Using strategies of distortion, grotesque figures, biomorphic forms, and a satirical tone, Ikeda sharply engaged with a range of contemporary issues including labor politics and class conflict, Japan-United States relations, nuclear disarmament, and legacies of militarism, especially through the proliferation and continued presence of American military bases on Japanese soil after the end of the Occupation era.
A leading figure in the Reportage movement of the 1950s and early 60s, Ikeda, along with artists such as Hiroshi Nakamura, Kikuji Yamashita, and Shigeo Ishii, visited sites of protest across the country to document the realities of postwar social unrest through a expressive mode inflected with both surrealist and realist tenors.
[1] He was involved in a number of prominent but short-lived artistic societies that emerged after the war, including Tarō Okamoto and Kiyoteru Hanada's Zen'ei Bijutsu-kai (Avant-garde Art Study Group, which had its roots in their earlier Yoru no Kai group), Seiki no Kai (Century Society), Seibiren (Youth Artists' Alliance) and the Seisakusha Kondankai (Producers' Workshop), which he co-founded with film critic Senpei Kasu.
His later works, particularly following the Anpo protests in 1960 and their failure to enact social upheaval, turned to more spiritual and cosmological concepts, as evidenced by the biomorphic, embryonic forms expressed in the BRAHMAN series (1973–88).
[5] After enrolling in Imari Commercial High School in 1941, he was put in a military training course, where he recalled hearing the broadcast of the Imperial Japanese Navy's entrance into war in the Pacific following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Though he had originally enrolled with the intention of studying oil painting, Ikeda quickly lost interest in academism and instead began to immerse himself in Tokyo's avant-garde circles.
Seibiren His works from the early 1950s, which feature fragmentary geometries and constellated symbols demarcated by strong, dark outlines reveal the influences of Cubism and Surrealism on the young artist’s nascent practice.
Ikeda went on to visit American military bases in Tachikawa and Uchinada, recording his observations with a critical gaze towards the social, environmental, and political anxieties that plagued residents in occupied areas.
Cast with an ominous tenor, the duo embody a common predicament faced by many young women in the postwar, who, after losing male family members to the war, turned to Occupation soldiers for financial support.
Alongside fellow left-wing artists such as Hiroshi Nakamura, Kikuji Yamashita, and Shigeo Ishii, Ikeda began producing a rich series of protest work that sharply critiqued the conservative cabinet that rose to power following the occupation and the ongoing violence incurred by the perpetuation of American military presence, endemic corruption, and the escalation of the nuclear arms race.
Combining elements of both realism and surrealism, the works often mobilize satire, allegorical imagery, and the aesthetics of the grotesque to express in vivid form the perils and anxiety of the postwar social condition.
[4]: 154 In 1954, crew members of the Lucky Dragon #5 tuna trawler were exposed to nuclear fallout from a thermonuclear bomb test conducted by American forces at Bikini Atoll.
No, this will end worse than ghosts.”[4]: 38 Following the succession of thermonuclear tests in the Pacific and the ongoing rapid industrialization taking place across the country, Ikeda became further disillusioned and unnerved by the pervasive indices of toxicity in the atmosphere and throughout social life.
[6] In 1973, he began to explore ideas surrounding the origins of life and space-time relations through his Brahman series, using an airbrush technique to render his forms with a soft, atmospheric quality.