Dumb Type is a group of creative art forms that express the new and daily life of the twentieth century modern and technological world of Japan.
In a 1990 interview in High Performance, the late Teiji Furuhashi, one of Dumb Type's co-founders, described their work as political in nature: "Something Japanese theater never does.
"[1] Notable in a country plagued by political apathy, the group has played the unpopular role of HIV/AIDS activist, organizing symposia and other events, motivated in part by the fact that Furuhashi died of AIDS in 1995.
[3] The founding leader of the group Furuhashi, suggested that the name "Dumb Type" expressed an idea of the reality that Japan has become because its technology and the attraction to the media.
Furuhashi explained that the core group—Furuhashi, Toru Koyamada, Yukihiro Hozumi, Shiro Takatani, Takayuki Fujimoto and Hiromasa Tomari—began working together in 1982, while still students at Kyoto City University of Arts.
Several solo exhibitions have been dedicated to Dumb Type, at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2018, at the MOT-Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in 2020 and at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2022 among others.