One of the most influential Japanese artists in post-dermal art history, Takashi Murakami was born in Tokyo in 1962 into a humble family. Young Murakami refuses to produce following the canons of traditional Nihonga art taught in academies, and instead focuses on the Otaku manga subculture, predominant in 1980s Japan. In 1995 he publishes the Superflat artistic manifesto, a flattened graphic style that would revolutionize the world of postmodern oriental art.