VOU (magazine)

In Japan's interwar modernist milieu, poets and artists engaged with European avant-garde currents—including Dada and Surrealism (see also Surrealism in Japan)—through small coterie circles and their self-published journals.^[3] Within this context, poet and designer Katsue Kitasono formed the VOU Club in July 1935 and launched its journal VOU as a forum in which a revolving group of poets and creators could define the magazine's program.^[3]

Contemporary reference works describe VOU as a leading venue for experiments in abstract theory and method, aiming toward a composite arts movement that extended beyond poetry to fields such as music and architecture.^[4] Accounts of the circle emphasize the magazine's cross-media editorial culture: members contributed not only poems but also photographs and essays on art, music, and film.^[2]

VOU began in July 1935 as the house journal of the VOU Club, an avant-garde poetry circle organized by poet and photographer Katsue Kitasono (北園克衛), together with Shūzō Iwamoto (岩本修蔵) and others.^[5] A profile of Kitasono describes the journal as emerging from a modernist milieu in which Dada- and Surrealism-informed approaches were recombined within a rotating circle that included poets alongside artists, composers, and architects.^[6] According to an encyclopedia overview, the first run of VOU reached 30 issues, published through October 1940.^[5]

In the wartime climate, the magazine was retitled Shingijutsu (新技術) from December 1940 to September 1942 (seven issues).^[5] Other summaries of the VOU group describe its overall activity as spanning 1935 to 1978 with an interruption during the Pacific War.^[7]

The journal revived in December 1946, then adopted the title CENDRE (サンドル) from January to December 1948 (six booklets), before returning to VOU in October 1949.^[5] The same overview emphasizes the journal's cross-media ambitions—as a site for experiments around abstract poetics and related theory and methods, with contributions spanning poetry as well as writing connected to music, architecture, and crafts.^[5] VOU ultimately ceased publication in June 1978, ending with cumulative issue no. 160, following Kitasono's death.^[5]

The VOU Club (ヴァウクラブ (VOU kurabu)) was a Japanese avant-garde coterie founded in July 1935 by the poet and editor Katué Kitasono, and the magazine VOU served as the club's official organ.^[8]

As described in the Nipponica encyclopedia entry, the club positioned VOU as a site for theoretical and methodological experimentation in abstraction, aiming at a synthetic movement across multiple arts (including poetry, music, architecture, and crafts).^[8] In an English-language account by scholar and translator John Solt, the VOU group is described as gathering avant-garde practitioners “from all the arts”; its membership numbered roughly thirty at a time, and many members who were primarily musicians, painters, architects, or photographers also wrote poetry.^[9] The poet–photographer Kansuke Yamamoto belonged to the VOU Club from 1937 until its dissolution in 1978, making him one of the long-running participants across the prewar and postwar decades.^[10]

In addition to publishing and member contributions (poetry, photographs, and arts writing), the VOU milieu also mounted exhibitions; for example, Yamamoto's exhibition chronology records multiple numbered “VOU Exhibition” group shows in Japan and a “VOU Group” exhibition at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD Museum) in 1986.^[11]

VOU functioned as the organ of the VOU Club, publishing work by its members across media. In addition to poetry, the journal carried photographs and critical writing, including essays on art, music, and film.^[2] An encyclopedia entry characterizes VOU as a venue for theoretical and methodological experimentation in abstraction and as part of an “integrated arts” orientation spanning multiple fields beyond literature.^[12]

The magazine also served as a publication outlet for member artists working across disciplines. In a translator's note published in a Getty catalogue, John Solt describes the VOU group as comprising members who were active in varied fields (including music, architecture, technology, and visual art) while sharing poetry as a common practice, and notes that poet–photographer Kansuke Yamamoto joined the group in 1939 and published poems in VOU.^[13]

Design and typography were central to the magazine's identity. Writing about Kitasono's graphic sensibility, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art describes his approach as emphasizing color, experimental typography, and spatial composition rather than a strict grid-based layout—an approach consistent with VOU’s reputation as an avant-garde little magazine.^[14]

Postwar issues are also associated with experiments in visual poetry. LACMA’s exhibition backgrounder on Kitasono notes that in the mid-1950s he developed “Plastic Poetry,” a photographic mode framed as a form of visual poetry and linked to Surrealist photography by regular VOU contributors, underscoring the journal's sustained intermedia orientation across text and image.^[15]

Across its prewar and postwar runs, VOU functioned alongside the VOU Club as a cross-disciplinary circle: while members included practitioners primarily active in other fields (e.g., music, architecture, technology, and the visual arts), they nonetheless contributed poetry and related texts to the group's magazine.^[16]

• Katué Kitasono — poet-editor who led the VOU group and its magazine.^[16]

• Shōhachirō Takahashi^[17]
• Shirō Seki^[17]
• Motoyuki Itō^[17]
• Toshihiko Shimizu^[17]
• Setsuko Tsuji^[17]

• Kansuke Yamamoto — joined the VOU group in 1939 and published poems in the group's magazine VOU.^[16] Art historian Ryūichi Kaneko also notes Yamamoto's membership in VOU (led by Kitasono) in discussing his early 1930s Surrealist practice.^[18]

In Japanese reference works, VOU is described as a leading journal of the avant-garde poetry movement: the organ of the VOU Club founded by Katsue Kitasono, and a venue for theorizing abstraction and for “methodological experiments” that sought a cross-disciplinary, integrated arts movement (including poetry, music, architecture, and crafts).^[19] The same summary notes that the magazine achieved international recognition while serving as a forum for modernist and experimental practice across the prewar and postwar periods, and it lists a range of participants from within Japan's postwar poetry scene.^[19]

In English-language scholarship and curatorial contexts, the VOU group has been characterized as a long-running network that continued (with interruption during World War II) from the 1930s into the late 1970s, maintaining an interdisciplinary membership whose contributors shared poetry as a common medium even when their primary practices lay in other fields.^[20] Museum presentations of Kitasono's work have likewise emphasized his editorial and design role for VOU and treat the journal as central to his practice and reception.^[21]