Takashi Murakami

“I've been immersed in manga since I was a kid. I grew up with this culture.”

“Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and, in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of 'high art.'”

“I grew up in a low-income area of Tokyo. Like most homes in Tokyo, ours was small. It was a free-standing, two-family rental duplex built 30 years earlier.”

“I'm always very interested in breeding. Raising cacti is breeding. My lotus plant collection is breeding. The insects are breeding.”

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

“I always have stress.”

“In Japan, I focus mostly on sending messages through Twitter, trying to spread my minority way of thinking.”

“In the West, it's just a given that art exists in this high-class place. But in Japan, there's no high class. The minute you come out, you're low class.”

“Rather than a big figure, I guess you could say I'm more of an influential minority symbol.”

“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.'”

“The works I made at the start of my career rely on the themes of war, atomic power, and outer space.”

“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.”

“When I was little, my parents belonged to a cult, a big Buddhist sect called Soka Gakkai. I didn't have any particular sentiment for or against religion, but I did feel bad about my parents' poverty and how it made them depend on that cult.”

“My father, Fukujuro, drove a cab and my mother, Itsuko, was a homemaker. My parents often took me to see Impressionist exhibits. At home, I would paint pictures in a similar style.”

“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.”

“I tried to teach myself to draw anime, but I was so bad.”

“My company, Kaikai Kiki, is unique because it's an art business. I had to find out how to do this by myself.”

“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.”

“In Japan, I am famous in certain special circles - mainly as someone who is trying to break down and enlighten the conventions of Japanese art.”

“For children of my generation, anime was an escape from Japan's loser complex following World War II. Anime wasn't foreign. It was our own.”