At a time when Japanese pop-culture products—from comics to films to videogames—are among the hottest trends in America, Yale University Press and the Japan Society are betting that a hefty exhibition catalogue can sell as well as a popular manga or anime title.
Yale University Press is the publisher for Japan Society's current exhibit, Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, curated by acclaimed contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, who also edited the catalogue. Mounted at the Japan Society gallery in New York City, the exhibition offers a historical investigation into the development of Japanese pop culture since the atomic bombs fell. It examines comics, toys, animated films and, most importantly, the obsessive fans—called otaku—devoted to the stuff, ultimately looking at their impact on contemporary Japanese artists.
Patricia Fidler, publisher, art and architecture, at Yale, said that YUP and the Japan Society were banking on the book's "crossover appeal" and gambled on a 20,000-copy first printing, much larger than normal for a lavishly illustrated $60 catalogue. "We think the book will appeal to scholars," said Fidler, pointing to the book's selection of accessible essays, "as well as to a wide general market interested in manga, anime, graphic design and contemporary art." Fidler added, "There's much international interest in Murakami," who also wrote several essays for the volume. "It's a catalogue that doesn't really need an exhibition."
Hyun Soo Woo, interim director of the Japan Society, said the exhibition offered a chance "for us to do more than show traditional Japanese art. Manga and anime are very popular in the U.S. and Asia, and many people do not understand where it really comes from."
Manga is one of the fastest-growing categories in the U.S. book market and anime takes up ever-larger blocks of time on cable TV. Who's to say this bet won't pay off? Murakami was featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, and the show got a rave review from Times art critic Roberta Smith shortly after it opened. It's also collected good reviews from the New Yorker, ArtForum, Time Out and many others. The gallery is routinely jammed with visitors (the show is open until July), and Woo said the Japan Society bookshop sold out its 5,000-copy allotment in two days.
Robert Barrett, manager of Henessey + Ingalls, a well-known Los Angeles art bookstore, expects Little Boy to do well. "It combines high art and the lowest of the low. Murakami has started a kind of movement," he said. "The book goes beyond what I expect from the manga world and tracks how things shift through the culture. The people that buy our graphics books will love it."
