Born in Nagoya in 1936, Shusaku Arakawa is perhaps Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artist. Like many others of his generation, he participated in the dynamic Japanese art scene of the ’50s, and then moved to New York. Among Arakawa’s few supporters in Japan was the critic Atsushi Miyakawa. Although Miyakawa is as obscure as Arakawa is prominent, his writings have been quite influential in Japan. Instrumental in introducing contemporary French thought and art informel to the Japanese art community, he had an important formative influence on many artists of his generation. Arakawa’s recent