¹ “LEVEL 7 feat. Myth of Tomorrow”, 2011. Retrieved 20 February 2014.

² “Okamoto Tarō san no Hekiga ni Itazura” [Okamoto Tarō's Mural Vandalised], Asahi Shimbun, Evening edition, 2 May 2011, p.10; Chūnichi supōtsu, 2 May 2011.

³ Nishioka Kazumasa, “Okamoto Tarō Hekiga ni Genpatsu no e Tsuketashi, Sawagase Shūdan, Jitsu wa Shitataka” [Agitators Who Added a Painting of a Nuclear Power Plant to Okamoto Tarō's Mural are Really Determined], Asahi Shimbun, Morning edition, 25 May 2011, p. 25; Chim↑Pom, Geijutsu Jikkō Han ^{Art Perpetrators], Tokyo Asahi Shuppansha, 2012, p. 10.}

⁴ Aida has also tackled political themes, such as in his War Picture Returns series.

⁵ Edan Corkill, “Shock tactics return”, Japan Times. Retrieved 12 March 2013; Christopher Y. Lew, “Foreword” in Super Rat, Tokyo, PARCO, 2012, pp. 12-15 (p. 15); “The trashy art of Asian diplomacy”, Japan Times. Retrieved 12 March 2013.

⁶ The Level 7 in the title refers to the level assigned to the Fukushima nuclear disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the International Atomic Energy Agency's measure of the severity of nuclear accidents. The Japanese government raised their assessment of the severity of the disaster from an initial rating of 5 (equivalent to the Three Mile Island accident of 1979) to 7 (the same level given to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986) after the country's nuclear safety commission revealed that the amount of radioactive materials released from the damaged reactors had reached 10,000 terabecquerels per hour for several hours after the March accident.

⁷ Yoshimi Shun'ya, Yume no Genshiryoku [Atoms for Dream], Tokyo, Chikuma Shobō, 2014, p. 23-26.

⁸ Carl Cassegård, “Japan's Lost Decade and its Two Recoveries: On Sawaragi Noi, Japanese Neo-pop and Anti-war Activism” in Nina Cornyetz and J. Keith Vincent (eds.) Perversion and Modern Japan: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Culture, Routledge, 2009, pp. 48-52.

⁹ Sawaragi Noi, Tarō to Bakuhatsu: Kitaru beki Okamoto Tarō e ^{Tarō and Explosion: To an Okamoto Tarō Yet to Come], Tokyo, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2012, p. 44.}

¹⁰ Yuhara Kimihiro (ed), Okamoto Tarō Shin Seiki ^{A New Century of Okamoto Tarō], Bessatsu Taiyō: Nihon No Kokoro [Taiyō Supplement: The Soul of Japan], no. 179, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 2011, p. 22.}

¹¹ The London Naval Conference of 1930 was the third in a series of five meetings to determine limitations on the naval capacity of the world's largest naval powers in the wake of the First World War. Japan participated in the conferences alongside Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France and Italy.

¹² Yuhara, Okamoto Tarō, p. 36.

¹³ Ōsugi Hiroshi, “‘Asu no Shinwa’ Kansei ni itaru Hansen, Hankaku no Messēji [Anti-war and Anti-nuclear Messages in the Lead up to Myth of Tomorrow]’ in Asu no shinwa: Okamoto Tarō no Messēji, 2006, p. 80.

¹⁴ Aya Homei, “The contentious death of Mr Kuboyama: science as politics in the 1954 Lucky Dragon incident”, Japan Forum, vol. 25, no. 2, 2013, p. 213. Ann Sherif has pointed out that although the Lucky Dragon incident is widely credited with sparking an anti-atomic bomb movement in Japan such a movement did already exist. Prior to the Lucky Dragon incident, however, the movement was primarily led by supporters of the Japan Communist Party, Japan Socialist Party and the labour unions. Following the incident, however, the involvement of large numbers of non-aligned citizens, particularly the famous homemakers of Suginami ward in Tokyo who led the “Ban the Bomb” petition movement, made the movement more palatable to media representation in the deeply polarised environment of the Cold War. See Ann Sherif, “Thermonuclear weapons and tuna: testing, protest and knowledge in Japan”, in Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney and Fabio Lanza (eds.), Decentering Cold War History, Routledge, Oxon, 2013, pp. 15-30.

¹⁵ Ōsugi, “‘Asu no Shinwa‘”, p. 80.

¹⁶ Okamoto Tarō, Jujutsu Tanjō ^{The Birth of Sorcery], Tokyo, Misuzu Shobō, 1998, p. 32.}

¹⁷ Okamoto Tarō, Nihon no Dentō [Japan's Traditions], Tokyo, Misuzu Shobō, 1999.

¹⁸ Okamoto Tarō, Okinawa Bunka Ron: Wasurerareta Nihon ^{On Okinawan Culture: The Forgotten Japan], Tokyo, Chūo Kōronsha, 1996.}

¹⁹ Sawaragi, Tarō to Bakuhatsu, p. 20.

²⁰ Sawaragi, Tarō to Bakuhatsu, pp. 31-32.

²¹ Sawaragi, Tarō to Bakuhatsu, p. 32.

²² Asu no Shinwa Saisei Purojekuto (ed.), Asu no Shinwa: Okamoto Tarō no Messēji, p. 4.

²³ Okamoto Tarō, Bi no Juryoku ^{The Magical Power of Art], Tokyo, Shinchōsha, 2004.}

²⁴ Yamashita Yūji, ‘Okamoto Tarō ga “Asu no shinwa” ni Kometa Omoi’ [The Feelings in Okamoto Tarō's Myth of Tomorrow], in Asu no Shinwa: Okamoto Tarō no Messēji, 2006, pp. 69-70.

²⁵ Okamoto Toshiko, “Asu no Shinwa Hakken”, p. 4

²⁶ The restoration process is chronicled in Yoshimura Emiiryū, Okamoto Tarō “Asu no Shinwa” shūfuku 960 nichi kan no kiroku ^{A Record of 960 Days Restoring Okamoto Tarō's “Myth of Tomorrow”, Tokyo, Puraimu, 2006.}

²⁷ Coco Masters, “A Lost Masterpiece, Now Found in Tokyo's Metro”, Time, 18 November 2011. Retrieved 18 July 2014.

²⁸ Edan Corkill, “Chim↑Pom and the Art of Social Engagement”, Japan Times Online, 29 September 2011. Retreived 12 March 2013.

²⁹ “Mujin-to Production”. Retrieved 22 August 2013.

³⁰ For an exploration of the politics of the seemingly unending “post-war” see Harry D. Harootunian, “Japan's Long Postwar: The Trick of Memory and the Ruse of History”, South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 99, no. 4, pp. 715-739.

³¹ Chim↑Pom, SUPER RAT, Tokyo, Paruko Entateinmento Jigyōbu, 2012, pp. 24-26.

³² Atsuro Morita, Anders Blok and Shuhei Kimura, “Environmental Infrastructures of Emergency: The Formation of a Civic Radiation Monitoring Map during the Fukushima Disaster”, in Richard Hindmarsh (ed.), Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima Daiichi: Social, Political and Environmental Issues, London, Routledge, 2013, p. 81-84. See also David McNeill, “Truth to Power: Japanese Media, International Media and 3.11 Reportage”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 11, iss. 10, no. 3, 11 March 2012. Retrieved 20 February 2014.

³³ Suh Kyungsik, “‘Igo’ ni arawareru ‘izen’ [The ”Before“ That Appears in the ”After“]”, in Hihyō Kenkyū ^{Critical Inquiry], vol. 1, 2012, p. 6. This and all subsequent translations are my own unless otherwise noted.}

³⁴ Suh, “‘Igo’ ni arawareru ‘izen‘”, pp. 6-7.

³⁵ “Genshiryoku Kiseiihō, Mokuteki ni, ”Anzen Hoshō“ Genshiryoku Kihonhō ni mo Tsuika [‘National Security’ Added to the Objectives of the Nuclear Regulation Authority Law, Same Change Made to the Atomic Energy Basic Law], Asahi Shimbun, 21 June 2012.

³⁶ ‘Press Release (English)‘. Retrieved 9 February 2014.

³⁷ Chim↑Pom, SUPER RAT, p. 31.

³⁸ Chim↑Pom, SUPER RAT, p. 31. Translation in original.

³⁹ Chim↑Pom, Geijutsu jikkōhan, p. 2.

⁴⁰ Sawaragi, Tarō to Bakuhatsu, p. 12-13.

⁴¹ Okamoto Toshiko, “‘Asu no Shinwa’ Hakken [The Discovery of Myth of Tomorrow]” in Asu no Shinwa Saisei Purojekuto (ed.) Asu no Shinwa: Okamoto Tarō no Messēji ^{The Myth of Tomorrow: Okamoto Tarō's Message], Tokyo, Seishun Shuppansha, 2006, p. 4.}

⁴² Cassegård, “Japan's Lost Decade and its Two Recoveries”, 48.

⁴³ Cassegård, “Japan's Lost Decade and its Two Recoveries”, 48-51.

⁴⁴ Chim↑Pom, Geijutsu Jikkō Han, p. 11; Yoshimi, Yume no Genshiryoku.

⁴⁵ The Japan Atomic Power Company Tōkai Daiichi nuclear reactor, which was based on a British Calder Hall type reactor, had been completed four years earlier at Tōkai-mura in Ibaraki prefecture but the technology was inefficient and expensive and all new reactors built during the 1970s were of the American light water type.

⁴⁶ Yoshimi, Yume no Genshiryoku, pp. 14-15.

⁴⁷ Sawaragi, Tarō to Bakuhatsu, p. 300.

⁴⁸ Sawaragi, Tarō to Bakuhatsu, p. 299.

⁴⁹ Yoshimi, Yume no Genshiryoku, pp. 39-42.

⁵⁰ Sawaragi, Tarō to Bakuhatsu, p. 301.

⁵¹ Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History, New York, Verso, 2004, pp. 229-244.

⁵² Okamoto Toshiko, “‘Asu no Shinwa’ Hakken”, p. 10.

⁵³ Chim↑Pom, SUPER RAT, p. 31. Translation in original.