“Sleep,” Murakami emails, when I ask him what he does to escape the divisiveness of the modern world. “I feel the most creative every morning, when I first wake up.” On YouTube, there’s a clip of him laying down a sheet of cardboard and sleeping while his team work on desktops around him. A little like childhood, sleep is a state where concepts of high and low art can dissolve, an environment free from conversations of class and consumerism. It’s as if the sleep he is getting in the clip is as important as the work the people are doing around him, and the act is simply a tool to erase hierarchies of taste and embrace the chaos of the imagination.
It seems weirdly perfect that, as the century turns 25 this year, so does Murakami’s theory of ‘Superflat’. First introduced in the show notes to his exhibitions at the Parco department store museums in Tokyo and Nagoya in April 2000, the theory commented on Japan’s rejection of western delineations of high and low art in the shadow of the second world war, and how his country’s taste for two-dimensional illustrations seemed to place everything in a frame in a state of flatness. In rejecting the class systems that bind up the western world, Superflat positioned commercialism, art and pop culture as collaborative forces.
Superflat may have been introduced as a comment on postwar Japan, but it presaged the ways in which pop culture is consumed now. On social media, pop is experienced as a psychedelic torrent, whereby mediums, ideas, celebrities and the general public entangle and organise freely. You stare down at your smartphone and pop is there, churning endlessly around TikTok, the boundaries of high and low culture flattened under the forward-charge of the internet.
“The maximum I can concentrate is probably 20 minutes,” says Murakami of his brain in the 21st century. “So in order to intermittently break up my short concentration, I post on social media or watch content.” There’s something refreshing and equalising about the image of an artist as decorated as Murakami lying in bed watching content, drained of focus, drumming up just enough enthusiasm to get moving for the day. But don’t mistake any of this for nihilism or punching down: Murakami is engaged in the art of sleeping through the century, letting it all just wash through him. “I listen to songs recommended by Spotify,” he says of his favourite music now.
It’s fitting that Murakami works regularly with Louis Vuitton, a brand that has long looked beyond the world of fashion design for new creative directions. The late Virgil Abloh, its artistic director from 2018 until 2021, was a trained architect, and so too explored theories of cultural flatness and passing ideas between disciplines in his work for the brand. In 2003, Vuitton’s then-artistic director Marc Jacobs approached Murakami to rework the brand’s logo, incorporating his dreamlike sense of colour and manga across 33 monogram variations. “Louis Vuitton always does everything on this large, grandiose scale. That’s fun for me,” Murakami said in a press release for the new collaboration – its second part,
a cherry blossom motif, launches in March.
A portrait taken by the Guardian in 2019 captures Murakami’s cultural essence, his openness. He stands legs apart, jaw wrenched open, resembling the arcane creatures he drew for Ye’s 2007 album, Graduation. It’s as if the illustration behind him in the image – a hurricane of paint he describes as a “stupid cat portrait” – has literally burst out of him.
He counts a moment from his childhood, when he fell down a hole and was forced to sit out school for a month, as his first cultural awakening. In the days spent recovering and discovering Japanese manga for the first time, he discovered there are riches to be found in staying loyal to the world as it changes and shunts forward. Across all of his formats and ideas, he’s still just a kid on a bed, lost in childhood and dreams, hovering somewhere above all the man- made terms we cling to on Earth.
North West: What kind of music do you listen to when you’re creating?
Takashi Murakami: I listen to songs recommended to me by Spotify. Recently, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for the anime Gundam: Zeek Axis.
Martine Rose: What song never fails to cheer you up when you are low?
Takashi Murakami: “Long Season” by Fishmans.
Kim Kardashian: It must feel very powerful to have a brand that has transcended multiple generations. It makes everyone so happy. I love it, my kids love it. Is this what you always envisioned for your art?
Takashi Murakami: I still can’t fully grasp it. Since I’m a sci-fi geek, my mindset is quite far from fashion. However, I do think I can come up with ideas for costumes in narrative contexts, as in costumes for Star Wars, and I believe that’s the approach I take when designing.
Takashi Murakami: So long as your work can gain and retain significance in history, I think it doesn’t matter whether it’s for technique, concept or something else.
Imruh Asha: What has been the best day of your life?
Takashi Murakami: It was when I was 17 years old and watched the animated film Galaxy Express 999. I was deeply moved and realised that I truly loved animation. That moment gave my life a sense of purpose.
Jawara Alleyne: I’m a huge admirer of your work. Your style is so distinct and deeply rooted in your Japanese identity, from your vibrant use of colour to the humour in your pieces and the unmistakable anime-inspired aesthetic. Have you ever visited places outside Japan that shifted your perspective on your work? Are there any cultures that have particularly inspired or influenced your artistic practice?
Takashi Murakami: Various places in the United States. Japan was defeated in the war against America. I find it very curious how deeply Japan loves and admires the US despite
that background, maintaining a positive perspective on the relationship.
Alex Consani: What is one thing you would say to artists trying to do something new?
Takashi Murakami: Work extremely long hours.
Rema: What do you do when you have a creative block?
Takashi Murakami: I watch anime and comedy on YouTube.
Rosie Marks: In what emotional state do you make the best work?
Takashi Murakami: When my brain is utterly empty.
Brent McKeever: What does it mean for a flower to bloom in a void? What do you believe humanity has forgotten that artists are obligated to remember?
Takashi Murakami: I like my own Zen-like concept of emptiness and void.
Hair CHARLIE LE MINDU, make-up JEWEL YANG, nails TOMOYA NAKAGAWA, models AMELIA GRAY at THE LIONS MANAGEMENT, HEPHILIE at HT CASTING, set design IBBY NJOYA at NEW SCHOOL REPRESENTS, movement direction ERIC CHRISTISON at PARENT, photographic assistants FRÉDÉRIC TROEHLER, VALENTINO BIANCHI, DIANE SOUËTRE, styling assistants AROUA AMMARI, CAMILLA POCE, ASYA ANDREATTA, wig artist HAN BIN, hair assistant MHEILA KILAMA, make-up assistants LOÏSE HULIN, LUO MINYAN, set design assistants CLEMENTINE DEBRAY, SASHA GABILAN, production LOUIS2, production assistants ALEXANDRE JOHANNES, FLORIAN PEREZ PERRIER, INÈS DIARASSOUBA, casting MISCHA NOTCUTT at 11CASTING, casting associate OPHELIA HORTON at 11CASTING, special thanks NICOLAS GERBIER, EMILIE DHALLUIN and DORIANNE LADAYCIA at the CENTRE POMPIDOU
This story features in the spring 2025 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally on 6 March 2025. Buy a copy of the magazine here.
