ABSTRACT
Following Japan's defeat in the Second World War, the liberal atmosphere fostered by the US General Headquarters, the body in charge of the Allied occupation of the country, held great promise for all forms of artistic practice. The impossibility of isolating Japanese postwar art from a lineage of the historical avant-gardes established in the country since the turn of the twentieth century has been affirmed by a number of authors, and the role that photography played in this lineage is equally important to note. Takiguchi received the highest recognition for his continuous contributions to Japanese art. In 1958, he travelled to Europe for the first time as a commissioner of the Japanese pavilion for the Venice Biennale and finally found his way to the apartment on rue Fontaine to meet Breton. The question of Surrealism’s relevance for revolutionary art and politics in 1960s Japan was further complicated precisely by the evolution of Surrealism into a subject of academic study.
