On one occasion, John Lennon described his wife Yoko Ono as "the most famous unknown artist in the world. Everyone knows her name but no one knows what she does." This oxymoron is in itself a theorem that was not revealed until the early 21st century when numerous international museums gave her the place she deserved decades earlier.
In Yoko (Libros Cúpula), David Sheff offers the most intimate portrait of this multidisciplinary Japanese artist whom he met in 1980 when Playboy commissioned him to interview the most famous couple on the planet. Yoko told him on more than one occasion that that interview would be very important to him. She was not mistaken. Lennon was assassinated on December 8 of that same year at the entrance of the Dakota building, where the couple owned six apartments, before his posthumous interview was published.
Almost everything is known about Yoko Ono from the moment she met Lennon in 1966, but her previous life remains little known despite her stratospheric fame. The memoirs written by Sheff shed light on many of the episodes experienced by the Japanese artist.
Yoko, whose name in Japanese means 'ocean child', was born in Tokyo in 1933 between material privilege and emotional poverty. Her mother, Isoko, belonged to the Yasuda banking dynasty (owners of the Yasuda bank, later converted into the Fuji Bank), one of the four richest and most powerful families in Japan from the 19th century until World War II. Her father, Eisuke, a descendant of a samurai, served as the president of the Industrial Bank of Japan. Until the age of two, Yoko only knew him through photos as he had moved to San Francisco for work.
Despite swimming in abundance, the Ono-Yasuda family was quite stingy in terms of affection. Yoko describes it as follows in the biography: "My parents had a very close relationship with each other, but not with me. My father was a very distant man. When I was little, if I wanted to see him, I had to call his office and make an appointment. And my mother had her own life. She was a beautiful woman and looked very young." This situation influenced the character developed by the girl who, as she grew up, became more insecure, distrustful, reluctant, and depressive, traits that many interpreted as arrogance when her name became associated with the Beatles. Nothing could be further from the truth. Shyness has almost always caused her trouble.
In her palatial residence near the emperor's residence in Tokyo, Yoko began receiving piano lessons at the age of 3, which she combined with traditional Japanese arts such as calligraphy, singing, and painting. These disciplines helped develop an imagination beyond that of any other child her age, which eventually became a method of survival. Yoko's mother did not allow her to socialize with other children because she thought they would take advantage of her status, a reason that increased a loneliness that reached such an extreme that to feel contact with someone, she would ask for tea cups from the staff.
The maids had very specific instructions: they were not allowed to hold her in their arms because Isoko was afraid that her daughter would suffer brain damage, they were forbidden to assist her if she fell, and if they traveled by tram, they had to disinfect the seats with cotton balls soaked in alcohol. "My mother had a germ phobia, and because of that, I myself became obsessed with cleanliness," she recounts in the book.
Not even the births of her brother Keisuke (88) in San Francisco and her sister Setsuko (83) in Tokyo managed to alleviate the introspection into which Yoko had plunged. While receiving an elitist education, she recorded her thoughts in notebooks, drawings, stories, and poems, including haikus. She also played the piano at some parties. The entertainment vanished when, starting on March 9, 1945, the Americans began bombing Japan. The harshest blow came on August 6 with the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and three days later on Nagasaki.
To cushion the pain of that nightmare, Yoko and her siblings were sent to a small village where they were not well received. "They saw us as a family of city rich kids who had gotten what they deserved," Yoko recalled, while recounting the teasing from schoolmates who also threw stones at her, calling her an American spy "for not being able to sing the Japanese national anthem as fast as they could." During that time, they experienced hunger, exchanged belongings for rice, and lost about thirty servants. Upon their return to the capital, they tried to rebuild their way of life, but the war disaster had annihilated much of their fortune, although they still had means.
From her adolescence, Yoko attempted suicide several times. Her first husband, the pianist and composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, prevented her from taking her own life, and she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Since the artist's parents were against that relationship, Yoko made a living as a typist and engaged in Japanese folklore activities through calligraphy and origami, reciting haikus, playing music, and painting, although she did not exhibit it.
In 1961, she gave her first solo concert, in 1963 she triumphed with the canvas Pieza cocina, and a year later, she achieved great success with the performance Pieza cortada.
After six years of marriage, Yoko divorced in 1962 to marry the New York painter and sculptor Antony Cox, with whom she had a daughter, Kyoko, in August 1963. Yoko was 30 years old and had been admitted again for another suicide attempt. The child saved her. "The day my first daughter was born, I made the decision not to try to take my life again. Her birth freed me from that desire," she admitted in 2009. The marriage with Cox also did not work out, and they eventually split. Kyoko ended up living with her mother and Lennon, but her father eventually kidnapped her in 1971. Yoko went 23 years without seeing or communicating with her daughter. The girl and her father had taken refuge in a religious sect and traveled across different continents. During those difficult times, she had the support of Lennon, whom she had married in Gibraltar in 1969. The couple spent 1.5 million dollars on detectives to find the little girl. "Losing my daughter was a very deep pain," Yoko confessed to People; "I always felt a void in my heart," she added.
Yoko Ono in an image from 2013©Yoko Ono
Her life with Lennon was also not easy. From the beginning, Yoko was the target of racist and sexist comments and was accused of causing the Beatles' breakup. She became the witch who separated the Liverpool quartet.
The Lennon marriage welcomed their only son, Sean, in 1975. John already had a son, Julian, from his relationship with Cynthia Powell. After John's death, Yoko was a victim of betrayals, thefts, extortions, and death threats. Currently, at 92 years old, she resides at her farm on the outskirts of New York.