An aspiring artist living in Japan my brother has spent the past several years developing his art network, meeting other artists and getting introductions to galleries and other plays in the Osaka and Tokyo art worlds.
Recently, he’d been working on a series of pixel-style drawings of popular characters, including Japan’s official “anime ambassador” (hard to believe this is a thing)—Doraemon, a robot cat cited as the Japanese equivalent of Mickey Mouse.
“Don’t do Doraemon,” a gallery owner told my brother when he saw the work. “Do something American, like Mickey Mouse.”
As much as my brother is fascinated by Japanese culture, the Japanese art world just isn’t interested. They don’t need an artistic rendering of Doraemon; in fact, based on a quick Google search, Doraemon’s likeness seems to be EVERYWHERE in Japan.
Mickey Mouse, though? Now, that’s something a Japanese person doesn’t see every day.
But my brother, of course, isn’t interested in Mickey Mouse—he’s interested in the robot cat that no American has ever heard of.
There’s a struggle here of identify and expectation—Japanese art galleries expect a white expat American to produce art about America, not about Japan.
Taylor Coe 