Japan Art Revolution: The Japanese Avant-Garde, from Angura to Provoke

by Amelie Ravalec

A captivating examination of the avant-garde art scene in Japan in the 1960s and '70s, and the revolutionary Japanese artists who made it a creative force both in the country and around the world.
The 1960s in Japan were a time of profound social change, political unrest, and student protests. The turbulent years of the postwar era inspired an artistic explosion, with the emergence of a revolutionary scene of avant-garde artists who pioneered many disciplines: experimental and erotic photography, "Angura" theater and underground street performances, apocalyptic butoh dance, surreal illustrations, and seminal graphic design.

Taking design cues from Japanese luminaries Yokoo Tadanori and Awazu Kiyoshi, Japan Art Revolution showcases more than six hundred captivating artworks, encompassing photographs, film stills, theater posters, and illustrations by visionary artists including Moriyama Daido, Hosoe Eiko, Araki Nobuyoshi, Ishiuchi Miyako, Tanaami Keiichi, Hijikata Tatsumi, Ohno Kazuo, Terayama Shuji, Tenjo Sajiki, Kawada Kikuji, Neo-Dada Organizers, Hi-­Red Center, Hanaga Mitsutoshi, Nakahira Takuma, and Tanabe Santaro, to name a few of the artists featured in this book.

Drawing on extensive interviews with these iconic artists, this comprehensive publication offers readers a nuanced understanding of the thriving world of Japanese avant-­garde art, complemented by insightful texts and quotes from esteemed experts, curators, academics, and archivists.

Genres: Japan, History

320 pages, Hardcover

Published January 27, 2026

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not a fan of Ravalec's earlier documentary on a similar window in Japanese culture, and was a bit concerned that this book was supposedly based on the doc. However, the book obviously contains a lot more material than the doc, including quite a few artists not mentioned earlier; the doc mostly confined its presentation to a relatively few big names. Also, a lot of the components of the doc that I had trouble with (a lot of talking heads, academic theorizing, too much screen time displaying photos, etc) actually work better in the book format. There are a lot of striking photos in the book, and Thames and Hudson does its usual excellent job with the production.

I do have some relatively minor quibbles (the butoh chapters can be more interesting, for instance). But there's a fair amount of documentation on angura available these days, for example:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

My review of the documentary:
https://letterboxd.com/billhsu/film/j...

I also recommend highly this website for English speakers:
https://anguraresearchcenter.wordpres...

It has mostly in-depth original research (a fair amount of the material in Ravalec's book is mined from collections and coffee table books, though some of these are hard to find). There are some very interesting essays, and links to video of Terayama performances that were subtitled in English by the blog creator. I am not aware of most of this material being available elsewhere.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A picture book on the art of the Japanese 'Long 68', and as such there's not much analysis, obviously - though even a bibliography or further reading would have been nice - but mostly fantastic stuff, and the tensions between the few women artists and the relentlessly macho 'sexpol' is brought out subtly and well; documents of a very old society and an ostensibly conservative polity hitting the most accelerated modernity head-on and making some very intense and/or very pretty art out of it.