Money, Trains, and Guillotines examines a constellation of politically engaged Japanese artists who participated in the controversial Yomiuri Indépendant exhibitions and organized pivotal arts groups such as Neo Dada and Hi Red Center in the late 1950s and 1960s. Their work was formed out of the detritus of Japan's rapidly growing consumer society—it was messy, confrontational, and at times even violent. In a characteristically avant-garde move, these artists challenged established arts institutions, and as Marotti argues, they produced a sustained critique of contemporary Japanese society and leveled a subtle challenge to the very authority of the state.

Marotii's rich analysis of the government's Kafkaesque prosecution of Akasegawa Genpei for counterfeiting provides the thread that unifies his study. As the author demonstrates, a great deal was at stake in this bizarre episode of political theater, in which the artist, his colleagues, and his lawyers battled with prosecutors over the definition of art, the limits of free speech, and state's capacity to define “reality” through its monopoly on generating paper money. In order to explain why the government should care so much about an artist's production of one-sided “1000-yen notes” that clearly could not be mistaken for “real” money, Marotti provides a meticulous analysis of the history of the postwar constitution that emerged out of complex negotiations between the Allied Occupation and Japanese elites. Although the constitution enacted significant reforms, Japanese interests succeeded in preserving the sovereignty of the emperor and, crucial to Akasegawa's trial, reaffirmed the state's right to curtail freedom of speech.

Marotti makes helpful connections between this circle and artistic practice elsewhere in the world. The writings of Bréton clearly had an impact, as did the abstraction, performance art, and pop art of contemporaries such as Mathieu, Kaprow, Johns, and Rauschenberg. Surprisingly, Marotti makes little effort to develop any relationship between his subjects and other Japanese artists. He mentions in passing that Tone Masanao had a strong interest in early avant-garde artists such as the Mavo group of the 1920s, but does not try to relate the artists under examination with the politically charged photographs of figures such as Kawada Kikuji, Hamaya Hiroshi, and Tōmatsu Shōmei. Furthermore, he dismisses attempts to find precedents for his artists in the work of others as an unproductive effort to establish “ownership” over artistic innovation (p. 144).

Although there are limits to how far the author could pursue these issues in this context, some further discussion of the place of his subjects within a broader artistic community is warranted. Of particular importance is the Gutai Group, whose members experimented with dramatic confrontations between their bodies and their materials, and staged performance pieces and encouraged audiences to participate—all strategies heavily exploited by Marotti's subjects. Despite these striking similarities, Gutai work was less explicitly political than that of Akasegawa and his associates; exploration of this key difference would have been welcome.

One of this book's strengths is the rigor with which Marotti deals with the political and legal issues that shaped the production and reception of these artists’ work. The author also provides a nuanced interpretation of their enigmatic texts and images. This well-researched, interdisciplinary study adds significantly to our understanding of Japanese cultural politics in this turbulent era.