Dreaming of America: The Art of Hiroshi Nagai
By Ligeia Rose
Palm trees, beautiful beaches, vintage cars, sparkling pools, and skyscrapers reaching for an ultramarine, cloudless twilight sky. These all feature in the works of Japanese artist Hiroshi Nagai, whose evocative paintings were used for the covers of many 1980s Japanese pop albums. The somewhat nostalgic, dreamy realism of Nagai’s work has captivated many across the world, and more recently, has garnered renewed interest. Many see his serene paintings as a celebration of American prosperity and innovation.
Nagai was born on December 22, 1947, in Tokushima City. His father, an oil painter specializing in landscapes, inspired him to become an artist. Nagai later traveled to Tokyo to study art formally but was rejected from every institution he applied to. To support himself, he took a job as a TV set decorator and began working at his uncle’s design company to hone his illustration skills.
He credits two main events during the 1970s for cementing his unique style as an illustrator: a photorealism exhibition he attended and a forty-day tour of the United States he took with a dozen other artists.
During this visit, Nagai developed a lifelong love for America. He was captivated by the sun-drenched tropical scenery of the Pacific in Guam, Hawaii, and California. While flying over Los Angeles, he was surprised to see swimming pools everywhere, in hotels and residential backyards alike. “At the time,” he explained, “there were no such pools in Japan. I just loved America.”1
In the 1980s, Japan experienced unprecedented economic and artistic prosperity. Anime and manga became entertainment staples. The video game industry began to produce powerful new computer hardware and popular toys, such as action figures, stuffed animals, and other merchandise based on beloved characters. A new, lighthearted genre of music also emerged, dubbed “city pop.”
Resembling the sunshine pop of 1960s California, with roots in American jazz and rhythm and blues, this style reflected the optimism of Japan’s post–World War II economic boom and showcased the hopeful sense of life that now permeated the country.
It was around this time that Nagai began to find success. His California city scenes, luxurious pools, and tropical flora merged beautifully with the uplifting soundscape of city pop. One of his first projects to gain recognition was the record sleeve of A Long Vacation, the 1981 best-selling album by Eiichi Ohtaki.
Nagai also painted the same scene but at dusk. This version became the cover art for the subsequent album, A Long Vacation from Ladies, which featured several female singers covering all the songs from Ohtaki’s earlier album. Nagai went on to paint more than fifty album covers, establishing himself as a seminal part of the city pop genre.
Nagai’s retro style combines vivid detail with exaggerated perspective. He invents his settings by combining elements from magazines, catalogs, and travel brochures that are evocative of the locations he seeks to depict, then synthesizes these inputs, creating artworks that are integrated around his worldview. In this way, Nagai’s process attests to philosopher Ayn Rand’s description of art as “a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.”2 Nagai carefully selects parts from his vast well of experience to transform into stunning, romanticized concretizations of his life-affirming outlook.
Nagai’s work is so precise and clear that some mistake it for digital renderings, but he paints entirely by hand. He uses acrylic and aerosol paints, starting in grayscale. His signature contrast between rich blues and jet black captures the brightness and dry heat of summer.
Nagai’s work has often been compared to that of British artist David Hockney. However, Hockney’s work focuses on showcasing the city of Los Angeles itself and its beauty. Nagai’s work is dreamier and more aspirational—it embodies his treasuring and longing for the beauty of America while living in Japan.
Sadly, the great prosperity of 1980s Japan came to an end in the 1990s, melting into what became known as the Lost Decade. The economy waned, hopes for a better future dwindled, and the playful optimism of city pop was replaced by pervasive melancholy, as people saw rewards for their efforts significantly diminish during the recession. The dismal artwork of Tetsuya Ishida, a painter active during the Lost Decade, reflected this phenomenon. His work often depicted young men—once full of love for their work—as cogs in machines, stripped of their individuality and robbed of their futures by an endless, horrifying mundanity.
During this time, viewers began to notice a liminal, mysterious quality in Nagai’s paintings. The beautiful emptiness of his landscapes evoked nostalgia—a yearning for the greatness of the past and an acknowledgment of the bleakness of the present.
The late 2000s, however, brought a revival of the city pop genre, and with it, even greater international interest in Nagai’s paintings. In 2020–2021, Nagai’s first international solo exhibition took place in Sydney, Australia. He said of the experience, “It is nice to see that I am not forgotten, that my old paintings are still in the minds of the young people.”3
We live in volatile times. Moral relativism runs rampant, especially in the arts and entertainment. The art we consume and surround ourselves with has a great impact on our mental well-being, and so much in our world today tends toward apathy and despair. In that gloomy sea, Nagai’s work is a beacon of optimism—a reminder of the beauty man is capable of creating and the serenity that is his to achieve.