 His early work shows the influence of the New York-based Push Pin Studio (Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast in particular), but Yokoo cites filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and writer Yukio Mishima as two of his most formative influences.In the late 1960s he became interested in mysticism and psychedelia, deepened by travels in India.Because his work was so attuned to 1960s pop culture, he has often been (unfairly) described as the "Japanese Andy Warhol" or likened to psychedelic poster artist Peter Max, but Yokoo's complex and multi-layered imagery is intensely autobiographical and entirely original.