Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts
The Avant-garde Rejection of Modernism

Thomas R. H. Havens (Author)

9780824830113

Hardback, published 31 July 2006

344 pages, 34 illustrations, 10 in colour
23.7 x 16.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.721 kg

Tom Havens' indispensable new book provides a magisterial guide to the postwar Japanese avant-garde in the nonverbal arts. - David Goodman, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign ""Meticulously researched and written in impeccably clear and jargon-free prose, the book is particularly rich in material garnered through personal interviews of the principals of the period."" - John Whittier Treat, Yale University

Radicals and Realists is the first book in any language to discuss Japan's avant-garde artists, their work, and the historical environment in which they produced it during the two most creative decades of the twentieth century, the 1950s and 1960s. After surveying censorship and arts policy during the American occupation of Japan (1945-1952), the narrative divides into two chronological sections dealing with the 1950s and 1960s, bisected by the rise of an artistic underground in Shinjuku and the security treaty crisis of May 1960.