Inside the radical art scene of 1960s Japan

“The horizon was a straight line,” recalls Keiichi Tanaami, the genius pop artist who passed away last year. He is describing his memories of relocating to his grandfather’s house in Tokyo after the city was firebombed during World War II. The terrifying spectacle of American planes, flames and fleeing masses were burned forever into Tanaami’s consciousness, later surfacing in his simmering paintings, which fuse American comic art with psychedelic nightmares and Japanese culture.

Tanaami is not the only artist interviewed in the new documentary Japanese Avant-Garde Pioneers who discusses the tension between trauma and allure in the wake of the war. “You can see the echoes of dada and surrealism in Japan’s post-war avant-garde,” explains director Amélie Ravalec. “But where the European avant-garde had something to push against, the system had collapsed entirely in Japan. It wasn’t just a crisis, but a void.” What’s clear from the get-go is that these artists did not extinguish the darkness the war had ushered in, but embraced it. “Art became a way of processing grief and rebuilding meaning. It was a kind of survival. The intensity of these artists is almost unmatched in the history of art.”

The intensity of these artists is almost unmatched in the history of art – Amélie Ravalec

Ravalec has not made an art documentary in the traditional sense, but something more visceral and disorienting. The mix of image, video, voice and music whisks you away to this enchanting world, which was borne from the ashes of another. Ravalec honours the spirit of cross-pollination by rejecting hierarchy and linearity, and blurring boundaries between disciplines, timelines and aesthetics. She says, “Theatre spilled into the street. Photography became protest. Dancers worked with poster designers. Musicians scored experimental theatre.” One exemplary figure who trailblazed into different media was Shuji Terayama, for whom the artist could be a poet, dramatist, film director, photographer and critic all at once.

“What drew me in was the total refusal to play by the rules,” says Ravalec. “These artists really sought to resist the oppressive structures of Japanese society and carve out space for radical freedom.” The film sets the scene with grainy footage of the student protests that shook late-60s Japan and represented the transformed values of a new generation. “Everyone seemed to be rebellious, fighting against their genre, the world and everything political,” reminisces Daido Moriyama, one of the founding members of DIY photo magazine Provoke, which embodied the opposition artists felt towards authority. Watanabe Hitomi recollects her experiences documenting the university riots as a woman, risking arrest as she hid her camera behind the blockade, while Ishiuchi Miyako describes the distinct feeling of freedom she felt protesting. “We were freer then.”

The film has taken five years to piece together, with the pandemic throwing a significant spanner in works. Moreover, many of the artists are now in their 80s, which made access difficult, particularly for a young, outsider filmmaker who doesn’t speak Japanese. “There’s a word, ikigai, which roughly means one’s reason for being,” says Ravalec. “For many of the artists I met, their work wasn’t just a creative pursuit, but their ikigai. It was deeply personal and inseparable from who they were. That made access even more sensitive. You’re not just asking someone to speak about their art, but to open up about the core of their existence.” Ravalec talks about how, through the initial rejections, delays and setbacks, the sense of urgency intensified as the project progressed. “There was only a small window left to capture the spirit and memory of that generation, and it was closing fast.” Some contributors to the film have since passed away, including photography historian Ryuichi Kaneko and Eikoh Hosoe, who offers some of the film’s sharpest insights.

“Reflection of truth!” exclaims Hosoe, translating the Japanese word for photography, “shashin”. The truth he is referring to is less material but psychological, indicating the camera’s psychic power to record one’s inner photographic theatre. Hosoe was unrivalled in his ability to borrow from different art forms to bring memories and dreams to life. In the 60s, he sparked relationships with Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the two pioneers of Butoh, a radical dance-theatre that is both bodily yet apparently staged in the afterlife. Hosoe’s most masterful collaboration was Ordeal by Roses, which was incidentally one of the last projects writer Yukio Mishima chose to undertake before his sensationalist suicide in protest of the government. Giving Hosoe free artistic reign, Mishima found himself pictured in a series of heroic-slash-erotic portraits, warped in a water hose, as if shedding the mortal coil.

“These artists didn’t wait for institutions to validate them... they kept creating, with no budget, audience or safety net. For younger audiences today, in a world that’s often curated and hyper-visible, their work is a reminder that the most vital art comes from the edges, from risk” – Amélie Ravalec

As explained by Kinbaku scholar Master “K”, rope was sacred in Japan long before its erotic associations. In hojōjutsu, the way the captive was restrained conveyed their status, crime or fate, while in the Shinto religion, braided shimenawa ropes mark the boundary between the earthly and the divine. Similarly, this sacred act of tying also applies to the erotic and spiritual connection of Kinbaku, the photographing of which in brothels and bondage studios challenged traditional attitudes to censorship and elevated it into the realm of high art, thanks to one photographer in particular. “Photo Devil!” announces Nobuyoshi Araki, now 84, as he rhetorically points at himself. His controversial bondage shots might have contributed to his “bad boy” reputation, but Sentimental Journey stands as his magnum opus, a heart-stirring record of his honeymoon, told in the confessional diaristic style of the “I-novel”. He appears gentler as he recalls the moment he saw his wife for the last time in her coffin, and took a picture. “This must be what it means to live,” he says.

What’s interesting is how many of these artists channelled opposing forces in their art, such as beauty and violence, light and dark, life and death. When asked what we can learn from Japan’s avant-garde artists today, Ravalec maintains it’s that art shouldn’t need permission. “These artists didn’t wait for institutions to validate them. Many were rejected, marginalised, ignored. But they kept creating, with no budget, audience or safety net. For younger audiences today, in a world that’s often curated and hyper-visible, their work is a reminder that the most vital art comes from the edges, from risk.”

Japanese Avant-Garde Pioneers, directed by Amélie Ravalec, premieres in the UK at Everyman’s Screen on the Green, London, on 1 May 2025. The full screening schedule can be found here.