What can Kenji Yanobe's cosmic cats teach us about humanity?

Japan Times

14 hours ago

On a placid lake at the Nordic-themed Metsa Village park in Hanno, Saitama Prefecture, a giant inflatable feline in a neon-orange spacesuit lies curled on its own island.
A peek inside reveals it's a nesting cat doll of sorts, filled with smaller cats diving, napping or painting classical art. Called 'Ship's Cat Island,' this creation of artist Kenji Yanobe can be accessed only via boat and is part of Hyper Museum Hanno's inaugural exhibition of the same name that runs through Aug. 31.
Yanobe has been tackling thorny social issues with various lovable characters since the 1990s, and his spacesuited felines will be familiar to those who have visited the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka or Tokyo's Ginza Six shopping complex last year. In front of the former, a cat statue stands as if a guardian, while in the mid-air display titled 'Big Cat Bang' in Ginza Six, two space mousers ride through the lofty atrium on a spacecraft modeled after Tower of the Sun, the postwar artist Taro Okamoto's avant-garde monument for Expo '70 in Osaka.
The exhibition 'Ship's Cat Island' at Hyper Museum Hanno also includes an island installation of the same name that features a giant inflatable space cat. |
Hyper Museum Hanno
The spacesuited cats in Yanobe's art are imagined as products of an eruptive event occurring billions of years ago that sent them hurtling through the cosmos, with some of them landing on Earth. |
Hyper Museum Hanno
Yanobe has long considered Okamoto an aspirational figure , saying in interviews that he considers Tower of the Sun the measure by which he gauges his own works. According to Yanobe's fantastical mythology, his cosmic cats are an update to Okamoto's 'Tree of Life' theory of evolution portrayed with a sculptural installation inside the Tower of the Sun.
Yanobe also says that his felines embody Okamoto's maxim 'Art is an explosion' as they are imagined as products of an eruptive event occurring billions of years ago that sent them hurtling through the cosmos. Some of the alien kitties landed on our planet, specifically Hanno's Lake Miyazawa, as explained in the newly detailed fable presented at the exhibition. From there, they preserved life on Earth through five extinction phases until humans emerged, when they began teaching us cave painting and other art fundamentals.
That's the story, anyway. As outlandish as it may seem, like all of Yanobe's wild tales, it serves a purpose: to cultivate what he calls the 'grand fantasies' needed to create a future even while humanity threatens its own existence.
Ruins of the future
Future fantasies are Yanobe's original source of creativity. The Osaka native grew up in the shadow of Expo '70, predecessor of the world fair that is currently being held in the city 55 years later. Having visited the site after its closure, Yanobe describes seeing its deconstructed pavilions as limitless potential for creation and re-creation.
'It was like a time trip to the ruins of the future,' the artist says. 'I realized there that I could create anything.'
Yanobe repeatedly returns to the Tower of the Sun in his work, both physically and metaphorically. In 2003, he reenacted a Vietnam War protester's infiltration of the tower during the 1970 expo. Yanobe, wearing an atomic radiation protection suit, scaled the structure in what he called 'a search for another exit to the future,' a daring feat described in the film "Tower of the Sun Hijacking Project: Special Edition" (2007) and also discussed in a documentary screened at the current exhibition. The artist seems to still be looking for this portal — the theme of living in an untenable world riddled with conflict and environmental destruction is deeply rooted in his art.
After 2011, Yanobe, whose art warns of disasters, pivoted to more whimsical expression but with the same message. |
Hyper Museum Hanno
Early in his career, an accident at the Mihama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture in 1991 started Yanobe down the path of building mecha-like sculptures meant to withstand apocalyptic disaster. 'Yellow Suit' (1991) is a set of lead and steel armor for protection against radiation. Fitted with a Geiger counter, it comes with a matching outfit for a pet dog. 'Survival System Train' (1992-97) is a locomotive unit that can lay its own tracks. Equipped with food, water and oxygen, it is designed as a self-propelling escape device.
The culmination of Yanobe's preoccupation with catastrophe was his visit to Chernobyl in Pripyat, Ukraine, in 1997. There he staged a photoshoot documenting himself wandering through the nuclear evacuation zone in an Astro Boy-inspired antiradiation suit — this time created as much for function as symbolism. After returning to Japan, those experiences were embedded in his future artworks.
In 1998, he posed for a photo with the Tower of the Sun (still standing in Expo '70 Commemorative Park) in his helmeted Chernobyl costume; he faces the camera with his back to the back of the tower, where a black face representing the past is painted. The image is open to multiple interpretations: perhaps Yanobe is saying with his physical stance that he's looking in the opposite direction, to the future; maybe he's suggesting through the juxtaposition that Okamoto's generation has sent his into exile, toward some brave new world.
From survival to revival
The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, which saw a triple disaster of earthquakes, tsunami and nuclear plant meltdowns in the Tohoku region, marked an inflection point in Yanobe's career. Disheartened that the warnings of his art had failed to prevent calamity, he decided a new approach was required and shifted his focus 'from survival to revival.'
The tone of his works changed as well, from irony-laden grimness to pop-driven cheerfulness. Still, Yanobe insists his message is as serious as ever, it's just the delivery that is different. He says he does not believe that art with a weighty subject necessarily needs to feel heavy.
'If anything, I think that can backfire,' he told The Japan Times at Hyper Museum Hanno last month. 'I want to create accessible works inviting further thought.'
Having spent time as a child near the site of the Osaka Expo '70 and playing under Taro Okamoto's Tower of the Sun monument, Kenji Yanobe's work often references Okamoto's work. |
Hyper Museum Hanno
Collaborations with Japanese lacquer artisans and animators are also on show, and a Roomba-mounted kitty moseys around the room. |
Hyper Museum Hanno
This stance also seems to be the modus operandi for his current exhibition. Displays include large and small sculptures of the white cat, illustrations (some hand-drawn and others AI-generated), and even an NFT project in which backers can 'return' a Ship's Cat figurine to 'space.' A balloon launch from Oarai Sun Beach in Ibaraki Prefecture is planned for later this summer.
Collaborations with Japanese lacquer artisans and animators are also on show, and a roomba-mounted kitty moseys around the room. Outside, a 3-meter-tall Ship's Cat with wings looms sphinxlike in front of the building.
'Ship's Cat Island' also exhibits other characters and their recent iterations. 'Lucky Dragon Concept Maquettes' (2009/24) is a large metal ark alluding to a 1954 incident in which a U.S. hydrogen bomb test near Bikini Atoll hit a Japanese fishing boat with radioactive fallout. Yanobe's ship is filled with several of his self-made icons addressing issues of atomic weaponry and power.
Another noteworthy piece is 'Blue Cinema in the Woods' (2006), a set of sculptures featuring Torayan, the character based on a ventriloquist dummy invented and publicly performed by Yanobe's father. Footage of Torayan's adventures plays on a mini theater perched on the back of an aluminum-plated elephant. Anyone curious about the evolution of Yanobian lore and the relationships among his characters should watch the four films about the artist at the exhibition, shown with English subtitles on loop for a total of 120 minutes.
Outside Hyper Museum Hanno a 3-meter-tall Ship's Cat with wings looms sphinxlike. |
Hyper Museum Hanno
There is, however, a nagging contradiction between the message of Yanobe's works –– a stark warning about human-led environmental destruction –– and the questionable sustainability of producing them, many of which are massive metal and plastic objects. NFTs and AI have also generally been criticized for their sizable carbon footprints.
'I think it's about balance,' Yanobe said, explaining that he feels artists with a social conscience do have an obligation to be consistent in how they make their works, but that to truly leave no trace, he would need to abandon his art entirely.
'I want to make work with a broad vision that speaks to but looks beyond its time,' he said. 'I hope its impact will override its imperfections.'
'Ship's Cat Island' runs through Aug. 31 at Hyper Museum Hanno in Hanno, Saitama Prefecture. For more information, visit metsa-hanno.com