Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture

This exhibition catalogue for a show at the Japan Society looks at contemporary Japanese culture from the prespective of one of the country's most celebrated artists.

Little Boy examines the culture of postwar Japan through its arts and popular visual media. Focusing on the youth-driven phenomenon of otaku (roughly translated as “geek culture” or “pop cult fanaticism”), Takashi Murakami and a notable group of contributors explore the complex historical influences that shape Japanese contemporary art and its distinct graphic languages. The book’s title, Little Boy, is a reference to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, thus clearly locating the birth of these new cultural forms in the trauma and generational aftershock of the atomic bomb. 

• Published 2005
• Edited by Takashi Murakami
• Japanese and English text
• 9.5 x 11.5 inches
• 298 pages, hardcover