[2] Other members of this circle from the same area that Yoshimura met at this time included future Neo-Dada collaborators Genpei Akasegawa, Shō Kazakura, and Arata Isozaki.
[3][4] Sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, this freewheeling exhibition was unjuried and open to anyone, and thus became a site of artistic experimentation that paved the way for new forms of "anti-art," "non-art," and "junk art.
[6] By adding the English word "organizers" to their name, the group indicated their interest in appropriating (and possibly mocking) the left-wing jargon of the ongoing Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.
[1] Pioneers of so-called "anti-art," the Neo-Dada Organizers engaged in all manner of visual and performance artworks, but specialized in producing disturbing, impulsive spectacles, often involving physical destruction of objects, that the art critic Ichirō Hariu deemed "savagely meaningless.
"[7] The group held three official exhibitions in 1960, as well as a number of bizarre "actions," "events," and "happenings" in which they sought to mock, deconstruct, and in many cases, physically destroy conventional forms of art.
Examples included filling galleries with piles of garbage, smashing furniture to the beat of jazz music, and prancing the streets of Tokyo in various states of dress and undress.
[12] Although the Neo-Dada Organizers never officially disbanded, they did not hold any major public events after the fall of 1960, after which time many of the group's leading members began to pursue their own individual artistic activities.
"[13] Although short-lived, Neo-Dada's bizarre and spectacular performances received outsized media attention, and proved influential on a number of Japanese artistic collectives active later in the 1960s and associated with the "anti-art" movement, including Zero Jigen, Group Ongaku, and Hi-Red Center.
[2] Yoshimura hoped to stay in New York, where his career was going extremely well and he was garnering increased international attention, but in 1966 he was forced to return to Japan when he proved unable to renew his visa.
[2] Mentally and emotionally exhausted, Yoshimura withdrew to the mountains near Hadano, Kanagawa, where he set up a small atelier far from the center of Japan's art scene in Tokyo.