusive focus on neutral materials and universal human
subjectivity bypassed contemporary discussions over national authenticity in
modernist styles, and showed a powerful answer to the predicament of Japanese
modernist art.
Yoshihara’s conceptual model of materials and human subjectivity for non-
figurative painting was adopted and greatly expanded by young Gutai artists.
The departure from mimetic representation and emphasis on these two aspects
of painting opened up new expressive possibilities in conceptualizing painting as
an object, as well as painting as a process. Yoshihara encouraged Gutai
members to pursue the “object-hood” and performativity of painting practice by
providing such unusual exhibition environments as an outdoor park and a
theater. These challenging environments led Gutai artists to adopt an
unprecedented variety of materials, techniques, methods, and presentations.
Among Gutai artists, Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko
created unique, individual works, ranging from two- and three-dimensional art
objects to performance pieces. However, these three artists each had distinctive
interests in their approach to visual art that persisted through their diverse works:
Shimamoto desired to break what constituted “painting” with his violent acts,
while Shiraga rigorously worked to eliminate conventions of composition and
ccxciii
color tonality from painting, using various parts of his body. Tanaka was intrigued
by the flexibility and expandability of painting support. By expanding the use of
tools and materials beyond oil paint, paintbrush and canvas, Gutai transformed
the practice of Japanese modernist art that had evolved in response to Western
art since the late 19th century.
Gutai members confidently presented their works and their innovative
approaches through a series of journals and at exhibitions in the center of the
Japanese art community, Tokyo. Yet their new model of Japanese modernist art
was mostly rejected by the young generation of critics and artists. The young
critics, who emerged as a powerful critical force in the mid-1950s, shared
concerns with Gutai on subjectivity and national identity of Japanese artistic
practice. Like Yoshihara, they emphasized the material aspect of an art object
and tried to relate that to the issue of human subjectivity. However, unlike Gutai,
they considered figuration as the fundamental mode of expression for
reconstructing Japan’s reality in painting. In addition, Yoshihara’s established
position in the leading modernist art group Nika-kai led them to reject Gutai’s
many experiments as flamboyant and trivial.
This study has shed light on Gutai’s early period from three different
perspectives. First, the theoretical constellation around Yoshihara Jirô was
discussed, focusing on his pre-Gutai years. His involvement in local art
organizations, his discovery of children’s art, primitive art, contemporary
American painting, and calligraphy, and encounters with local young artists all
contributed to the construction of his innovative concept. Secondly, the
ccxciv

developments of three Gutai members were examined, paying equal attention to
their individual theorization practice and creative conversations with Yoshihara.
Thirdly, it considered the response of the powerful contemporary Tokyo art
community to Gutai and its work as one decisive factor in Gutai’s return to
conventional practice in painting. These perspectives should bring Gutai back
from its current isolated position in Japanese art history and ground it firmly on its
historical and cultural contexts in early postwar Japan.
As the earlier part of this dissertation demonstrated, the activities and
works of Gutai were the rich results of an artistic dialogue between American
painter Jackson Pollock and Yoshihara Jirô. These figures never had any direct
contact, and we can never know Pollock’s opinion of Gutai, except that he owned
a few copies of the journal Gutai. But Pollock inspired Yoshihara in his theoretical
construction of the gestural mode of painting as one of the best ways to bring
materials forward through artist’s subjective engagement. Furthermore,
Yoshihara saw in Pollock’s painting an attention to materials that would lead to
the transformation of painting practice, from painterly expression to physical
“object.” This conceptualization of Pollock’s painting led Yoshihara to encourage
young Gutai artists’ interest in transcending the confinement of painting practice
to create three-dimensional and installation works. Yoshihara’s critical
interpretation of Pollock and Gutai artists’ remarkable expansion of the
possibilities resulted in a rich body of modernist art. Yet at the same time, this
study suggests that Yoshihara’s encounter with Pollock’s painting was one of
many events that this Japanese modernist painter and theorist digested in
ccxcv

achieving his goal of presenting a new art. This study of Gutai’s early years has
shown that a process of artistic transmission, interpretation, and creation is a
complex project, contextualized by a specific time and space. Locating this
complexity of modernist art should disrupt the myth of modernist art history as a
static, monolithic lineage.
ccxcvi
Figures
ccxcvii
Figure 1. Shimamoto Shôzô, public demonstration of Painting

by Throwing Bottles, the Second Gutai Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan
Hall, Tokyo, October 1956.
ccxcviii
Figure 2. Shiraga Kazuo,

Please Come In,
paint on wood, 1955/1992.
ccxcix
Figure 3. Tanaka Atsuko, Electric Dress, mixed media, 1956/1986.
ccc
Figure 4. Georges Mathieu, public demonstration, September 1957.
ccci
Figure 5. Nakanishi Natsuyuki, Clothespins Assert

Churning Action, shown at the 15th Yomiuri Indépendant
Exhibition, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1963.
cccii
Figure 6. Kanayama Akira, Work, mixed media on vinyl [top],

shown at the Third Gutai Exhibition, Kyoto City Museum of Art
[bottom], 1957.
ccciii

ccciv
Figure 7. Hasegawa Saburô, untitled image in his “Sho wa bi no hôko

desu” (Calligraphy is Treasure House of Beauty), Sho no bi 31
(November 1950), 13.
cccv
Figure 8. Okamoto Tarô, Heavy Industry, oil on canvas, 1949.
cccvi
Figure 9. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work (Painting of Cannons), industrial

paint, glass, paper on canvas, 1955.
cccvii
cccviii
Figure 10. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, cotton cloth, 1955, shown at the First
Gutai Art Exhibition, October 1955 [top] and extant pieces [bottom]; all
created in 1955.
cccix
cccx
Figure 11. Tsuruoka Masao, Heavy Hands, oil on canvas, 1949.
cccxi
Figure 12. Kazuki Yasuo, Burial, oil on canvas, 1948.
cccxii

Figure 13. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, oil on canvas, 1937.
cccxiii
Figure 14. Yamashita Kikuji, The Tale of Akebono Village, oil on

canvas, 1953.
cccxiv
Figure 15. Nakamura Hiroshi, Fifth District of Sunagawa, oil on wood,

1955.
cccxv
 

cccxvi
Figure 17. Yoshihara Jirô, Chrysanthemums, oil on canvas, 1942.
cccxvii
cccxviii
Figure 18. The First Genbi (Contemporary Art Discussion Group)

Exhibition, 1953.
cccxix
Figure 19. Yoshihara Jirô, stage designs for ballet program Amerika
(America), March 18-19, 1950.
cccxx
Figure 20. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work: Holes, paint and pencil on

newspaper, 1950.
cccxxi

Figure 21. Yoshihara Jirô, Fish and Morning Glories, oil on canvas,
1928.
cccxxii

Figure 22. Yoshihara Jirô, Ship Mast, oil on canvas, 1931.
cccxxiii

Figure 23. Yoshihara Jirô, Landscape D, oil on canvas, c.1933.
cccxxiv
Figure 24. Yoshihara Jirô, Flowers and Children, oil on canvas, 1947.
cccxxv
Figure 25. Yoshihara Jirô, Face with Running Tears, oil on canvas,
1949.
cccxxvi

Figure 26. Haniwa (terra-cotta tomb figurines), Dancing People, Kofun
Period, 6th century.
cccxxvii
cccxxviii
Figure 28. Yoshihara Jirô, Face, oil on canvas, 1949.
cccxxix

cccxxx

cccxxxi
Figure 31. Joseph Glasco, Two Figures, oil and sand on canvas, 1951.
cccxxxii
cccxxxiii
Figure 33. Jackson Pollock, Number 8, oil, enamel, and aluminum paint
on canvas, 1949.
cccxxxiv
Figure 34. Nakahara Nantenbô, Calligraphy, circa December 20, 1913,

Kaiseiji Temple, Nishinomiya City, Hyôgo.
cccxxxv
cccxxxvi
Figure 35. “[Zadankai] Nantenbô no sho” ([Roundtable discussion]

Calligraphy of Nantenbô), Bokubi 14 (July 1952), the front page.
cccxxxvii

Calligraphy of Nantenbô), Bokubi 14 (July 1952). Nakahara Nantenbô,
Calligraphy (screens 5 and 6), circa December 20, 1913.
cccxxxviii

Calligraphy of Nantenbô), Bokubi 14 (July 1952). Nakahara
Nantenbô, Calligraphy (screen 1 [R] and details of screens 3 and 5
[L]), circa December 20, 1913.
cccxxxix
Figure 38. Ryôkan, Heaven and Earth, ink on paper, Edo period.
cccxl
cccxli
Figure 39. Yoshihara Jirô, Girl and Seven Birds, oil on canvas, 1950.
cccxlii
Figure 40. Yoshihara Jirô, Bird, oil on canvas, c.1950.
cccxliii
Figure 41. Yoshihara Jirô, Cat and Fish, oil on canvas, c.1950.
cccxliv
cccxlv

cccxlvi
cccxlvii
Figure 45. Yoshihara Jirô, Night, Bird, Hunter, oil on canvas, 1951.
cccxlviii
Figure 46. Yoshihara Jirô, Primordial, oil on canvas, c. 1952.
cccxlix
cccl
Figure 47. Yoshihara Jirô, Work B, oil on canvas, 1953.
cccli

Figure 48. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, oil on canvas, 1953.
ccclii
Figure 49. Suda Kokuta, Work 13, oil on canvas, 1954.
cccliii
cccliv
Figure 50. Willem De Kooning, Excavation, oil and enamel on

canvas, 1950.
ccclv
Figure 51. “α bu” (Alpha section). Bokubi 11 (April 1954), unpaged.
ccclvi
 

Figure 52. Tanaka Atsuko, Work (Bell), mixed media, 1955/1981.
ccclvii
Figure 53. Inoue Yûichi, Hin, ink on paper, c. 1955.
ccclviii
ccclix
Figure 54. Morita Shiryû, Soko (Bottom), ink on paper, 1955.
ccclx
Figure 55. Kinoshita Toshiko, titles unknown, mixed media on paper, 1956,
shown at the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall, Tokyo,
October 1956.
ccclxi
Figure 56. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, industrial paint on asphalt sheet,

c. 1950-1952.
ccclxii
Figure 57. Critique and selection before the Seventh Gutai Art Exhibition,
Turin, Italy, June 1959, at Yoshihara’s studio, in his residence in Ashiya.
ccclxiii
Figure 58. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, industrial paint on newspaper,

1951.
ccclxiv

Figure 59. Shiraga Kazuo, Work, oil on paper, 1955 (The actual
entry piece is undertermined; this is a similar piece also created in
1955).
ccclxv

Figure 60. Murakami Saburô, Entrance, paper and wood, 1955/1992
ccclxvi
Figure 61. Shiraga Kazuo, Challenging Mud, earth, cement and water,
1955.
ccclxvii

Figure 62. Yoshida Toshio, The Entrance Sign for Yomigaeru Yagaiten
(Outdoor Exhibition Revived), July 25 – August 2, 1992, at Ashiya Park,
Ashiya.
ccclxviii
Figure 63. Shimamoto Shôzô, Untitled, metal sheet, 1955.
ccclxix

Figure 64. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, industrial paint on metal sheet,
1955/1992.
ccclxx
Figure 65. Yamazaki Tsuruko, Danger, metal sheet, wood and nails,
1955/1992.
ccclxxi
ccclxxii
Figure 66. Yoshihara Michio, Work, mixed media, 1955.
ccclxxiii

Figure 67. Murakami Saburô, Work, asphalt sheet, 1955.
ccclxxiv
ccclxxv
Figure 68. Motonaga Sadamasa, Liquid: Red, vinyl sheet, ink, and
water, 1955/1992.
ccclxxvi
Figure 69. Tanaka Atsuko, Untitled, cloth, 1955/1992.
ccclxxvii
Figure 70. Yoshida Toshio, Untitled, industrial paint and wood panel,
1955.
ccclxxviii
Figure 71. Kanayama Akira, Work B, industrial paint, rubber ball, and
wood panel, 1955/1992
ccclxxix

Figure 72. Sumi Yasuo, Work, enamel paint, cloth, and wire net,
1955/1992.
ccclxxx
Figure 73. Tanaka Atsuko, Yellow Tree, paint on wood panel, 1955.
ccclxxxi

Figure 74. Motonaga Sadamasa, Work “Water,” polyethylene, ink and
water 1956/1992.
ccclxxxii
Figure 75. Kanayama Akira, Footsteps, industrial pain and vinyl sheet,
1956/1992.
ccclxxxiii
Figure 76. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, mixed media, 1955.
ccclxxxiv
Figure 77. Yamazaki Tsuruko, Room, vinyl, wood and light bulbs,
1956/1992.
ccclxxxv
Figure 78. Tanaka Atsuko,

Stage Clothes, mixed media,
1956.
ccclxxxvi
ccclxxxvii
Figure 79. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, mixed media, 1956.
ccclxxxviii
Figure 80. Motonaga Sadamasa, Work, mixed media, 1956.
ccclxxxix
Figure 81. Shiraga Kazuo, Ѻ, earth, water, vinyl, and linen ropes,
1956.
cccxc

Figure 82. Shimamoto Shôzô, Please Walk On This, mixed
media, 1956.
cccxci
Figure 83. Taniguchi Saikô, Untitled, ping pong balls, bamboo sticks,
and wood panel, 1955.
cccxcii

Figure 84. Murakami Saburô, Sky, mixed media, 1955/1992.
cccxciii

Figure 85. Sakamitsu Noboru, Work, elastic and cotton gloves, 1955.
cccxciv
Figure 86. Sumi Yasuo, Automatism Drawing, shown at the First

cccxcv
Figure 87. Shiraga Kazuo, Ultramodern Sanbasô, shown at the

cccxcvi
Figure 88. Kanayama Akira, Big Balloon, shown at the First Gutai
Art on Stage, 1957.
cccxcvii
Figure 89. Yoshida Toshio, Fabric Ritual , shown at the Second

Gutai Art on Stage, April 1958.
cccxcviii
Figure 90. Yoshihara Jirô, Two Spaces, shown at the First Gutai Art on
Stage, 1957.
cccxcix
cd
Figure 91. Tanaka Atsuko, Stage Clothes, 1956-1957, shown at the

cdi
Figure 92. Tanaka Atsuko and Motonaga Sadamasa, Finale: Stage

Clothes and Smoke (1956-1957), shown at the First Gutai Art on Stage,
1957.
cdii

Figure 93. Shimamoto Shôzô, Hitting And Destroying Objects, 1956,
shown at the First Gutai Art on Stage, 1957.
cdiii
Figure 94. Tanaka Atsuko, Stage Clothes 1956-1957, shown at the

cdiv
Figure 95. Tanaka Atsuko, Stage Clothes 1956-1957, shown at the

cdv
Figure 96. Tanaka Atsuko, Stage Clothes 1956-1957, shown at the First
cdvi
Figure 97. View of the

First Gutai Art
Exhibition, Ohara
Kaikan Hall, Tokyo,
October 1955.
cdvii
Figure 98. Murakami Saburô, Six Holes, 1955, shown at the First
Gutai Art Exhibition, October 1955.
cdviii
cdix
Figure 99. Motonaga Sadamasa, Work, 1956, shown at the One Day
Outdoor Exhibition, April 1956.
cdx
Figure 100 Murakami Saburô, Breaking Papers, 1956, shown at the One
Day Outdoor Exhibition, April 1956.
cdxi
Figure 101. Shiraga Kazuo, demonstration of Foot Painting, 1956,

shown at the One Day Outdoor Exhibition, April 1956.
cdxii
Figure 102. Kanayama Akira, Work, oil on wooden board, 1954.
cdxiii
Figure 103. Kanayama Akira, WORK-S1, oil on canvas, 1954.
cdxiv
Figure 104. Kanayama Akira, Balloon, rubber balloon, 1955.
cdxv
Figure 105. Kanayama Akira, Red Ball, light bulb, 1955 [on the top].
cdxvi
Figure 106. Kanayama Akira, Signal, mixed media, 1956.
cdxvii
Figure 107. View of the Third Gutai Art Exhibition, Kyoto City Museum
of Art, April 1957.
cdxviii
Figure 108. Shiraga Kazuo, public demonstration of Foot Painting, the

Second Gutai Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, October 1956.
cdxix
cdxx
Figure 109. Murakami Saburô, Passing Through, 1956, shown at the

Second Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, October 1956.
cdxxi
cdxxii
Figure 110. Yoshida Toshio, Work, 1956, shown at the Second Gutai
Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, October 1956.
cdxxiii
Figure 111. Motonaga Sadamasa, Work, oil on wooden board, 1958.
cdxxiv
Figure 112. Murakami Saburô, Exfoliating Painting (Hakuraku suru

kaiga), mixed media on wooden board, 1957.
cdxxv
Figure 113. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, oil on wood, c. 1950 [top] and
Sekine Yoshio, Work, 1949, (the reverse side of Shimamoto’s Work)
[bottom].
cdxxvi
cdxxvii
Figure 114. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, paint on cloth, 1956.
cdxxviii
cdxxix
Figure 115. Sumi Yasuo, Work, enamel paint on paper, 1955.
cdxxx
cdxxxi
Figure 116. Yoshihara Michio, demonstration of Bicycle Painting,

1956, One Day Outdoor Exhibition, April 1956.
cdxxxii
Figure 117. Yoshida Toshio, public demonstration of Painting by

Watering Can, the Second Gutai Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan Hall,
cdxxxiii
Figure 118. Shimamoto Shôzô, demonstration of Painting by Throwing

Bottles, for BBC Television, February, 1959.
cdxxxiv
cdxxxv
Figure 119. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, paint on paper and canvas,

1957.
cdxxxvi

Figure 120. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work, paint on canvas, 1960.
cdxxxvii
cdxxxviii
Figure 121. Shiraga Kazuo, Concentration of Instinct, oil on canvas,

1952.
cdxxxix

Figure 122. Shiraga Kazuo, Flowing Vein 2, oil on canvas, 1953.
cdxl
Figure 123. Shiraga Kazuo, Wriggles, oil on canvas, 1954.
cdxli
cdxlii
Figure 124. Shiraga Kazuo, Work, oil on canvas, 1954.
cdxliii
Figure 125. Shiraga Kazuo, Hand, oil on canvas, 1954.
cdxliv
Figure 126. Shiraga Kazuo, Work I, oil on paper, 1954.
cdxlv
cdxlvi
Figure 127. Murakami Saburô, Work Painted by Throwing a Ball (Tôkyû

Kaiga), ink on paper, 1954.
cdxlvii
Figure 128. Shiraga Kazuo, creating Foot Painting at his studio.
cdxlviii
cdxlix
Figure 129. Shiraga Kazuo, Work II, oil on paper, 1958.
cdl
Figure 130. Shiraga Kazuo, Challenging Mud, earth,

cement and water, 1955, details [bottom] and his essay
“Kotai no kakuritsu (Establishing one’s individuality)” [top]
published in Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956), 6-8.
cdli
Figure 131. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, oil on canvas, 1955, details

published in Gutai 4 (July 1, 1956).
cdlii
cdliii
Figure 132. Shiraga Kazuo, ○, earth, water, and vinyl, 1957.
cdliv
cdlv
Figure 133. Shiraga Kazuo, Red Liquid, mixed media, 1956.
cdlvi
Figure 134. Shiraga Kazuo, Stuffed Red Bottle, mixed media,

1957.
cdlvii

Figure 135. Shiraga Kazuo, Object From Challenging Red Wooden
Logs, red paint and wooden logs, 1956.
cdlviii
Figure 136. Shiraga Kazuo, Ultramodern Sanbasô, 1957, shown at

cdlix
Figure 137. Shiraga Kazuo, Work BB21, oil on vellum paper, 1956.
cdlx
cdlxi
Figure 138. Shiraga Kazuo, Tensatsu-sei Koku-senpû , oil on canvas,

1962.
cdlxii
cdlxiii
Figure 139. Satô Seiichi, Human Bag (ningen bukuro), mixed media,
1956.
cdlxiv

Figure 140. Shiraga Kazuo, Hunting Boar (Two), oil and boar fur on
canvas, 1963.
cdlxv

Figure 141. Tanaka Atsuko, Calendar, paper collage with ink and
pencil, c. 1954.
cdlxvi
Figure 142. Tanaka Atsuko, Calendar, paper collage with oil and ink, c.
1954.
cdlxvii

1954.
cdlxviii

Figure 144. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, ink and adhesive on hemp, c. 1954.
cdlxix
cdlxx
Figure 145. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, paint on wood, 1955.
cdlxxi
Figure 146. Tanaka Atsuko, Notch, copper on wood board, 1955.
cdlxxii
Figure 147. Tanaka Atsuko, Untitled – Study for Work (Bell), 1955
and Plan for Work (Bell), ink on paper, 1955, published in Gutai 4
(July 1, 1956), 24.
cdlxxiii
Figure 148. Tanaka Atsuko, Electric Dress and drawings for Electric
Dress, shown at the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, October 1956.
cdlxxiv
Figure 149. Tanaka Atsuko,

Sketches for Work, Electric
Dress and Work, ink and
pencil on paper, 1955-1956.
cdlxxv
cdlxxvi
Figure 150. Tanaka Atsuko, Lightning Disks and Clothes, shown

at the Second Gutai Art on Stage, April, 1958.
cdlxxvii
Figure 151. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, mixed media (including recycled

pieces from Electric Dress), 1957.
cdlxxviii
Figure 152. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, ink, oil and enamel paint on
paper, 1957
cdlxxix
cdlxxx
Figure 153. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, ink and oil on paper, 1957
cdlxxxi

Figure 154. Tanaka Atsuko, Work, ink and enamel paint on paper, 1957.
cdlxxxii
cdlxxxiii
Figure 155. Tanaka Atsuko, Work and plan for Work, published on
Gutai 5 (October 1, 1956).
cdlxxxiv

Figure 156. Tanaka Atsuko, painting a piece (Work) for the
International Art of New Era: Art Informel and Gutai, 1957-1958.
cdlxxxv
cdlxxxvi
Figure 157. Tanaka Atsuko, Work (on the floor), enamel paint on vinyl
sheet, shown at the International Art of New Era: Art Informel and Gutai,
April 1958.
cdlxxxvii
cdlxxxviii
Figure 158. Front cover of Gutai 1, January 1, 1955.
cdlxxxix
Figure 159. Shimamoto Shôzô, Advertising poster for the First Gutai Art
Exhibition, 1955.
cdxc
cdxci
Figure 160. Invitation card for the First Gutai Art Exhibition, 1955.
cdxcii
cdxciii
Figure 161. Invitation card for the Second Gutai Art Exhibition, 1956.
cdxciv
Figure 162. Invitation card for the First Gutai Art on Stage, 1957.
cdxcv
cdxcvi
Figure 163. Zen’yasai (pre-opening night festival) of the Nika-kai

exhibition, appeared in Asahi Shinbun, 31 August 1952, evening
edition.
cdxcvii
cdxcviii
Figure 164. Gutai Pinacotheca, Nakanoshima, Osaka.
cdxcix
Figure 165. Gutai Art Festival, the Osaka World Exposition, 1970.
di
dii
Figure 166. Yoshida Katsurô, Cut Off (Hang), wood, rope and
stone, 1969.
diii
div
Figure 167. Hikosaka Naoyoshi, Delivery Event + Floor Event,

1972.
dv
dvi
Appendices
dvii
Appendix 1. The Gutai Art Manifesto
Yoshihara Jirô, “Gutai Art Manifesto”451
To today’s consciousness, the art of the past, which on the whole displays
an alluring appearance, seems fraudulent.
Let’s bid farewell to the hoaxes piled up on the altars and in the palaces,
the living rooms and the antique shops.
They are made of the matter called paint, of cloth, metals, earth, and
marble, which through the meaningless act of signification by a human, were
made to assume a deceptive appearance. The materials, all slaughtered under
the pretence of production of the mind, can now say nothing.
Lock up these corpses in the graveyard.
Gutai Art (Gutai bijutsu 具体美術) does not alter the materials. Gutai Art
imparts life to the materials. Gutai Art does not distort the materials.
In Gutai Art, the human spirit and the materials shake hands with each
other, but keep their distance. The materials never compromise themselves with
the spirit; the spirit never dominates the materials. When the materials remain
intact and exposes its characteristics, it starts telling a story, and even screaming.
To make the fullest use of the materials is to make use of the spirit. By enhancing
the spirit, the materials are brought to the height of the spirit.
451 Originally published as “Gutai bijutsu sengen” in Geijutsu Shinchô 7, no. 2 (December 1956),
202-204. The English translation is by Reiko Tomii, in Alexandra Munroe, Scream Against The
Sky: Japanese Art after 1945 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 370, and by Barbara Bertozzi
and Klaus Wolbert, GUTAI, Japanische Avantgarde / Japanese Avant-Garde 1954-1965
(Darmstadt: Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, 1991), 364-368. The author modified and added to the
translated text.
dviii
Art is a place in which creation occurs; however, the spirit has never
created the materials before. The spirit has only created the spirit. Throughout
history, the spirit has given birth to life in art. However the life thus born always
changes and perishes. To us today, the great lives of the Renaissance are
nothing more than archaeological relics.
Today, it is only primitive art and various art movements after
Impressionism that manage to convey to us a feeling of life, however inert.
Fortunately, these movements could neither successfully distort the materials,
that is, the paint, nor kill it through using it for the purpose of naturalism as in the
case of Pointilism and Fauvism. However, their styles no longer move us at all;
they are things of the past.
Now, interestingly, we find a contemporary beauty in art and architecture
of the past ravaged by the passage of time or natural disasters. Although their
beauty is considered decadent, it may be that the innate beauty of the materials
is reemerging from behind the mask of artificial embellishment. Ruins welcome
us unexpectedly with warmth and friendliness; they speak to us through their
beautiful cracks and rubble – which might be a revenge of the materials that have
regained its innate life. In this sense, we highly regard the works of Pollock and
Mathieu. Their work reveals the scream of the materials themselves, cries of the
paint and enamel. These two artists confront us in a way that aptly corresponds
to their individual innate discoveries. Or rather, they even seem to serve the
materials. Astonishing effects of differentiation and integration take place.
dix
Recently, Tominaga Sôichi and Dômoto Hisao reported the interesting
activities of Art Informel led by Mathieu and Tapié. I do not know all the details,
but their introduced principles have many points that I agree with. To my surprise,
their movement demands the immediate revelation of matters arising
spontaneously and suggests approaches unbounded by the conventional forms.
Despite the difference in expression, Art Informel has curiously much in common
with our claims in creating lively art. I am not sure, though, about the ways in
which Art Informel in their artistic creation grasped the relationship between the
conceptually defined pictorial elements like colors, lines, and shapes in abstract
art, and the characteristics of the materials. As far as the denial of abstraction is
concerned, the essence of their claims is not clear to me. Yet it is obvious to us
that formulaic abstract art has lost its appeal; the Gutai Art Association founded
three years ago under the slogan that we would go beyond the borders of
abstract art and that the name Gutai-ism (Concrete-ism) was chosen. Above all,
we had toe search for a centrifugal approach, instead of the centripetal one seen
in conventional abstract art.
We have always thought – and still do – that the greatest legacy of
abstract art is the opening of an opportunity to create, from naturalistic and
illusionistic art, a new autonomous space, a space that truly deserves the name
of art.
We have decided to pursue enthusiastically the possibilities of pure
abstract art. We believe that by merging human qualities and the materials’
properties, we can concretely comprehend the abstract space.
dx
When the individual’s quality and the selected materials melt together in the
furnace of automatism, we are surprised to see an emergence of a space
unknown, unseen and inexperienced. Automatism inevitably transcends the
artist’s own image. We endeavor to achieve our own method of creating space
rather than relying on our own image.
The works of our members will serve as examples. Kinoshita Yoshiko is
merely a chemistry teacher at a girls’ school. She created a curious space by
chemical reaction on filter paper. Although it is possible to predict the results
beforehand to a certain extent, the final results of mixing the chemicals will not be
known until the following day. Yet the curious imagery of the materials is her own
work. Although so many Pollock-imitators have emerged after Pollock, his legacy
will never be faded. We must respect inventions.
Shiraga Kazuo put a lump of paint on a huge piece of paper, and started
to spread it violently with his feet. For about the last two years journalists have
shown interests to his unprecedented method by calling it as “the art of a bodily
crash” (taiatari no geijutsu). Shiraga Kazuo had no intention at all of making this
strange method known to public. He found a method which enabled him to
confront and join with whatever materials his disposition, guide by his own
spiritual dynamics, had chosen. In doing so, he achieved an extremely
convincing result.
In contrast to Shiraga’s organic method, Shimamoto Shôzô has
persistently utilized mechanical manipulations for the past few years. He created
the spray pictures by violently smashing a bottle of paint, or the large pictures in
dxi

a single moment by firing a small, hand-made cannon filled with paint, using an
acetylene gas explosion. These paintings display a breathtaking freshness.
Other works that deserve attentions are Sumi Yasuo’s paintings made with
a vibrator and Yoshida Toshio’s work which consists of only one single lump of
paint. Their approaches are full of intellectual energy that demands our respect
and recognition.
The search for an original, unknown world also resulted in numerous
works in the so-called object d’art. I suspect that the conditions at the annual
open-air exhibitions in Ashiya City have contributed to this. These works, created
by artists who are confronted with different materials, differ from the object d’art
of Surrealists. That is evident simply from the fact that the Gutai artists tend not
to give these works titles or to provide interpretations. These objects included a
painted, bent iron plate (Tanaka Atsuko) and a work made of red hard vinyl in the
form of a mosquito net (Tsuruko Yamazaki). They were strictly the straightforward
presentations of the materials’ characteristics and their colors and shapes.
Our group does not impose restrictions on the art of its members, letting
them make full use of their creativity. The members began to actively engage in
various experiments. These include art felt with the entire body, art which could
only be touched, and Gutai music (in which Shimamoto Shôzô has been doing
interesting experiments for several years). There are also Shimamoto Shôzô’s
bridge-like piece which sinks as the viewer walks over it, Murakami Saburô’s
work which is like a telescope you can enter to look up at the sky, and Kanayama
Akira’s piece made of plastic bags with organic elasticity. Tanaka Atsuko is
dxii

creating a work of flashing light bulbs which she calls “clothing,” and Motonaga
Sadamasa is experimenting with water and smoke for artistic creation.
Gutai Art highly regards all daring steps with lead to an unknown world.
Often times at first glance we are compared with and mistaken for Dadaism, and
we fully recognize the achievements of Dadaism. However, in contrast to
Dadaists, we firmly believe in fruitful results from the investigations of
possibilities. We hope that there is always a fresh spirit in our Gutai exhibitions
and that the discovery of new life will call forth a tremendous scream in the
material.
dxiii
Appendix 2. Chronology of Events
Gutai Art World in Japan Others

1945 8.2 Japan accepted the
Potsdam
Declaration, ending
the Pacific War.
10 Nika-kai re-
established.
Series of debates on
artists'
responsibilities
during the war.
1946 1 Emperor Hirohito
declared his status
as "human
being" (Ningen
sengen).
3 First Japan Art
Exhibition (Nitten)
was held.
4 Japan Art
Association (Nihon
Bijutsu Kai) founded.
5 Yoshida Shigeru
became Prime
Minister.
9 Mizue (art
magazine) reissued.
11 Constitution of
Japan promulgated.
Many exhibition
groups re-
established this
year.
dxiv
1947 SCAP's many

democratization
Shimamoto Shôzô measures reversed
met Yoshihara Jirô. in fear of rise of
Yamazaki Tsuruko communism and
began studying financial burden for
under Yoshihara. the U.S.
9 Japan Avant-garde
Artists Club
established.
12 First Japan
Indépendent
Exhibition opened.
1948 1 Bijutsu Techô (art
magazine) launched.
4.3 Ashiya City Art
Association
established.
Yoshihara Jirô
became the
president.
6 First Ashiya City Art
Exhibition (Ashiten).
The exhibition is
held annually.
1949 2 First Yomiuri
Indépendent
Exhibition (Yomiuri
Anpan) started.
10 People's Republic of
China established.
1950 1 Peace Problems
Symposium Group
published
Geijutsu Shinchô "Statement
(art magazine) Regarding Peace
launched. Treaty Issues"
5 Isamu Noguchi
visited Japan.
dxv
6 Korean War started.

"Special
Procurements"
fueled the recovery
of Japanese
economy.
"Red purge"
intensified in
journalism.
1951 2 Salon de Mai in
Japan exhibition
opened.
3 Pollock's painting
shown at Third
Yomiuri Indépendent
Exhibition.
Henri Matisse
Exhibition drew
150,000 attendants.
4 General Douglas
MacArthur resigned
as SCAP.
8 Interdisciplinary art
group Jikken Kôbô
formed in Tokyo.
Pablo Picasso
Exhibition opened.
9 San Francisco
Peace Treaty and
the U.S.-Japan
Security Treaty
signed.
10 Japan participated
First Saõ Paulo
Biannual, first
international
participation since
the war.
dxvi
11 Kamakura Museum
of Modern Art
opened as the first
public museum of
modern art in Japan.
1952 1 Bijutsu Hihyô (art
magazine) launched.
5 First Japan
International Art
Exhibition opened.
6 11 Japanese artists
participated in 26th
Venice Biannual.
10 Japanese artists,
including Yoshihara
Jirô, participated in
Carnegie
International.
11 Contemporary Art
Discussion Group
(Genbi) founded.
Genbi's monthly
meeting started.
12 Tokyo National
Museum of Modern
Art opened.
Zero-kai was
founded. Members:
Shiraga Kazuo,
Murakami Saburô,
Kanayama Akira,
and others. Tanaka
Atsuko later joined
the group.
1953 7 Japan International
Art Club founded. Korean War ended.
dxvii
1954 3 Japanese fishing

vessel Fukuryûmaru
suffered radiation
from U.S. hydrogen
bomb test at Bikini
Atoll.
5 First Modern Art Fair
organized by the
Genbi. (11.13-18)
National Self-
Defense Force
established.
8 Gutai Art Association
was founded.
10 French Art from
Louvre Museum
Exhibition toured the
nation, attracted
1,420,000
attendants.
11 Second Genbi
Exhibition held. Most
Gutai members
participated.
(11.13-18)
1955 1.1 First issue of journal
Gutai published.
3 Gutai participated in
Seventh Yomiuri
Indépendent
Exhibition in Tokyo.
All the entries were
titled Gutai. (3.11-17)
6 Kanayama, Shiraga,
Murakami, Tanaka
joined Gutai.
11 Liberal Democratic
Party formed.
dxviii
1955 7 Challenge the Mid-

Summer Sun
Exhibition opened at
Ashiya Park.
(7.25-8.6)
10 Second issue of
journal Gutai
published. (10.10)
First Gutai Art
Exhibition at the
Ohara Kaikan Hall,
Tokyo. (10.19-28)
Third issue of journal
Gutai published.
(10.20)
11 Tanaka Atsuko's Bell
was exhibited at
Third Genbi
Exhibition.
(11.24-28)
1956 4.9 One Day Only
Exhibition was held
for Life magazine Series of unknown
(never published). illness of central
Prior to the nervous system
exhibition, the (later determined as
reporters caused by mercury
photographed Gutai poisoning) reported
members' production in Minamata,
process. (4.6-8) Kumamoto.
6 Print maker
Munakata Shikô
received Grand
Prize in 28th Venice
Biannual.
7.1 Fourth issue of
journal Gutai
published.
Outdoor Gutai Art
Exhibition at Ashiya
Park. (7.27-8.5)
dxix
10 Fifth issue of journal

Gutai published.
Small Pieces of
Gutai Art Exhibition
at Sanseidô Gallery,
Tokyo. (10.3-8)
Second Gutai Art
Exhibition at the
Ohara Kaikan Hall,
Tokyo. (10.11-17)
11 World, Today's Art
Exhibition opened.
Many Informel and
Abstract
Expressionist
paintings exhibited.
12 "Gutai Art Manifesto" Japan officially
published in Geijutsu joined the United
Shinchô. Nations.
1957 4.1 Sixth issue of journal
Gutai published.
Third Gutai Art
Exhibition at the
Kyoto City Museum
of Art, Kyoto.
(4.3-10)
5.3 First Gutai Art on
Stage at Osaka
Sankei Kaikan Hall.
7.2 Seventh issue of
journal Gutai Experimental group
published. Kyûshû-ha founded.
7.2 First Gutai Art on
Stage at Sankei Hall,
Tokyo.
dxx
Michel Tapié saw

copies of journal
Gutai and became
interested in the
group.
9 Michel Tapié visited
Japan.
1957 9 Georges Mathieu
Solo Exhibition at
Shirakiya
Department Store,
Tokyo (9.3-10) and
Daimaru Department
Store, Osaka
(9.12-15). His public
demonstration drew
significant attention.
9.3 Eighth issue of
journal Gutai
published.
10 Fourth Gutai Art
Exhibition at the
Ohara Kaikan Hall,
Tokyo. (10.8-10)
1958 4.4 Second Gutai Art on
Stage at Asahi
Kaikan Hall, Osaka.
International Art of
New Era: Informel
and Gutai exhibition
at Takashimaya
Department Store,
Osaka (4.12-20).
Later toured
nationwide.
Ninth issue of journal
Gutai published.
Fifth Gutai Art
Exhibition at the
Ohara Kaikan Hall,
Tokyo. (4.30-5.2)
dxxi
9 The Gutai Group

Exhibition (Sixth
Gutai Art Exhibition)
at Martha Jackson
Gallery, New York
(9.25-10.25) and
other venues in the
U.S.
dxxii
Appendix 3. Selected Exhibitions of the Gutai Art Association after 1972
1972 Gutai Bijutsu Kyôkai 17-nen no kiroku (Records of the Gutai Art
Association's 17-year History). Gutai Mini Pinacotheca, Osaka: April
10 – 20; Hyôgo Civic Hall, Kôbe: April; Jusco Supermarket, Himeji:
May; Ashiya Civic Hall: May 15th – 25th.
1976 Gutai bijutsu no jûhachinen (Eighteen Years of Gutai Art).

Osaka Civic Gallery, Osaka: November 2 – 14.
1979 Yoshihara Jirô to Gutai no sono go (Yoshihara Jirô and today’s

aspects of Gutai). Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art:
January 5 – 28.
1983 Dada in Japan: Japanische Avantgarde 1920/1970 (Nihon no Dada,

Nihon no zen’ei 1920/1970). Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf: May 18 –
July 31; Art Museum, Graduate school of Arts and Sciences and
College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo: June 6 – July 13,
1984.
1985 Yoshihara Jirô to Gutai (Yoshihara Jirô and Gutai). Ashiya Civic
Center: September 1 – 16.
Kaiga no arashi, 1950 nendai: Informel, Gutai, COBRA (Action et

emotion, peintures des annés 50: Informel, Gutai, COBRA).
National Museum of Art [Kokuritsu Kokusai Bijutsukan], Osaka:
September 27 – November 26.
Reconstructions: Avant-Garde Art in Japan 1945-1965. The

Museum of Modern Art, Oxford: December 8 – February 9, 1996;
Fruitsmarket Gallery, Edinburgh: February 22 – April 5, 1986.
Groupo Gutai: Pintura y Accion (Gutai Group: Painting and Action).

Museo Español de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid: December 21 –
January 26, 1986.
1986 Gutai: Kôi to kaiga (Gutai: Action and Painting). Hyôgo Prefectural
Museum of Modern Art: August 30 – September 28.
Japon des Avant Gardes 1910 – 1970. Centre Georges Pompidou,

Paris: December 1 – March 2, 1987.
1990 Gutai: Mikan no zen’ei shûdan (Gutai: Unfinished Avant-garde

Group). Shôtô Museum of Art, Tokyo: April 10 – May 27.
dxxiii

Giappone All’avanguardea il Gruppo Gutai negle anni Cinquanta.

Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome: December 6 – February
28, 1991.
1991 GUTAI, Japanische Avantgarde / Japanese Avant-Garde

1954-1965. Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt: March 24 – May 5.
1992 Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten (Retrospective Exhibition of

Yoshihara Jirô). Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Ashiya: April 4
– May 5 (part 1: 1905 – 1950) and September 5 – October 11 (part
2: 1950-1972); Ohara Museum, Kojima Kojirô Memorial Hall:
October 20 – November 23.
Gutai ten I: 1954-1958 (Gutai Exhibition, Part 1: 1954-1958). Ashiya

City Museum of Art & History, Ashiya: June 20 – August 2.
Yomigaeru Yagaiten (Outdoor Exhibition Revived). Ashiya Park,

Ashiya: July 25 – August 2 (Organized by Ashiya City Museum of
Art & History).
1993 Gutai ten II: 1959-1965 (Gutai Exhibition, Part 2: 1954-1958).

Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Ashiya: January 5 – February
14.
XLV Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte (La Biennale di Venezia;

Included Yoshihara Jirô’s works and examples from Gutai’s two
outdoor exhibitions). June 13 – October 10.
Gutai ten III: 1966-1972 (Gutai Exhibition, Part 3: 1966-1972).

Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Ashiya: June 19 – July 18.
Gutai, 1955/56: Nihon gendaibijutsu no risutâto chiten (Gutai,

1955/1956: The Restart Point of Japanese Contemporary Art).
Penrose Institute of Contemporary Art, Tokyo: October 15 –
December 19.
1994 Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky. Yokohama
Museum of Art, Yokohama: February 5 – March 30; the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art with the Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts, San Francisco: May 31 – August 27; the Guggenheim
Museum SoHo, New York: September 14 – January 8, 1995.
1995 Sengo Bunka no Kiseki: 1945-1995 (Japanese Culture: the Fifty

Postwar Years). Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo: April 19 – June 4;
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima: June 14 –
July 21; Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Kôbe: August
dxxiv

15 – September 24; Fukuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Fukuoka:

October 8 – November 5.
1996 Murakami Saburô ten (Murakami Saburô Exhibition). Ashiya City

Museum of Art & History, Ashiya: April 6 – May 12.
1997 Torino Parigi New York Osaka. Tapié. Un Art Auture. Galleria Civica
d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, di Torino, Turin: March 13 –
June 1; Espace d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Toulouse et Midi
Pyrénées: September 22 – November 23.
1998 Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles: February 8 – May
10; MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna: June 17 –
September 6; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona:
October 15 – January 6, 1999; Museum of Contemporary Art,
Tokyo: February 11 – April 11, 1999.
Sôgetsu to sono jidai: 1945-1970 (Sôgetsu and Its Era: 1945-1970).

Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Ashiya: October 17 –
November 29; Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba: December 5 –
January 10, 1999.
1999 Gutai. Gallery Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris: May 4 – June 27.
2001 Atsuko Tanaka: Michi no bino tankyû, 1954-2000 (Tanaka Atsuko:

Search for an Unknown Aesthetic, 1954-2000). Ashiya City
Museum of Art & History: March 3 – May 6; Shizuoka Prefectural
Museum of Art, Shizuoka: July 28 – September 9.
Akushon peintâ: Shiraga Kazuo ten (Action Painter: Shiraga Kazuo

Retrospective Exhibition). Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern
Art, Kôbe: June 2 – July 22.
2004 Electrifying Art: Tanaka Atsuko, 1954-1968. Grey Art Gallery, New
York University, New York: September 14 – December 11; The
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver: January 21 – March 20, 2005.
dxxv

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dxxvi
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Shôzô and Nanjô Fumio eds., Âto Kankaku no Shinhyôgen: Pafômansu nau
(New Expression of Art: Performance Now). Tokyo: Tôkyû Agency, 1986.
Yamawaki Kazuo. “Gutai: Kôi to kaiga wo meguru bôken” (Gutai: Adventures

through Action and Painting). In Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Gutai:
Kôi to kaiga (Gutai: Action and Painting), Kôbe, 1986.
Yamazaki Tsuruko. Interviewed by Yamamura Tokutarô and Osaki Shin’ichirô. 12

July 1985. In GSDG: 387-391.
Yanagi Tôru. “Bijutsu hihyô no kanô to genkai” (ThePpossibility and Limitation of

Art Criticism). Bijutsu Hihyô 20 (August 1953).
Yokohama Museum of Art. Sengo Nihon no zen’ei bijutsu/Japanese Art After

1945: Scream Against the Sky. Yokohama, 1994.
Yoshida Toshio. “Dainikai Gutai bijutsuten no sakuhin ni tsuite” (On the Works in
the Second Gutai Art Exhibition). Biiku Bunka 6, no. 11 (November 1956): 24-29.
Yoshida Toshio. “Nokosareta seishinteki isan: Yoshihara Jirô goroku wo chûshin

ni” (Spiritual Legacy That Left to Us: Focusing on Yoshihara Jirô’s Words). Bijutsu
Techô no. 446 (March 1979).
Yoshihara Jirô and Nakamura Shin. “Amerika no kindai kaiga” (Modern Painting
in America). Kansai Bijutsu 13 (May 1951): 12-13.
Yoshihara Jirô and Ohara Hôun. “Zen’ei geijutsu wo kataru” (Discussion of Avant-
garde Art). Shinkô Shinbun, 4 January 1952.
Yoshihara Jirô and Suda Kokuta. “[Taidan] Jidôga no shomondai” ([Discussion]

Some Issues on Children’s Paintings). Kansai Bijutsu 12 (April 1951): 9.
Yoshihara Jirô Kenkyûkai ed. Yoshihara Jirô kenkyû ronshû (Anthology of

Studies on Yoshihara Jirô). Ashiya: Yoshihara Jirô Kenkyûkai, 2002.
Yoshihara Jirô, et al. “[Zadankai] Zen’ei kadô wo kataru, jô, ge” ([Roundtable
discussion] On Avant-Garde Flower Arrangement, First and Second Half). Shin
Kansai, 25 and 26 May 1951.
Yoshihara Jirô, et al. “[Zadankai] Bokujinkai ten wo kataru” ([Roundtable

discussion] On the Bokujin-kai Exhibition). Bokujin 29 (November 1954): 19-49.
dxliii
Yoshihara Jirô, et al. “[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu kondankai: Sho to modan âto”
([Roundtable discussion] Contemporary Art Discussion Group: Calligraphy and
Modern Art). Bokujin 12 (March 1953): 9-29.
Yoshihara Jirô, et al. “[Zadankai] Gendai bijutsu ni tsuite” ([Roundtable

discussion] On contemporary art). Ashiya Bijutsu 3 (May 1950), 3-7, 10.
Reprinted in Ashiya City Art Association and Ashiya City Museum of Art & History
eds., Ashiya Shiten: 1948-1997 (The History of Ashiya City Exhibition From 1948
to 1997), Ashiya, 1997: n.p.
Yoshihara Jirô, et al. “[Zadankai] Gendai jidôga no arikata” ([Roundtable

discussion] The Ideal Form of Contemporary Children’s Art). Ashiya Bijutsu 2
(November 1949): 1-4. Reprinted in Ashiya City Art Association and Ashiya City
Museum of Art & History eds., Ashiya Shiten: 1948-1997 (The History of Ashiya
City Exhibition From 1948 to 1997), Ashiya, 1997: n.p.
Yoshihara Jirô, et al. “[Zadankai] Modan âto fea wo kataru” ([Roundtable

discussion] On Modern Art Fair). Bokujin 26 (June 1954): 2-47.
Yoshihara Jirô, et al. “[Zadankai] Nantenbô no sho” ([Roundtable discussion]

Calligraphy of Nantenbô). Bokubi 14 (July 1952): 5-8.
Yoshihara Jirô, et al. “[Zadankai] Sho to chûshô kaiga” ([Roundtable discussion]

Calligraphy and Abstract Painting). Bokubi 26 (Auguest 1953): 4-17.
Yoshihara Jirô. “(Shuppinsaku no kôsô) Yoru no tori” (Plans for Entry Piece:
Night Bird). Asahi Shinbun, 1 September 1951, Osaka edition.
Yoshihara Jirô. “’Gendai nihon tôgei ten’ wo mite: Zen’ei ha ni kyôkan suru”
(Review of Exhibition Contemporary Japanese Ceramics: Feeling Empathy for
Avant-garde School). Asahi Shinbun, 3 June 1952, Osaka edition.
Yoshihara Jirô. “An’naijô” (Invitation [for the First Gutai Art Exhibition]). Reprinted
in GSDG: 76.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Anata e hitokoto: Kuro to shiro no kankaku” (A Word for You:
Sense of Black and White). Asahi Shinbun, 20 May 1952, Osaka edition.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Arai Tatsuo koten hyô” (Review of Arai Tatsuo’s Solo Show).
Mainichi Shinbun, 21 October 1950, evening edition.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Atama no itakunaru e: modan âto no kanshô ni tsuite” (Painting

That Causes a Headache: On Appreciation of Modern Art). Kôbe Shinbun, 22
December 1949.
dxliv
Yoshihara Jirô. “Bijutsu kanshô shijô kôza: modan âto” (Lecture on Paper, Art
Appreciation: Modern Art). Shinkô Shinbun, 7 November, 1951.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Bokujin ni taisuru iken, hihan, yôbô” (Comment, Criticism, and
Request for “Bokujin”). Bokujin 7 (October 1952): 16.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Bunkajin gunzô, rirê tenbyô: Itô Tsugurô ron” (Mass Image of
Cultural Figures, Depiction by Relaying: On Itô Tsugurô). Mainichi Shinbun, 10
October 1951, Hanshin edition.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Chûshô kaiga no bi” (Beauty of Abstract Painting). Asahi

Shinbun, 17 April 1951, Osaka edition.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Chûshô kaiga no yohaku” (The Blank Space of Abstract

Painting). Bokubi 21 (Feburary 1953): 12-15.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Daiikkai Modan Âto kyokai ten hyô” (Review of the First
Exhibition of the Modern Art Association). Kansai Bijutsu 13 (May 1951).
Yoshihara Jirô. “Dansô” (Fragmented Thoughts). Mizue no. 541 (November

1950). Reprinted in Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Botsugo 20 nen
Yoshihara Jirô ten (Retrospective Exhibition of Yoshihara Jirô), Ashiya, 1992:
201-202.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Dôshite fukitsuna chôrui ga sakaeruka” (Why Are Evil Birds
Flowlishing?). Shin Osaka Shinbun, 5 March 1952.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Gendai furansu sôsakuhanga ten wo mite (Review of Exhibition

Contemporary Prints from France).” Shin Osaka Shinbun, 26 November 1950.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Gutai bijutsu sengen” (The Gutai Art Manifesto). Geijutsu
Shinchô 7, no. 12 (December 1956): 202-204. Reprinted in GSDG: 6-7.
Translation in English included: 8-9. Also reprinted in Kristine Stiles and Peter
Selz eds., Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Source Book of
Artists’ Writings (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996): 695-698.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Gutai gurûpu no jûnen, 1, 2, 3” (Ten Years of the Group Gutai).
Bijutsu Journal 38, 39, 40 (March-May 1963). Reprinted in GSDG: 323-327.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Hin no sho to beru no kaiga” (The Calligraphy of Poverty and the
Painting of Bell). Probably written in 1955-1956. In Ashiya City Museum of Art &
History, Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten (Retrospective Exhibition of Yoshihara
Jirô), Ashiya, 1992: 202-203.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Kaiga bu senpyô” (Comment on Monthly Painting Competition

Section). Bokujin 29 (November 1954): 11.
dxlv
Yoshihara Jirô. “Kaiga sakuhin senpyô” (Comment on Monthly Painting

Competition Section). Bokujin 22 (Feburary 1954): 18.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Kaiga sakuhin senpyô” (Comment on Monthly Painting

Competition Section). Bokujin 43 (April 1956).
Yoshihara Jirô. “Kaiga to jikan to seikatsu” (Painting, Time, and Life). Osaka
Nichinichi Shinbun, 12 January 1952.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Kôdô no modan âto” (Modern Art at Kôdô Bijutsu’s Exhibition).
Kansai Bijutsu 7 (October 1950).
Yoshihara Jirô. “Kodomo no e no arikata: Shidô no kaishaku to hôho no mondai”

(How Children’s Picture Should Be: Interpretation of Instruction And Issues of
Methodology). Mainichi Shinbun, 4 December 1949, Osaka edition.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Modan âto wa shômetsu shinai” (Modern Art Would Never
Disappear). Kobe Matashin Nippô, 7 January, 1952.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Moeta Himawari” (Burnt Sun Flowers). Ashiya Bijutsu 1 (August
1949): 1. Reprinted in Ashiya City Art Association and Ashiya City Museum of Art
& History eds., Ashiya Shiten: 1948-1997 (The History of Ashiya City Exhibition
From 1948 to 1997), 1997, n.p.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Morita Shiryû shôron” (Brief Essay on Morita Shiryû). Bokujin 28
(October 1954): 25.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Natsumatsuri no bigaku: Gion Matsuri ni yosete” (Aesthetics of

Summer Festivals: On Gion Festival). Asahi Shinbun, 24 July 1951, evening
edition.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Rakugaki to churinga seki” (Graffitti and Churinga Stone). Kirin 4,
no. 10 (October 1951).
Yoshihara Jirô. “Saron do Me’e ten wo mite” (Review of Exhibition Salon de Mai).
Shin Osaka Shinbun, 16 May 1951.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Sho rashiku nai sho” (Uncalligraphic Calligraphy). Bokubi 2 (July
1951): 44.
Yoshihara Jirô. “Tanaka Atsuko ni tsuite” (On Tanaka Atsuko). Gutai Pinacotheca
ed., Tanaka Atsuko [solo exhibition catalogue]. Osaka: Gutai Pinacotheca, 1963.
dxlvi
Yoshihara Jirô. “Waga kokoro no jijoden 1-6” (Autobiography of My Heart 1-6).

Kôbe Shinbun, 4 June – 9 July 1967. Reprinted in Ashiya City Museum of Art &
History, Botsugo 20 nen Yoshihara Jirô ten (Retrospective Exhibition of Yoshihara
Jirô), Ashiya, 1992: 196-201.
Yoshihara Michio. “Chichi, Yoshihara Jirô no omoide” (Memories of My Father,

Yoshihara Jirô). Bijutsu Techô no. 446 (March 1979).
Periodicals
Atorie 241 - 829 (August 1946 - November 1997)
Bijutsu 1, no. 1 - 3, no. 7, 8 (January 1944 - July 1946)
Bijutsu Hihyô 1 - 62 (January 1952 - February 1957)
Bijutsu Techô 1 - (January 1948 - )
Bokubi 1 - 301 (1951-1981)
Bokujin 1 - (1952- )
Geijutsu Shinchô 1, no.1 - (Janurary 1950 - )
Gutai 1 - 14 (January 1955 - October 1965). Texts reprinted in GSDG: 267-310.
Mizue 493 - (September 1946 [reissued] - )
dxlvii

To Paul and Eulalia Stewart and Jan Stewart

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To Paul and Eulalia Stewart and Jan Stewart

This dissertation would not have been possible without tremendous

various aspects of Gutai, many of which materialized in this project. Curators

Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art (later Hyôgo Prefectural Museum of

Art) Hirai Shôichi also guided me in finding research materials.

I am grateful to former Gutai members, Shimamoto Shôzô, Shiraga

accompanied us to her husband’s studio.

Since I started my graduate study, Professor Jonathan Reynolds has

continuously and vigorously supported my interest in modern and contemporary

led me to acknowledge the importance of seeing real objects of art. Professor

Martin Powers inspired me to methodically frame Gutai, an art group in Asia, in

relation to international/Western modern art history. Professor Maria Gough

owed to her research methodology. Professor Leslie Pincus helped immensely in

my effort to contextualize Gutai within the intellectual currents of postwar Japan.

dissertation. I am particularly grateful to Professor Kevin Carr for becoming an

completion of this project.

I received generous financial support from the Department of History of Art

enabled me to conduct research and interviews in Japan.

At the University of Michigan, I was very fortunate to have many friends

and provided insightful comments. Michelle Plauché helped to polish my

my writing. In Japan, my former colleagues Mizutani Mitsuru and Ichijô Akiko

helped to locate research materials in Japan on my behalf.

Finally, I would like to express deep gratitude to my family members. My

Eulalia Stewart, and my husband Jan Stewart. Their enduring support,

encouragement and patience truly helped me to complete this project. Thank

In accordance with Japanese practice, Japanese names are written

surname first. Exceptions are made for Japanese Americans or Japanese-born

Chapter One: Introduction .....................................................................................1

Figure 1. Shimamoto Shôzô, public demonstration of Painting by 291

Figure 2. Shiraga Kazuo, Please Come In, paint on wood, 292

Figure 3. Tanaka Atsuko, Electric Dress, mixed media, 293

Figure 4. Georges Mathieu, public demonstration, September 294

Figure 5. Nakanishi Natsuyuki, Clothespins Assert Churning 295

Figure 6. Kanayama Akira, Work, mixed media on vinyl [top], 296

Figure 7. Hasegawa Saburô, untitled image in his “Sho wa bi no 297

Figure 8. Okamoto Tarô, Heavy Industry, oil on canvas, 1949. 298

Figure 9. Shimamoto Shôzô, Work (Painting of Cannons), 299

Figure 12. Kazuki Yasuo, Burial, oil on canvas, 1948. 302

Figure 13. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, oil on canvas, 1937. 303

Figure 15. Nakamura Hiroshi, Fifth District of Sunagawa, oil on 305

Figure 16. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, oil on canvas, c.1936. 306

Figure 17. Yoshihara Jirô, Chrysanthemums, oil on canvas, 1942. 307

Figure 23. Yoshihara Jirô, Landscape D, oil on canvas, c.1933. 313

Figure 26. Haniwa (terra-cotta tomb figurines), Dancing People, 316

Figure 27. Yoshihara Jirô, Drawing, pencil on paper, c. 1948. 317

Figure 28. Yoshihara Jirô, Face, oil on canvas, 1949. 318

Figure 29. Yoshihara Jirô, Drawing, pencil on paper, c. 1948. 319

Figure 30. Yoshihara Jirô, Drawing, pencil on paper, c. 1948. 320

Figure 32. Yoshihara Jirô, Drawing, pencil on paper, c. 1948.

Figure 33. Jackson Pollock, Number 8, oil, enamel, and aluminum

Figure 34. Nakahara Nantenbô, Calligraphy, circa December 20,

Figure 35. “[Zadankai] Nantenbô no sho” ([Roundtable

Figure 36. “[Zadankai] Nantenbô no sho” ([Roundtable

Figure 37. “[Zadankai] Nantenbô no sho” ([Roundtable

Figure 40. Yoshihara Jirô, Bird, oil on canvas, c.1950.

Figure 42. Yoshihara Jirô, Drawing, ink on paper, c. 1951.

Figure 43. Yoshihara Jirô, Drawing, ink on paper, c. 1951.

Figure 44. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, oil on canvas, c.1952.

Figure 45. Yoshihara Jirô, Night, Bird, Hunter, oil on canvas,

Figure 46. Yoshihara Jirô, Primordial, oil on canvas, c. 1952.

Figure 47. Yoshihara Jirô, Work B, oil on canvas, 1953.

Figure 48. Yoshihara Jirô, Work, oil on canvas, 1953. 338