Murakami fuses an array of seemingly oppositional influences—the ancient and the modern, high art and popular culture, Japanese and Western traditions—to investigate contemporary Japanese society and Japan’s relationship with the United States since World War II. The enormous wave depicted here, spanning the length of three panels that evoke a traditional folding screen, suggests celebrated ukiyo-e woodblock prints of a similar theme by Hokusai (1760–1849). Approximately twenty layers of paint were applied and then scraped away to create an abstract background that refers to Nihonga style, a fusion of Japanese and Western artistic approaches that developed in the late nineteenth century. Populated by Mr. DOB, one of Murakami’s signature characters, 727 refers both to a Japanese cosmetics brand whose billboards, posted in rural fields, are best seen from passing train windows, and to the aircraft manufactured by the American company Boeing.