1947/1948) was a short-lived but highly influential art research and discussion group founded in early postwar Japan by two major theorists, Kiyoteru Hanada and Tarō Okamoto.
While Hanada was a literary critic steeped in Marxist theory, Okamoto was an avant-garde artist well versed in Surrealism and ethnography in the mold of Bataille's College of Sociology.
[3] In February, they began holding their formal meetings twice a month on Monday nights, at the French restaurant Mon Ami in Nakano, Tokyo, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
[4][5] Early participants were personally selected by Hanada, and at the first meeting they included Hiroshi Noma, Rinzō Shiina, Yutaka Haniya, Haruo Umezaki, Kiichi Sasaki, Hideto Nakano, and Tōzaburō Ono.
In it, the group asserts their desire to search for a new artistic paradigm that made sense in the new, postwar climate in Japan – a goal that involved breaking with the past completely.
[7] In addition to investigating new frameworks for postwar art and culture, Hanada brought to Yoru no Kai ideas of the importance of Marxist collective production that he had introduced earlier, to Sōgō Bunka Kyōkai.
[13] Although Yoru no Kai was only active for a brief period of time, it facilitated key exchanges between artists and writers and introduced young creators to avant-garde ideas.
According to art critic Shin'ichi Segi, who participated in Yoru no Kai meetings, "the atmosphere of the group was salon-like, it was a place where members exchanged opinions with each other, but from the public format, the result was that it served the role of spreading enlightenment.
[6] In 1949, after Yoru no Kai had dissolved, Hanada and Okamoto went on to create the Abangyarudo Geijutsu Kenkyūkai (Avant-garde Art Study Group), which was designed to mentor young artists and critics.