This story really moved me.  It happened in the 90s in Japan.  The economic bubble of the 80s had burst and the corporate oriented restructuring and austerity measures gave some people a newly found reality of surviving outside of the corporate routines.  The underground station of Shinjuku, Tokyo was filled with cardboard houses populated by the homeless people.

It’s a story of young artists who themselves lived on the edge of the corporate cage, relentlessly trying to be true to humanity…

I came across their website recently and the English translation was missing in the descriptions of their art works which are crucial in telling the story of those artists.  I offered to translate some of them and here is a first set of images which tells about how they got started.

Photos are by Naoko Sakokawa.

By Take Junichiro and Takewo Yoshizaki  Location:  the west exit underground plaza (map)

The very first Shinjuku Underground Station West exit Cardboard painting.

Initially, I wasn’t intending on painting those cardboard houses at the underground corridors at all. I was set to street-paint in Shinjuku, guerrilla style. I walked around Shinjuku with paint cans with “TAKEWO”. But the seemingly open, unrestricted big city didn’t have any place for the guerrilla paint job. We looked and looked but it was all systematic. We just walked around aimlessly with disappointment.

We just stood around hopelessly. The city was gigantic and oppressive. As we followed the river of people in despair, we came across the village of cardboard houses at the Shinjuku Underground Station West Exit. We stumbled onto one of them, knocking the cardboard door:

“What do you want?” A large man with a menacing face answered.

“I’m an artist and I would like to paint on your cardboard house,” I answered.

“Say what??”

“Like I said, I would like to paint on your cardboard house.”

“What!”

“…”

“OK, go ahead.”

That’s how our cardboard house painting got started. We, “TAKEWO” and I, spent all night painting two of the cardboard houses that night. We kept hearing distant sounds of people screaming and shattering glass, and the underground corridor was filled with the police siren and the ambulance siren every once in a while.

In the summer night, our rebellion was born in the underground of the mega city.

http://cardboard-house-painting.jp/mt/archives/2004/09/post_118.php

By Take Junichiro, Takewo Yoshizaki and Yasuhiro Yamane  Location:  the west exit underground plaza (map)

This piece is considered a representative work of ours that survived the forced removal of homeless people by the city of Tokyo on 1/24/1996. It’s THE Shinjuku Underground Station West Exit cardboard house painting.

Yamane mentioned the words “Left Eye of Shinjuku”. The image of those words got the three of us started. It was an all night live painting. The battle of us three. It was so intense that we drew some audience.

Across from the West Exit rotary there is a monument called “An Eye of Shinjuku”. It’s the right eye. And the one we painted is the left one. Makes sense. It’s the pair. The giant eyes had emerged in the Shinjuku underground corridor. The underground became a creature with a soul, baring its teeth against fucking Japan.

Just in case, I must say that the “Left” of “The Left Eye of Shinjuku” has nothing to do with the left wing. So those middle aged dick-wad lefties dragging around the 60s shouldn’t mix this up with that. We are not piece of shit like you all. By the way, it’s odd but when we finished painting this one, we somehow felt that when this painting is gone, that’ll be the time this village will be gone.

The Left Eye of Shinjuku which survived the forced removal had prevailed as a symbol of the underground kingdom.

Then the big fire of February of 1998 came. Soaked in water, the painting was disposed of by the City of Tokyo, and the village has disappeared as well. The Left Eye of Shinjuku really died with the cardboard village.

http://cardboard-house-painting.jp/mt/archives/2004/09/post_117.php

By Take Junichiro  Location:  the west exit underground plaza (map)

You can see rest of the 121 paintings at their site.  And here is the introduction to the work by Take Junichiro.