Go Mishima (Tsuyoshi Yoshida) Japanese 1924-1988
Untitled, 1972

£1,350

Lithograph
Signed (in the plate) (upper right)
42cm × 29.5cm (54cm × 40cm framed)

Go Mishima was a pioneering Japanese illustrator, editor, and painter who served as a central pillar of post-war Japan's gay artistic awakening. Widely considered the first artist to codify the "Japanese gay macho" aesthetic, Mishima shifted the era's subcultural standard away from Westernised "pretty boys" toward a distinct, fiercely masculine iconography rooted in Japanese working-class and underworld subcultures. In 1955, while bodybuilding at a Tokyo gymnasium, he befriended the celebrated and controversial nationalist author Yukio Mishima. Sharing a mutual fascination with physical fitness and hypermasculine sexuality, the two men routinely drew male figure nudes together as a hobby. With the author's strong encouragement to pursue erotic art professionally, Yoshida adopted the pen name "Go Mishima" as a lifetime tribute to their friendship.

By the late 1950s, Mishima discovered the erotic illustrations of the legendary Finnish artist Tom of Finland, whose hypermuscular aesthetic heavily refined his own trajectory. Mishima adapted this high-masculinity style to fit Japanese culture, forging an era of Otoko-e (men's pictures).