The Beginning Place: Long Interview with Yoshitomo Nara

How does contemporary artist Yoshitomo Nara create his works, and what inspires him? On the occasion of the large-scale solo exhibition, Yoshitomo Nara: The Beginning Place (October 14, 2023-February 25, 2024) at the Aomori Museum of Art, Tokyo Art Beat sat down with renowned artists to discuss his career, homeland, childhood, music, and peace.【Tokyo Art Beat】

Time traveling retrospective 

──The Beginning Place is a unique exhibition focusing on your roots and philosophy. Are you emotionally attached to your homeland, Aomori Prefecture?

Aomori is where my sensibility was nurtured, so I wanted to create an exhibition that could only be done here! I was inspired by the words of the staff at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, during our meeting for my solo exhibition next year. I asked if we could bring it to Barcelona and Madrid because I wanted as many people to see it as possible, but they said, “No need, they will all come here.” Their confidence was very inspiring. That is why I decided to hold the solo exhibition exclusively in Aomori and make the visitors come during the most characteristic winter season. I wanted them to see the scenery I used to see, the air I used to breathe, and, of course, see the works as if being invited into my home.

──The Aomori Museum of Art has the world’s largest collection of your works, including the large sculpture Aomori-Ken (Aomori Dog). Do you have a close connection to the museum?

It was easy for me to work here because I've known the building since before it was built, and I knew the concept Jun Aoki had in mind when he designed it. But of course, what made this exhibition special was the fact that Shigemi Takahashi curated it. She is the only curator at the museum from Aomori Prefecture, and although she is younger than me, she was also born in Hirosaki City, allowing her to see the hometown that exists deep inside me. If the person in charge were from outside the prefecture, it would have been more subcultural or taken a completely different angle. But this exhibition was realized through a combination of many connections.

──Generally, exhibitions tend to focus on the artwork and explain the artist’s life as a side story, but The Beginning Place illustrates how deeply your life and artwork are intertwined.

The impression of my work is too strong, so most people tend to look only at the surface, leaving most of the background hidden. No researchers have previously analyzed my work, and I'd half given up, thinking that people would only look that far. But this changed slightly during the process of making the book Yoshitomo Nara (Phaidon Press, 2020). When Yeewan Koon interviewed me, it got me thinking that if I divided my life into several themes, I could compose a multilayered exhibition.

──Indeed, Takahashi created an exhibition that skillfully reveals your personality and unique approach to life through five different themes.

I never imagined an approach like this, so it was very refreshing. It is a framework that reveals how I have been formed as a person rather than an artist. By looking at my past self from the present, I have faced both the past steps and the works objectively. Because of this exhibition, I have been able to recall and realize many things hidden in the depths of my mind.

Burning sensation of childhood

──The title of the first room, “Home,” refers to the motifs of your paintings, but also the homeland or a specific place in our hearts. You painted houses a lot early in your career, didn't you?

Most children would draw a square house with a triangular roof, right? My childhood home was also a one-floor house standing in a field. But as Japan’s economy grew, the surrounding area was filled with buildings. However, I always remember it as a lonely house in the field.

──So these are the scenes from your childhood?

Yes. The nature, like mountains and forests, remains the same, but the landscape of my hometown has completely changed. However, it stays forever in my heart. 

──For you, home is an inseparable part of yourself, isn’t it?

Yes, but it's not only me, you know? A home is a place we live, but also friends or something we abandon, miss, and many other significant things beyond ourselves. 

──You also repeatedly painted burning houses.

When I was in elementary school, a neighborhood restaurant caught fire, and I remember going to see it at night. I thought the fire was beautiful, and it left a strong visual impression on me. I even remember little things like returning the next day and finding white rice behind the burnt one. These fragmented memories appear in my painting without any particular reason. It would have been different if I had not seen that fire or had grown up in the city instead of the suburbs.

──Could it be said that images emerge unconsciously from the accumulated memories?

Yes, my hands often move before I even understand what is happening. Only later do I see the meaning behind my paintings. Same with this exhibition, I only realized I was painting houses so much once we started collecting materials for the show.

──Takahashi described this exhibition as time travel, and indeed, as I walked through the halls, I felt a strange sense of time moving back and forth, like I was looking at past and present at the same time. 

Takahashi suggested putting my words on the walls, and when I re-read them, I realized what she meant. 

“We never forget the childhood and youthful exuberance. We remember it to grow up. It is not nostalgic sentimentality. Nor is it dragging the past. I want to find a holding point in my timeline, like a tree trunk. The years will pass, and yet I will always be.” (From a tweet on May 4, 2013)

It's a strange analogy, but it feels like running very fast and arriving at the same place again. I now understand that my sense of time is structured this way. For example, if I see a friend for the first time in years, I know it's been a long time, but I can only react as if I had seen them recently. The longer I don't see them, the more recent it seems.

──You once said that every memory and sensation you experienced as a child takes the form of a house and that you think about them so often that you can create a city map of your memories. 

Correct. If this city was made of things that have nothing to do with me, something would have been different, but a city born from within me will never change.

The roots of sensibility

──After graduating high school, you studied art in Tokyo and Aichi Prefecture. However, you were based in Germany from 1988 until you returned to Japan in 2000. I understand that it was while you studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Germany) that you began to confront your childhood?

Yes. When I began studying at a Japanese art university, I found that everyone was reading the same books, studying the same theories and art history, and learning the same techniques. This resulted in artwork resembling school homework. But when I went to Germany, I realized how important it was to have things beyond art, things that were more autobiographical, things that expressed an understanding of issues that arose inevitably in a particular place, a personal history, and things that could only be done in a particular location. What differentiates me from other artists is my childhood rather than what I gained from pursuing art. By remembering more and more of my childhood and regaining the sensitivity of that time, I was able to create the children's paintings.

──Why is childhood so special?

Because you can never go back. The sensibilities and experiences that were nurtured during that time are unique. After that, we are made of common things, and there are few differences between us and others. We listen to similar music, read similar books, make similar friends, and so on.

Besides, if I want to absorb something new and grow, I have to go back to my childhood. That is why I have always admired my childhood self and my children. It saddens me when the kids I used to play with become more like adults. Like when they enter junior high school and start club activities, they suddenly start using polite language...it is a little sad. 

──But on the other hand, you are also drawn to the spirit of adolescence, to immaturity and youthful impulses?

I always pursue the purity of youth without lies. When I listen to the music I listened to in my teenage years, it brings back my old senses. Back then, I experienced many different things, like hanging out with the older generation at the rock cafe, being a misfit, listening to music, traveling, and so on. Those experiences are definitely in my blood now.

Over the last ten years, I have seen many artists who have been influenced by or imitated my work, but they are all somewhat shallow. They only think in the context of art, and since they probably started out with the intention of making art from the beginning, they don't have my diverse experiences. I only decided to study art after high school, and up until then, I lived my life the way I wanted to, without having anything to do with art, so my base is different. It creates a layer in my work that is visible to those who can see it.

Dialogue with paintings

──Drawing on your childhood and adolescent sensibilities, you have painted children throughout your career. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, a turning point in your career, you have created many large portraits with striking expressions, such as Miss Spring (2012). How do you confront the canvas now?

I always paint for myself. I want to paint a painting that I have never seen before and be inspired by it. Wouldn’t you like to look through the secrets of your mind and see a part of yourself you never knew you had?

──You have always said that your works are self-portraits, but when was the last time you felt that they showed an unseen side of yourself?

Just recently, when I was working on Midnight Truth (2017) at night, I felt like I was facing my truth, like looking in a mirror. I always try to find a compromise between myself as a creator and viewer to complete the work, but the work gets significantly better at some point. When that happens, I'm satisfied and think, “Now it's done! I can finally have a drink and go to sleep!” But this painting was like a twin being born, as if I wanted to keep facing it, just one step away from completion.

──Does the feeling go away once the painting is completed?

It becomes more numb. Even when I have reached a good point and could have stopped there, I get defensive or try to force myself to finish the work. Then it's not a dialog. That’s the case with most works.

──The Midnight Tears conveyed an extraordinary aura on the exhibition flyer, but when I saw the actual work, I was overwhelmed by its strong presence. The multilayered colors that emerge from the darkness and the delicate, realistic depictions are quite a change from your previous works.

This painting is the product of an accident. I always paint on unprimed cotton or linen canvas, which I prime myself, but I mistakenly bought a primed white canvas. When I tried to use it, the brush slipped, and I could not control it. The method I had learned, of course, did not work, so I struggled a lot. As a result, the painting was made with more than just regular technique.

For example, if I use all my brushes from Germany and buy new ones, I have to start all over again until I master them. Similarly, I felt like I was returning to the basics with this painting. I realized afterward, though, that if I just turned the canvas inside out, it would be the same base as usual [laughs].

──The traces of struggle definitely create a three-dimensional, powerful, and vivid presence.

Maybe so. I was also conscious of the oil-like technique I learned long ago. I suppose a professional artist, aware of presentation and the market, would make a series from this new style, but I can’t because it seems too intentional.

Music and peace

──Your anti-war stance resonates strongly with music, and this exhibition features many pro-peace works. Is music an essential part of your life?

Most people like music when they are young, but most stop listening to it halfway through life. But for me, music has always been a part of my life, and what really influenced me was the spirit of the times. Around the time I was in high school, the university protests were happening all around, and the experience of listening to the anti-war songs and reading the subculture magazines was something I would never forget. No Nukes (1998) is inspired by a photograph of the anti-nuclear movement that appeared in the magazine Sharaku. Clippings from this magazine are also featured in the exhibition.

──Did you feel you could change society, given the generation’s awareness of the Vietnam War and other conflicts?

By the time I realized what was happening, it was almost over. The student movement was being suppressed, films like The Strawberry Statement were being made, and anti-war songs against the Vietnam War were no longer being sung because the military pulled out of Vietnam. That kind of music was most popular in the ‘60s and ’70s when Jimi Hendrix played louder than the explosions, and Bob Dylan made people listen through poetry. I am drawn to music that creates a sense of unity, like the protest and anti-war songs of the civil rights movement, when everyone was looking in the same direction. 

──Did you also learn about the world through music and photography?

During the Vietnam War, regular journalists and photographers were able to reach the war zone for the first time, and people started to learn about the situation in real-time. People began to realize that while America was praising a justified war, in reality, the children and women were dying. For the first time, the PTSD of soldiers became an issue, as they spoke out publicly, marched in uniforms, and were joined by students, creating a massive anti-war movement. The United States withdrew from the war because they could no longer control it.

In elementary school, I thought it was strange that the United States would bring back rocks from the moon or that countries from all over the world would gather at the Osaka World Expo to play friends. Still, warplanes were flying from American military bases in Japan to Vietnam, and I just wondered what was really going on. I vividly remember news and images that portrayed the truth. I wonder if this was the beginning of a new generation that believes in the visual. 

──Yet, many conflicts and wars are still happening in different parts of the world.

Nothing changes in a world dominated by enormous forces, does it? I remember a few years before the Berlin Wall fell, David Bowie performed live, singing Heroes with the speakers intentionally facing East Berlin. He also said in German, “We send our best wishes to all of our friends on the other side of the wall.” A few years later, the wall fell, and the German government expressed gratitude to Bowie. The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia was also called “velvet” because the president liked the songs of the Velvet Underground. It is possible to shift towards peace because both good and bad things happen over time.

But now, the West is getting increasingly out of control and heading towards a very bad direction that could turn into a world war. I am an optimist, so I think people are not that stupid, but when someone uses people as pawns while they hide in a safe place, war will start. It's like a natural disaster; it happens just when you forget about it.

The world and art after the earthquake

──You have been active on the world stage for a long time. How did you see the world before the Great East Japan Earthquake?

Like others, I subconsciously assumed that my career center would be somewhere in Europe or the United States. That is why I went to Germany instead of Asia to study. Although I could face my childhood and connect with my past in Germany, my eyes were focused on the West.

However, when the exhibition Yoshitomo Nara: Nothing Ever Happens was shown at the San José Museum of Art in California in 2004, a lot of Asian people came to the opening, which gave me an excellent opportunity to focus on Asia. When I say “Asian,” I mean Chinese, Vietnamese, and Koreans rather than Japanese Americans. They saw me as an Asian artist, not a Japanese artist. In the United States, Asian Americans are a minority, so they were happy to see someone from the same Asian community having a solo show in a public museum.

That was when I figured it out. I had studied Western art and had been in the Western art market, subconsciously thinking that exhibiting in Western art museums was an indication of “status,” but in fact, the core of my work was in my background. The place where I was born and raised and where my sensibilities were nurtured is the real epicenter. From there, it just spread out and reached the place that I considered the center.

──Wise words. Almost like the map of your heart has changed?

The Great East Japan Earthquake reminded me of this even more. I used to think that everything in my hometown and region had nothing to do with me, but now, on the contrary, I find it extremely interesting.

──Has the image of your hometown changed as well?

My childhood memories have not changed, but nowadays, my hometown is not just Aomori but the whole northern region of Japan. I really like Kenji Miyazawa, so even the neighboring Iwate Prefecture is my home!

──Have you noticed anything regarding your desire to find a holding point in your timeline? Did you describe it as a “tree trunk”?

Yes. I always believed that if I kept walking, I would get further, but I kept going in circles and returning to the same place. It’s not so much going backward; it’s just that as you walk, you grow as a person and come back a lot stronger and bigger.

──Something resembling the growth rings of a large tree?

I guess so. I want to keep traveling and growing, going forward and coming back.

*This article is a digest of a three-hour interview with the artist. The full interview is available in Japanese: