Takashi Murakami

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.'

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I stopped worrying about competition in contemporary art. It feels a little bit more pure. That's where I am, one step back.

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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.

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Quotes by Takashi Murakami