Hundertwasser, top left, with his eyes on Ikewada.
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[/floatr]Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the controversial Austrian artist and architect who claimed ""shit is our soul", visited Japan in 1960 where he was awarded the Mainichi Prize at the 6th International Art Exhibition in Tokyo. He stayed to paint in Hokkaido before returning to Vienna. He divorced his first wife to marry Yuko Ikewada and Time magazine reported in 1965 that, while living in Venice, he would dress "sometimes in a kimono to match his Japanese wife". The relationship didn't last and the couple divorced in 1966. Hundertwasser railed against rationalism in architecture, regarding straight lines as "the devil's tools". He wasn't averse to addressing his audiences naked.
Hundertwasser's reputation remained high in Japan and he was commissioned to design the exterior of the Maishima Incineration Plant in Osaka (pictured below). He died in 2000 at the age of 72.
It's unclear what happened to Ikewada but the president of the Japan Paul Klee Association, Makoto Shindo, mentions here (in story no.16) that he went out to drink with her in a bar in Shinjuku and talked about when she met Herman Hesse. He says that she is a painter in Vienna.
[/floatl]Here's a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. 
[/floatr]Meinl grew too old for his wife and she had a series of affairs, apparently with his consent. Viktor de Kowa was a superstar at the time and one of the most important comic actors in Germany in the ten years leading up to WWII. An Anglo-American counterpart might be Cary Grant. De Kowa had been married already to actess Ursula Grabley. He also "liked Brigitte Horney, but after he asked her to meet for breakfast he added that he only loved Louise Ullrich". The details are somewhat unclear but De Kowa eventually met Tanaka and married her in either 1939 or 1941. Not only did he have Meinl's approval to do so, the Austrian businessman served as the actor's best man at the wedding and gave his former wife a considerable some of money. Meinl died soon after in 1944. De Kowa was a pacifist which caused him no end of difficulties in wartime Germany. After hostilities ended, however, he was able to restart his career managing the Berliner Tribüne theatre from 1950 and continued to be actively involved with peace groups and the trade union movement. His wife became involved in re-establishing the Japanese consulate in Germany,
[/floatl]He did make some occasional film appearances but they were mostly unremarkable. He also worked as a dubbing actor, most notably voicing James Stewart's role in the hit film "Harvey" for the German market. His wife continued with her own film success and revisited one of her early triumphs by playing the lead in a joint 1954 Italian-Japanese production of "Madame Butterfly" which was entered into competition at Cannes. Apparently, however, she was mainly chosen for her acting because her voice was dubbed by another singer. Around this time, the couple visited Japan. In interviews at a Tokyo hotel, Michiko apologized that she had almost forgotten her Japanese and said how much the city had changed since she was last there. She noted how Ginza had become American and how tall young Japanese seemed to be. De Kowa died in 1971 and his wife followed in 1988 after spending the intervening years teaching music. They are buried together in a grave in Berlin's Friedhof Heerstraße cemetry.
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[/floatr]He moved into experiments with electronica and collaborated with the likes of Gary Numan, A Flock of Seagulls, Harold Budd and David Sylvian. This new direction also saw him working with Yellow Magic Orchestra and he developed a particulary close friendship with the band's drummer, Yukihiro Takahashi. The picture on the right shows him with Takahashi's wife, Emiko around 1984. This period brought him more commercial success but Nelson paid little attention to the money side. Here's Gary Numan speaking about their acrimonious working relationship:
[/floatl]They married in 1995, both in their late forties, and he writes about her like this: "I don't know how I'd cope if anything should ever happen to Emiko, (God forbid) She's the rock that I cling to in my troubled sea...Emiko has become my life support system as well as my wife, lover and friend. She was a stunningly beautiful teenager and I couldn't have imagined myself landing a catch like her back then if we'd ever had the good fortune to meet". When family issues called her back to Japan for a trip, Nelson 
