日経新聞 3rd May 2020 What is Kyushu-Ha? (1)What is Kyushu-Ha? Draw on asphalt!
Around 1960, when the avant-garde art movement flourished, there was a unique
movement called “Kyushu-Ha” in Fukuoka. They advocated anti-art and refused toexhibit it to the public. They made radical happenings by drawing on asphalt and using
scraps.
What motivated the young painters, who were just ordinary residents in the local citiesof the post-war transition period?
The black luster of the scrap material.
The back luster of the asphalt looks like a tear, the nails and wires attached to thesurface painful. There are also cracks here and there that seem to have been cut witha knife. This is the painting by Takami Sakurai entitled "Linch".

I saw it at the Fukuoka City Museum of Art collection exhibition in mid-February before
its closure due to the coronavirus. Along with this work, there were another seven black
paintings lined up in the corner that emitted a different energy from its surroundings.
Mokuma Kikuhata's funeral march no.2, is made by attaching innumerable red pottery
like haniwa on to the black asphalt. Jutaro Yamauchi’s “Algerian man” is composed bya humanoid figure attached to a blue-green copper plate surrounded by plasterreminding us of a desert.
Shigeharu Obana acclaimed work "Self-portrait '' uses only the unevenness of theasphalt piled up on the board to express his eyes, nose and hair. The black lusteredface looks like a coal mine worker.
"Each painting is different, but because they are dark you can identify them right away,"
said curator Yozo Yamaguchi. Asphalt is an early Kyushu-Ha trademark. At theexhibition hall in the late 1950, one of the members, Mitsuko Tabe, recalls that "it wasnoticeable. I immediately recognised it".
Around 60 years ago, there were still many uneven roads in Fukuoka city, and paving
work was being done, an asphalt pitch was "100 yen per lump, it was cheap," saidTabe. Oil paints were expensive for poor young painters.
Thickly melt the asphalt in an iron pan on a portable clay stove, while the black smoke
rises, ladle it and pour it onto the plywood, large areas can be covered at once.
Furthermore, "the surface tension that appears is interesting and a thick unevensurface is created by chance. It's informal (unconventional)" said Tabe. Hot asphalt"also serves as an excellent adhesive" said Tabe. Fragments, pottery, cardboard,plastics, ropes, tubes, cloth... anything can stick to it. Tabe cut the bamboo broom
pattern into slices and stuck them firmly.
Osamu Ochi was the first one to use asphalt. Ochi, who worked for a printing company
in Fukuoka, found out in the work process that the glass plate coated with thephotosensitizer is washed in an asphalt tub containing silver nitrate. He was fascinatedby the beauty of the waste liquid.
Sakurai and Ochi met in 1956 and were at the core of the formation of Kyushu-Ha,
during that time everyone started drawing with asphalt. A variety of daily necessities
and junk items were added, "to present their raw life in paintings" says avant-garde

researcher Raiji Kuroda. “Ochi thought that asphalt was a material that wasexpressively strong. Sakurai thought that it could be sold as a material and anideology."
The eldest son of Sakurai and painter Tomokazu Sakurai remembers his father'swords. "Kyushu-Ha is not a ‘group’ but a ‘material’, it is not an ‘ideology’ but a ‘thing’.”
The idea that everything can be material holds true to the contemporary avant-garde
art movement of Neo-Dada in New York.
The production site was unexpected. In the intense odor of the high-temperatureasphalt “I worked hard wearing only pants. It was like a festival, spectators wouldgather.” Kikuhata recalls. "That was our commune," "It's no longer post-war," wrote theEconomic White Paper in 1956. The latter half of the 1950s was an era of rapid
economic growth in Japan. However, Fukuoka, which is located in the corner ofKyushu far from Tokyo, was a slightly different world.
Consumers rampaging during the postwar transition period
With the energy shift from coal to oil, a wave of rationalization was pushed to the coalmines in Chikuho and Omuta and labor disputes intensified. It peaked in the 1959
Miike dispute, which was said to be capital versus labor. Strikes and lockouts occurred
frequently at railways, department stores, and newspaper companies. In 1956,
pollution problems spread from Kyushu and the Minamata disease was officiallyconfirmed.
There was an uproar. The 1960 political conflict against the Japan-US security treaty
also existed in Tokyo, but Fukuoka was still in the midst of a post-war transition thatwas deeply rooted in the economic structure. The painters who gathered at KyushuHa
were ordinary people working in this town.
Sakurai and Mamoru Matano worked at the Nishi-Nippon newspaper, Yasuyuki
Ishibashi worked at Nishi-Nippon Railroad Co, Tabe and Yutaka Yagara at Iwataya
department store. Kikuhata drew portraits on plates at the Raku ware corner ofIwataya. Most of the other members also received monthly salaries as school teachersand such.
"No one sponged off their parents" (Kikuhata "Anti-Art talks").

Sakurai holds a red pencil in the editorial department while taking care of a carrier
pigeon used by the newspaper company to communicate with the branch, the rooftop
of the pigeon house became a hangout for the members.
There are no art colleges in the area and few have received a specialised art
education. Since there are no museums or galleries, the only way to become a painteris to study under a public organisation and be selected at public exhibitions. Not
hindered by such a convoluted situation, they started rampaging to make a new movethat was Kyushu Ha.
The origin is "genius", said Ochi. After graduating from high school in Saga in 1955,
Ochi became a printer and read the overseas magazine "Vogue" at work. There hesaw a Jackson Pollock's painting and thought, "I can draw this too." The two paintings
he drew on that style were selected for the Nika Exhibition (Tokyo MetropolitanMuseum of Art) in autumn of the same year. Furthermore, they were exhibited in Room
9 where avant-garde works selected by Taro Okamoto were exhibited. Sakurai wasshocked to see this painting. He didn't know that Ochi lived in Fukuoka. The following
summer, 1956, Sakurai and Ochi met for the first time and formed a group. Sakurai, alabor union fighter for the Nishi-Nippon newspaper, demonstrating his ability as an"organizer" increased his circle.
Kikuhata, who won the first prize in the independent exhibition in 1956, was also invited
to participate. Remove the painting from the canvas, roll it up and take the Nishitetsu
train to Sakurai's house in Futsukaichi. He showed his paintings to Sakurai, Ochi, andIshibashi. Kikuhata wrote in the 1986 “Anti-Art Talks” that everyone laughed andcriticized, but when they met in March it was different. “When I showed it, I wasn’t
ridiculed when the voices started.” “We evaluated each other as good or bad. There
was no hierarchical relationship, at that time that was unheard of, it was natural for ayoung man like me to get caught up. "Kikuhata was 3 years old when he lost his father and 6 when he lost his motherbecoming an orphan. He stayed at the house of Masakane Yonedura, a classmate wholater became an actor, while working he painted by himself. That's possibly Kikuhata’strue motive. Kyushu-Ha was founded in August 1957. At the outdoor exhibition held inNovember, members wore a gunny sack with a "Q" written on it, hit an oil can, andparaded through town. Looking at the photo from this time, a wounded veteran wearingwhite clothes stands with a donation box on top of the bridge in Nakasu. It was such anera.
“I was stunned that a proper member of society often did such stupid things without
any concerns. Performing Chindon’y and having sumo tournaments in the middle of thestreet, while quietly going to work the following day. This was truly ridiculous. I'm sure
this isn't just Kyushu-Ha fault. Society was Kyushu Ha.” (Anti-Art Talks)
Koga Shigeki
Translated by: Sara Melo