The Takashi Murakami curated Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture is at NYC’s Japan Society through July 24, and anyone interested in Japanese culture — or even art or sociology or pop culture in general — will want to take a gander.

But prepare to have any preconceptions about sunny-and-smiley-Japanese-pop everything shattered — shattered like a Hello Kitty stained glass window. Murakami places formerly harmless figures like Doraemon in a critical, thoughtful cultural context; and contrasts cutie pie commercial characters alongside accomplished new Japanese artists who are concerned with how Murakami views Japan: as a morally, socially, and psychologically lost society suffering from familial decay and a country-wide identity crisis. Oh yeah, the whole much-discussed Hiroshima/Nagasaki scarring and fear-of-technology deal is in there, too.

Heavy, dark, creepy, thought-provoking, and hypnotic stuff. Wheee!

Spread the word!