A few phone calls in the morning. Then train, and taxi to Takashi Murakami studio, or factory which located in a very industrial suburb of Tokyo.
Nice meeting with the artist. He is the one who curated the exhibition Ero Pop Christmas at the Nadiff Bookstore. Do you remember? We went to the opening last Friday? Spoke about his work, about the exhibition, about this relation ship to the popular culture as well as to the high painting tradition in Japan. Takashi is doing some works which looks like real size, I mean human size, scultpture looking like manga characters. Of course it is coming from this part of the popular culture, but also his work deals with problems of bi and tri dimensional represention in Japanese painting (One of the image also shows a group of paintings).

As an artist, Takashi Murakami also tries to reconsider his role in the Japanese society and tries to re conciliate the art and the audience by using the very popular imagery and also by being the producer of events dedicated to younger artists, and by producing multiples, not expensive. that anybody (almost!) could afford. He likes to think about his activity in term of company and would like his work to be diffused and music companies diffuse CD.
He might do a store into the exhibition for Let's Entertain. It was a nice meeting. The only weird thing was the pollution. This suburd of Tokyo is so industrial that after a couples of hours in this air I started to feel sick. Even if his studio seems to be in the middle of the country side it is the most polluted place I have ever been. I wonder what kind of vegetable they are cultivating there. It is very strange for me to see a tractor in Japan. I thought everything was computer controled or activated by cyborg.

Headed back to Tokyo for a meeting with dealer Shugo Satani in Ginza. And you can notice with me that Japanese people are very welcoming. In Ginza, they installed a billboard with my name on it. I was moved. I had tears in the eyes. I would like to have the same when I will come back to Minneapolis.

He introduced me to the artists of the gallery. The one I was really interested in, was of course the one who almost stops working, and anyway does not want to hear anything from the art world, or meet anybody from the art world. His name is Nakahara. He did installions, sculpture, kind of cyber robet built out of paper. He seems to deal with the idea of a visual equivalent of the vortex, and was at the Aperto in Venice in 1993 and then stoped. He was also Kenji Yanobe teacher. The work is fascinating, but the artist unavailable. But in case he want to do a come back or show the works that, I think, he is doing in secret, I'll be there (with 3756 other curators, I am sure). There some thing of Charles Ray in the madness of his work. I was very happy with this meeting with Shugo Satani.

Ran for an opening at Koyanagi Gallery where I met with Emmanuelle and Tim Blum for Blum and Poe in LA. We were supposed to meet with Tomio Koyama but he was late which is kind of strange for a Japanese citizen. So we left Tim. because my plan was to go to LaMama. LaMama is a club and Merzbow (noise electronic music) was performing. Very noisy indeed but great. I even thought that I destroyed my left hear. No the day after I recover and was able to hear agin from it. That is a good news. Everybody was weary little thing in their hears not me. I was kind of anxious. I am not Van Gogh and not ready to loose this part of my anatomy yet. At night people sell melon in the street. It is nice after a club. It is very healthy. That's the beauty about Japanese food. It is very healthy. It is a real pleasure. And I know you know how important is health to me. No excess. Bed early and so on.