was a Japanese artist. He is famous for his wanderings throughout Japan, during which he often wore a sleeveless undershirt, garnering the nickname "The Naked General."

Early life

Yamashita was born in

Asakusa is a district in Taitō, Tokyo, Japan. It is known as the location of the Sensō-ji, a Buddhist temple dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon. There are several other temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals, such as the . History The ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

. At the age of three, he had an acute abdominal disorder which, although not life-threatening, left him with a mild

speech impediment Speech disorders or speech impairments are a type of communication disorder in which normal speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute. Speech skills are ...

and some neurological damage. At elementary school, Yamashita was the victim of bullying and on one occasion wounded a classmate with a knife. Because of this, his parents decided to move him to the Yahata institution for the mentally handicapped in Ichikawa, Chiba. His IQ was measured at 68. It was here he started to experiment using torn pieces of paper to create pictures. His talent was recognised by mental health expert Ryuzaburo Shikiba, who organised an exhibition of Yamashita's work in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

which received wide praise. Tiring of life at the institution, and in order to avoid the mandatory physical examination for recruitment into the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

, Yamashita ran away in 1940 to start his wandering around Japan, which would last until 1954. At the age of 21, staff from the institution found him helping in a restaurant and forced him to take the recruitment exam. Eventually he was considered exempt from service. The events from this time were recorded in his “Wandering Diary” of 1956, and the most popular image of Yamashita travelling alone through the country with his rucksack comes from this period.

Works

Yamashita used the '' chigiri-e'' method of sticking torn pieces of coloured paper together to depict the scenery he saw on his travels, and some of his most famous works such as "''Nagaoka no hanabi''" and "''Sakurajima''" were made in this way. Possessing

eidetic memory Eidetic memory ( ; more commonly called photographic memory or total recall) is the ability to recall an image from memory with high precision—at least for a brief period of time—after seeing it only onceThe terms ''eidetic memory'' and ''pho ...

, Yamashita usually recreated the entire scene from memory when he returned to the institution or his home. Because of this, Yamashita is often considered an

autistic savant Savant syndrome () is a rare condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of average. The skills that savants excel at are generally related to memory. This may include rapid calcu ...

. In the post-war period, he became widely known as the “Japanese

Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

” or the “Naked General” (due to his habit of wearing a sleeveless undershirt in his travels). In 1956, the Kiyoshi Yamashita Exhibition opened at the Daimaru store in Tokyo, and toured the country, stopping at 130 places in Japan and attracting over 500,000 visitors. In June 1961, Yamashita and Shikiba embarked on a 40-day tour of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. Here he recorded the many famous places and monuments he saw.

Death

Yamashita died from a cerebral hemorrhage aged 49.

Legacy

His work is still highly regarded throughout Japan, and is the subject of frequent exhibitions. His life was portrayed in a long-running

Japanese television drama , also called , are television programs that are a staple of Japanese television and are broadcast daily. All major TV networks in Japan produce a variety of drama series including romance, comedy, detective stories, horror, jidaigeki, thrill ...

, , which ran from 1980 to 1997.

References

External links

Official Website (Japanese)

(This article is an attempted translation of the Japanese Wikipedia article of the same name, and is ongoing.) {{DEFAULTSORT:Yamashita, Kiyoshi 1922 births 1971 deaths Japanese people with disabilities Outsider artists Artists from Tokyo 20th-century Japanese male artists 20th-century Japanese painters