Yasunao Tone
Japanese artist (1935–2025)
Yasunao Tone (刀根 康尚, Tone Yasunao; 31 March 1935 – 12 May 2025) was a Japanese multidisciplinary artist born in Tokyo, Japan, and working in New York City. He graduated from Chiba University in 1957 with a major in Japanese Literature. An important figure in postwar Japanese art during the 1960s, he was active in many facets of the Tokyo art scene. He was a central member of the early noise music collective Group Ongaku and was associated with a number of other Japanese art groups such as Neo-Dada Organizers, Hi-Red Center, and Team Random (the first computer art group organized in Japan).
Tone was also a member of Fluxus and one of the founding members of its Japanese branch. Many of his works were performed at Fluxus festivals or distributed by George Maciunas’s various Fluxus operations. Relocating to the United States in 1972, he henceforth gained a reputation as a musician, performer and writer working with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Senda Nengudi, Florian Hecker, and many others. Tone is also known as a pioneer of "Glitch" music due to his groundbreaking modifications of compact discs and CD players.
Tone died on 12 May 2025, at the age of 90.
Early life in Tokyo
While in high-school Tone became interested in Japanese Avant-Garde poetry and prose of the 1920s and 30s.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Yasunao Tone” as japanese artist (1935–2025). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as japanese artist (1935–2025). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8050043. VIAF identifies the subject as 96606593. The Library of Congress control number is nr92032725. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2025, 1957 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yasunao Tone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.