The Japanese cultural phenomenon of kawaii - 'cuteness' - has become ubiquitous all over Asia, spearheaded by Sanrio's now iconic Hello Kitty merchandising. In Japan, kawaii has been absorbed into the country's mainstream culture and used as a framework for artistic expression by artists such as Takashi Murakami, whose 'Superflat' style draws on anime and manga.
But a new show at New York's Japan Society, entitled Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art and curated by David Elliott, exhibits darker, more realistic works that stand in stark contrast to the cute, cartoony work of recent Japanese artists.
A stuffed elk augmented by translucent spheres, an installation featuring a bridal dress infused with a flowing blood-like liquid, and a large-format painting of a mound of faceless salarymen herald a new, less-childlike trend in Japanese art.
'The artists in this show are presenting a different view of themselves, Japan and Japanese art,' says Joe Earle, the Society's Gallery vice-president and director.
'Their work has little to do with the past - they are all children of the heisei [current] era, and do not look back. These artists grew up during a time when the old structures of lifelong employment and endless material progress at the cost of great self-sacrifice and discipline were being replaced by more uncertain employment and a much more uncertain world.
'Although there was certainly darkness, the world of the previous generation of artists tended to focus around optimistic moments like the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the Expo 70. But the world of these younger artists has been a less optimistic, less secure one.'
The Japanese cultural obsession with cute, childlike images is generally thought to be a deep-rooted reaction to the devastation of Hiroshima and the results of losing the second world war. A 2005 exhibition at the Japan Society, Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, explored the relationship between postwar Japanese art and the A-bomb. The girlish images and iconography of kawaii that infiltrated the art world were originally part of the Japanese high school girl culture of the 1970s.