THE ROMANCE OF RUBBISH: THE WORLD OF THE JAPANESE ART BRUT CREATOR GATARO

IN HIROSHIMA, A JANITOR TRANSFORMS HIS WORK SUPPLIES AND THE DETAILS OF HIS SURROUNDINGS INTO EXQUISITE TREASURES

by Nobumasa Kushino

Editor’s introduction, by Edward M. Gómez:

Based in Shizuoka Prefecture, southeast of the Tokyo metropolitan region, Nobumasa Kushino is a senior program officer for Shizuoka’s prefectural arts council. Prior to taking up that job a few years ago, he made his name in Japan as a leading researcher, presenter, and promoter of contemporary Japanese art brut and outsider art. He has written and published several books, and curated numerous exhibitions, in these related fields. In the recent past, he also handled art in the role of a private dealer.

The Japanese researcher, curator, and art promoter Nobumasa Kushino’s book Chōrō Gejutsu, or The Art of the Aged, which was published last year, in Japan, by Kenelephant.

Last year, his book 超老芸術 (“Chōrō Gejutsu,” or “The Art of the Aged,” published by Kenelephant, Japan), presented a survey of the creations of older Japanese, self-taught artists working with a wide variety of materials, in various genres. In Shizuoka City, Arts Council Shizuoka sponsored a related exhibition curated by Kushino featuring works by several of the artists who are cited in his book.

Among them was Gataro, a true art brut and outsider artist who lives in the city of Hiroshima. To date, Kushino has frequently exhibited Gataro’s exquisite drawings made on found scraps of paper, with their chiaroscuro depictions of the artist’s cleaning rags and janitorial supplies, and the people he meets in his immediate surroundings. Here is Kushino’s introduction to Gataro’s distinctive art, which I have translated into English from this talented researcher-curator’s original Japanese.

The artist Gataro is featured in Nobumasa Kushino’s book Chōrō Gejutsu, or The Art of the Aged, which was published last year.

In the center of the city of Hiroshima, the so-called Genbaku Slum, a shantytown of shacks, once spread out close to the north side of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (which is known as the “Genbaku Dome” in Japanese). Toward the end of the 1970s, it was cleared out and transformed into the Motomachi public-housing district. There, for the past 38 years, a man has worked alone as a janitor in a vast shopping center whose main passageway is some 300 meters long. This man is Gataro.

Born in 1949, Gataro has enjoyed drawing subjects taken from his immediate surroundings, but because he has suffered from severe, debilitating attacks of “genbaku burabura byō” (“atomic-bomb numbness syndrome”), he was never able to hold various past jobs for long, including those of an employee at a printing company, a postman, a cabaret bellboy, a demolition-crew day worker, and others from which he routinely moved on. [Editor’s note: “Genbaku burabura byō” is a kind of radiation sickness characterized by fatigue, headaches, a susceptibility to catch colds, and other symptoms.]

Gataro works as a janitor in a shopping center in the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Photo by Nobumasa Kushino

It was at the age of 33 when, feeling himself halfway on the way toward total desperation, Gataro received an introduction from a friend that led to the start of his work as a shopping-center janitor. Taking over from an elderly woman who had held the job until then, ever since that time, following a self-imposed rule, every morning from 4:00 a.m. until just after 9:00 a.m. (“without any exceptions, except for Sundays and New Year’s Day,” he says), he has continued doing his janitorial work.

[Click here to see a short video, produced by Nobumasa Kushino, featuring Gataro and his artworks in his home setting.]

When he first started, because of the demands of the job and physical fatigue, many times he thought about quitting. However, while looking over his cleaning supplies and tools in their dark storage area, little by little, Gataro’s feelings began to change. Recalling when he was a young, homeless man with a mental disability, he worked silently, with an eagerly worn-out mop and cleaning rags, cleaning up stains; he started to admire his cleaning supplies and, in time, they became the subjects of his drawings.

One of Gataro’s untitled drawings of a dust cloth, made on a piece of found paper. Photo by Nobumasa Kushino

Gataro took part in numerous open-call exhibitions in Hiroshima but his work never attracted critical attention. That being the case, he presented his own “Weather-beaten Exhibitions,” as he called them, in ditches along railway lines or in public parks, standing guard over them as he spent the nights outdoors. Along with a young homeless man, Gataro gathered up cotton gloves, with which they produced some 5000 weird “Cotton-glove dolls.” They handed them out before dawn in their “Midsummer Mystery” event, which stirred up television and newspaper coverage.

Gataro arrived at a turning point at the age of 63. After being featured in a television program, from all over Japan, individuals who were concerned about family relationships, as well as those who assisted disabled people and others who struggle to survive began, to showing every day at Gataro’s side.

A group of Gataro’s untitled drawings of a dust cloths on display in October 2023 in an exhibition organized by Nobumasa Kushino, which was presented in the city of Shizuoka. Photo by Edward M. Gómez

Due to that television exposure, the figure of Gataro, who earnestly did his cleaning work and continued making his drawings, gained recognition as something of a saint. He says, “Well, they’ve been such wonderful people with regard to a mere janitor like me.” Skillfully and uncompromisingly, Gataro has changed the stereotypical image of the dust cloths he uses every day, which have become dear to his heart.

Superimposing on the figures of these old, worn rags, from which all the liquid has been squeezed out, the figure of a humble janitor who has been bled dry by the structures of society, since April 2018, every day, Gataro has continued making drawings of these subjects.

Gataro is always prepared with words of self-discipline. He is by no means extravagant, nor does he brag about himself. First of all, about the name “Gataro,” which refers to a kappa (a mythical, water-dwelling creature) and to someone who picks up trash: It’s a certain kind of discriminatory expression, but Gataro likes using it, for, as he says, “It conveys a sense of freedom.”

A group of Gataro’s untitled drawings of various subjects from his immediate surroundings on display in October 2023 in an exhibition organized by Nobumasa Kushino, which was presented in the city of Shizuoka. Photo by Nobumasa Kushino

In order to escape from authority, status, and fame, Gataro just keeps making his drawings. In one of his most recent works, Gataro has made a painting of various people from his surroundings gathering around him and, beneath a naked light bulb, taking part in a yaminabe party (in which a stew prepared using ingredients provided by the guests is usually eaten in the dark, just for fun). This becomes a real-life, true-story basis for this work. In this way, Gataro always looks up and regards society from his vantage point — in a riverbed.

[Scroll down to see more photos of Gataro’s artworks.]