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This thesis is an examination of the concept and the term "superflat" as it is elaborated by the Japanese artist Murakami Takashi in his writings, in the exhibition he curated under the same name, and in his own art. / Its aim is to contextualize Murakami's project on one hand in terms of a similar attempt to define a Japanese national aesthetic in the early 20 th century, and on the other in terms of the 1990's tendency to return to Edo Japan to find the "origins" of Japan's postmodernity. / Murakami's own art is then turned to in order to both elaborate on and test the aesthetic of Japanese art he calls the superflat. This examination of Murakami's art permits the formulation of an aesthetics of Japanese contemporary art and animation even as it will afford an understanding of the "cultural logic" of the digital age that informs Murakami's argument. / Questions important to this project are: Is the articulation of a local aesthetics possible in this globalizing age? What are the aesthetic traits of the digital age? How should the superflat---as both idea and project---be interpreted?

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 185-200). Also available via the World Wide Web.