An Introduction to
Kimura Ryōko:
IkemenPaintings
MAKI KANEKO

1

2

1
俺はヒーロー
Ore wa hīrō
君だけの 君を守る
Kimi dake no kimi o mamoru
抱きしめるDakishimeru

I am a hero
I protect only you
Holding [you] tight2
鍛えるよ 毎日
Kitaeru yo mainichi
強くて そして かっこいい
Tsuyokute soshite kakkoii
君の漢（おとこ）になるために		
Kimi no otoko ni naru tame ni

I train everyday
Strong and cool
To become your man’s man[or man among men]

Fig. 1 Kimura Ryōko, Heroes-Training
Boys 1 and 2, 2010, Spencer Museum ofArt, The University of Kansas, Museum
Purchase: Helen Foresman Spencer Art
Acquisition Fund, 2013.0156.a.b

33

34

The pair of four-panel folding screens in the
Spencer Museum’s collection titled HeroesTraining Boys 1 and 2 (Heroes-Danshi tanreizu
byōbu 男子鍛錬図屏風) features a group ofyoung Japanese men unabashedly displaying
their bodies (Fig. 1). This is a leitmotif of theJapanese artist Kimura Ryōko 木村了子 (b. 1971),
who has increasingly gained publicity for her
paintings of ikemen イケメン in the past decade.
As explained further below, ikemen is a relatively
new slang word coined around the late 1990s
and is generally translated as “good-lookingguys” or “cool dudes.”1 As a Japanese female
artist so unequivocally celebrating the imageof sexually attractive men, Kimura’s artistic
practice is highly unconventional and may evenbe called revolutionary, especially consideringthat many of Kimura’s ikemen pictures aredone in the medium of Nihonga 日本画 (neotraditionalist Japanese-style painting), arguably
the most conservative and male-dominant fieldof Japanese modern art.2 Kimura’s art as well as
the publicity she has received seems to indicate
not only her unique vision and talent, but also asignificant shift occurring in Japanese society
over the politics of gender, sexuality, andrepresentation.
Kimura studied at the Tokyo University ofArts, where she obtained a BFA in oil painting
and an MFA in mural painting. After graduating
in 1997, the first turning point of her careercame in 2001, when Kimura was commissioned
to create a prop for the film Oyō directed by her
father Sekimoto Ikuo (b. 1942). Released in 2002,
the film features three famous Japanese artists
active in the 1920s, one of which was the Nihonga
Fig. 2 Kimura Ryōko, The Four Roped-up
Women: Sliding Door Panel Paintings, 2001,
Courtesy of the artist

An Introduction to Kimura Ryōko

in Kimura’s current practice, which focuses on
images of ikemen.
Kimura’s first major works featuring thebeautiful male figure was a series of fivepaintings titled Beauty of My Dish (Watashi nonantaimori ryōri 私の男体盛り料理, Figs. 4–5). In
this series, naked young men are used as dishes
for various foods and elaborately presented tofemale diners as a full-course meal. This motif
is an inversion of nyotaimori 女体盛り (the female
body plate), an “infamous” sexual service said tohave originated in eighteenth-century Japan inwhich sushi or sashimi was served on the body ofa naked woman. In making an inverted version of
the female body plate, Kimura jokingly provides

Fig. 3 Front coverof Rose: How to
Sex Visual Book,
2005, Courtesy of
the artist

painter Itō Seiu 伊藤晴雨 (1882–1961), who has acult following for his sadomasochist seme-e 責め
絵 pictures of torture and shibari-e 縛り絵 picturesof rope bondage. Kimura’s task was to create afour-panel sliding door painting based on Itō’slegendary, but now lost, bondage pictures ofa pregnant woman. According to Kimura, thiswork, subsequently titled The Four Roped-up
Women: Sliding Door Panel Paintings (Oyō shibari
yonren fusumae
およう縛り四連襖絵), became the starting point ofher current career, providing her with the firstopportunity to examine closely the human formand experiment with the medium of Nihonga (Fig.
2).3The year 2005 was the second turning
point for Kimura’s career. As explained in thefollowing interview, up to this point Kimura’scentral motif had been the erotic female form.
While she was gaining popularity for her female
figures, Kimura still felt at
odds with her own practice,especially the eroticization andobjectification of the female
body. After questioning what
she really wanted to paint when
she illustrated Rose: How to
Sex Visual Book (2005), a sex
manual for women, Kimuracame to a seemingly simple
and yet quite significant
realization: she enjoyedillustrating the male figure
more than the female figure,and her heterosexual desire
was the drive of her art (Fig. 3).4
This realization has culminated35

Fig. 4 Kimura Ryōko, Aperitifs 1—First
Appetizer: Man’s Body Dish for Sashimi under
the Cherry Blossom from the series Beauty of
My Dish, 2005, Courtesy of the artist

Maki Kaneko

a pseudo-scientific explanation for her choice,“the temperature of the male body is more stable
than women’s [because women have a period], andtherefore men are more suitable to be a dish.”5
While the inclusion of assertive female
figures in Beauty of My Dish is rather exceptional
among Kimura’s oeuvre, the artist’s signature
style and strategy are evident in her earliest
ikemen paintings. The artist borrows settings,
practices, and customs commonplace in maledominated aspects of Japanese society suchas the sex industry and the field of Nihongaas evidenced in the aforementioned “torture
pictures” by Itō. She reverses the roles of men
and women, a choice for which she often provides
humorous or purposefully absurd pretexts. In
addition to the erotic display of the male body,
Kimura employs various “female-friendly” visuallanguages and settings inspired by or quoted
from girls’ comics (shōjo manga 少女マンガ), fairy
tales, and male idol magazines. For example,
Aperitifs 1—First Appetizer: Man’s Body Dish for
Sashimi under the Cherry Blossom (Ōka nantai
sashimimori 桜花男体刺身盛り) is abundant withvisual motifs commonly used in girls’ comics:
a young, slim, good-looking man encircled byflowers and petals and floating in an abstract,pinkish space (Fig. 4).6 The result is a strangely
beautiful discord of softness and hardness,vulgarity and decency, and overt femininities andmasculinities. Through these visual contrasts,
Kimura’s work seems not only to challenge
conventional gender roles, but also to visualize,
celebrate, and possibly scrutinize current
discourses of female heterosexuality manifest inJapanese media culture and art.
In the following interview and elsewhere,
Kimura claims that ikemen is the quintessential
motif of her art. Her adherence to this masculine
category seems to be a key in contextualizing
Kimura’s art within the ever-shifting gender roles
and politics of female sexuality in contemporary
Japan. The slang word ikemen is believed tohave originated in the teenage girls’ magazine
egg in the late 1990s. It stands for iketeru イケてる, which means “cool, attractive, and superior,”
and men, a reference to both the Japanese word
meaning “face,” and the English loan word for“men.” Because of the subsequent overuse of theterm by the mainstream media, today ikemen
is loosely used to refer to all types of desirable
men. Yet two factors seem to separate ikemenfrom pre-existing categories of desirable men:36

their physical beauty and their
willingness to serve primarily,
but not exclusively, as an
object of heterosexual female
desire. For example, Kimura
Takuya 木村拓哉, a male idolcommonly known as Kimutaku
who enjoyed widespread
popularity from the mid-1990s
to the 2000s, is considered
the earliest manifestation ofikemen.7 What set Kimutaku
apart from his predecessors
was the unabashed display ofhis physical beauty, a strong
fashion and body-conscious
attitude, and an emphasis on
sexual appeal.8 Many scholars
consider the unmatched
popularity of Kimutaku
among both men and womento indicate a significant shift
in the concept of ideal heteromasculinity and the changing
role of women in the mid to late
1990s. After the corruption of “bubble economy”
in the early 1990s and during the prolonged
economic recessions throughout the next decade,the grey-suited “salaryman” lost his position as
Japan’s representation of hegemonic masculinity,
while women were singled out as key consumers
and, as Alexandra Hambleton explains,encouraged to “gaze upon [and consume] the male
body for their own pleasure.”9
Kimura’s art is a product of such media andmarket-oriented shifts over the concepts of ideal
hetero-masculinity and female spectatorship.
Most evidently, the aforementioned sex manual
Rose is one such erotic product that became
increasingly available to Japanese women during
the past twenty years. As Kimura details in thefollowing interview, being a part of its production
team was a catalyst to express her own sexualdesires and actively assume the agency of thegaze. It ultimately inspired Kimura to create
her own ikemen works that celebrate a new typeof man who is willing to accept a role as a sex
object. This practice not only began Kimura’s
successful career as a professional artist, but also
reverses the conventional role of women as musesand men as artists.
Although Kimura’s art presents the possibilityof women’s empowerment through the emergence

An Introduction to Kimura Ryōko

Fig. 5 Kimura Ryōko, Dessert: A Man’s Body Dish for L’Opera Gateau
au Chocolat from the series Beauty of My Dish, 2005, Courtesy of
the artistof erotic products marketed toward heterosexual
women, the shift toward objectifying the male
body and encouraging female spectatorshipof the male body in the context of gender andsexual equality continues to be contested. The
philosopher Chiba Masaya claims that theadvent of ikemen should be welcomed froma feminist viewpoint because it attests to thebelated deprivation of men’s privileged position
as the solo holder of the gaze in Japanesesociety.10 Hambleton, on the other hand, is morecautious about the market-oriented celebrationof male beauty and female sexual desire. In
her examination of recent “female-friendly”
pornography, which features ikemen porn actors
known as eromen エロメン “erotic men,” Hambleton
characterizes this type of pornography created
for and by women as “post-feminist.”11 She
argues that although these products embracesome subversive elements and the possibility of“spur[ring] a small revolution,” many of themmerely reinforce conventional gender roles andencourage heteronormative behavior, as well as
the commodification of female sexual desire.12
A similar ambivalence is present in Kimura’sart. As is evident in the following interview,
Kimura openly denies any political or feminist
aspirations, and instead emphasizes her own
pleasure and hope that viewers (both men and37

women) can find pleasure in theattractive male figures. In termsof her seemingly apolitical propleasure attitude, celebrationof female heterosexuality,
and unsettled feelings toward
so-called second-wave
feminism, Kimura’s stancecan be characterized as“post-feminist,” and seems toembrace both revolutionary
and conservative elementsthat Hambleton articulates in
the aforementioned study.13
For example, throughout thefollowing interview, Kimura
frequently used the term
futuu 普通 (normal/natural)
to describe her heterosexualdesire for beautiful men and the
motivation behind her ikemen
painting. Kimura’s claim on
the one hand boldly challenges
the still-dominant tendency tosensationalize women’s frank
expression of their sexual desire as deviant, buton the other hand, it also unwittingly reinforces
heteronormativity and possibly depoliticizes
women’s desire by characterizing her sexual
orientation as normal and natural.
Although it includes many issues that deserve
further critical discussion, I believe that Kimura’s
art destabilizes, if not challenges, the dominantdiscourses of gender, sex and sexuality, andtheir canonical manifestations in Japanese
mainstream media and traditional art. As
discussed previously, Kimura’s work celebrates
male beauty and female sexuality, both of which
are usually presented with a sense of humor andirony, which is yet another post-feminist trait andpossible tool for countering patriarchal canons.14
For example, Kimura’s male figures are often
engaged in physical exercise for the pleasure of
the female gaze (Fig. 1). This motif provides apretext for the explicit display of the male bodywithout diminishing the male sense of heteromasculinity. At the same time, it also suggests
the constructed nature of their masculinity andphysical beauty. The accompanying narratives ortexts that Kimura provides are always tongue-incheek, such as, “Why do they want to be stronger?
‘To protect girls,’ of course!” The sugar-coatedsarcasm prevalent in Kimura’s ikemen painting

Maki Kaneko

Fig. 6 Kimura Ryōko, Let’s Ride a Crocodile: Born to be Wild!
Crocodile and Tiger, 2009, displayed at the Nijō Castle, Kyoto,at the Kan-Hikari Art Expo, 2011, photo by Inoguchi Kōichi

helps address, if not criticize, the tawdry andsometimes ridiculous nature of the so-called
girls’ dream or heterosexual women’s fantasies
promoted and perpetuated by the mainstream
media and market economy.15
Moreover, Kimura presents popular media
imagery such as ikemen in a neo-traditionalist art
form of Nihonga. By separating ikemen from its
conventional spaces of consumption and placing
them into galleries, museums, art classes, andeven the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the
Nijō Castle in Kyoto (Fig. 6), Kimura provides
us with a particular viewing experience or sitein which the conventional demarcations between
subject and object, public and private, andpolitical and personal are largely dismantled.16 In
front of an enlarged image of attractive ikemen
displayed as a time-honored art of Japan, we areinvited not only to consume these images forour pure pleasure or empowerment, but also tocontemplate the meaning of male beauty in pastand present art and society, as well as our own
conceptions of gender, sexuality, and desire.

—38About the Author
Maki Kaneko is associate professor ofJapanese art in the Kress Foundation Departmentof Art History at the University of Kansas.
She received her PhD in world art studies andmuseology from the University of East Anglia andSainsbury Institute for the Study of JapaneseArts and Cultures (Norwich, UK). Her researchconcerns the politics of memory, race, and genderin twentieth-century Japanese visual culture andthe Asia-Pacific region. Her book Mirroring theJapanese Empire published in 2014 examines therepresentation and signification of the male figure
in Japanese oil painting and cinema between 1930
and 1950, the decades when Japan engaged with aseries of imperialist wars.
Endnotes

1
In September 2014, Yuriika (Eureka), a well-recognized journalof arts and culture, published a special issue on ikemen. Given thesignificant and prolonged impacts of ikemen on Japanese society,the special issue cited the need of critical studies about this new
masculine category and advocated for the formation of Ikemen
Studies. “Ikemen stadhīzu,” Yuriika rinjizōkangō no. 648(September 2014).
2
Nihonga (lit. Japanese painting) is a product of the rapid
modernization and Westernization of Japan that occurred fromthe mid to late nineteenth century. As a counterpart of yōga (lit.
Western painting), a practice that was promoted as a part of Japan’sWesternization policy from the 1850s, this new painting category
was established through the careful selection and accumulation ofcertain painting styles, techniques, subjects, and treaties that existed
in Japan prior to the age of modernization, and were institutionalized
as Japan’s “national style” of art. Because of its origins, this painting
school tended to associate with nationalist or conservative forces,
but given the diversification of styles and aesthetics throughout thetwentieth and twenty-first centuries, today Nihonga is often defined
simply by the materials used, such as mineral pigments, ink, silk, andgold. For the birth and development of Nihonga as the “national style,”see: Kitazawa Noriaki, Me no shinden: “Bijutsu” juyōshi nōto (Tokyo:
Bijutsu shuppansha, 1989); Ellen Conant, Steven D. Owyoung, and
J. Thomas Rimer, Nihonga, Transcending the Past: Japanese-style
Painting, 1868–1968 (New York: Weatherhill, 1995); Satō Dōshin, Nihon
bijutsu tanjō: Kindai Nihon no “kotoba” to senryaku (Tokyo: Kōdansha,
1996). For more recent trends in Nihonga, see: Matthew Larking,“Nihonga beside Itself: Contemporary Japanese Art’s Engagementwith the Position and Meaning of a Modern Painting Tradition,”
Literature & Aesthetics 23, no. 2 (December 2013): 24–37; Chelsea
Foxwell, “The Painting of Sadness? The Ends of Nihonga, Then andNow,” ARTMargins 4, no. 1 (2015): 27–60; John D. Szostak, Imayō:Japan’s New Traditionists: An Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese
Art (Honolulu: The Art Gallery, The University of Hawai’i at Manoa,2017).
3
Kimura Ryōko, “Commissioned works,” accessed May 30, 2017,
http://www.ryokokimura.com/wb03-kimura-ryoko.html.
4
Kurada Masumi (text) and Kimura Ryōko (illustration), Rōzu: Motto
fukai ai no katachi (Rose: How to Sex Visual Book) (Tokyo: Koa magajin,2005).

An Introduction to Kimura Ryōko

5
Kimura Ryōko, “Nihonga: Japanese Paintings 2005–2003:
Beauty of My Dish – Watashi no nantaimori ryōri,” accessed May 30,
2017, http://ryojokimura.com/wj01-kimura-ryoko.html.
6
Mizuki Takahashi examines the historical origin of several visual
motifs and techniques specific to shōjo manga, such as a full-length
portrait, floating panels, and flower motifs. She argues that these shōjomanga’s visual components have been disregarded as “meaningless”
by male critics and scholars who are not equipped with the skills toread their symbolic meanings. Mizuki Takahashi, “Opening the Closed
World of Shōjo Manga,” in Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in theWorld of Manga and Anime, ed. Mark W. McWilliams (Armonk, NY: M.
E. Sharpe, 2008), 114–136.
7
Chiba Masaya, Hoshino Futoshi, and Shibata Eri, “Tettei tōgi
Ikemenorojī no hādo koa,” “Ikemen stadhīzu,” Yuriika rinjizōkangō, 12.
8
The anthropologist Laura Miller examines the ideal heteromasculinity Kimura Takuya introduced and its impact on young
Japanese men in the following study: Laura Miller, “Chapter 5 Male
Beauty Work,” in Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body
Aesthetics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 125–158.
9
Alexandra Hambleton, “Women and Sexual Desire in theJapanese Popular Media,” in Women and the Media in Asia: The
Precarious Self, ed. Youna Kim (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012),
123.
10
Chiba, 13.
11
Alexandra Hambleton, “When Women Watch: The Subversive
Potential of Female-Friendly Pornography in Japan,” Porn Studies 3,
issue 4 (2016): 437–438.
12
Hambleton, “When Women Watch,” 440.
13
For a much contested definition of “post-feminism,” I referprimarily to the following studies: Angela McRobbie, “Post-feminism
and Popular Culture,” Feminist Media Studies 3, no. 3 (2004):
255–264; Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a
Sensibility,” European Journal of Culture Studies 10, no. 2 (2007):
147–166; Fien Adrieans, “Post feminism in Popular Culture: A Potential
for Critical Resistance?” Politics and Culture 4 (2009), https://politicsandculture.org/2009/11/09/post-feminism-in-popular-culturea-potential-for-critical-resistance/; Stephanie Genz and Benjamin
A. Brabon, Postfeminism: Cultural Texts and Theories (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2009); Miura Rei’ichi, “Posuto feminizumu
to daisanpa feminizumu no kanōsei: Purikyua, Taitanikku, AKB 48,”
in Jendā to “Jiyū”: Riron, Riberarizumu, Kwia, eds. Miura Rei’ichi and
Hayasaka Shizuka (Tokyo: Sairyūsha, 2013), 59–79.
14
As many scholars have argued, the workings of irony in postfeminist products are multiple and could function in both favor anddisfavor of feminism. See Heike Missler, “4 Funny Chicks: Humour and
Irony in Chick Lit,” in The Cultural Politics of Chick Lit: Popular Fiction,
Postfeminism, and Representation (London: Routledge, 2017). In thecase of Kimura’s art, a closer visual analysis and examination of thereception of her works, which cannot be included here, are needed
to determine if and how Kimura’s male figures resist the hegemonic
notions of gender and sexuality.
15
Kimura Ryōko, “Works Nihonga: 2010–2011,” accessed
December 2, 2017, http://ryokokimura.com/wj43-kimura-ryoko.html.
16
Kimura participated in the Kan-Hikari Art Expo in 2011. She
displayed Let’s Ride a Crocodile: Born to be Wild! Crocodile and Tiger(2009) at the seventeenth-century Nijō Castle, which is known for
magnificent wall paintings by the Kanō School, one of the most wellestablished painting schools since the late fifteenth century, whose
styles, aesthetics, and lineage became a foundation of Nihonga.

39

Interview
withKimuraRyōko
Maki Kaneko&
Kris Ercums

Maki Kaneko

This interview took place in person on July 24,
2015, in Tokyo, Japan.
Maki Kaneko (MK): Can you tell us how you cameto focus on men in your painting?
Kimura Ryōko (KR): I had always painted the figureof women. Inspired by my favorite movies andartists, I painted them erotically. I particularly
liked Saeki Toshio, an illustrator active in the
1970s. He provided illustrations for the cover ofnovels that I liked, but at that time when I wasan art student, such art movement as Mono-ha
dominated…1
MK: That means that figurative painting was stillout of fashion.
KR: Yes. [But] I liked Yamada Fūtarō’s novels
like this one [with a cover illustration by Saeki].
His colors and ukiyo-e-like illustrations inspired
me to paint erotic female figures. I found thateroticism was a venue through which I could
illuminate human’s innate nature humorously.
However, I didn’t think of painting the malefigure at all. I just painted the female figure as
many other painters did. Then, many people said
that my female figures were not erotic enough.
At that time, I myself ached for an amorous
woman. There are women, you know, whosomehow attract guys just by standing there. I
wanted to be like them and that’s perhaps one of
the reasons why I painted erotic female forms. I
probably wanted to express a sense of eroticism
that I had failed to gain. But I couldn’t paint welland was discussing with a lot of people how I
could express a sense of eroticism. I quite likepainting women including their tits. They are
beautiful. But since I am a woman, my heart races
with excitement more when I’m painting men.
Especially when I hired a [male] model for the
first time, I found myself feeling good, something
like “wow, my heart’s thumping.” [Laughing]. I
thought that feeling would affect my painting.
MK: So, you were working on the female figure,but somehow found yourself at odds with it?
KR: Yes. I always felt that something was wrong.
MK: What made you paint the male figure in thefirst place?
KR: Perhaps because of my conversation with
my clients … well, it’s actually not possible toidentify the cause. A number of different factors
were there. But one client commented on mypainting. You know, there still are some people
called “gallery stokers.” At that time, I was stillin my early 30s and one middle-age man said to40

me that “your painting isn’t erotic enough” andso on, which pissed me off. He then asked me if
I had ever painted my own genitals. This kindof question was actually quite common. Well, ofcourse, it depended on the venue. At that time,
I displayed my works in a gallery specialized inerotica. And when only women artists were there
in such venue, we were often asked that kind ofquestion. In a little more sophisticated venue, I
was asked a bit more intelligent questions, like
“Uemura Shōen painted her own vagina. How
about you?” [Laughing].2 I was asked this question
so frequently that it was almost like a series ofcoordinated terrorist attacks. I was wondering
if I painted my own sex organ, what would
happen. In a sense, it is just a motif, but I couldn’t
think that it would help my expression. I really
couldn’t think that way. But I happened to havea commission which gave me a chance to do it[paint sex organs].
I was asked to provide illustrations for a
how-to sex manual. Now, you know that I did a
number of obscure jobs. [Laughing]. In 2005, I
illustrated the sex manual book for women [Rose:
How to Sex Visual Book]. For this book, I painted
many vaginas, penises, and so on. Since the book
was for women, I must make them somewhat
beautiful, not too dirty and not too erotic. Then,as I was painting, they started to appear as
mere things to me. I eventually realized that it[painting sex organs] wasn’t really a huge deal.
Then, I questioned myself which one of them I
wanted to illustrate. Since I’m futsuu (normal), mypreference is that one [for men]. Having said that,
I got tired of [painting penises]. I’d had enough.
[Laughing]. This was not what I really wanted
to paint. What I wanted to paint was something
more like romance and love. I thought it’d be fun
if I painted the male figure in such a [romantic]
setting. So, I hired a male model and painted
this one [Beauty of My Dish]. This is the first[male painting]. It was fun to paint. We actually
did place sashimi on the body of the model. Not
only sashimi, but everything, all kinds of food[appeared in Beauty of My Dish]. It’s a full courseof nantai-mori. I painted a few pictures like thisand presented them as a series…
MK: You said that you are often mistaken for a
gay artist. Do you have any responses from gay orbisexual people?
KR: Yes. A Russian gay magazine contacted me.
I said to them that I was actually a heterosexual
woman, but they said it wasn’t a problem.

Interview with Kimura Ryōko

MK: I think this is quite rare to find art that can beenjoyed by people with various sexualities.
KR: I don’t mean to emphasis a specific genderor sexuality, but it is the strong fact that I am awoman and the most important thing for me inmaking art is my motivation. To paint men keeps
me motivated and interested. It would be evenbetter if I could develop some romantic relation
with my models. [Laughing].
MK: Well, it [a heterosexual female artist who
wants to paint a man] is perhaps a simple thing,but such a simple thing has invited various
reactions from a diverse group of people. It would
be interesting to think about your practice fromthe lens of gender politics.
KR: I actually studied feminism and feminist art.
I thought I should create my works in line with[them]. But I couldn’t get interested.
MK: What kind of artworks did you look at?
KR: I cannot recall the names of artists, butremember that many works illustrated female sexorgans. That turned me off.
MK: For example, do you know Silvia Sleigh? She
just died. How about her works?
KR: I wish I could have met her.
MK: Clearly, your approach is different from thatof other feminist artists.
KR: As we see in Sex and the City, now it ispossible for women to be sexually active likenikushokukei (meat eater).3 But such female
sexuality tends to be expressed through theirfemale bodies. I wondered why it couldn’t bedone through the male body. Then, when I was
thinking that the image of men by women would
be interesting, “boys’ love” became very popular.4
According to “boys’ love” readers, it is easy forthem. In a sex scene of a woman and man, theytend to project themselves by relating with thewomen and [cannot help but] feel exposed. But inthe case of a boy-boy erotic scene, they can justenjoy, because they are irrelevant. Having said
this, I actually don’t really understand “boys’
love,” as I am a super-heterosexual. I quite like[erotic expressions] by gay artists, but somehow
don’t find “boys’ love” attractive. It lacks a senseof realism and all happens in women’s dream

41

world. In my case, I want to see the relationshipbetween me and the opposite sex, but women are
a complete voyeur in “boys’ love.” There is noother woman in an all-male world.
MK: Talking about “boys’ love,” are you
influenced by manga?
KR: I love it. I’ve read it since I was little. I was a
hard reader. So, I wish my son would be a manga
artist, although it’d be a big problem if he couldn’t
sell his works well. [Laughing].
Kris Ercums (KE): What about the idea of passive
eroticism?
MK: The term appears in Professor Yamashita’s
essay. Sarigenai iroke in Japanese. Can you
explain it? 5
KR: I love passive eroticism. For example, a fullnude is not always the most erotic. Well, of course
it is erotic, but what I want to express is more likean erotic mode or flavor coming out from people
even though they are fully dressed. [She holds up
Seventeen: High School Boy in Spring].
MK: How about “Johnnys”? 6
KR: Johnny & Associates is an amazing agency
that completely determined the Japanese girl’s
idea about ideal boys. It is actually scary, as they
are so strict about the copyright of their idols.
The first boys that the majority of Japanese
girls get off on are Johnnys. They are not amacho type. Young girls don’t like macho. They
prefer someone who looks like them, gentle
and sexually ambiguous. The ultimate Japanesegirl’s dream is a Johnny male idol. I have a lot ofmagazines about them.
MK: Would you describe your male figures as“Johnnys type”?
KR: Yes. But I personally wasn’t interested
in Johnnys at all. I had bought many porno
magazines as a reference for my erotic pictures.
I wasn’t embarrassed at all and loudly asked fora receipt. But when I bought male idol magazines
for the first time, I shouted in my mind, “It is soembarrassing. Please do not think that this is
my taste.” [Laughing]. Then, once I opened themagazine, there was a completely new world that
I had never seen before. They are somehow very
erotic. Look at their amorous eyes!

Maki Kaneko & Kris Ercums

MK: A number of great photographers have taken
their pictures, such as Leslie Kee.
KR: Their gaze, for example, invites us to ask,
“Who are you looking at? Me?” [Laughing]. I
found them so erotic. Of course, it is clearlystaged. But when girls do the same in a sexyswimsuit, we probably don’t feel anything as wehave gotten so used to that kind of image. But
once men do this, something new is out there. I
remember that I got so motivated to paint them.
KE: How are Johnnys different from a boy?
KR: My keyword is ikemen. Good-looking boysor handsome men are somehow different. Goodlooking boys are more like the ones painted by
Takabatake Kashō.7
KE: What is ikemen?
KR: Not just good looks. Perhaps someone more
approachable? Not necessarily a perfect man. He
could be your neighbor.
KE: Everyday good looks?
KR: Probably it is just Japanese, but you know
how girls are waiting for their prince charming.
MK: That is not only just Japanese girls.
KR: So, Disney probably inspires it?
KE: Definitely. Disney takes the idea on but it
comes from fairy tales.
KR: I have made paintings that only consist ofprinces [Prince Come True]. It was actually quite
hard to accumulate so many princes. [Laughing]. I
thought there were many, but there weren’t. Look,
this is a prince for Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella,
Snow White … and then I was running out ofprinces. [Laughing]. In this picture, I constructed
the country of princes. It is an embodiment of agirl’s dream. Fairy tales, Disney, and Johnnys are
the embodiments of a girl’s ultimate dream.
MK: Do you find any particular meaning inpainting [Prince Come True] in the medium of
Nihonga? This work clearly refers to nanban
byōbu (Southern barbarian screens).8 I found thisis very playful.
KR: I quite like my playfulness here, but can’t
think of any academic meanings …
MK: Please don’t worry about “academic”
something. If needed, we will think about it later[Laughing]. Did you want to paint it in Nihonga?
KR: Yes. I wanted to represent the sense of
grandeur often seen in Japanese golden screensor southern barbarian screens. Also, I see thetechnique of Nihonga to be a dying tradition.
Today, we have many media technologies andcan paint with a computer. To make Nihonga,
on the other hand, we have to dissolve nikawa

42

glue, grain mineral pigments, and so on.
These techniques will disappear [one day]. Of
course, there will always be someone who tries
to maintain this tradition and I too think that
Nihonga techniques should be passed down to
the next generation as an important culture ofJapan. I believe that traditional techniques andcompositions can develop further, if we create
something new [based off tradition]. Such artists
as Mr. Yamaguchi [Akira] probably think thesame way. It is actually not so uncommon [thatartists create their works based on Nihonga].
Mr. Aida [Makoto] or Mr. Yamaguchi have been
pioneers in giving new value [to Nihonga] and I’ve
reached the same path from a different direction.
I think it was also a trend of the times. Prior tothis, abstraction was dominant. [The techniquesand motifs of Nihonga] weren’t highly regarded
when I was a student. It was a group of artists
gathered around Mizuma Gallery that brokeground and set a new trend. I am one of them. Of
course, I needed to find my own expression andseparate myself from other artists at Mizuma
Gallery [working on Nihonga]. Then, I happened
to find princes and men as painting motifs that
motivated me most. Also, since I had workedon oil and stained glass, I quite liked a sense of
sublimity, which [is seen in] Nihonga, although I
began working on Nihonga by commission [not by
my own intent] as I said earlier. But once I started
learning Nihonga techniques, I got more andmore motivated to paint. It is fun to absorb thetechniques in my own way, although I don’t know
yet if there is any specific meanings there [in my
inclination towards Nihonga].
MK: It is just my personal opinion, but I often findthe nude done in Nihonga is somehow more erotic
than that of oil.
KR: I believe that oil is suited for the
representation of realism and threedimensionality. It is after all a culture born in
Europe. Look at my face and look at Kris’s. The
form of our faces is so different. Mine is flat andKris’s is more three-dimensional. There must be
some meaning that Japanese or Asian created a
set of techniques suited for the representationof two dimensionality…Well, come to think of it[the cultural root of something], the other day I
talked to my husband about panchira (a glimpse
of a woman’s underwear) and why Japanese men
make such a big deal about it. That’s somethingforeigners don’t understand. My husband’s
theory is that it is rooted in Japanese culture!

Interview with Kimura Ryōko

The famous rock garden in the Ryōanji Temple
provokes the image of water, despite the fact thatit doesn’t use water at all. Only a brief glimpse ofpanties can stimulate our imagination. If we see awhole, we are fully satisfied. To imagine from apart, that is the Japanese spirit! [Laughing].
KE: We should talk about Heroes-Training Boys
[Fig. 1]. What was the inspiration for this piece?
KR: I wanted to create my own Nihonga, not a
copy of Itō Seiu’s picture, but entirely my own.9
This is my primary motivation. My picture also
features S&M [sadomasochism, or the enjoyment
of inflicting or receiving pain] practices. For Itō,
torturing women and painting their suffering
would have been the biggest motivation. I
kind of understand that. The figure enduring
pain indeed has some appeal for more or lesseveryone, I believe. For example, many people
are attracted to sweating athletes. For me, S&M
isn’t just a sexual predilection, but about humanrelationships, a relation between a sadistic andmasochistic person. When I was thinking aboutsuch things, I came up with the idea that thephysical workout is a sort of S&M. Although
they work on their bodies in order to build up
strength or beautify them, the process is pain
and suffering. The facial expression or those
who endure [a hard workout] appealed to me
and stimulated my sadistic mind. This is how I
came up with this motif. I then found out that
there were a number of ways to train the body,but I definitely wanted to include my version of“upside down suspension.” First, I was painting
him doing a headstand with both of his hands, but
found that the sense of sadism wasn’t enough. I
needed to torture him further. [Laughing]. That
was how I designed each pose. This one [the last
panel of the second screen] is a hip and hamstring
exercise.
KE: This is incredible. So hard to paint that.
Did you use a model?
KR: Yes. I made a sketch in this room usinga model.
MK: [Referring to the pose of the male figure]This pose is pretty tough to keep.
KR: Yes, that’s why it was so fun. It is fun to see
him suffering [Laughing]. The guy who posed for43

me was really kind. I of course paid and treated
him to Japanese barbeque. [Laughing].
MK: How did you find your models?
KR: This model was introduced to me by an
acquaintance. Some people approached me via
the Internet, but it is a bit scary to have them here,
and so I normally ask my friends to find a model.
He [a model who posed for Heroes-Training
Boys] is nearly 10 years younger than me. I’m notinterested in young men and so it’s easy for me tobe relentless [Laughing]. Not for this painting, but
a different one, I asked him to keep his legs apart.
He didn’t like that.
[We start looking at some other paintings andlaugh at the embarrassing poses Kimura asked
her model to strike.]
KE: Unlike your other work, this one [HeroesTraining Boys] has no background or anything.
KR: It focuses just on the movement of the humanbody. As you can see, it is a four-panel screen. I
wanted to compose all four panels with only thehuman body. That’s why I painted the background
only with a thick vegetable pigment. Almost
no color in the background. I also didn’t knowwhether I should include calligraphy, but it wasdifficult to make a nice composition with only
the human body. Then, I happened to find apoem written by Itō Seiu. It’s actually a stupid
poem, something like, “Her long, black hairbecame even more beautiful in disarray,” or“Let’s tie up this girl, both her hands and legs.”
It is just so literal [laughing], but interesting
too. This inspired me to include calligraphy in asimilar style to Seiu’s in my painting. As I neverlearned calligraphy, I asked my friend who isa calligrapher to help me make a composition
together after the painting was complete.
MK: So, did you write calligraphy under theguidance of your friend?
KR: Yes. Concerning this work [Four Ropedup Women], my friend did it since it was acommissioned work. My friend emulated Seiu’s
style. For the work [Heroes-Training Boys], myfriend gave me some instruction and I tried out
a number of different characters and styles. And

Maki Kaneko & Kris Ercums

then, we found kana syllabary to be the best,
which didn’t disturb my painting and appeared
like chirakigaki (scattering writing).
KE: This is so thin. The other one is thick, but thisone … [pointing to Heroes-Training Boys]
KR: We did it very gently. My painting skill was
improved [since Four Roped-up Women] and I also
did study a bit about calligraphy. To match my
painting, I thought that kana would be the best.
Since kana is known as “women’s hands,” it suits
my work. Especially hentai kana (non-standard
style of kana) looked good. Even if I wrote
something very stupid, not many people can readit and would think that something very importantmust be written there. [Laughing]. We tried out
various variations of hentai kana and finallycame up with this one.
KE: So, did you make a lot of sketches? And thenwent back to your studio and painted?
KR: Yes. First, I made sketches. I sketched eachfigure individually and then thought about
the composition. Sometimes I swapped theirplacements in order to create a nice flow [among
the eight figures].
KE: And the background. Is it all painted gold or
what is the background?
KR: I used Japanese green alder. I believe that
this is a type of pine tree. This sometimes iscalled “ancient color” and is often used forthe conservation of old paintings. It createsa yellowy brown color when roasted. In fact,
the color will darken as time goes along. It wasthinner before. After two years, the color looked
really different. I exhibited this work [for the firsttime] in 2011, but actually planned to include it
in my [2009] show in Beijing. The painting wascompleted, but I couldn’t figure out how I shouldincorporate calligraphy. So, I left it for two years
and never opened it. When I opened it again,
the color was changed beautifully. I was reallysurprised. Later, a staff member at an art supply
store told me that the color [made out of greenalder] would darken.
MK: Then, the color [of Heroes-Training Boys]
will keep changing?
KR: [For Heroes-Training Boys], I painted [ancientcolor] again and again. In order to illuminate thehuman body effectively, I wanted to have a color
just slightly darker than that of white paper. But
such Japanese mineral pigments of yellowish
color as ōdo would rather flatten the background.
No matter how carefully I mix them with water,some particles are left. So, I didn’t want to use

44pigments and what I did was rather close to thetechniques of natural dye. That gives a sense oftransparency to the paper. But it was really timeconsuming as the color didn’t stay much and I had
to paint it so many times. It was as if I was dyeing
paper with thin tea.
KE: Is this a technique in Nihonga painting?
Do you see in it used in other paintings?
KR: Yes. Other Nihonga artists often use it. For
example, Ms. Matsui Fuyuko and I go to the sameart supply shop and I saw her buying it.10
MK: The painting solely focusing on the humanbody is quite rare among your works, isn’t it?
KR: I think so. That’s why I want to try it again.
It was really difficult, but fun. I didn’t need tothink about the balance between the figure andbackground. I could just focus on the body. I wantto make [something similar] again.
MK: Why did you use the character 漢 (otoko,
man’s man), instead of 男 (otoko, man)? The latter
is more commonly used for men. Is there any
reason?
KR: I’m inspired by yakuza films. [Laughing].11
That’s the men’s world. I love it. I quite likeyakuza films. But I’m not a man and so cannot
step into it. Well, if my husband is a yakuza,
that’d be troublesome. It looks fascinating,because I am an onlooker. Anyway, the kanji 漢
attracted me. For me, 男 just refers to a sex, but
漢 means something more spiritual. Something
like chivalrous spirit.
KE: We talked a little bit about your future
project, working on a video game. Do you haveany kind of dream projects that you are workingon?
KR: I am working on the male version of The Little
Mermaid. I’m making a story too. [She shows
us some pictures]. What he [the boy mermaid] isholding is a high-heeled shoe, which makes him
yearn for legs, a human girl outside his world.
Once he goes to the upper world, he sees a girlsinging and develops a crush on her. Then, justlike the original Little Mermaid, a storm occurs
and he saves her life. The boy mermaid then asks
the witch to make him human. In the original,
the witch asks for the mermaid’s voice, but in myversion, she asks for his virginity. I’m planning to
make a shunga (erotica) of the boy mermaid andugly witch having sex.
MK: Is this going to be part of a series?
KR: Yes. It will function as a front cover.
I’m hoping to make a picture book.
MK: How are you going to display them?

Interview with Kimura Ryōko

KR: That’s my problem. [Laughing]. I’m thinkingof organizing a solo show. I want to display mypaintings in a manner so that the visitor canfollow the story. And how I deal with shunga is
another issue.
MK: Are you calling your works shunga?
KR: Well, I’m referring to the picture of the boy
mermaid and the witch having sex. [When I
started this series] I had a plan to have a solo
show in Shanghai, though it didn’t happen. So,
the story is set in Shanghai. The girl he loves is
a prostitute in an opium den. To be sure, it’s justmy own imagination, ok? It isn’t based on any
specific period or place. The boy mermaid chases
after her and then he comes to work as a maleprostitute. [Illustrations of] this part will be very
sexually explicit. [Also, unlike my other works]
he is by no means a prince, but a boy at the social
margin. This is the image of him as a human.
But I’m now troubled with how to end this story;
whether he kills the girl. With her blood, he canturn back into a mermaid. At first, I was planningto have him kill the girl. He stabs her by thinking,“Why don’t you accept me?” But then I lost myclose friend and couldn’t help thinking what she
would have done. I’m still thinking and stuck, but
probably I won’t let him kill her. Anyway, I wantto paint a young man bombarded with his own
sexuality. Also, I want to paint an aestheticizedform of death. Death never was my theme. I didn’t
want to paint it. But now I want to challenge thisnew theme, although there is no particular reason.
I really don’t know where [this series of paintings]
will go. Once I seriously thought of Little
Mermaid, I realized that she is quite disjointed.
She is actually a moron. It is about a girl at themercy of everything. But we have accepted andeven admired the story. I wonder why that in our
girlhood, we longed for this kind of story and thatmeans we learned pretty distorted values throughfairy tales. I didn’t think of this when I started[the series], but once I swapped the gender of themermaid, I realized how stupid she was. Then myquestion is, what about boys?

—
45

Epilogue
After the interview, I (Kaneko) was fortunate to have several additional meetings with Kimura. During
our most recent meeting in July 2018, Kimura addressed her deep concern that, like many male Japaneseartists and photographers, she treated the model merely as an object, and displayed her anger toward
those male artists who remained numb to how violent their expressions were. Overall, her discussion
was far more politicized and gender-oriented than during her initial interview in 2015. Kimura herself
admitted this change by saying, “at that time [in 2015], I thought my pleasure was the most important
thing, but things really changed.” When I asked Kimura what brought about this change she first did notprovide a clear answer, but eventually pointed out that in 2015 the male figure was an extremely minor
genre in the mainstream art scene, but has since gained far more popularity. As a result, she received
substantially more feedback on her work from diverse perspectives, including LGBTQ people. Kimura
said she became more conscious about her own position and the violent power of representation.
About the Artist
Kimura Ryōko was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1971.
She moved to Tokyo to attend the Tokyo Universityof Arts where she completed a BFA in oil painting
in 1995 and an MFA in mural painting in 1997.
Since her inaugural solo exhibition Beauty of My
Dish (Span Art Gallery, Tokyo, 2005), her Nihonga
paintings have been featured in exhibitions
that include: Asian Contemporary Scene: PartI (Modern Art Museum, Shanghai, China 2017),
Beauté Animale de l’Homme (Galerie Vanessa
Rau, Paris, France 2015), and Imayō: Japan’s New
Traditionalists (The Art Gallery at the Universityof Hawai‘i at Mānoa; The Honolulu Museum of Art,
Honolulu, USA; Shoto Museum of Art Tokyo Japan).

8
Nanban byōbu refers to a style of art that flourished in Japan
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that was informedby contact with traders and missionaries, primarily from Portugal,
who arrived in Japan in 1543. The Japanese of the sixteenth century
called Europeans, Southeast Asians, and other foreigners nanban,
or southern barbarians. The term originated in the highly hierarchicalSinocentric system, but by the sixteenth century, nanban came toloosely refer to anything foreign or exotic.
9
Concerning Itō Seifu, see Kaneko’s essay on pages 29–35.
10Matsui Fuyuko (b. 1974) is a female Nihonga painter active since
the early 2000s.
11
Yakuza refers to the Japanese mafia. They are often represented
as an icon of Japanese masculinity in popular media. In the yakuza
world, 漢 is more commonly used, because, generally speaking, 漢
sounds more macho and, in a sense, more archaic than 男.

Endnotes

1
Mono-ha (School of Things) refers to a loosely associated groupof artists emerging in the Tokyo art scene during the late 1960s andwho were extremely active in the first half of 1970s. They used raw
materials including stones, woods, irons, and papers and presented
them “as it is,” exploring the unmediated property of “things” andthereby challenging the conventional ideas of art-making andrepresentation.
2
Uemura Shōen (1875–1949) was arguably the most establishedwoman Nihonga artist in twentieth-century Japan. She was known for
her technical virtuosity and images of beautiful women, often in timehonored historical settings.
3
Nikushokukei is a recent slang term referring to people who are
active and aggressive in love and sex.
4
“Boys’ love” is a genre of manga and literature. Most typically, itfeatures a romantic or homoerotic relationship between young boys,
primarily targeting heterosexual female readers.
5
See further Yamashita Yuji, “Perverted or Perfectly Normal?
Ryoko Kimura’s take on ‘danshi [boy]’,”Kimura Ryoko: Born to Be Wild
木村了子: 覺醒吧，野性! (Beijing: Mizuma & One Gallery, 2009).
6“Johnnys” is a term that refers to the male idols represented by
the talent agency Johnny & Associates. Founded in 1962, the agency
has been one of the dominant forces in the Japanese entertainment
industry.
7
Takabatake Kashō (1888–1966) was an illustrator who popularized
the genre of bishōnen or “beautiful boys” in the twentieth century. See
Matsumoto Shinako, Takabatake Kashō: Taishō Shōwa retoro byūtī(Tokyo: Kawabe shobō shinsha, 2004).

Maki Kaneko & Kris Ercums

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