Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano into an affluent family of merchants who owned a plant nursery and seed farm, Kusama started creating art at an early age and began writing poetry at age 18. Her mother was apparently physically abusive and Kusama remembers her father as "...the type who would play around, who would womanize a lot". Kusama says that her mother would often send her to spy on her father's extra-marital affairs, which instilled within her a lifelong contempt for sexuality, particularly the male body and the phallus: "I don’t like sex. I had an obsession with sex. When I was a child, my father had lovers and I experienced seeing him. My mother sent me to spy on him. I didn’t want to have sex with anyone for years [...] The sexual obsession and fear of sex sit side by side in me." When Kusama was ten years old, she began to experience vivid hallucinations which she has described as "flashes of light, auras, or dense fields of dots". These hallucinations also included flowers that spoke to Kusama. Patterns in fabric that she stared at coming to life, multiplying, and engulfing or expunging her, a process which she has carried into her artistic career and which she calls "self-obliteration”.. When Kusama was 13 years old, she was sent to work in a military factory where she was tasked with sewing and fabricating parachutes for the Japanese army. Her childhood was greatly influenced by the events of World War II, and she claims that it was during this period that she began to value notions of personal and creative freedom.