When going through Toshiko Okanoue's work (born in 1928, in Kochi), one can easily relate her style and dreamy aesthetic to the Surrealist Movement in Japan (1925-70). However, it was not until 1952 that she actually came accross the surrealist world, when her encounter with the artist and poet Shuzo Takiguchi in 1952 was decisive. It was he who -being impressed by the quality of her work- acknowledged her compositions as surrealist, introducing her to the works of Max Ernst. Even though after this concurrence she had some prolific six years -with over a hundred works in her portfolio-, her career was suddenly terminated by her marriage in 1957. Fortunately enough, in the mid-1990s her work was rediscovered, leading to a number of exhibitions around the world, as well as two monographs: Drop of Dreams (2002) and the portfolio The Miracle of Silence (2007).
Even if her work is already sixty years old, the topics she addressed remain contemporary in modern-day Japan. As up-to-date and westernized as we can think of Japanese society nowadays, the attitude towards Western influence remains unclear. Both rejected and admired, white beauty standards definitely have a place in Japanese strategic marketing campaigns. Usually targeting young women and girls, this external influence of remote beauty standards and trends tends to harm and dissociate female identity. In her work we can observe those contradictory emotions clearly portrayed: they narrate a Japanese young student's encounter with the Western way of life as depicted in fashion magazines -as a result of the deluge of foreign (Western) merchandise in post-war devastated Japan. In this sense, she cautiously sorted fragments (fashionable outfits, body parts, animals and inanimate objects) from magazines such as Vogue, Life or Harper's Bazaar and arranged them into dreamlike compositions. In her own words: "Those scraps of my fantasies turned into strangely interesting things".
Another interesting aspect of her work somehow closely linked to Japanese culture itself, in the sense of its syncretic aspect. Historically, Japan has a tradition of incorporating -even ameliorating- foreign elements to its own ethos: this can be seen from the language, religion, martial arts, and even food or fashion. In this regard, even if her image making seems avant-garde and revolutionary, it is deeply rooted in Japanese traditional hari-e: the technique of making pictures by pasting small pieces of coloured paper on pasteboard. Both presaging and ancestral, her work links the East with the West as well as unreachable dreams with concrete reality, condensing the universe in an exquisite artistic expression.
Another interesting aspect of her work somehow closely linked to Japanese culture itself, in the sense of its syncretic aspect. Historically, Japan has a tradition of incorporating -even ameliorating- foreign elements to its own ethos: this can be seen from the language, religion, martial arts, and even food or fashion. In this regard, even if her image making seems avant-garde and revolutionary, it is deeply rooted in Japanese traditional hari-e: the technique of making pictures by pasting small pieces of coloured paper on pasteboard. Both presaging and ancestral, her work links the East with the West as well as unreachable dreams with concrete reality, condensing the universe in an exquisite artistic expression.