Superstar Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is well known for his corporate approach to art making, with a network of studio and production factories around the globe. But this Friday, the artist took to Twitter to rip apart a different kind of corporatized culture — the Cool Japan initiative, a government-mandated advertising campaign that promotes Japanese culture abroad. “Dear ad agencies and bureaucrats! Attention please. Stop inviting me to Cool Japan events, interviews or sending any kind of offers whatsoever. I have absolutely no connection to Cool Japan.” Murakami wrote (as translated by Spoon & Tamago).
Cool Japan is a branding campaign that tries to aid in Japan’s resurgence after its ‘90s economic collapse through promoting cultural exports. Journalist Douglas McGray coined the term “Gross National Cool” in 2002 to describe the country’s position as an arbiter of taste in art, fashion, style, and technology the world over. Popular culture like Hello Kitty, Pokemon, anime, and video games have given Japan a huge amount of soft power — cultural pull and influence, rather than military might. Now, the country is capitalizing on its name-brand success with the Cool Japan campaign, which has even been spun off into a TV show of the same name.
Murakami takes issue with ad agencies’s co-optation of the Cool Japan initiative and the money that comes with it. “I can’t understand why artists get involved with the gimmicks of ad agencies who are simply trying to turn a profit with Cool Japan,” the artist tweeted. “It really pisses me off to think that a few individuals are in bed with each other, licking up the money that came out of our country’s deficit. And the ad agencies who strut about pretending to be creative disgusts me.”
Murakami’s vitriol seems reserved for the ad agencies rather than the branding campaign, and is curious given how the artist’s own work has wandered perilously close to advertising in the past. Seeing that Murakami has slapped his Superflat imagery on a Louis Vuitton bag and a Kanye West album cover, it’s easy to see where ad agencies would get the idea to approach him. Murakami is one of Japan’s chief cultural representatives, and perhaps its single most internationally visible artist. While his anger toward agencies is understandable, one wonders why he wouldn’t want to participate in a nationwide branding campaign — it seems so perfectly Murakami.