Visual Counterculture in Japan

Marco Bohr

This book presents innovative analysis of emergent visual trends in Japan from the late 1960s to the present day. Adopting a thematic approach, this interdisciplinary text deconstructs the role that visual practices played in shaping a variety of countercultural discourses related to politics, gender, identity, sexuality, censorship, ethics and disasters. The book makes the case that visual practices do not merely function as a way to record counterculture, but that such practices are in themselves contributing to dynamics of resistance. By considering a wide range of artists, photographers, film makers and practitioners, the book focuses on the way that visual culture transgresses, subverts or in the very least questions assumed socio-cultural boundaries in Japan. In doing so, the book foregrounds the crucial role that images play in our society today. Images are no just...