Performance Art in Japan

It is a well-known fact that Japanese art faced a major turning point from the latter half of the 1950s onwards, and that this change gave the impetus for many avant-garde artist groups to be formed by young artists in various cities around the country. One of the foundations from which these artists emerged was the “Yomiuri Indépendants2,” an exhibition that granted artists with the democracy of participation and freedom of expression (at least it was initially based on such philosophy!). It was through this exhibition, which gave unknown artists outside of Tokyo the opportunity to be unearthed by art critics and to be catapulted to the pages of national newspapers, that the “anti-art” trends that had radicalized from around 1960 until its demise, had developed into multifarious experiments of the art of that decade.

However, it seems that ample discussion has not been made in Japanese post-war art history as to where the young artists who had lost their outlet for expression when the Yomiuri Indépendants ended in 1963, directed anew their rambunctious energy. The Jishu Indépendant, which was self-managed by artists and critics, was only partially or temporarily able to replace the role of the Yomuri Indépendants. For example, even in the work3 by Chiba Shigeo, which is considered an epochmaking elaboration of Japanese post-war art history, or in the exhibition and exhibition catalog by Alexander Munroe4, the post-Yomiuri Indépendants movements have been connected to the Hi Red Center, Pop Art trends, Nihon Gainen-Ha (Japanese Conceptual Group), Mono-Ha, or to Hijikata Tatsumi’s Butoh, with a certain kind of logical leap. I for one, however, believe that it was the individuals and artist groups in the performance field who inherited in a more direct way the lawlessness that was inherent in the Yomiuri Indépendants. (http://www.bordersphere.com/text/kuroda.html)