Like many Japanese people of his generation, Yanagi's family was part of the Empire of Japan's Pacific War war effort. An awareness of this familial history has informed the artist's body of work: his father was a fighter pilot, and his paternal grandfather worked in border control in Japan’s former colony Manchukuo and was detained for more than a decade in Siberia and China following Japan’s surrender. In his artwork, Yanagi considers continuity and diversity with regards to his own position and the place of the Japanese nation within this tumultuous history.