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Yoshitomo Nara's 'Knife Behind Back' sells for $25 million in Hong Kong

Sotheby's Hong Kong sold Yoshitomo Nara's 'Knife Behind Back' for about HK$195 million in October 2019, a record for the Japanese artist.

13 Nov 2026, 04:041 min read

This summary was written by AI to complete the context; it is not based on a current source.

On 5 October 2019, Sotheby's Hong Kong sold Yoshitomo Nara's painting "Knife Behind Back" (2000) for about HK$195 million, roughly US$25 million. The price was a record for the Japanese artist at auction and far above what the work had been expected to fetch.

The canvas shows one of Nara's best-known subjects: a small child with a large head and an unsettling stare, hiding a blade behind its back. Nara, born in 1959 in Hirosaki, northern Japan, rose to fame in the 1990s and early 2000s. His work draws on punk music, folk songs and manga-influenced imagery, and it often sets innocence against hints of menace or defiance.

The sale mattered because it confirmed the strength of demand for contemporary Asian artists among Asian collectors, with Hong Kong acting as the main hub for the trade. It lifted Nara into the top tier of the market for living Japanese artists and became a benchmark for later sales of his paintings across the region, including in Seoul.