Editing Japanese art (section)

====The 1960s: An explosion of new genres====

With the dominance of socialist realism fading, the 1960s witnessed an explosion of new art forms in Japan, as the arts expanded in new directions that might best be termed "postmodern."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kapur|first=Nick|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Re5hDwAAQBAJ|title=Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo|publisher=[[Harvard University Press]]|year=2018|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|page=273|isbn=978-0-674-98848-4}}</ref> Artist collectives such as [[Neo-Dada Organizers]], [[Zero Dimension]], and [[Hi-Red Center]] explored concepts such as "non-art" and "anti-art," and conducted a variety of audacious "events," "happenings," and other forms of performance art designed to erode the boundaries between art and daily life. The [[Mono-ha]] group similarly pushed the boundaries dividing art, space, landscape, and the environment. Other artists, such as graphic designer [[Tadanori Yokoo]], drew inspiration from 1960s counterculture and the explosion of new forms of adult-oriented [[manga]] comics. In the performing arts, [[Tatsumi Hijikata]] pioneered a new form of postmodern dance called [[Butoh]], and playwrights such as [[Jūrō Kara]] and [[Makoto Satō (theater)|Satō Makoto]] created the [[Angura]] style of radical "underground" theater.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kapur|first=Nick|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Re5hDwAAQBAJ|title=Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo|publisher=[[Harvard University Press]]|year=2018|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|pages=208–9|isbn=978-0-674-98848-4}}</ref> And in photography, photographers such as [[Daidō Moriyama]] pioneered an extremely influential new school of postwar photography that emphasized spontaneity over carefully staged composition and celebrated the characteristics "''are, bure, [[bokeh]]''" (literally "rough, blurred, out-of-focus").<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kapur|first=Nick|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Re5hDwAAQBAJ|title=Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo|publisher=[[Harvard University Press]]|year=2018|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|page=176|isbn=978-0-674-98848-4}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Simpson|first=Gregory|url=https://www.ultrasomething.com/2014/09/the-are-bure-boke-matic/|title=The Are-Bure-Boke-Matic|website=UltraSomething.com|date=September 1, 2014|access-date=October 13, 2020}}</ref>

The proliferation of new types of art was supported by the tremendous growth of Japan's economy in the 1960s, remembered as the "[[Japanese economic miracle]]." Over the course of the 1960s, the Japanese economy grew by over 10% per year. Rising wealth created a new class of consumers who could afford to spend money on art and support different types of art and artists. For the first time in Japan's modern history, it became viable for significant numbers of artists to make a living purely through selling their art. The 1960s construction boom in Japan, which leveled the old wood-and-paper traditional Japanese architecture and replaced it with sparkling mega-cities of glass and steel, helped inspire brand new schools of Japanese architecture, such as the [[Metabolism (architecture)]] movement led by [[Kenzō Tange]], that boldly broke free from conventional models and proved influential around the world.

At the same time, however, the art world remained dominated by cliques that promoted the works of certain (usually male) artists over others. As it became much easier for Japanese to travel overseas in the 1960s, some female artists such as [[Yayoi Kusama]] and [[Yoko Ono]] found better reception overseas, and decamped for artistic centers such as London, Paris, and New York, as did many male artists as well.

The triumph of the new forms of Japanese art was cemented at the [[Expo '70|1970 Osaka World's Fair]], where dozens of avant-garde and conceptual artists were hired to design pavilions and artistic experiences for fair-goers.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kapur|first=Nick|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Re5hDwAAQBAJ|title=Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo|publisher=[[Harvard University Press]]|year=2018|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|pages=201–2|isbn=978-0-674-98848-4}}</ref> Japanese avant-garde art had gone global, and had become something even the conservative government was proud to display to the world.