Reflex

Edited by Mark Sanders, Fumiya Sawa and Kyoichi Tsuzuki

In Japan, the 20th century is indelibly linked to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Another prominent feature, becoming fully visible towards the close of the 20th century, was the country’s penchant for the gizmoid and insensible, surreal and plastic.

In “Reflex,” 40 urban young artists and performers realize the manifestations of modern Japan through their own unique brand of self-portraiture.

“Reflex” charts the alternative incarnations of the Japanese psyche as seen through the eyes of a new generation of Japanese contemporary artists, illustrators and photographers.

Superficially, many portraits seem simply weird. Two gay Sumo wrestlers are fighting in a bathhouse, for instance, thereby subverting the parameters of traditional, male-orientated Manga culture.

From Elvis impersonators to gangs of marauding youths in the latest ad hoc street fashions, the cultural terrain that is contemporary Japan continues to change and mutate into ever more diverse and bizarre manifestations of itself.

But they are more than that.

By identifying six distinct Japanese reflexes to the 21st century — the Kid Reflex, Naked Reflex, Manga Reflex, Group Reflex, Amateur Reflex and the Imagined Reflex — these artists have provided, in a myriad of self-representations, the concerns of young Japan.

In a high-tech world saturated with consumerism, the question of the essence of Japanese identity has taken a new importance.

All the work that is contained within this volume was produced by Japanese artists — both established and amateur — whose work represents a new mode of thinking about what it means to be Japanese in today’s global village.

It is evidence that, contrary to popular opinion, Japanese society has moved away from simple appropriation of Western popular culture. It is creating its own unique brand of aesthetics that is often as surreal as it is insightful.

“Reflex” is a glimpse into the soul of a modern Japan that finds itself in a constant state of flux.

Mark Sanders, Fumiya Sawa and Kyoichi Tsuzuki

Mark Sanders, Fumiya Sawa and Kyoichi Tsuzuki co-edited “Reflex.” Mark Sanders is the senior editor of “Another Magazine,” a fashion magazine. Fumiya Sawa is a consultant and curator on the Barbicon Gallery’s exhibition “JAM: Tokyo – London.” Kyoichi Tsuzuki is an artist and editor of 180 photographs of the award-winning “Roadside Japan.”