His critics have dubbed him a swindler who is falling into the art market's growing need for easily consumable and exotic Japanese art. For Murakami, though, this is a compliment, and it is exactly what he meant. His art is influenced by otaku culture in Japan, which is full of strange perversions of beauty and purity, as well as incredible savagery. Murakami employs this to construct a sophisticated criticism of the current Japanese society and the West's encroaching influence on it.