Yoshitomo Nara is one of Japan's most popular contemporary artists, with admirers not only in Japan but also in Europe and the United States.
The 43-year-old, whose work consists mainly of cute yet quirky drawings of impish girls, openly proclaims himself a pacifist.
In late September, Nara traveled to Afghanistan. There he produced works that appeared in the Jan. 30 launch issue of Foil, a new quarterly magazine of the visual arts published by Little More. The theme of that issue was "no war."