DOB in the Strange Forest Takashi Murakami art publishing/1999/Japanese/185*210*18 A collection of works by Takashi Murakami, one of Japan's leading artists, titled “DOB in the Strange Forest.” Murakami, who majored in Japanese painting at Tokyo University of the Arts, began his career as a contemporary artist in the early 1990s and has since steadily created the character “DOB.” This book was published in April 1999 to coincide with an exhibition of the same name held at the Parco Gallery, marking Murakami's first book. The origin of the name “DOB” comes from the phrase “Dobochite Dobochite, Oshamanbe,” which is a forced combination of two completely different phrases: one from Kawasaki Noboru's “Inakappe Taishou” and the other from the great comedian Yuri Toru. Starting as a real creation where the “mock” becomes the “original,” DOB gradually evolved into a mirror reflecting the times, and eventually became something akin to Takashi Murakami's self-portrait.