The Mushroom
On August 6, 1945, a pivotal moment in history, the United States launched nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, inflicting profound devastation not only on Japan but also leaving an indelible mark on global consciousness. This event also heralded a new era where nuclear powers began to exert economic and political influence over non-nuclear states, a phenomenon often likened to colonization. Not only at the international level, nuclear weapons have also long been seen as a symbol and source of fear in the minds of ordinary people. This fear has been widely represented not only in mass media but also in the field of art. In Japan, both film and manga, such as Godzilla and Akira, reflect the Japanese people's fear, which, according to commentators, became part of a programmed mindset toward nuclear weapons and a vulnerability to colonialism. Japanese artist Takashi Murakami's mushroom cloud paintings and his sculpture My Lonesome Cowboy, offer an ironic and critical perspective on Japanese society's fear and inferiority complex when confronting the truth of their history. Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang's fireworks displays are an essential reference point for my research, particularly his two works featuring mushroom clouds. By comparing the perspectives of Chinese and Japanese artists who share similar opinions on nuclear weapons, I hope to further explore global concerns about these devastating weapons on a real and symbolic level. I'll conclude by discussing the relationship between nuclear weapons and nature, as mentioned in Art of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. A book notes that mushrooms are the first species to grow after a nuclear explosion.
Furthermore, Jeremy Rifkin references the earth’s resilience, particularly in his The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth. My analysis reveals that the advent of nuclear weapons represents a profound disaster for humanity, a theme poignantly depicted by Japanese artists like Murakami through various media, including film, manga, and the fine arts. These works directly or indirectly engage with the disaster’s ongoing profound impact on Japanese society, encapsulating the collective trauma sustained. Moreover, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang's work demonstrates that the dread of nuclear armament extends even to nations untouched by nuclear fallout. The resilience of nature, as evidenced by the growth of mushrooms in radioactive environments, is a powerful reminder of nature's omnipotence. Thus, my project asserts that while nuclear proliferation is a human-made disaster, it pales in comparison to the immense and enduring power of the natural world, before which humanity must maintain reverence and humility.
The assistance of the United States after World War II helped Japan largely overcome the gloom of the war and accomplished economic take-off in a very short period. The colonization of Japan by the U.S. created a new subculture among Japanese people, which Takashi Murakami's Little Boy The Arts of Japan's Exploding subculture calls otaku. Otaku are considered to be a group of people who have a connection to real life but want to connect with fictional aesthetics. Cute and beautiful girls are two essential elements in otaku culture. Psychoanalyst Tamaki Saitō defines otaku as “having a strong affinity for the fictional context.” In Takashi Murakami's view, Japan was demilitarized after the war and experienced a sense of helplessness, and the metaphor of the "little boy" was intended to describe Japan's unavoidable dependence on its "big brother," the United States. The proliferation of this "cuteness" in Japanese contemporary art, especially in otaku culture, is a manifestation of the common desire of the post-war generation to escape from horrific memories and feelings of powerlessness.
The feeling of powerlessness is deeply ingrained in the Japanese people, and it largely stems from the atomic bombing. This fear has been depicted in various art forms. One famous example is the Tokusatsu movie Godzilla by director Ishiro Honda in 1954. Godzilla is one of the most famous monsters in the world, and its birth is inextricably linked to nuclear weapons. In the movie, Godzilla is depicted as a creature awakened from its ancient slumber by the effects of radiation from a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean. Godzilla's appearance destroys cities, and countless ordinary people die in the disaster. At the end of the story, it is mentioned that if humans don't stop the nuclear test, more Godzilla's companions will appear in the future to destroy human civilization. This scene directly conveys the prevailing social ideology of the Japanese people in the 1950s, which was the fear of nuclear weapons. Godzilla is the embodiment of this fear. The movie was filmed in 1954, only nine years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the director expresses the collective psychological trauma of the Japanese people about the nuclear bombings through the lines of the movie characters.
(Godzilla. Directed by Ishirō Honda, performances by Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, and Akihiko Hirata, Toho Co., Ltd, 1954)
It is this widespread fear that has made nuclear a very sensitive term in Japan. Murakami believes that the tragic memory of the atomic bomb has received little serious discussion among the Japanese public and that the otaku is an exception to this historical forgetting. Manga, derived from the otaku culture, has repeatedly featured elements associated with atomic bombs, mushroom clouds, and decolonization. Katsuhiro Ōtomo's Akira is a leader in this category, set in Neo-Tokyo, a futuristic city in 2019 built in the aftermath of World War III. The story follows Kaneda and his friend Tetsuo, who develops superpowers after a motorcycle accident. Tetsuo and another super-powered person, Akira, set off a massive explosion in Volume 6 of the manga, leaving Neo-Tokyo in ruins. The United Nations enters Neo-Tokyo after the explosion and wants to help build the city, but Kaneda, the protagonist of the manga, says to them, "Take your guns and get the hell out of our country!” Ōtomo used Kaneda's voice to cry out the desire for freedom and independence of some ordinary people in post-war Japan, a positive and painful expression that no other form of art in Japan at the time could achieve.
( Ōtomo, Katsuhiro. Akira. Vol. 6, Kodansha, 1993.)
Takashi Murakami's artwork also criticizes post-war Japan's fearful and inferior social environment. On the first page of Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, Takashi Murakami presents the nuclear explosion in a very playful way. The image is filled with vibrant manga characters designed by Murakami. Additionally, there are two colorful mushroom clouds depicted in the image. One cloud is red, and the other is black, and both of them have facial expressions. The depiction of nuclear bombs in Murakami's painting appears quite different from what we had previously discussed. The painting is filled with playful and happy vibes, so perhaps Murakami intended to create a sense of contrast by using happiness to evoke feelings of sadness.
(Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, edited by Takashi Murakami, Japan Society, New York Yale University New Haven and London 2005, p. 1)
(Murakami, Takashi. My Lonesome Cowboy. 1998, Sculpture, Superflat.)
In his other work, My Lonesome Cowboy, Murakami creates a sculpture of a Manga teenager. He is completely naked and waving a jet of semen from his penis, which flies through the air like a cowboy's lasso. This piece shares its name with Andy Warhol's movie Lonesome Cowboys, in which Andy Warhol portrayed a powerful American cowboy. Takashi Murakami satirizes Japanese society, culture, and reality in this rather amusing way. Some Japanese escape the reality of society and the pain of the country’s past through masturbation, manga, etc. This power is unrealistic even if one becomes a powerful cowboy, like in Andy Warhol's movies. This work expresses Takashi Murakami's satirical view of the prosperity of twentieth-century Japanese society, in which the whole country seems very powerful, but in reality, all the power is superficial.The sheer power of nuclear weapons does not only frighten the people of Japan, but Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang has also expressed his views on nuclear weapons. His artwork Color Mushroom Cloud was presented at the University of Chicago, where Enrico Fermi invented the world's first nuclear reactor. This work of Cai Guo-Qiang is very similar to Takashi Murakami's paintings mentioned earlier. Both use colorful elements to depict the mushroom clouds, and according to Laura Steward, the curator of Public Art at the Smart Museum of Art, “Cai gave the mushroom clouds a profit of color and wanted the colors to suggest creativity and peace.”
(Cai Guo-Qiang, Mushroom Cloud and Mushroom, 1995–96. Painting.)
We feel the human's fear of nuclear weapons and desire for peace in the works of Japanese and Chinese artists, respectively. But the exciting thing is that this nuclear threat seems nothing to nature. The book Art of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene mentioned a very interesting thing. After the Chornobyl nuclear reactor accident in 1986, mushrooms were found everywhere around the damaged reactor. These mushrooms contain melanin, which actually uses radioactive rays as a digestive aid of sorts and, therefore, thrives in radioactive environments. The fungus, known as "radiotrophication," uses melanin ionization rather than photocooperation to get to “food.” Cai Guo-Qiang discusses this magical phenomenon in his Mushroom Cloud and Mushroom work. Using gunpowder ink and dried Ganoderma mushrooms to create a 20-page folded album on paper, he discusses the relationship between nature and nuclear energy by combining the imagery of mushrooms and mushroom clouds.
(Cai Guo-Qiang, Color Mushroom Cloud, 2017. Fireworks. Photo by Wen-You Cai, courtesy Cai Studio.)
It's still difficult for humans to live in Chornobyl today, but mushrooms have adapted quickly to the environment, highlighting the earth’s resilience. In Jeremy Rifkin's book Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth, he emphasizes that “the litmus test will be how we nurture and prepare our children and they their children to let the sense of awe awaken, even to the terrifying ways the earth is convulsing.” The mushrooms growing in Chornobyl are just one example of how powerful and unpredictable the Earth can be. We must learn from these surprises to better understand our planet. We must always maintain a sense of wonder and respect for nature, appreciating and protecting all it offers.
Reference
Brett Hack (2016) Subculture as social knowledge: a hopeful reading of otakuculture, Contemporary Japan, 28:1, 33-57, DOI: 10.1515/cj-2016-0003
Harris, G. (2017, December 5). Cai Guo-Qiang’s pyrotechnic mushroom cloud successfully erupts over Chicago. The Art Newspaper - International Art News and Events. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2017/12/05/cai-guo-qiangs-pyrotechnic-mushroom-cloud-successfully-erupts-over-chicago
Dong‐Yeon Koh (2010) Murakami's ‘little boy’ syndrome: victim or aggressor in contemporary Japanese and American arts?, Inter‐Asia Cultural Studies, 11:3, 393-412, DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2010.484179
Masterworks. (2022, October 21). What Is Murakami’s My Lonesome Cowboy? Masterworks. https://insights.masterworks.com/art/artists/what-is-murakamis-lonesome-cowboy/
Murakami, T. (2005b). Little boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture. Yale University Press.
Rifkin, J. (2022). The age of resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth. St. Martin’s Press.
Tsing, A. L., Bubandt, N., Gan, E., & Swanson, H. A. (2017). Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/52400
Yoshimi, S., & Buist, D. (2003) ‘America’ as desire and violence: Americanization in postwar Japan and Asia during the Cold War, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 4:3, 433-450, DOI: 10.1080/1464937032000143797