enya Shimizu (清水 健也) is a young Japanese artist steeped in the erotic artistic traditions of his country. Born in Fukui Prefecture in Japan, 1976, Kenya devoted himself early on to mastering the techniques of his art studying pen drawings by his self and learning how to paint watercolours working as a background painter for Japanese animation. Although he has never been to art college (he has however a university degree in Russian language, and that’s the reason he signs his works in Cyrillic), since 2000 he has been exhibiting his work at the joint Rainbow Arts Exhibition, held by the LGBTI community in Tokyo every summer. In 2001 he was awarded at the 5th Emerging Erotic Artist Contest by the Tom of Finland Foundation and has since been publishing his works in publications across Japan. Used to draw illustrations for mainstream gay magazines including G-men, he recently has started to show his original works, and has put value on more artistic activities. Kenya works in pen and ink and water colour producing pictures which are often sexually explicit and feature fetish themes, in the tradition of Japanese male “Shunga” (traditional erotic drawings). While his homo-erotic fantasies (pen and ink) reveal, in style and composition, his love for the great tradition of European Art Nouveau and masters such as Harry Clarke, Alfons Mucha, Aubrey Beardsley, his iconographic references are to be traced in Japanese classic art and in the work of authors such as Sadao Hasegawa (whose is often considered the heir), Go Mishima, Naomichi Okutsu, Tamotsu Yato, expressions of the homoerotic imagery born in postwar Japan under the influence of Yukio Mishima’s cult of tradition. Like those authors, Shimizu refers to Japanese culture and settings – for example, Samurai warriors and weapons, theatrical masks, tattoos and, of course, bondage.
His stunning portrayals on gold and silver leaf of magnificently built samurai displaying astonishing tattoos and brandishing weapons are brilliant compositions executed with panache and great skill; they are rendered with utmost sensitivity and perfectionism and truly capture the intense homoeroticism that lies beneath the Cult of the Warrior: “I first learnt of them as an adult and came to have an appreciation of them as part of my heritage. I am proud to be Japanese, and have produced my works as Japanese culture. In my recent paintings, I paint the beauty of Japanese men. Especially in the motif of Samurai, I want to express ideal Japanese men who were loyal to their master, observed proper etiquette, carried out justice and showed compassion for the weak. A man with high aspirations who adheres to these principles is referred to as Samurai, although the samurai no longer exist in Japan.” However, compared with themes expressed in the work of Yukio Mishima, or for example in the iconography of an author like Gengoroh Tagame, usually considered the most important and the best known Japanese homoerotic contemporary artist, in Shimizu’s work sexuality is never linked to the idea of death, abuse or suicide, as typically is in those authors. Shimizu’s images rapresent sexuality as complex, fetishist, rich of symbolic elements inherited from cultural tradition, but at the same time fun and not morbid; perhaps a sign of a new Japanese generation who lives his homosexuality in a more peaceful and less confrontational way than in the past.
