Most of my works are the statue of human body.
It stands alone. Its body has something abnormal.
These bodies represent me and a community which is involved with me.
Why do they show abnormality?
The reason is that they are in Japan.
There is one question; why does Japan show abnormality?
I want to show this reason from two keyword, 'Japan's WW2 defeat' and 'Subculture'.
1. Japan's WW2 defeat
Most of the Japanese don't have the religious belief. However, there are the worship of nature or the thought from Buddhism and Confucianism in Japan. This Japanese traditional thought divides the human into body and spirit. For example, it tells that the sprit parts from the body after the death. And more, it considers that the spirit is more important than the body, therefore its find religious value in that the spirit control the body.
In short, the Japanese tends to consciously control the body.
The Japanese were bound to this traditional belief during WW2. Seppuku (cutting the belly) and Tokkou (Special Attack Forces) represents it
.
However, this thought was castrated by Japan's WW2 defeat.
The Japanese criticized their own body sense and tried to take in western body sense which connects the body with the spirit.
This attempt was failed. The Japanese have had the distorted body sense since this failure.
Although large communities like Social systems and education are based on the western body sense, small communities are based on the traditional body sense.
This separation make the Japanese confuse and suffer because they can't grasp their own body sense.
Now, the Japanese pull sward for Seppuku, but they can't do it. They lost where they return their sward and remain standing with it in a daze.
I want to represent this Japanese situation by my works.
Once western people made the body statue in order to approach God who created man in his own image. In other word, the artist made an ideal body for community. In modern age, the western artist began to make the statue of his/her own body.
I am the Japanese, so I can't make an ideal body for community or the statue of his/her own body. I can only make the distorted body statue because my community and myself distort my body sense.
2.Subculture
Japanese subculture is strongly influenced by thoughts on straightening out distorted body sense.
And, the Japanese who is distressed by the distortion of body sense consume such a subculture.
Disney characters are fantasy because it represents the Western countries' body sense. However,
Manga represents the Japanese distortion in this way; Manga gives characters some bodies that spill blood and sometimes die. This unique expression in order to unify the body and the spirit in the fantasy has been known well by Tezuka Osamu. The Japanese need this fantasy. It is the other way about the Disney characters in Western countries.
However, the distortion in Japanese nature is not perfectly corrected. As a result, the distortion is represented as an alien in Manga. Especially, it is expressed as the abnormal sexuality because we consider "the sexuality" strongly connects to "the body" in our daily life.
These abnormal sexual expressions have been accepted and consumed by the Japanese, owing to the fact that they feel something real in these expressions of the sexuality. Many Japanese Manga writers have dug into the sexual expressions in order to be consumed their stories, therefore the sexual expressions have been diversified in Manga, for example 'FUTANARI (a kind of hermaphrodites)' or "Boy's Love".
I apply the way of Manga expression, especially sexual ones which show us the diversity and the strong reality, to my artwork in order to represent the Japanese distorted body sense.