We started the new year in Osaka, Japan. Konnichiwa! The celebration was great, the food and the sake fantastic, but the Japanese are not very familiar with streetart and graffiti. It is very regularized, officialized, well-signposted, marked and labeled. Streetpaintings which are out of the prevailing rules and raster, get cleaned away fast or cubically painted over. Which is kind of another invitation for some more already framed wish-wash or spray can art…
But as well in Japan there is streetart, because streetart is everywhere, even in Oman we could find some graffiti. You just have to search for it.
In Osaka there is the alternative neighborhood America-Mura, also called Amemura next to the metro station Shinsaibashi. Here the city looks totally different, there are lots of second hand shops, fully stickercoverd walls, painted stick figure lamp poles and cool bars, restaurants and clubs.
The suburb is much more laid back and easy going, the streets are more colorful and especially on the evenings, when the shops close down their roller, you can find a lot of nice artwork on the frontage. In one of the streets there is the big “Peace on Earth” mural painted by Osaka artist Seitaro Kuroda in the year 1983.
Other current sprayer in the clear and quite small scene are YIPS, VERYONE, WAZ, ZENONE, JOE, CASPER, MSY, PUSHU, COOK, DON, COSAONE, NEK, KICHI.
Overall the reactions in Japan to train paintings and graffitis on house walls are disgust and precision – like in other countries as well. But the way how they try to prohibit in Japan is unique. You can find specialized warning and forbiddance sings for about nearly everything nearly everywhere, graffiti prohibition included and the schoolkids adjusted special paintings with requests of neglect. Not enough… they even painted the buses and trains themselves…
Full article with more streetart footage and the visit of the graffiti shop "Crackers" @ Vagabundler: http://vagabundler.com/the-map/countries/japan/streetart-osaka/