title: Warriors of Art: A Guide to Contemporary Japanese Artists
author:  Yumi Yamaguchi 
description: The world of cartoon cuteness goes horribly, surrealistically wrong again and again in this survey of 40 contemporary Japanese artists. The overriding mood is one of suffocating, inward-looking dread, expressed through an obsession with imagery drawn from manga, television, the Internet and pornography. There are hamsters in bondage, a tattooed Kewpie doll, and Lolita figures riddled with hypodermic needles. The best of these disturbing visions are presented with an audacious virtuosity. Mika Kato paints masterful and exquisitely creepy oils of doll faces, and Shintaro Miyake's elaborate installations could depict the dream lives of abandoned plush toys. The few artists who depart from the basic formula of pop surrealism are generally derivative of Western artists. Yasumasa Morimura, for example, takes staged photos of himself that are almost embarrassingly similar to Cindy Sherman's work. So what does it all mean? The text by critic Yamaguchi is not much help, offering mostly banalities. That picture of the girl being poked with all those needles? She's apparently a very contemporary reflection of a society in chaos. But it's the images themselves that make up the bulk of the book, offering a brisk, intoxicating tour through the dark side of the Japanese pop culture imagination. <i>(June 1)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  Literary and 
  Art Theories in Japan
  
  i 
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  Plate 
  | 
  Tsurayuki 
  and 
  his 
  poem. 
  Portrait 
  and 
  calligraphy by Iwasa Matabei (1578-1650).
  
  Makoto Ueda 
  Literary 
  and Art 
  Theories 
  in Japan 
  The Press of 
  Western Reserve 
  University 
  CLEVELAND, OHIO
  
    
  Copyright © 1967 by 
  The Press of 
  Western Reserve University 
  Cleveland, Ohio 44106 
  All rights reserved 
  Printed in the United States 
  of America 
  Library of Congress Catalogue 
  Card Number 67-14521
  
  TO MY WIFE 
  f 70° 
  /33
  
    
  Preface 
    
  A study of Japanese literary and art theories will be useful in 
  two significant ways. First, and obviously, it will help the reader 
  gain a deeper understanding of Japanese literature and art. By 
  learning about the philosophies of art in Japan, he will come to 
  know the aims and methods with which the Japanese produced 
  paintings, music, plays, novels, and poems. As it happens, many 
  of the major Japanese aestheticians were also great artists, so the 
  person who ca