[1] Beginning in the 1970s, Kishimoto's interests shifted toward examining and questioning the political power structure of Japanese society as well as that of the U.S.-Japan relations, and she briefly adopted the style of Pop Art.
[3][4] While combatting cancer on the sickbed during the last few years of her life, Kishimoto continued to probe the personal and the political through expressive works on paper as well as performances.
[6] The encouragement of her mother Natsuko, who was unable to sustain her dream of becoming a painter, played an important role in the start of Kishimoto's artistic career.
Graduates from the same program included Genpei Akasegawa, Shūsaku Arakawa, and Iwata Shin’ichi (member of Zero Jigen group), who were two years ahead of Kishimoto.
However, Kishimoto's father was reportedly overwhelmed by the vast amount of oil paintings in museums when he traveled to Europe for an academic conference.
Therefore, taking on her father's advice of switching to Japanese painting, the young artist changed course right before the university entrance exam and subsequently failed it.
[citation needed][dubious – discuss] An interview with the artist's sister Yoshiko Iida unveiled the family's concern for Kishimoto later on.
[7] Aiming to dismantle existing conventions in art, Neo-Dada artists presented shockingly destructive performances and employed mass media to expose their works and themselves.
[2] In 1966, at her solo exhibition Narusisu no bohyō [The Gravestones of Narcissus] at Tsubaki Kindai Gallery, Tokyo, Kishimoto presented a multimedia installation that announced her stance on the female identity.
[2][12] By exposing and manipulating bodily forms as well as establishing the resonance between birth and death, The Gravestones of Narcissus revealed Kishimoto's rejection of the feminine body.
[6] Kishimoto, in front of many visitors as well as former Neo-Dada colleagues such as Ushio Shinohara, Nobuaki Kojima, and Tomio Miki, destroyed her works by spraying white house paint over them.
[2][14] Recalling her practices in the 60s, Kishimoto later wrote, “I believed that ART could not serve its original role and function as the releasing machine to uplift the mind of the viewer unless I completely broke with my narcissism as a woman and a human being.
Those works were the very result of my desperate act of self-annihilation at age twenty-six.”[15] In 1968, at her solo exhibition Romantic Structure at the Ginhodo Gallery in Ginza, Kishimoto covered the walls and ceiling of the space with large-scale drawings of flower petals.
[7] Although having retreated from under the spotlight, Kishimoto continued to create works, mostly paintings and drawings, adopted a Pop art style while engaging with broad political issues that emerged in Japanese society then.
The two motifs of Ono-Lennon marriage and the tied bow resonate with each other and point to the Japanese-U.S. relationship, specifically the renewal of the Japanese-U.S. Security Treaty (Anpo) in 1970, which many students had protested.
[2] In January 1976, Kishimoto participated in "Artists Union Symposium '76" and in July, exhibited her work Rain at the Women Filmmaker's Festival.
The artist believed that the human society at large had been shaped into a pyramidal structure, in which one was compelled to dominate, conquer, and overtake others in order to move up.
Based on this view, Kishimoto created several expressive, dynamic paintings on long, horizontal canvases and frequently adopted various animals as the protagonist of her visual narratives.
Erotical Flying Machines — A trip to the Galaxy (1983), Kishimoto illustrated the journey of a pink grasshopper, an embodiment of the artist herself, traveling with other insects and overcoming difficulties before landing on a utopia.
Furthermore, The Civilization of Monsters (1983) manifests a radiant scenery of dinosaurs, which echoes the artist's view that a more ideal world existed on the earth before the emergence of humans, thereby before the rise of patriarchy and phallicism.
[5] Titled Momotaro Onna Samurai/Kishimoto Sayako's Evening of Song and Narrative, the exhibition was said to be a performance and its flyer wrote “Momotaro-Samurai girl, formerly known as messenger from hell!