Takashi Murakami knows how to work his magic to brighten people’s mood wherever he goes. Take his recent whirlwind trip to London, for example. It was almost impossible to spot a non-smiling face at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s lecture hall, where he gave a talk to a full house. Fans asking for selfies afterwards all had their wishes granted. Even some of city’s most serious journalists, covering his solo exhibition opening at Gagosian, cracked a smile when they saw the Japanese art star in his signature flower hat, and Murakami returned the favor with playful poses to ensure that everyone went home with great photos.

Beneath that cheerful facade, nevertheless, is an ambitious, serious man. The artist, who became a global celebrity along with the launch of his Superflat Manifesto 25 years ago, is more than an icon of his generation. He is an cultural entrepreneur who works (almost) around the clock, as do the 70-plus staffers who toil away on a countless number of projects at his massive factory-like studio on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Perhaps what makes the 62-year-old artist most interesting is that he is also a visionary theorist armed with plentiful knowledge of Japanese art history, popular culture, Western art, the global art market, and politics. He proves this by placing Japanese art history high on his agenda during his London visit.

Takashi Murakami, Rakuchū-Rakugai-zu Byōbu: Iwasa Matabei RIP (2023–24). Photo: Ariel Finch. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian. © 2024 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd

First, it is the central theme of the new paintings featured at his latest exhibition, “Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami,” at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill space—his first major London solo in 15 years. The paintings result from his reimagination and reinterpretation of historical Japanese paintings with the assistance of A.I.

This body of work, consisting of over a dozen pieces, features an expansion on what he did for his recent exhibition “Mononoke Kyoto” at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art in February, such as the centerpiece Rakuchū-Rakugai-zu Byōbu: Iwasa Matabei RIP (2023-24), a reworking of the Tokyo National Museum’s treasure Rakuchū-Rakugai-zu Byōbu (Scenes in and around Kyoto) (Funaki Version) by Matabei from the Edo period in the 17th century. He even paid tribute to his seniors from generations ago in his signature, coining himself “the old man mad about painting” (画狂老人), a title that is often associated with Katsushika Hokusai. The show almost sold out before its December 10 opening; it runs through March 8, 2025.

Beyond the show, he also made great attempts to contextualize the role of manga and anime in Japanese art history for an international audience during his public appearances in the British capital. Since the postwar period, “the forefront of Japanese art was manga,” he told Sam Thorne, CEO of Japan House, who moderated the talk at the V&A, which was part of Japan Cultural Expo 2.0.

The artist went on to explain, via his interpreter, that since postwar Japan, becoming a manga artist has always been the highest aspiration for “anyone who can draw.” The narrative art form, which comes with imagination, expansion, and creation of a cultural world in black and white, “is the highest form of art to them,” said the artist, who dreamed of becoming a manga artist and animator (“I tried and failed”) before going on to earn a PhD in the traditional Japanese painting style of Nihonga from Tokyo University of the Arts. He cited Nobuo Tsuji, the Japanese art historian who Murakami said was the first to hold manga in high esteem in the context of Japanese art history. “Through my relationship with him, I could make contemporary artworks outside of the manga world,” the artist noted.

Takashi Murakami (center) at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, with Sam Thorne, CEO of Japan House (left). The photos on display include, at right, a still from the anime Your Name (2016) and an image of the location that inspired that scene. Photo: Vivienne Chow.

No one who knows about Murakami would be surprised by his passion for manga and anime, or how they fueled his Superflat movement. Murakami wrote in his 2010 book On the Battle of Art: How to Become a Real Artist? that he is a “disciple” of the Oscar-winning Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, who was the first to successfully elevate anime to the status of art. But listening to the artist’s explanation of Japanese graphic novels and cartoons in an art-historical context was new to some members of the audience, as they told me after the talk.

“It is a surprise, I guess, to people who are not from Japan,” Murakami told me via his interpreter when I asked him after the talk. “But in Japan, after World War II, the whole pyramid of society was dismantled.”

As a result of the hefty inheritance tax, which can be as high as 55 percent today and was put in place to deter the formation of a super wealthy class, he said, “You cannot really collect and inherit [art], and grow your collection. That is why there is no culture of art collection and appreciation. In that context, you can only look for the type of artistic expression you know, and that was how we arrived at manga. But that is a post-war reality in Japan.”

However, the audience members’ surprise was new to me; I also grew up with manga and anime, and also tried to draw and failed. I suspect the differences come from the vast cultural gap in our upbringing. The aesthetics and narratives of manga and anime have influenced generations of those growing up not only in Japan, but across East and Southeast Asia. The context, however, is different from what Murakami described. They are essentially a part of our collective childhood memories, largely because these forms were so widely available as major cultural exports from Japan, when we had few alternatives. Hong Kong artist Stephen Wong, for example, concedes that manga and anime form an integral part of his artistic practice.

By contrast, in much of the West, manga and anime have been regarded as a geeky, nerdy subculture, never treated even as a part of mainstream culture, let alone as having any impact on art. They get different treatment in France, which has a long tradition of comics appreciation and has been more welcoming to works from Japan. Anime such as Grendizer and Captain Harlock, for example, were mainstream TV programs for children in France in the 1970s.

Hayao Miyazaki, still from My Neighbor Totoro (1988). © 1988 Studio Ghibli.

Manga and anime have gradually become more mainstream today, especially after the Pokémon franchise became a global phenomenon over the past decade or so. “My children are well versed in manga and anime, which I do not have a clue about,” one audience member told me after the talk. VIZ Media, a leading publisher of manga titles translated into English, claims that it reaches one in four millennials and half of all Gen Z manga readers. And that might not be an exaggeration, as many of these titles are available not only at specialist shops like Forbidden Planet in London, but also across mainstream bookstore chains such as Waterstones and Foyles, which have sizeable sections dedicated to manga.

Streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime continue to expand their anime libraries because of their growing popularity. Netflix, which carries hundreds of anime titles, revealed earlier this year that it has at least 100 million households tuning in each year. And there are live action adaptations of famous manga titles underway.

Perhaps Murakami already foresaw their growing worldwide popularity when he made his Superflat Manifesto along with three exhibitions he curated in 2000. The term originally came from a sales pitch by his L.A. gallerists, who described his paintings as “super flat, super high quality, super clean.” He thought that these descriptions summarized the basis of Japanese culture.

Takashi Murakami, Blue Dragon Soars Through the Universe (2024). © 2024 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd

This tendency was initially referred to as “super flatness” to describe “the original concept of the Japanese, who have been completely Westernized,” as Murakami put it. The term relates historical Japanese art with the aesthetics of modern anime as a commentary on how the Japanese art framework was replaced by that developed in the West, particularly after World War II.

“What is important in Japanese art is the feeling of flatness. Our culture doesn’t have 3D,” he said in an interview with Artnet in 2000, singling out the difference between Japanese and Western art. He wrote that same year that Japan is “a country where no distance exists between mainstream culture and subculture. Society, customs, art, culture: all are extremely two-dimensional,” he wrote. “Super flatness sets the stage for the future.”

Does Murakami still believe in Superflat? “Yes,” he said firmly in our interview. He noted that the feeling of flatness still persists today, especially considering that Japan, ever since losing World War II to the U.S., has been acting like America’s “puppet.”

“We are not independent yet,” he said. “Both economically and politically, [the country] is under the influence of the U.S. It is just a fact.”

Murakami’s passion for manga and anime remains unchanged. Asked to choose one title that he would recommend today, he sunk into deep thought for a few moments before enthusiastically naming Look Back. The 2024 film adaptation of the manga of the same name, by Tatsuki Fujimoto, centers on two young friends, their passion for the art form, and the struggle of being a manga artist.

“It is a stunning portrayal of manga culture in Japan,” he said, “a nice way to understand the world of manga.”