In Harakiri School Girls Aida did not want to simply fetishize uniform-wearing girls or create a modern version of traditional bijinga (pictures of beautiful women). "Azemichi" or "A Path Between Rice Fields".
These schoolgirls, in their loose socks and school uniforms, symbolize the entire country, killing itself. During the nineties, the number of suicides increased year by year, and according to Aida, Japanese patriotism withered away. "After the Bubble Economy collapsed, I felt that an air of pessimism was spreading through Japan like a virus." Everything might have looked cute and happy, but underneath that veneer seethed dejection and darkness. "Harakiri School Girls is an allegory for the distorted mentality of Japanese youth at the time and the atmosphere of Japanese society," Aida explains. A stream of blood flows past a curious kitten, karaoke flyers, and discarded tissues, into a drain. The flash of a blade creates a rainbow in the blood spurting from a girl's neck. Laced with dark humor, the work shows a group of uniform-clad schoolgirls plunging samurai swords into their stomachs, disemboweling themselves, and slicing off their own heads. "The scene reminded me of besieged warriors who have decided to commit mass suicide." Out of this, Aida created Harakiri School Girls, originally as a poster to advertise his first solo exhibit in 1999, and later as a painting for the Singapore Biennale 2006. "Historically and even globally, they were unique, and I sought a way to portray them." Inspiration came from a group of high school girls squatting on the ground in Shibuya. "I think those kogals in the 1990s were originals," he says.
"A major reason why it's not romantic is how desperately impossible it is," he says.ĭuring the late nineties, as gal culture was running rampant, Aida became intrigued. Rather, it is a reminder of his youth and his aging. "As I get older, the age difference gets wider, and yet the almost magnetic attraction to these girls gets stronger and stronger." But, the artist emphasizes, it's not a romantic interest. "At the age of fourteen, I became obsessed with the magical quality young girls have," he says. And he strives the make the viewer uncomfortable: Whether it be videoing himself masturbating in front of a large banner that reads "beautiful little girl," dressing up as Osama bin Laden for a Saturday Night Live-esque video project, or painting the firebombing of New York by Japanese airplanes. His themes include sexuality, war, and national identity. They drew inspiration from this–using the language of manga and anime to convey their message.Īida is iconoclastic and uncompromising, his work varied and provocative. They experienced the rapid ascent of the Japanese economy during the heady 1980s, and came of age surrounded by pop culture.
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These artists had grown up after the war, while the process of rebuilding Japan was in full swing. Makoto Aida was one of Japan's enfant terribles, along with Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara, that took the international art scene by storm in the 1990s.
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