[5] In 1960, Nakanishi was a frequent participant in the activities of the short-lived but influential "anti-art" collective Neo-Dada Organizers, of which his future Hi-Red Center compatriot Genpei Akasegawa was a member.
On October 18, 1962, Nakanishi, along with future Hi-Red Center collaborator Jirо̄ Takamatsu and other collaborators, carried out an artistic happening they titled the "Yamanote Line Incident" (山手線事件, Yamanote-sen jiken), in which they boarded a Yamanote loop line train heading counter-clockwise on its route, disrupting the normalcy of passenger's commutes with a series of bizarre performative actions.
On the Fluxus-produced map of Hi-Red Center’s activities, compiled and edited with the help of Shigeko Kubota, the Yamanote Line Incident is listed as number three.
[13] Another photograph shows Nakanishi squatting on a train platform in white face paint, hunched over a Compact Object which he is licking as pedestrians watch in confusion.
[15] The group's name was formed from the first kanji characters of the three artists' surnames: "high" (the "Taka" in Takamatsu), "red" (the "Aka" in Akasegawa), and "center" (the "Naka" in Nakanishi).
[18] The work was a part of the fifteenth Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition, taking place at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum from March 2 to 15, 1963.
[5] Clothespins Assert Churning Action was also exhibited on May 28 of that year as part of Hi-Red Center’s “Sixth Mixer Plan” event.
[17] As Nam June Paik recounts, “It was a hideous picture that induced the viewer’s empathy, knowing how painful it would be to be bitten by the springs of numerous laundry clips.”[19] Akasegawa reflected on the piece with the question, “In the knowledge that this was not paint but simple, everyday objects, had we not discovered the minimum separation between painting and real life?”[20] Another photo from the “Sixth Mixer Plan” iteration of the work shows Nakanishi, adorned with clothespins, holding what is presumably one of his Rhyme ‘63 objects encased in tinfoil and clothespins.
[22] Other activities listed on the Fluxus edition that explicitly mention Nakanishi are number two occurring September 15th,1962, “Opening day of Jiritu-Gattuko.
1963 Yomiuri andi-pandan show at Ueno museum” where “10,000 clothespins made by Nakanisi [sic] were attached to museum visitors,” and number eleven, an NHK television show on November 3rd, 1963 which included a “Foaming fountain by Nakanishi.”[17] From January 30 to February 15, 1964, Nakanishi was featured in the exhibition “Young Seven” curated by Yoshiaki Tōno at Minami Gallery, Tokyo.
The partnership began during Genpei Akasegawa's Model 1,000-Yen Note-Incident when Hijikata approached Nakanishi to make theatrical props and related art for his choreography.
As art historian Michio Hayashi has observed of the connected but different approaches by the two artists, “In contrast to Hijikata, who eagerly incorporated the effects of the gravitational pull on his body as an important element of his choreography, and, moreover, positively acknowledged the physical ground under his feet as their unquestionable support, Nakanishi expressed his suspicion about such phenomenological optimism.”[29] After Nakanishi’s radical questioning of art’s conventions through his proximity to the Neo-Dada Organizers and his work with Hi-Red Center, he notably returned to painting with sustained and intensive engagement with the medium.
In this regard, Nakanishi differentiated himself from “continental or constructivist art” which he felt demonstrated a “blind faith in earth, or ground.”[35] His search for another means of orientation often relies on water, shown in his various “rituals” such as placing a glass of water near a canvas in progress, trying to cut a perfect circle from a sheet of paper while abroad a boat floating on a pond, and going to Cape Inubō to observe the Pacific Ocean as a panoramic horizon.
[30] Nakanishi was one of the founders of the experimental and radical art education program Bigakko, whose founding was prompted by the decline of the leftist movements in Japan at the end of the 1960s.
[41] Such unorthodox teaching methods would continue in Nakanishi’s practice as an educator, such as the exercise of holding a small steel ball in the palm of one’s hand and focusing one’s attention on it while walking about.
[41] In April 1970 the workshop was introduced with a rotating faculty of Nakanishi, Nakamura, Genpei Akasegawa, Yutaka Matsuzawa, and Mokuma Kikuhata.