Biography
During the 1950s and 1960s, Akasegawa became involved within the Neo-Dada movement, along with Ushio Shinohara, Shusaku Arakawa, and Yoshimura Masanobu. He formed the Hi-Red Center with Jiro Takamatsu and Natsuyuki Nakanishi during this time, which was a group of artists that presented their works as a collective in Japan; they performed happenings within the Hi-Red Center. Akasegawa was also associated with the avant-garde.
In 1970s he used the idea of Hyper-Art (chōgeijutsu), an ordinary but useless street object that happened to look like a conceptual artwork. He called such things Tomasons, (named for Yomiuri Giants outfielder Gary Thomasson) and published photographs of them first within the magazine Shashin Jidai and later within books.
As "Katsuhiko Otsuji," he received the Akutagawa Prize in 1981 for his short story, "Chichi ga kieta". Akasegawa is known for many humorous essays, and his 1998 book Rōjinryoku was a major hit.
Akasegawa is fond of old (used) cameras, especially Leicas, and since 1992, he has joined Yutaka Takanashi and Yūtokutaishi Akiyama in the photographers' group Raika Dōmei, which has held numerous exhibitions.
Read more about this topic: Genpei Akasegawa
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