Amazing article, thanks for this. I'm sorry for his passing but glad to have learned about him. I draw a straight line from buying the imported Bandai God Marz at Forbidden Planet in Manhattan in 1984 to now having two half-Japanese children. :) (I'm not sure the Japanese would call that a victory of soft power but okay.)
“…and here I was stuck in America with the goddamn Go-Bots!” is one of my new favorite sentences. I do have a better appreciation for them now, but in my childhood they only existed to confuse anyone trying to buy me a Transformer. Anyway, a big thank you for highlighting the life and work of Murakami-san.
The toys you spent a childhood reaching for are, over here, mostly sitting in storage sheds. Tin ones especially. Rusted at the seams, kept in a box not because anyone thought they'd be worth something, but because they're 思い出の品 — something you keep for what it's attached to.
The clean ones sell for real money now. They're rare precisely because almost nobody treated them as things to preserve.
Murakami designed toys to be played with. Most of us obliged.
Amazing article, thanks for this. I'm sorry for his passing but glad to have learned about him. I draw a straight line from buying the imported Bandai God Marz at Forbidden Planet in Manhattan in 1984 to now having two half-Japanese children. :) (I'm not sure the Japanese would call that a victory of soft power but okay.)
Now that is taking a Godaikin obsession to the next level!
Many of mine came from Forbidden Planet, too. Perhaps we crossed paths as children!
“…and here I was stuck in America with the goddamn Go-Bots!” is one of my new favorite sentences. I do have a better appreciation for them now, but in my childhood they only existed to confuse anyone trying to buy me a Transformer. Anyway, a big thank you for highlighting the life and work of Murakami-san.
I love the toys now, but man, that Hanna-Barbera cartoon of the day truly drove home the aesthetic differences between US and Japan to me.
Reading this from the other side of that ocean.
The toys you spent a childhood reaching for are, over here, mostly sitting in storage sheds. Tin ones especially. Rusted at the seams, kept in a box not because anyone thought they'd be worth something, but because they're 思い出の品 — something you keep for what it's attached to.
The clean ones sell for real money now. They're rare precisely because almost nobody treated them as things to preserve.
Murakami designed toys to be played with. Most of us obliged.