Like many other kids, I liked watching anime.
For children of my generation, anime was an escape from Japan's loser complex following World War II. Anime wasn't foreign. It was our own.
I tried to teach myself to draw anime, but I was so bad.
When I was making my debut as an artist, I felt that it was very important that I try to combine the background of my own culture, my people, and the country into the contemporary art world. So that's how I came up with the term 'superflat.'
Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and, in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of 'high art.'
I'm always very interested in breeding. Raising cacti is breeding. My lotus plant collection is breeding. The insects are breeding.
My father, Fukujuro, drove a cab and my mother, Itsuko, was a homemaker. My parents often took me to see Impressionist exhibits. At home, I would paint pictures in a similar style.
The theme my generation explored was the relationship between capitalism and art.
My Miyoshi studio in Japan is located in the northern part of Saitama, which puts it in quite close proximity to Fukushima. As such, we can feel the effects of radiation.
I don't think it's an unnatural thing at all for my collaborations or projects to be seen as art but entertainment at the same time.
I stopped worrying about competition in contemporary art. It feels a little bit more pure. That's where I am, one step back.
In Japan, I am famous in certain special circles - mainly as someone who is trying to break down and enlighten the conventions of Japanese art.
In Japan, after having lost World War II, the hierarchy that used to exist in the society, from the rich to the poor, has been flattened, especially by the winners, by Americans. As a Japanese artist debuting in America, I really had to bring that kind of theme into the work.
When I was little, I guess I was just an ordinary kid. But then things changed when I was in junior high. You know, kids that become geeks become one because of something. Like, they aren't good at sports, or girls don't like them. I, too, for some reason, got into things like science fiction and, well, especially science fiction as an escape.
I don't always enjoy curating, but I do believe it's part of my job. It's a good exercise for my brain, like warming up. Just focusing on my work would be so depressing! For me, curating is necessary - it's like physical training.
I've been immersed in manga since I was a kid. I grew up with this culture.
As a young artist in New York, I thought about postwar Japan - the consumer culture and the loose, deboned feeling prevalent in the character and animation culture. Mixing all those up in order to portray Japanese culture and society was my work.
My parents came from the Kyushu Island in the Southern part of Japan to find work in Tokyo. So we could only afford to live downtown, in a low-income area. It was just by the river, and whenever a typhoon came around, we were under water up to, like, here. That's the kind of place we lived in.
I grew up in a low-income area of Tokyo. Like most homes in Tokyo, ours was small. It was a free-standing, two-family rental duplex built 30 years earlier.
Manga uses Japanese traditional structures in how to teach the student and to transmit a very direct message. You learn from the teacher by watching from behind his back. The whole teacher-master thing is part of Asian culture, I think.
