In conversation, Tadanori Yokoo jumps nimbly between the past and the present. One moment he's watching the sky glow red as bombs rain down on Kobe during World War II. The next he's riding in a taxi with Yukio Mishima. And then he's back in the present, here at his studio in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward, discussing his latest painting.
It has always been that way for this 75-year-old who, in the 1960s, became Japan's most famous graphic designer before abruptly deciding, in 1981, to become a painter. Not only his conversation but everything he has produced to date — his graphic-art posters, his fine-art paintings — draws on his memories.
Yokoo was born in 1936 in Nishiwaki, Hyogo Prefecture, and was adopted by relatives — a doting elderly couple who had run a kimono fabric-making company.