Murakami's 'little boy' syndrome: victim or aggressor in contemporary Japanese and American arts?

This paper examines the ambiguous nature of Murakami's criticism toward the postwar Japanese condition - as the artist most effectively captured in his phrase 'A Little Boy,' which was also the title of his curated exhibition at the Japan Society of New York in 2005. As Murakami wrote in his introduction to the catalogue, demilitarized Japan after the Second World War underwent a collective sense of helplessness, and the metaphor of a little boy is intended to describe Japan's supposedly unavoidable reliance on its big brother, America. The name 'Little Boy,' in fact, originates from the code name used by the American military for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The proliferation of 'cuteness' in Japanese contemporary art, which draws upon youth culture, especially otaku culture, evinces a common urge among the postwar generation in Japan to escape from their horrible memories and sense of powerlessness. Murakami's rhetorical analysis of Japan's self-image seems, however, contradictory, given his extremely aggressive business tactics, which can find no counterpart in the Western art world - not even in the efforts of Murakami's predecessor, Andy Warhol. Like My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), whose hyper sexuality defies its pubescent and immature appearance, his art, theory, and art marketing indicate the paradoxical nature of his theory of impotence. By focusing on his manifesto and writings published on the occasion of his 2005 exhibition and his style of managing Kaikai Kiki Ltd., this paper delves into the dual nature of Murakami's interpretation of postwar Japanese art and culture, particularly in relation to those of America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]