He stands most openly in Bowie’s “Berlin” songs. Perhaps above all, the work of Mishima, whose last books were being translated into English in the early Seventies.įor Bowie, Mishima was the extremity of Japan’s artistic culture. He loved its art, photography ( Sukita), fashion ( Yamamoto), food, music (Toru Takemitsu), kabuki ( Bando), film ( Oshima), temples, and likely more than a few of its citizens. Well before he first toured the country in spring 1973, Bowie had immersed in Japan (he always did the research). The almond eyes have a penetrating sadness. One of Bowie’s favorite paintings, arguably his best, it’s a severe crop of Mishima’s head, which seems carved from stone. All that’s on the yellow (not electric blue) wall is an enormous canvas: Bowie’s portrait of the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. A man gone from the world, hiding in his bedroom. This is Bowie-in-Berlin, in a stolen moment (or was it? was the photograph staged for possible use? I don’t know who took it). Thirty years old, his face is that of a beautiful sleeping child. The photograph shows a room in a flat in West Berlin-155 Hauptstraße, Schöneberg.
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