Background
Akasegawa was born on March 27, 1937. He was the second youngest of six children. Though born in Yokohama, his family moved frequently due to his father's job as a warehouse clerk.
Genpei Akasegawa (1961)
Greater Japan Zero Yen-Note (1967)
Genpei Akasegawa wrapped objects in fake currency.
Genpei Akasegawa wrapped objects in fake currency.
March,1983
August, 1983: An investigation at the town Tanimachi
1,000-Yen Note Incident Round-Table Conference, The Great Courtroom Exposition (1966/1994). Photograph also reveal that the courtroom was literally transformed into an exhibition, with examples of Akasegawa's pictures tacked up on the walls, sculptures displayed on cabinets and chairs, and Nakanishi's work All Men's Catalogue '63, a long scroll of life-sized nude photographs of the Hi-Red Center members shot from behind, stretched across the public gallery.
原平 赤瀬川
choreographer novelist Photographer writer mangaka
Akasegawa was born on March 27, 1937. He was the second youngest of six children. Though born in Yokohama, his family moved frequently due to his father's job as a warehouse clerk.
Genpei socialized above his age group and showed interest in art at a young age. His older brothers and their conclave influenced him to take up oil painting in high school.
After moving to Tokyo in the mid-'50s and attending Musashino Art University, Akasegawa followed what was then the accepted path for a budding artist by showing his work in invitational exhibitions like the Yomiuri Independant.
In 1960, Akasegawa became involved within the Neo-Dada Organizers, along with Ushio Shinohara, Shusaku Arakawa, and Masanobu Yoshimura. He formed the Hi-Red Center with Jiro Takamatsu and Natsuyuki Nakanishi in 1963, which was a group of artists that presented their works as a collective in Japan. They performed happenings within the Hi-Red Center. Akasegawa was also associated with the avant-garde.
In the 1970s he used the idea of Hyper-Art (chōgeijutsu), an ordinary but useless street object that happened to look like a conceptual artwork despite nobody having intended this. He called such things Hyperart Thomasson (named for Yomiuri Giants outfielder Gary Thomasson) and published photographs of them first within the magazine Shashin Jidai and later within books. Hyperart: Thomasson, marks a crucial turning point in his metamorphosis from a subversive culture to a popular culturatus.
As "Katsuhiko Otsuji," he received the Akutagawa Prize in 1981 for his short story, "Chichi ga kieta". Akasegawa is known for many humorous essays, and his 1998 book Rōjinryoku in which he put forth a hilariously positive take on the declining capabilities of the elderly was a bestseller.
Akasegawa was fond of old cameras, especially Leicas, and from 1992 to around 2009, he joined Yutaka Takanashi and Yūtokutaishi Akiyama in the photographers' group Raika Dōmei, which held numerous exhibitions.
But Akasegawa didn’t become widely recognized in Japan until what’s become known as the 1000-yen Note Incident. In January 1963, Akasegawa sent out invitations to a solo exhibition at a gallery in Tokyo. The announcement was delivered to several close friends in a cash envelope sent through the postal service. The announcement itself was a 1,000-yen note reproduced in monochromatic colors on the front, with relevant information regarding the exhibit on the back. He produced four more during the next year.
In January 1964, his 1,000-yen note partial reproductions became noticed by the police and he was indicted for creating imitations of banknotes, in violation of the 1894 Law Controlling the Imitation of Currency and Securities. The language of the law was quite vague, prohibiting any manufacture or sale of objects with an exterior front that may "be confused for currency or securities".
In August 1966, he went on trial for what was dubbed the "Thousand-Yen Bill Incident". In June 1967, he was found guilty with a three-month suspended sentence. He appealed twice. The decision was upheld in 1970. The epic piece Model 1,000-Yen Note Incident (1963-1974), which involved a real-life police investigation and trial, cemented his place as an inspired conceptualist.
More than setting out to express something or create something from scratch, he was fond of using his extremely observant eye and discerning mind to put a subtle slant on or overturn commonplace things and ideas. By doing this, Akasegawa was able to transform familiar aspects of everyday life into refreshing, humorous works. All of his works were a product of his unique method of slanting and overturning things.
Quotes from others about the person
Yoko Ono: "Mr. Akasegawa is the kind of artist who inspires everybody every time he makes a new piece of art."
"Mike Davis, author of In Praise of Barbarians: "Why is the city always laughing at us behind our backs? Akasegawa, of course, knows the answer, but prefers to keep us prisoners of his enigma…""
Michael Light, author of Full Moon and 100 Suns: "An indispensable, hilarious, and faux-naïve map of postwar Japan, conceptual art making, and exactly that point in the ’70s where Western consumerist culture collapses into unapologetic simulacra. Let this witty master of resistance usher you onwards to genuinely useful modes of higher observation … until one sees and knows only the startlingly different."