Yoru no Kai

Yoru no Kai (夜の会, "Night Society," est. 1947/1948) was a short-lived but highly influential art research and discussion group founded in early postwar Japan by two major theorists, Kiyoteru Hanada and Tarō Okamoto. While Hanada was a literary critic steeped in Marxist theory, Okamoto was an avant-garde artist well versed in Surrealism and ethnography in the mold of Bataille's College of Sociology. The group's tenet centers on its staunch rejection of "old familiar art" and earnest "exploration of a new art," as their manifesto radically called for: "We must destroy everything and create everything."^[1] Yoru no Kai offered an early important venue to discuss possible new directions in art and culture through public debates, member meetings, and publications. Although the group members were primarily those in literature, it embraced an interdisciplinary goal, collaborating with the artists collective Seiki no Kai (Century Society) and later recasting itself as Abangyarudo Geijutsu Kenkyūkai (Avant-garde Art Study Group). In doing so, they exerted a significant influence that would be felt into the 1950s, as seen in the emergence of Reportage painters and the formation of Jikken Kōbō.