青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

Five chapters follow Yoshitomo Nara’s career from his early days in northeastern Japan and youthful embrace of music to his years of training at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music and in Germany, his internal struggles in the midst of his skyrocketing popularity in the 2000s, his renewed concern with his northern home region after the 2011 disaster, and his thoughts on the future. Covering his earliest to most recent works and drawing on long-term research, interviews, and a wealth of valuable sources, this extraordinary monograph is the fruit of close collaboration between Nara himself and an art historian whose work straddles Asia and the West.

• Some 400 visual images, including Nara’s works, snapshots of his travels, and valuable source materials
• Features nine new artworks exclusive to the Japanese edition

Yoshitomo Nara was born in 1959 in the city of Hirosaki in Aomori Prefecture and received an MFA from the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in 1987. He entered the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1988 and worked from Köln following his graduation. In 2000 he returned to Japan, from where he has continued to produce works and conduct exhibitions around the globe.

Yeewan Koon is associate professor of the Department of Art History at the University of Hong Kong. She received her BA and MA from the University of London and her PhD from New York University. A specialist in Chinese and Japanese art and architecture, she is also active as a critic and curator of contemporary art.

This original edition was published in the United Kingdom in 2022 by Phaidon Press Limited.