Painter and 'counterfeiter' – On 'Makoto Aida: Monument for Nothing' (Part 2)




Aida Makoto - Dog (Snow) (1998), mineral pigments and acrylic on Japanese paper and board, 73 × 100 cm. Photo Kei Miyajima, © Makoto Aida, courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery.


Japanese art is still bogged down by the harmful befuddlement and repetition it experienced at the time of the introduction of Western culture during the Meiji Restoration. In this respect it is almost as if history doesn't exist. The problem surrounding the "Dog" series at the "Makoto Aida: Monument for Nothing" exhibition is probably related to this. There is a strong tendency for this latest problem to be discussed in connection with recent moves to define more clearly the concept of "child pornography." But unless we establish to begin with the more fundamental matter of exactly when and how it became commonplace in Japan to regard as socially problematic even images of naked females depicted in pictures as art, regardless of what is being alleged, the debate will inevitably be baseless and fruitless.

Extremely obvious though it may be to most people, it needs to be confirmed afresh that the propensity to make the female (or asexual) naked body the subject of art occupied a central position not only in the art of the ancient Greek and Roman periods upon which Western art is founded, but also in the clay figures and so on of the more remote past, when there was a stronger inclination toward magic. In fact, if depictions of the naked body were excluded completely from the history of either human civilization or Western art, then "art history" itself would be completely meaningless. And if we were to expand the scope of "child pornography" to include drawings or paintings that depict nonentities, such as Bronzino's An Allegory of Venus and Cupid, for example, then clearly the number of works that would likely become the subject of this discussion would be considerable.




Bronzino An Allegory of Venus and Cupid (c. 1545). Collection the National Gallery, London.


However, because in Japan the introduction of "nudes" in the context of Western art and the raising of awareness of "public order and decency" among the masses took place together during the rapid modernization of the Meiji Restoration, a conspicuous conflict arose between the two. In other words, from the point of view of the former, those among the masses who did not recognize nudes as art were regarded as "unenlightened" people who did not understand art, while from the point of view of the latter, the former were regarded as sinful "pornography" likely to brazenly disturb public order. The many incidents and disputes concerning art and pornography that have occurred in Japan since that time have in effect failed to rise above this level. The trouble concerning the "Dog" series at Makoto Aida's exhibition has likewise arisen within this deformed circle.

By a curious coincidence, during this same Makoto Aida exhibition there were reports of complaints from residents of the town of Okuizumo in Shimane Prefecture who wanted replicas of nude statues that had been erected in a public park, including those of Michelangelo's David and the Venus de Milo, to be covered with underpants (1), complaints that were ridiculed by some as showing "a lack of understanding of classical art." However, such complaints are also in fact not completely without basis. "If one looks at them in that way," one is bound to feel more than slightly ashamed upon staring at David's inappropriately exposed male genitalia or the Venus de Milo's breasts. That is to say, even though these are artworks whose status in the history of Western art is firmly established, they are not entirely lacking in characteristics that contravene the concept of "decency" that is widely adhered to in this country. Why, then, has the public appreciation of such works long been tolerated in the West?

The answer is that, even if the kind of dual nature referred to above does exist, the argument that in the context of human civilization greater importance should be attached to the "artistic merit" these works have that should be passed on to future generations – though it is usually dormant and not expressed openly – is deemed to have overwhelming precedence. Accordingly, the exhibition of such works is not restricted, and in fact they are widely endorsed as objects worthy of appreciation, which is not to say that if in the future there were to be a dramatic shift in the standards by which artistic merit is determined, the acceptance of this situation might not be completely overturned.

Formally speaking, this problem can be resolved using set theory. For example, "if one looks at them in that way," even works whose classical merits as artworks have been established such as Ingres' The Turkish Bath and Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son include elements that are contrary to "public order and decency" (and claims to the effect that "such elements are nonexistent because these are artworks" would be nothing but a meaningless tautology indicative of a mindless faith in art). At the same time, however, these works deal with such subject matter as the lot of sex and the incurability of desire, subject matter that we cannot avoid confronting as long as humans are humans, in a way that neither idly allures nor unilaterally condemns. Rather, making full use of their skills, the artists concerned are able to impose reins on the subject matter having temporarily accepted it as well as objectify it as subject matter able to be reflected on as "art." In other words, despite the fact that the subject matter is a single item as a physical object, when viewed from the perspective of the recipient it contains elements of both the first set (arousal of desire) and the second set (rational appreciation).




Left: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - The Turkish Bath (1862), collection the Louvre. Right: Francisco Goya - Saturn Devouring His Son (1821-23), collection Museo del Prado.


And yet, in the case of these paintings, after lengthy and vigorous historical verification, as things stand we remain at the level where the former opinion can be ignored. However, it is not yet the case that we have not completely reverted to the first set. Ultimately, the exclusion of something as pornography simply means that the inclusion relation concerning the two sets is wrong. Accordingly, even if it represents the tiniest minority opinion, the right to denounce it remains, and if the door for this is not left open, the assessment of art as it stands will naturally drift towards inertia and eventually ossify. It is for this very reason that even in the case of artwork for which it seems as if the historical assessment is determined, on each occasion on which they are brought to our attention as questionable, they need to be widely discussed and the judgment of the majority confirmed.

It goes without saying that in the case of Makoto Aida's "Dog" series, too, such polarities coexist. What is conclusively different between these works and the paintings of Ingres and Goya mentioned above, however, is that because the amount of time that has elapsed since they were produced is so small, the argument as to which of the two sets with the contradictory qualities of appreciative value as artworks and the ability to arouse sexual desire should be given priority is yet to reach social maturity. In fact, in the realm of contemporary art, where assessments fluctuate constantly like the exchange rate due to the extremely short history of the genre, such a divergence of opinions is almost inevitable.

Indeed, it is for this very reason that there exist art museums as public institutions dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art. Unlike regular museums, it is the role of "contemporary art museums" to provide the opportunity for widespread discussion of contemporary expression whose merits are yet to be completely determined, and in so doing move forward, even if it be little by little, the history of art in existence today. Holding in a public place an exhibition of work by Makoto Aida that is regarded as socially "harmful" means nothing other than not only taking into consideration such ambiguous qualities but also ascertaining the nature of its "merits" as things stand now. However, in the makeshift comments from the Mori Art Museum and their refusal on the part of the curators to even comment in response to these matters, I cannot sense at all any enthusiasm or sense of duty with respect to addressing the fluctuating "merits" of contemporary art. This is extremely regrettable.

Incidentally, my own personal opinion is that, while I can discern in Makoto Aida's work elements that conflict with "decency" as it is commonly accepted in society, it remains within the bounds of what is legally permissible, and because the emphasis is on artistic "methods" that "symbolize" and objectify such elements as "various designs" as opposed to overtly sexual characteristics that derive from them, their appreciative value takes precedence. (To be continued)



"Aida Makoto: Monument for Nothing" ran from November 17, 2012 to March 31, 2013 at the Mori Art Museum.

1. As another example from the past, at the Atopic Site exhibition held at Tokyo Big Sight in 1996, at the behest of the organizers a "diaper" was temporarily placed over the part of Sheree Rose "Boballoon" that resembled an exposed penis. As well, at this Makoto Aida exhibition an "R18 room" was established on the judgment of the organizers, although such zoning is not necessarily a step forward in Japan, given that as early as 1903 there was an exhibition at Ueno where as part of a Hakuba-kai display of all things a "special room" was established for the express purpose of exhibiting nudes. In other words, in Japan the practice of "zoning" has its origins in the classification based on an immature understanding of Western art of nude paintings as pornography and is a "backwards" step rooted in the contradictory dual nature of the country's modernization. The entrance to this room at the exhibition in Ueno was "concealed with a purple curtain, making it difficult to recognize from the outside." [See my book Nihon•Gendai•Bijutsu (Japan/Modernity/Art), Shinchosha, 1998, pp 185-186.] Based on their handling (or lack of handling) of the various problems mentioned above, perhaps the "zoning" at the Mori Art Museum should also be understood as an attempt to "cope" with the situation.

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

Painter and 'counterfeiter' – On 'Makoto Aida: Monument for Nothing' (Part 1)




Installation view of "Aida Makoto: Monument for Nothing" at the Mori Art Museum. Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery. Photo Osamu Watanabe, courtesy Mori Art Museum.


The exhibition "Makoto Aida: Monument for Nothing" at the Mori Art Museum (Roppongi, Tokyo) has attracted a lot of attention for various reasons. I saw the exhibition last year, and was greatly intrigued both by the extensive collection of existing works and the new works. At the same time, however, I had more than a few doubts about the initial response, which to my ears consisted of nothing but praise for the artist.

Makoto Aida has been dubbed among other things a "venomous artist" on account of his style, and in regards to the realization of this exhibition, too, I have heard that there are no plans to take it to other museums and that the desired level of corporate sponsorship was not forthcoming. Given this "uphill battle," the efforts of the Mori Art Museum in working together as one to pull off a Makoto Aida exhibition are worthy of close attention. So why, then, the doubts? The reason relates to the "venom" touched on above.

But what do we actually mean when we talk of "Makoto Aida's venom"? We will touch on this in due course, but for the present, let us consider the following. If Makoto Aida really were a "venomous artist," it would be unthinkable for there not to be intense debate or for questions about him not to be raised while the exhibition was on. Alternatively, if no fuss were to occur at all, surely this would mean that Makoto Aida was not venomous to begin with. Ultimately, one could only conclude that Makoto Aida is a harmless artist, in which case the "decisive action" of the art museum, which simply held an exhibition by a "wholesome" artist, would naturally lose much of its significance.

So what actually happened? At the very least, around the time I visited the exhibition, it was attracting nothing but praise from art insiders, culturati and the like. In other words, circumstances were extremely close to the latter scenario. Perhaps this is the reason the exhibition failed to rank among my list of "the best four of the year" published in a major newspaper at the end of each year despite being among the best exhibitions of 2012. It was as if in the gap between the provocative activities Makoto Aida the artist has engaged in over the last 20 years, ironically ridiculing the "art" of prize pupils and the bland compliments he has received, one could glimpse the social "defeat" (although not the surrender) of an artist who has referred to himself as a "lifelong kawarakojiki" (literally, "riverbed beggar," a derogatory term once applied to actors) painter. (1)

As the new year began, however, the criticism directed at the exhibition suddenly intensified. For the reasons given earlier, however, I basically "welcome" this series of "ructions." This is because I think that in each case the true nature of Makoto Aida the artist, the merits of the Mori Art Museum and so on have clearly been questioned.

Broadly speaking, this criticism can be divided into two categories. The first relates to the suspicions of "child pornography" directed mainly towards the series of works depicting "pretty young girls" with their arms and legs amputated as "dogs," while the second relates to the suspicions of "copyright infringement" directed towards Monument for Nothing IV, in which Aida borrowed without permission and collaged hundreds of tweets by others on Twitter. To reiterate, these are far from trivial complaints. This is because depictions of a sexual nature and the use of appropriation are images and a technique central to Makoto Aida's practice, which he has employed freely since the start of his career. Naturally, the onus is on the Mori Art Museum to present to the public logical arguments in support of Makoto Aida and his artwork.




Aida Makoto - Dog (Moon) (1996), mineral pigments and acrylic on Japanese paper and board, 100 × 90 cm. Takahashi Collection, Tokyo. Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery.



Aida Makoto - Monument for Nothing IV (2012), acrylic, paper, plywood, wood bolts, 570 × 570 cm. Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery. Photo Osamu Watanabe, courtesy Mori Art Museum.


It goes without saying that the starting points for such an undertaking are above all the commentaries and analyses regarding Makoto Aida and his artwork published in the exhibition catalog. Among these, the main text by the chief curator responsible for the exhibition (Mami Kataoka) plays an important role. However, upon rereading this text following the surfacing of the various issues touched on above, I noticed that any consideration of the two subjects that are both difficult to avoid and need to be addressed when discussing Makoto Aida, that is, "sex" and "appropriation," is crucially absent.

With regard to the former, there is hardly any reference to it at all, while with regard to the latter, it is considerably trivialized by naively linking it to the pre-modern (ie, pre-capitalist) Japanese practice of honkadori (adaptation of famous poems) while at the same time employing the terms "sampling" and "remixing" as suggested in my book Simulationism (1991) (although no reference is made at all to the book). Given this, from the outset I held no hope of those responsible having the staying power and so on required to respond to the various issues that one might have expected to have been and were in fact raised. Returning to the main text, not only does it include passages very similar to logical arguments in chapters 3-4 of another of my books, Nihon/Gendai/Bijutsu (Japan/Contemporary/Art, 1998), again without any reference, but by blandly referring to the identifying characteristic of 1990s art, which I identified as "schizophrenic," as simply "chaos," it severely narrows the scope of the issue. (2)

If Makoto Aida were indeed a "venomous artist," then it would be natural and predictable that issues concerning his depiction of sex and copyright would arise while the exhibition was on. To respond to these issues as Kataoka's essay does by explaining that "Makoto Aida is a man of chaos" ("Sorry for being chaotic"?), for example, has no potency whatsoever as far as others are concerned. What is more, Makoto Aida is certainly not a "man of chaos" or anything of the sort. This cannot be emphasized strongly or often enough. With this in mind, I would like to trace Makoto Aida's career back to its starting point.

Makoto Aida's "debut" as an artist was at the "Fortunes" exhibition (Roentgenwerke, curated by Min Nishihara (3), 1993). Even at this early stage, Aida made a point of mentioning his seemingly jumbled style, referring to it using the phrase "iroiro na dezain" ("various designs"). It need scarcely be mentioned that this is an adaptation of "Samazama naru isho" (Various Designs), the 1929 essay that marked the literary debut of the critic Hideo Kobayashi, who had a major influence on Aida. In this way, Makoto Aida intentionally incorporated into his own lineage as an artist a design element in the form of "Hideo Kobayashi." In short, unifying the multiformity of Aida's work, which on the surface cannot help but appear "chaotic," is without doubt "criticism as design." Or to put it another way, based on his own experience as a "painter" "setting out" as a "critic of painting," a process of fragmentation and coexistence in which he was required to abandon himself, Aida astutely observed of the circumstances of art at the time, which had degenerated into a jumble of "various designs," including every genre from Nihonga, Western-style painting, illustration and manga to anime, or in terms of contemporary art from abstract expressionism to minimalism, from Mono-ha to post-Mono-ha, that it in fact constituted "various 'artless' designs."

While casting a sober eye over the "various designs" concerning literature, Hideo Kobayashi was at the same time plainly aware of the contradiction represented by the fact that the only way to share his own critical passion was to write about "design" in some form or another. Similarly, notwithstanding the distorted critical spirit he adopted towards what he saw as an absence of art, Aida must have been thoroughly aware that his own expression would inevitably have to "be expressed" as some form of "simulacrum." Today, however, when capitalism has developed to an extent incomparable with Kobayashi's time, on each occasion these designs must inevitably turn into "various designs" that one is compelled to choose (ie, consume). While knowing this, Makoto Aida took it upon himself to flatten and borrow the "appeal" of everything from "substantial oil paintings" to "delicate Nihonga," from "vulgar graffiti" to "illustrations bordering on pornography," turning them into the art equivalent of "paper tigers." From Aida's perspective, in unfortunate times in which the "various designs" originating from Hideo Kobayashi and "simulationism" must inevitably come together, this was the only form "bad art" could take.

To put it plainly, Makoto Aida's "Nihonga" and "oil paintings," his "manga" and "installations," lack "appeal" as Nihonga and oil paintings, as manga and installations. It is probably for this very reason that he staked the very limits of his abilities as an artist on the "counterfeiter" (André Gide) as an "image" with which to present himself to the public. It is in this context that one should understand his reference to himself as a "genius," in which case it is clear that he is in fact apologizing ("sorry") for the hidden "hypocrisy" (as opposed to the pretence of evil) this entails. With regard to the suspicions of "child pornography" and "copyright infringement," too, ultimately it behooves us to respond based on the twisted nature surrounding Makoto Aida the artist without being distracted by the particulars of legal interpretations. (To be continued)


"Aida Makoto: Monument for Nothing" ran from November 17, 2012 to March 31, 2013 at the Mori Art Museum.

1. See the trialogue involving Makoto Aida published in Ato no shigoto (The Work of Art) (Taiyo Lecture Book 004, Heibonsha, 2005).
   
   
2. Regarding this matter, even if the various issues that surfaced during the exhibition were "unforeseen" (and all the more so if this were in fact the case), this does not alter the fact that issues like "sex" and "appropriation" touch on values with respect to art today that need to be questioned. Rather than brushing aside these issues, the chief curator, Mami Kataoka, should open up the debate to society by actively holding press conferences and so on. This is nothing less than a watershed, one possible outcome of which is that at the end of the exhibition not only the attitude of the art museum but also the "venom" of Makoto Aida the artist is able to be ignored as "a source of trouble," the other that Aida is recognized as an artist raising issues worthy of serious consideration. It demands a serious response from Kataoka as the curator.
   
   
3. For the record, let me state clearly that it was Min Nishihara, like Aida a graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts and then an art critic, who "discovered" Makoto Aida as an artist.

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

A Restatement: The Art of 'Ground Zero' (Part 10)
Nukes and Niigata III




Anne Graham - Shinohara's House (2012) Installation view at the Kozaburo Shinohara House, 
Gokahama, Niigata. Photo courtesy the Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival organizing committee


It is well known these days that in 1945 Niigata (hereafter meaning Niigata City) was picked alongside Kokura as a target for the atomic bomb. Ultimately two bombs were dropped, on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9). The latter of these was actually intended for Kokura, but poor weather conditions over the city forced the pilot to divert to his secondary target. It is thought that a total of four atomic bombs were produced as a part of the Manhattan Project. The first was detonated in a test in the desert of New Mexico, meaning there were still three that could be used on the enemy. With the end of the war imminent, two of these three bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and as the plan to bomb Kokura had earlier ended in failure, there was still a distinct possibility that the remaining bomb would be dropped on Niigata. In fact, because Japan surrendered soon after the two atomic bombings, and possibly for various other reasons (its distance from the B-29 bases and its scale), Niigata was ultimately spared this fate. However, given that, as touched on earlier, a mock atomic bomb had already been dropped on Nagaoka, a city in the same prefecture as Niigata, as one of a series of practice drops, it would be fair to say that behind-the-scenes preparations for dropping an atomic bomb on Niigata were steadily being carried out.

It has only been in recent years that the very term "mock atomic bomb" has become known. Similarly, people at the time were not made aware of the existence even of the term "atomic bomb." In Hiroshima it was called "pika-don" (literally, "flash-bang") due to its association with a bright flash and loud explosion, while the government, who partly grasped its true nature, sought to conceal the destructive power of the atomic bombs by referring to them as "shingata-bakudan," or "new bombs" (we still don't really know what we are not being informed of).

Speaking of not being informed, among the terms I have only recently become familiar with is "atomic bomb evacuation." An atomic bomb evacuation is when people flee a targeted area in anticipation of the dropping of an atomic bomb. And it was in none other than Niigata that this actually occurred.

Regarding this atomic bomb evacuation, some surprising information is revealed on the blog of Niigata municipal assemblyman Hitoshi Nakayama. For reference, the URL is http://green.ap.teacup.com/nakayama/121.html, but the contents can be summarized as follows.

On learning that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "shingata-bakudan," Niigata prefecture dispatched officials to Hiroshima. Although they did not make it to the affected area, on the way they visited the Ministry of Home Affairs, where they learnt that Niigata city was one of the targets of this new weapon. When informed of this, the prefecture convened an extraordinary meeting. After heated discussions, as if to defy the central government's policy, they decided on the "complete and immediate evacuation" of the citizens. And so it was that the first atomic bomb evacuation became a reality.

In the end, this evacuation was unnecessary, but since the events of March 11 we can no longer laugh off this evacuation as a stupid plan. Even now the genpatsu-shinsai (nuclear power plant earthquake disaster) is not under control, and despite pollution on a par with that of a de jure radiation-controlled area continuing to appear in spots here and there, more than a few local municipalities are unable to officially evacuate residents because their hands are tied by national government policy.

As these examples show, the connections between things nuclear and Niigata are both diverse and deep-seated. Even after the war, when weapons of mass destruction in the form of atomic bombs were replaced by the "peaceful use of atomic energy" in the form of nuclear power, the prefecture has continued to have a relationship with things nuclear. In particular, I cannot forget the day in 2007 when the ground on which the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant is situated buckled during the Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake, following which television broadcast live pictures of black smoke rising from part of the facility. At the time I was living in an apartment in London where I had been invited as a researcher, and I shuddered with fear when I saw the footage on the Internet. If it had escalated into a major accident in which large amounts of radioactive material were released, even Tokyo would have been in danger. From the other side of the world I arranged for stable iodine tablets and protective masks to be delivered to my family. It was that earthquake and accident in Niigata that spurred me to begin investigating in earnest the safety of nuclear power.

It was thanks to this, I ought to say, that on March 15, when the plume of radioactive material that had leaked as a result of the nuclear reactor meltdown (although those on television were already using this term in the immediate aftermath of the accident, they quickly switched to the phrase, "damage to the fuel rods") triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami reached Tokyo, I came very close to fleeing with my wife and child to the west of the country. Because we had stocked up on water, fuel and other essentials, we did not have to resort to "panic buying." Neither were we misled by the "reports" that the nuclear reactors "wouldn't meltdown" or that radioactive material "wouldn't reach Tokyo."

And so it is that for me this part of the country is associated with the memories of nightmares concerning things nuclear. On the one hand Niigata was where the country's first local citizen-administered referendum to decide whether or not to build a nuclear power plant was held, the result of which was an overwhelming victory for those opposed. It was also where Tohoku Electric Power was forced to withdraw its plan to build a nuclear power plant in what was then the town of Maki (which was incorporated into Niigata city as part of a 2005 municipal merger). The referendum held here in 1996 attracted a turnout of 86.29 percent, with more than 60 percent of residents indicating they were firmly opposed to the construction of the nuclear power plant.




Views of Kakumihama in related print materials: Left: Kakumihama Monogatari: Kieta mura no kiroku (The tale of Kakumihama: Record of the village that disappeared) (Wano no Mado Sosho) and right: Photo collection: Kakumihama (Makimachi Shosho) both by Fumio Saito.


The planned construction site was a coastal area surrounded on three sides by mountains called Kakumihama (located in what is now Nishikan-ku, Niigata city). Apparently the site is now a deserted, lonesome place where Tohoku Electric Power signboards remain standing from the time when construction was still planned. In the Edo period, however, it was the site of a settlement that grew up around a small fishing village, known as the place where the "Echigo no dokukeshi," or "Echigo antidote," originated. There is in fact a reason why the settlement declined. Perhaps due to the topography of the sea floor, since ancient times it has frequently been exposed to an erosion phenomenon called "makuridashi," or "roll back," in which the land adjacent to the sea is completely washed away. It is said that as a result of this cumulative damage the shoreline of the village retreated as far as 600 meters from where it once was. Gradually the villagers came to rely on work as migrant workers, and when demand for the local "antidote" also declined under pressure from the modern pharmaceutical industry, there was nothing they could do to curb the relentless depopulation. It was against this backdrop that in 1969 the proposal to build a nuclear power plant on this site was first put forward by Tohoku Electric Power.

Thinking about it now, there could hardly be a more contradictory proposal. This is because it called for building a nuclear power plant in a settlement that inevitably declined precisely because of an erosion effect so severe it was known as "makuridashi," requiring additional measures to stabilize the ground and prevent flooding. It was not until the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, however, that such irrationalities became common knowledge among the public.

Although it has already ended, the Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival 2012, which was staged in Niigata, established a venue near Kakumihama, or Maki as it was once known, in Gokahama. Unfortunately I was unable to see the exhibits there, which consisted of work by Anne Graham at Kozaburo Shinohara's house and work by Irina Zatulovskaya at Toshiyoshi Abe's house. Apparently visitors to the latter could also view a work in which traces were inscribed directly in the sand at Gokahama.




Left: Anne Graham - Shinohara's House (detail) (2012) Installation view at the Kozaburo Shinohara House, 
Gokahama, Niigata. Right: Irina Zatulovskaya - 100 chopsticks from "Basyo.com (barefoot)" May 30, 2012, Gokahama, Niigata. Photos courtesy the Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival organizing committee



Irina Zatulovskaya - Mt. Fuji reflected in five mirrors and other works from "Basyo.com (barefoot)," installation view at the Toshiyoshi Abe House, Gokahama, Niigata. Photo courtesy the Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival organizing committee


Although a venue was not established at the actual site of the proposed nuclear power plant, the former was a typical private dwelling that was relocated from Kakumihama, and this along with the fact that several exhibits were established very near the site suggested to me that the organizers of the festival were sending a strong message. In the not too distant future I want to see with my own eyes this place called Kakumihama, a place that was once known for beautiful "singing sand" worthy of a festival of "water and land," but also a place whose very existence was threatened by the terrifying "makuridashi."



Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival ran from July 14 to December 24, 2012.

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

Takashi Azumaya - the 'being and temperature'





Shinro Ohtake - Dub-Hei & New Chanel (1999) (detail). Installation view at "Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time" (Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo) Photo: Masataka Nakano, courtesy Setagaya Art Museum.


The independent curator Takashi Azumaya has passed away. He was just 44 years old.

I first met him all of 22 years ago. I had been invited to Tokyo University of the Arts for the first time to give a special lecture, and I took with me a draft of my first collection of essays, Simulationism (1991), which had yet to be published. The lecture went on for over three hours, and for the second half I was joined by the graphic designer Hiroshi Nakajima, who also works as a DJ. This approach was clearly unprecedented for a lecture at "Geidai." After I finished speaking, a number of students came up to me somewhat excitedly, and among them was Azumaya.

It was not until later, however, that I found out the student in question was Azumaya. It was at Röntgen Kunst Institut, the stronghold of the new generation of artists that opened near Haneda Airport a short time after that lecture, and which went on to produce in succession such artists as Takashi Murakami and Makoto Aida. At the time Azumaya was still an aspiring artist who carried around files of his own work. On the day in question he had a piece in which the singer Madonna had become pregnant, with Azumaya himself playing the part of the fetus inside a giant womb. Looking back on it now, I still think it was dreadful. But I remember thinking right away that, while there were still aspects of him that were unrefined, Azumaya had the potential to become an extraordinary artist. Ultimately, however, he abandoned the idea of becoming an artist and at some point set his sights on becoming a curator. At the Setagaya Art Museum, where he took up his first curatorial position, he was involved in organizing a large number of projects in which numerous innovative musicians (among them Tony Conrad and Mani Neumeier) were invited to participate, and while I went along to many of these partly due to the fact that I was living in Setagaya at the time, at this stage he had yet to be given the opportunity, it seems, to organize an exhibition on his own.

Then, completely out of the blue, I got a phone call from Azumaya. He was about to organize his very first exhibition at the Setagaya Art Museum. He wanted to invite Takashi Nemoto to participate, and was eager to know more about "909 - Anomaly 2," an exhibition I curated in 1995 at Röntgen Kunst Institut that featured Nemoto, and to this extent the purpose of the call was to canvas my thoughts (or rather, to seek my advice). This project eventually came to fruition in 1999 as "Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time" (featuring Atsuko Tanaka, Shinro Ohtake, Yoshitomo Nara, Yuichi Higashionna, Masami Tada, Hiroyuki Ohki and Takashi Nemoto). With Atsuko Tanaka's painting setting the underlying tone, the exhibition featured prominently the work of artists such as Ohtake and Nara who have a close relationship with rock music, and with the inclusion of the installation work of Tada, another artist with a close connection to music; Ohki, a young artist who is also involved in film; Higashionna, who makes use of light, color and pattern to produce an optical experience somewhere between design and art; and the outsider manga artist Nemoto, the result was an exhibition the likes of which a public art museum in Japan had never seen or ever will see again. Events held during the exhibition included a "collaboration" between Yamataka Eye of The Boredoms and Ohtake's installation, and at the opening a mystery person Nemoto interviewed while working on his piece strutted around the museum, all of which ensured every moment of the exhibition was filled with a raw tension that was very much the "temperature of the time."




Left: Yoshitomo Nara - The Little Pilgrims (Night Walking) (1999). Right: Takashi Nemoto - The Core Behind the Exhibition Temperature of the Time / Chaotic Neighbors (1999). Installation views at "Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time" Photo: Masataka Nakano, courtesy Setagaya Art Museum.


The inclusion of the words "Art/Domestic" in the English title of this exhibition was an acknowledgment by Azumaya that in art there was a measure best described as a domestic "temperature" discernible only to those people whose eyes were fixed on the place where they lived, which was undoubtedly impaired by cooled-down "international (global)" theory and history, and that it was his job as curator to visualize this. Furthermore, in publishing in 1998 Nihon･Gendai･Bijutsu (Japan/Modernity/Art) and curating at the end of the same year as "Art/Domestic" what could be called an exhibition version of that book at Art Tower Mito, titled "GROUND ZERO JAPAN," I was seeking to "reset" Japanese "contemporary art" in the wake of Nemoto and reform the "post-war art" landscape itself, and for this reason I had high hopes for Azumaya, the curator of "Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time," whom I regarded as an unconventional kindred spirit. In light of this, one could regard "Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time" and "GROUND ZERO JAPAN" as companions in the context of what was one of the major currents of the times.




A photo taken at the time of "Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time." From left to right: Shinro Ohtake, Takashi Nemoto, Yoshitomo Nara, Atsuko Tanaka, Masami Tada, Yuichi Higashionna, Hiroyuki Ohki (all participating artists) and Takashi Azumaya. Photo courtesy Chieko Azumaya.


"Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time" gave rise to among other things the Shinro Ohtake masterpiece Dub-Hei & New Chanel, but above all it deserves praise for shining a light fairly and squarely on Atsuko Tanaka as a painter in her own right. In this regard, the omission (whether deliberate or not I do not know) of "Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time" from the main chronology at the start of the solo exhibition "Atsuko Tanaka: The Art of Connecting," held in early 2012 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, was a major blunder. This is because it was undoubtedly the pioneering work of Takashi Azumaya that freed Tanaka, who is currently attracting a great deal of interest in the international art world, from the "Gutai" label that was habitually used to describe her at the time, and afforded her for the first time the public recognition she deserved.

After "Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time," however, Azumaya promptly left the Setagaya Art Museum. I am not aware of the details surrounding his departure. He later joined the organizing committee of the first Yokohama Triennale and served as a curator at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery and the Mori Art Museum, both of which have become central to the contemporary art scene in the metropolitan area (Azumaya often said, half-jokingly, "No other curator has followed as elite a course in Japanese contemporary art as I have."), eventually going on to tread the path of the "independent curator," a path he chose himself. I think this was also a challenge to the Japanese art environment of the kind only Azumaya could contemplate, to see if it were possible to continue curating exhibitions without belonging to a specific organization.

During this period, Azumaya curated "Gundam: Generating Futures" (which showed at the Suntory Museum in Osaka before travelling to other venues, 2005-07) and was a guest curator for the 2008 Busan Biennale before returning to the same biennale in 2010 as artistic director, the first such appointment for Azumaya at an international exhibition. In terms of our involvement together, two exhibitions that I will never forget are Shinro Ohtake's "Dub-Kei" in Osaka (KPO Kirin Plaza Osaka, 2000), which I invited Azumaya to curate, and "OP Trance!" (KPO Kirin Plaza Osaka, 2001), which we co-curated on the basis of our common interest in optical art. In addition, in 2003 when I established together with Masanori Oda and others the anti-Iraq War unit Korosu-na (Do Not Kill), Azumaya was one of the leading contributors along with people like Muneteru Ujino and Fuyuki Yamakawa, appearing on stage rain or shine playing his black single-string guitar and pulling his mini amplifier on casters. I undertook various other activities with the people from Korosu-na, including a live performance of John Zorn's "game" piece Cobra (Tokyo Operations Korosu-na Party, Leader: Noi Sawaragi, November 2003,Yamamoto Gendai), and as an extension of these protest activities we journeyed as far afield as the Onbashira festival in Suwa and Mount Osorezan on the Shimokita Peninsula, and Azumaya accompanied us on every occasion. Late one night when we shared the same karaoke box, it was Azumaya who entertained everyone the most. Altogether, while on the one hand he was always a step ahead of the times with his bold concepts, on the other he was full of careful consideration for those around him, and above all full of boundless affection for each and every artist he worked with. It is unlikely we will ever see another curator like him. Thinking about this makes me feel hopelessly sad.

Looking back dispassionately over Azumaya's career as a curator, however, I get the feeling there was nothing that surpassed that first exhibition, "Art/Domestic -Temperature of the Time." For this very reason I cannot help but imagine what it would have been like if he had been given the opportunity to bring to fruition the "Art/Domestic - Temperature of the Time 2" exhibition he had been talking about before his death. But he never did bring it to fruition. I wonder why. Perhaps it was because of the poor state of his mental and physical health, which had become conspicuous from a certain time. Or perhaps it was because of the intolerance of the Japanese art world, which was incapable of providing a being like Azumaya whose "body temperature" went up and down so dynamically with a grand stage commensurate with his ability.

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

A Restatement: The Art of 'Ground Zero' (Part 9)
Nukes and Niigata II





Otomo Yoshihide x Ameya Norimizu tachi - Smile (2012). Photographed July 16, 2012. All photos: Isamu Murai, courtesy the Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival organizing committee


Curiously, this summer for one reason or another I was blessed with several opportunities to visit Niigata. In addition to the Nagaoka Fireworks Festival, which, as I noted in my last column, I was invited to attend in connection with the Nobuhiko Obayashi movie Casting Blossoms to the Sky, this year I also attended the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2012, held over a wide area centered in Tokamachi, and the Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival, staged on a grand scale in Niigata City.

Traveling back and forth over such a short period of time between Tokyo and these various locations in Niigata, I was struck by the geographical and climatic variety of its administrative jurisdiction, a variety one cannot possibly comprehend from looking at a featureless map: the hilly topography of Tokamachi, known around the world as an area of record high snowfall; the scenic beauty of Nagaoka, which sprang up along the Shinano River; and the key port city of Niigata, which faces the Japan Sea. Considering that the prefecture also includes Sado Island, the country's sixth largest island in terms of area after Okinawa Island, it would be no exaggeration to say that Niigata prefecture is a microcosm of the entire Japanese archipelago.

Actually, until this summer I had never actually visited Niigata City itself, something that surprised even me. After passing Nagaoka on the shinkansen and feeling the gradual change in elevation during the descent into Niigata, the first thing I noticed was the salt tang of the sea. Perhaps this was because the main venue for the Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival was the harbor district not far from the station known as the former Bandaijima Fish Market, which meant that the venue fronted directly onto an ocean canal. It was this physiological sensation that made me think that the place name "Niigata," which literally means "new lagoon," actually derives from a "newly" opened up "tidal flat."

In fact, this sensation I felt in Niigata City was also closely related to the concept of the Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival. But why "water and land," which exist everywhere there are people living, in Niigata City? The answer is probably because the stretch of land known today as Niigata is itself what one might call a "newly developed area" formed by "land" carried down from the mountains by the abundant "waters" of the Shinano and Agano rivers. So rather than the theme being set because Niigata City is a place blessed with land and water, it was based on the fact that the city itself was formed by "water and land." In this sense, for Niigata City, water and land are more than simply a theme for an art festival. They are so important they could be likened to the city's mother and father.

Another thing I sensed while slowly wandering around the site of the old fish market that served as the festival's main venue before nightfall was how high up and how far away the sky seemed when I looked up. It was in the middle of a heat wave and so autumn was still a long way off, and yet facing the water and looking up at the sky I sensed the kind of expansiveness that almost seems to draw one in. It was completely different from the sky I saw over Nagaoka that was pitted with cumulonimbus clouds. So translucent was it that I got a real sense of how, just as if I followed the canal in front of me I would eventually be carried around the world, so too the sky linked me with every other place on earth.

It seems it was not by accident that I immediately thought, "This is the northern sky." Because more than a few of the exhibits at the main venue explored links between Niigata City and the Ainu culture of the north. This was unexpected given what I had assumed in advance to be image of the festival, but in a sense it was completely understandable.

If Niigata City were indeed a "newly" opened up "tidal flat" (ie, a "newly developed area") formed by the accumulation of land carried down rivers, then it would be no surprise if this place that thrived as a port were once a relay point on the Japan Sea side of Honshu for people and things traveling back and forth by sea to avoid having to cross the steep mountains. Come to think of it, this place is similar to the port of Otaru, which by coincidence I visited some time later. Almost certainly exchanges between Niigata and Hokkaido would have been far more vigorous and intimate before the development of overland railway links and air routes than they are now,.




Otomo Yoshihide x Ameya Norimizu tachi - Smile (2012) Photographed July 16, 2012.


Of all the works in exhibition, I think Smile by "Otomo Yoshihide x Ameya Norimizu tachi," which takes up a good deal of the space at the main venue, best summarizes the sentiments expressed here.

On setting foot inside the venue, one's eyes were immediately drawn to what looked like an abandoned house, or perhaps a bombed house would be a better description, which had been erected in the middle of the space. It appeared to have been relocated from somewhere in Niigata City. All of the remains in the venue of what appeared to have been an office and warehouse were transformed into completely foreign matter by being combined with sounds and objects by the two artists concerned.




Otomo Yoshihide x Ameya Norimizu tachi - Smile (2012) Photographed July 17, 2012.


The technique of reconstructing an abandoned house based on memories left behind as vestiges probably took its cue from Ameya's work since The Shape of Me, the installation using abandoned buildings scattered around Nishi-Sugamo, staged for "Festival/Tokyo 2010." This time, however, the thing that attracted my interest in relation to the art festival was that the floor of the venue was flooded throughout, with the flooding widest at the part facing the water so that it formed a kind of shoal allowing water to flow freely to the sea.

One would think that the combination of abandoned buildings and large volumes of water would inevitably call to mind the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, but for some reason this association struck me as inapt. Ameya has repeatedly placed large volumes of water around abandoned buildings in his installations to date, and the venues for his work are always redolent of water. This time, however, it was not so much this, perhaps, but the fact that the origins of the city of Niigata itself owe so much to water and its movement that precluded me from viewing the exhibit in the context of images of natural disasters. To put it more succinctly, it was because I interpreted from the coexistence of destruction and fertility that permeated every aspect of this installation that the very existence of this city, which was built up by masses of earth and sand carried from rivers, is the outcome of a natural phenomenon that is indistinguishable as either a disaster or a blessing.




Noriyuki Haraguchi - Niigata-Kei 12 (2012)


Other works in this main venue, such as Noriyuki Haraguchi's Niigata-Kei 12, in which the surfaces of water and waste oil laid flat like mirrors reflected the surroundings as if they were another world, and Yukihiro Yoshihara's Shibita, which captured in meticulous visuals the flow of water on the Shinano River and changes in the topography, pulled against and resisted each other using the same theme of water as their medium, giving rise to an extraordinary space the likes of which has rarely been seen in recent years.

Yoshihara's Shibita was particularly memorable. Inspired by the theory that the name of the artist's own hometown of Shibata derives from the Ainu for "a place where salmon can be caught," and the artist's conviction that "for the Ainu of old, a 'river' was a single life form that rose from the sea onto the land and flowed past villages before penetrating deep into the mountains," this work is based on scenes captured during Yoshihara's own journey along the 367 kilometers from the mouth of the Shinano River to its source on Mount Kobushigatake.






Video stills from Yukihiro Yoshihara - Shibita (2012).


As the work unfolds, scenes of sites of flooding and monuments to these events, ancient battlefields, ruins, hydroelectric dams, factories and so on appear in rapid succession to the accompaniment of the sound of raging waters, making it impossible to avert one's gaze. "Viewed from the perspective of the Ainu of old," notes Yoshihara, "this river would probably be the equivalent of a creature with wounds all over its body. Looking at the current state of what is Japan's longest river, my thoughts constantly turned to what it might look like in the future." In a manner that was never anything but coolheaded, Yoshihara traced the origins and history of his hometown as it appears today, having been transformed into a complex that is indistinguishable between something natural, the site of a disaster, and the vestige of human activity.

And it was as an extension of viewing these exhibits that I would encounter in Niigata for the second time after Nagaoka the vestige of nuclear misadventure. (To be continued)


Water and Land - Niigata Art Festival runs from July 14 to December 24, 2012.

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

A Restatement: The Art of 'Ground Zero' (Part 8)
Nukes and Niigata I




Still from Casting Blossoms to the Sky. © Nagaoka Film Commission / PSC.


August 6, 2012, 8.15am. At this time, exactly 67 years after the dropping of the atomic bomb on the center of Hiroshima City, I was in a hotel room in Nagaoka City, Niigata, vacantly staring at a TV screen on which unfolded scenes from the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Ceremony.

What was I doing here? Thinking about this made me feel strange. By around this time I should already have returned to my home in Tokyo.

I had arrived in Nagaoka on the afternoon of August 3. That evening, as if guided by events in the movie Casting Blossoms to the Sky, directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, which I had seen at the Yurakucho Subaru-za in a manner that seemed almost predestined, I had attended the Nagaoka Fireworks Festival with my wife and son at the invitation of Obayashi and Nagaoka City. Soon after our arrival there was a welcome ceremony at the Nagaoka Grand Hotel in front of the station. As dusk approached we took a hasty dinner before boarding a minibus for the journey to the roof of a building near the riverbed of the Shinano River, the venue for the fireworks display.

Naturally, the fireworks were almost sublimely wonderful, and so beautiful they were like something from another world. The sense of scale of fireworks displays in Tokyo and those in Nagaoka is completely different. My hometown of Chichibu is also famous for its fireworks display, held in conjunction with the Chichibu Night Festival, which is staged annually in December in the middle of winter, but even compared to this, there was something quite indescribable about the collapsing wall of light known as the Phoenix, which stretches for as far as 3km along the riverbed and was first created to spur on the restoration effort in the wake of the Chuetsu earthquake that struck the region in 2004. What's more, in the middle of the display, a special set piece named after Obayashi's movie was launched to commemorate the movie. This was a most unexpected fireworks feast that overturned the conventional wisdom of all the fireworks displays I had witnessed up until then.




The eponymous firework sequence at the 2012 Nagaoka Fireworks Festival set to commemorate the movie Casting Blossoms to the Sky. Courtesy the City of Nagaoka.


The fireworks display at Nagaoka has a special meaning beyond that of an event held in the cool of the evening in summer. August 1, 1945, 10.30pm. The air raid on Nagaoka launched by US Army Air Forces bombers lasted until after midnight, and left 80 percent of the urban area destroyed by fires started by the masses of incendiary bombs dropped on the city. As many as 1,470 people died. Nagaoka City recognized August 1 as a special day, and as early as the following year, 1946, began holding a war-damage reconstruction festival (the forerunner of today's Nagaoka Festival). And since 1947, a fireworks festival has been held on August 2 and 3 to honor the memory of the victims.

In fact, it was on seeing Nobuhiko Obayashi's Casting Blossoms to the Sky that I learned all this. As indicated by the Japanese subtitle, Nagaoka hanabi monogatari (The tale of the Nagaoka fireworks), the historical background to this movie takes as its cue the origins of the Nagaoka Fireworks Festival, and forms multiple layers, including the recovery from the series of natural disasters from the Chuetsu earthquake to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami as well as Japan's modern history during the period before, during, and after the Pacific War. At the same time, the movie unfolds as a "wonderland" in which dream and reality are indistinguishable, with a child who died during the Nagaoka air raid coming back from the dead and riding a unicycle and writing and performing in a play with the mysterious title, Mada senso ni wa maniau (There's still time to stop the war). But the thing that struck me more than anything was the historical fact that in the lead up to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, practice drops with "mock atomic bombs" were conducted over Japan by the US.

These mock atomic bombs were modeled on the Fat Man plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Due to their shape and the fact they were painted orange, they were named "pumpkin bombs." Although they contained no nuclear material, they weighed 4.5 tons and were roughly the same shape as the Fat Man atomic bomb, meaning they could be used in practice drops by pilots to confirm the ballistic and other characteristics of the Fat Man. A total of 49 pumpkin bombs were dropped on 30 cities throughout Japan, including Fukushima and Yamaguchi, between July 20 and August 14, the day before the cessation of hostilities, resulting in over 400 people killed and 1,200 injured according to current estimates (the targets included Tokyo's Chuo Ward, were one person was killed and 62 injured). (Later, as a result of Japan's surrender, the US Army Air Forces dropped the remaining mock atomic bombs over the ocean.)

It was a long time after the end of the war, however, that this historical fact became a matter of common knowledge among the Japanese people. It was first revealed in 1991 when the Kasugai no Senso wo Kiroku Suru Kai (The Kasugai society for documenting the war, Aichi prefecture) conducted their own investigation of US Armed Forces documents. On July 20, 1945, before the big air raid of August 1, one of these mock atomic bombs, or pumpkin bombs, was dropped on Nagaoka City and landed near an embankment by the riverside in Sakon. The result was a tragic incident in which an entire family of four who were doing farm work nearby were killed. A monument now stands on the spot where this mock atomic bomb landed and features in an important scene in the movie, but until 2004 when this monument was built the hole created by the mock atomic bomb remained intact.




Still from Casting Blossoms to the Sky. © Nagaoka Film Commission / PSC.


It was on August 4, the day after the Nagaoka Fireworks Festival, that I stood beside this monument (I later found out that the last scene in the movie was also set on August 4, being the day the protagonist, played by Yasuko Matsuyuki, leaves Nagaoka vowing to contribute to its recovery). As I mentioned at the beginning, this was not something I planned. To tell the truth, in the middle of the fireworks display the previous evening, my five-year-old son, who was viewing the fireworks with me, developed a high fever and began to show signs of distress. He was immediately taken to hospital in an ambulance, and ended up being admitted.

I rushed to the hospital and was surprised to find my son on an IV drip and his body covered in red marks resembling burns. We were told it was hives, but never before had I seen such a bad case. Eventually, we decided that my wife would stay with my son while I would return to our hotel for the time being. But I found it difficult to get to sleep. This was because the excitement of the fireworks display and the sight of my wife holding our son against the backdrop of the night sky lit up by the fireworks while we waited nervously for the ambulance to arrive overlapped in my mind with the scene in the movie where Ririko Motoki rushes around in confusion in the Kaki River with her young baby, Hana, on her back while sparks rain down on them. So anxious was I that it even crossed my mind that the spirit of a young child that died in the Nagaoka air raid had possessed my son by riding on one of the fireworks.

The next day I checked out of the hotel and drove back to the hospital to find that my son seemed to be on the road to recovery, which was a great relief for the time being. But as the cause of his condition was still unknown, it was decided to keep him in hospital a few more days until his symptoms subsided. My wife stayed at the hospital while I arranged to extend our stay in Nagaoka, and thereafter we took turns staying by his bedside.

And so it was that through an unexpected turn of fate in the form of my son becoming ill I stayed on in Nagaoka, and early the next day I took a taxi from the hospital and travelled alone to the monument marking the site where the mock atomic bomb landed. If Nagaoka wasn't going to let me return home for the time being, I thought, then I would use the time to see with my own eyes the places that appeared in that movie.




Still from Casting Blossoms to the Sky. © Nagaoka Film Commission / PSC.


At the start of the movie, there's a scene in which Yasuko Matsuyuki stops her taxi on the embankment and the taxi driver gets out and tells her about the mock atomic bomb. When I realized it, I, too, was in front of the same monument deep in conversation with my driver who had gotten out of his taxi. When I looked up I saw a midsummer blue sky stretching as far as the eye could see, and for a moment it was almost as if I had strayed into a movie myself. Before I knew it, I had become a traveler in what Nobuhiko Obayashi referred to as "Nagaoka wonderland." (To be continued)

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

A Restatement: The Art of 'Ground Zero' (Part 7)
Yusuke Nakahara and Nuclear Criticism II




The feeling I get from the artwork at the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale is one of spaciousness. The festival is overturning the conventional wisdom that artworks are exhibition space + work, and in doing so is heading in the direction of "post-art (datsu-geijutsu)."
-Yusuke Nakahara (art critic)


In March 2011, Japan experienced a disaster and accident of unheard-of dimensions, with an earthquake and tsunami leading to the breakdown of several nuclear reactors and the meltdown of large quantities of nuclear fuel, spreading radiation over a wide area. By a strange twist of fate, it was in the midst of this turmoil that I was informed of the death of the art critic Yusuke Nakahara.

When I say "by a strange twist of fate," I am referring to the fact that the nuclear reactor system at the heart of the accident that had such catastrophic consequences may well have been the field in which Nakahara would actually have been conducting research as a young student in Hideki Yukawa's laboratory at Kyoto University had he not entered the world of art criticism.

So why was it that Nakahara gave up theoretical physics while engaged in research at the cutting edge of that field and turned to art criticism? As mentioned in my previous column, Nakahara's debut work as a critic, "Sozo no tame no hihyo" (Criticism for creation), could be interpreted as an expression of his concerns and animosity regarding "machines" in the form of nuclear reactors, perhaps the ultimate product of cybernetics, from the point of view of "criticism" directed at whatever poetry or literature he happened to have at hand. Even so, this move to criticism was no small decision. In addition to Nakahara's own personal disposition, might there have been a separate, external catalyst?

In thinking about this question, the presence in Hideki Yukawa's laboratory of Mitsuo Taketani, who would have been Nakahara's senior, was something I could not overlook. Taketani was a young genius in the world of physics who contributed greatly to the research into elementary particles that led to Yukawa being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (in 1949, making him Japan's first Nobel laureate). At the same time, however, he had a strong interest in such things as historical philosophy and scientific criticism, having already founded in 1946 along with Shunsuke Tsurumi and others the journal Shiso no kagaku (Science of Thought), and in 1954, immediately prior to the publication of Nakahara's debut work of criticism, "Sozo no tame no hihyo," he had already made a splash with his own debut in the world of philosophy, "Benshoho no shomondai" (Problems with the dialectical process).

I should mention before I go any further that Taketani was one of the figures who advocated the peaceful use of atomic energy. However, there was a peculiar set of circumstances behind his position. At the beginning of the 1950s, when in response to the groundswell of support around the world for the development of nuclear reactors many young physicists in Japan, after reflecting on Japan's role as the victim of nuclear bombing, opposed this development, Taketani advocated that Japan take the lead in this development and curb the competition between Europe and North America precisely because it was a victim of nuclear bombing. As a result of the political maneuvering of Yasuhiro Nakasone and Matsutaro Shoriki, who saw the nuclear reactor issue as an opportunity to encourage the importation of technology from and trade with the victorious countries of Britain and the United States, however, the option of Japan conducting its own research into nuclear power and developing its own nuclear reactors was all too quickly cut off.

Concerned at the negative impact this import/trade regime would have on the development of nuclear reactor-related theory and engineering technology in Japan, Taketani changed his position completely. Working on the assumption that a nuclear disaster some time in the future was a possibility, he sounded the alarm bells. He contended that with regard to low-dose exposure to radiation, which was hardly discussed at the time, there was nothing one could describe as a "threshold" distinguishing between levels that were safe and those that were dangerous, only a "patience level" foisted on atomic bomb victims through a social imperative (it goes without saying that this is the historical basis for the series of disputes over low-level exposure to radiation in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant). In the years that followed, Taketani, who had already transferred from Kyoto University to Rikkyo University in 1953, became a scientist with no formal institutional affiliation, fiercely criticizing nuclear science from the margins of nuclear power research. Let us look more closely at the sequence of events over this period.

On New Year's Day 1956, the year after Yusuke Nakahara made the transition from theoretical physics to art criticism with the publication of "Sozo no tame no hihyo," Hideki Yukawa became a member of Japan's first Atomic Energy Commission. In March the following year, however, Yukawa resigned on the grounds of ill health. But the real reason behind this resignation drama, it seems, was Yukawa's dissatisfaction with the high-handed approach of the Commission's Chairman, Matsutaro Shoriki.

When in January 1956, the year before Yukawa's resignation from the Atomic Energy Commission, plans were announced for the installation of a research reactor in Uji, Mitsuo Taketani and others strongly objected due to the proximity of water sources. The site was moved from Uji to Abuyama near Ibaraki, but as this location was also near a water source for downstream residents it sparked a protest movement that grew to involve the entire city. This movement was epoch-making in pioneering local government- and local resident-organized movements against nuclear reactors.

Incidentally, somewhat surprisingly the word "minshu" (the masses) crops up here and there in Nakahara's "Sozo no tame no hihyo." For a long time even Ichiro Hariu, who was deeply interested in politics and involved in protest action himself, was uncertain as to the sense in which Nakahara was using this word, but in the light of this historical background, it may be possible to reread Nakahara's essay from a different angle. Mind you, there is no concrete evidence indicating the extent to which Nakahara was influenced by Taketani, who acted together with "the masses" in his role as a philosopher. For this reason, notwithstanding the fact that they were both involved with Hideki Yukawa's laboratory at Kyoto University, the extent to which there was an exchange of views between Taketani and Nakahara is unclear. At the recent Ay-O exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, however, I noticed that Taketani's name appeared alongside that of Nakahara as one of the initiators of the send-off party for Ay-O when he left for the US, proving beyond doubt that there were opportunities for the two to meet face-to-face even after Nakahara's metamorphosis to art critic.




Ay-O Visit to America Supporters' Association document (1957) Collection of the artist. Nakahara's name can be seen near the middle of the list, and Taketani's left of center.


In any event, what we need to understand from this is that by inserting the name "Yusuke Nakahara" between atomic energy research and art criticism, which on the face of it would seem unrelated, there arises the possibility of building a new bridge between these two in the wake of March 11, 2011.

For example, in the wake of March 11, 2011, I sense a close similarity on a level I would never have previously imagined between nuclear power plants and art museums, notwithstanding the fact that unlike nuclear reactors the latter are unlikely to trigger a situation so severe that human life is directly endangered.

As for whether the large-scale meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was triggered by the earthquake, by the tsunami, or by issues to do with the facilities themselves such as not attaching sufficient importance to seismic criteria, the details are still unknown. About the only thing that is clear is that it was the complete loss of power at the nuclear power plant that was the direct cause of the melting of the nuclear fuel.

But what would happen if a similar complete loss of power were to occur at an art museum? For argument's sake, let us think of the storage rooms as the equivalent of the pressure vessels that hold the nuclear fuel, and the gallery spaces as the equivalent of the containment vessels that surround the pressure vessels. To continue with this analogy, the equivalent of the "nuclear fuel" would probably be the artworks that provide the "heat source" giving energy to the system we know as "art history" (and to continue with it even further, the equivalent of the zirconium fuel cladding would probably be the storage crates, picture frames, and so on). Both are subject to public protection to ensure they do not come into direct contact with the air outside as well as being shielded by scores of barriers.

If we leave aside for the moment the obvious differences between nuclear fuel, something extremely dangerous to humans, and artworks, things that should be the subject of abundant intellectual appreciation, the fact that both are subject to public protection by the state and so on becomes even clearer.

How would an art museum fare, however, if it were to completely lose power temporarily? It would probably depend on the season among other things, but if it were at the time of year during the damp rainy season, the storage rooms would quickly grow hot and humid without air conditioning and the artworks would probably begin to "melt" due to mildew and other forms of bacteria. For this reason the storage rooms would have to be "vented," but this work would have to be done while groping around in the dark. Is such a scenario really nothing but wild supposition?




The Rias Ark Museum of Art website. The museum plans to partially open at the end of July after undergoing repairs in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami.


Nothing could be further from the truth. The scenario outlined above actually befell the Rias Ark Museum of Art in Kesennuma immediately following the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. I visited this facility in June 2011, and looking at the interior, warped here and there and covered in broken glass as a result of the earthquake, I could not help recalling the scene at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. That the disaster occurred in March at one of the coldest times of the year was a small mercy. If it had occurred during the rainy season or at the height of summer, the artworks and other material would probably have irreversibly "melted" in an instant. In a sense, the cold winter air served the same purpose as the natural seawater used to cool the nuclear reactors at Fukushima.

The government, however, failed to appreciate the importance of securing the power supply to art museums, for which it serves as a virtual life-support system, and it was not until May, by which time it was on the brink of a "meltdown," that strenuous negotiations on the part of the curators saw the air conditioning at the Rias Ark Museum of Art restored.

How did such a situation come about? As mentioned above, there are certain parallels between nuclear power plants and art museums in Japan in the sense that since modern times the national policy towards both has been to import advanced technologies and systems from overseas and to try to promote these as "the best available" (the peaceful use of artworks, anyone?). Notwithstanding the difference that the former falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the latter under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, in terms of the importation of advanced systems from the West and the unidirectional schema by which these are introduced and spread among the masses, both fall under the same enlightening (ie to educate and guide the ignorant) value system. Is not this the very reason why when the "post-art museum" movement that started with land art and earthworks arose it was exactly in sync with political developments in the US? And before we realized it, countless art museums were being constructed in Japan, many of which now face an uncertain future as they grapple with all manner of financial difficulty. There is no guarantee that in the future we will not see art museums being "decommissioned."

Mitsuo Taketani was once of the opinion that if nuclear power generation was completely unavoidable, then it was important that the Japanese themselves be able to conduct basic research into nuclear reactors and develop them independently. But is Japanese "art" really independent/autonomous of the US in the sense referred to by Taketani? Regardless of how closely one examines it, is in not ultimately just a rearrangement or reinterpretation of ready-made ideas, techniques, and so on? It is self-evident that we need art museums, but nevertheless, perhaps we ought to consider starting our very own "post-art museum" movement.

As time passes since the death of Yusuke Nakahara, a critic who spanned the fields of nuclear energy and art, it seems as if such fundamentals regarding art in Japan are rapidly becoming clearer. Come to think of it, was it not the critic Yusuke Nakahara himself who right up until his death championed "post-art"?

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

A Restatement: The Art of 'Ground Zero' (Part 6)
Yusuke Nakahara and Nuclear Criticism I





Yusuke Nakahara speaking at the symposium The Shape of the Art Museum of the Future (September 2010, Benesse House, Naoshima). Photo Osama Nakamura, courtesy the Setouchi International Art Festival organizing committee.


On April 24 I took part in a dialogue in front of a live audience with Fram Kitagawa in which we discussed the late Yusuke Nakahara.(1)

The last time I met Nakahara was at the symposium, The Shape of the Art Museum of the Future, held as part of the Setouchi International Art Festival 2010, which Kitagawa directed.(2) If my memory serves me correctly, this was the third time the two of us shared a platform. Only once, however, did we speak one-to-one rather than as panelists. It was for a total of around 30 minutes when we shared a taxi from the Port of Takamatsu to the airport on our way back from that event in Naoshima. Upon reaching the airport, because we were catching different flights we simply bowed to each other slightly and went our separate ways. That was the last time I saw Yusuke Nakahara. Just six months later, by March 11, 2011, Nakahara had already departed this life.

In the wake of the disaster of March 11, there are more than a few things I want to ask him. But Nakahara died on March 3, and so he left this world without any knowledge of the massive earthquake or the massive tsunami or the nuclear accident that followed. I recall receiving the actual news of his death on March 12. So in my mind, the death of Yusuke Nakahara, one of the leading figures in post-war art criticism, and the catastrophic impact of March 11 overlap in many respects. However, in one sense it would be totally wrong to dismiss this as a mere coincidence.




Noi Sawaragi + Fram Kitagawa at "The Now, Post 3.11: What might Yusuke Nakahara have talked about," a talk staged to celebrate the release of the second volume of Nakahara Yusuke bijutsu hihyo senshu (Selected works of art criticism by Yusuke Nakahara), April 2012, Hillside Plaza. © BankART1929, photo Tatsuhiko Nakagawa.


In my dialogue with Kitagawa I dwelled at length on the following single sentence from the end of Nakahara's very first work of criticism, "Sozo no tame no hihyo" (Criticism for creation, 1955). Often, without the author being aware of it, the first text (book) they send out into the world contains a piece of writing that defines that author's activities over their entire life, and in Nakahara's case I think it is probably this sentence:

"In order to examine the contradiction between consciousness and matter and unrelenting development, we need to discover in league with artists a new way of looking at things." (3)
"Sozo no tame no hihyo" was written while Nakahara was still a student in Hideki Yukawa's laboratory at Kyoto University. Normally, it would be inconceivable for a discussion of "matter" not to be influenced by theoretical physics. But as hinted at by Nakahara's original choice of the title for the "Man and Matter" art exhibition, "Between Man and Matter," here "matter" means more than simply "physical objects." Rather, the intended meaning is closer to the relativistic/quantum mechanical "place." This should serve as a clue to understanding the reasons why Nakahara consistently found possibilities not in the mechanical "boxes" of art museums but in quantum mechanical "places," and why he emphasized "place," incorporating such things as perception and process, action and environment, more than readymade "artworks" and "exhibits," employing such terms as "circumstances" and "presence." At the same time, however, such an approach naturally contains within it the seeds of the destruction of "art." Which is why it was probably an inevitability of sorts that after "Man and Matter" Nakahara made the most of these ideas and connections not by pursuing a career as a so-called "international curator" (ie, reinforcing existing "art"), but by directing his attention to the broader field of post-artistic cultural theory/civilization theory (despite the restrictions of the time).

Precisely for this reason, upon being informed of Nakahara's death amidst the maelstrom of that cruel nuclear disaster, I immediately called to mind the fact that he had been a student of theoretical physics in Hideki Yukawa's laboratory. If Nakahara had lived to witness that large-scale nuclear accident, I have no doubt he would have had some thoughts on the matter.




The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (Unit 4) after the accident. Photographed March 15, 2011 (from the TEPCO website).


In fact, in his debut essay mentioned above, "Sozo no tame no hihyo," rather unexpectedly there is a criticism of cybernetics from the very beginning. As the basis for his argument, Nakahara cites Kobo Abe, who, like Nakahara, studied science (at the School of Medicine at Tokyo Imperial University) before entering the world of literature, emphasizing the "cold and fragmentary nature" of matter. As a student of Hideki Yukawa's at Kyoto University, Nakahara would have mentioned this with the full knowledge of the extent to which the physics of the atom are beyond anything imaginable to humans in terms of power and time. In contraposition to cybernetics, Nakahara offered poetry and the possibilities of art criticism. In a manner of speaking, this is the resistance through "creativity" to automated "machines."

In reality, there is no better example of a cybernetic product than a nuclear reactor, a device by means of which humans seek to control the extraordinary power of nuclear energy. One could say that designs in which control rods are inserted automatically to prevent nuclear fission in the event of some kind of malfunction in a nuclear reactor and systems such as the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) that circulate steam generated by decay heat and cool the nuclear fuel even if power is temporarily lost are without doubt heirs of cybernetics. However, the very things Nakahara opposed in writing his criticism were these systems (as opposed to the ideology) of cybernetics. That is to say, his switch from theoretical physics to art criticism was not simply the result of his having been given an opportunity by having a piece he submitted published at the time of his debut, but may also have entailed a criticism of automatic control systems that far surpassed the capabilities of humans, as symbolized by a power generation technology that applied nuclear fission, basic research into which was then being conducted in Hideki Yukawa's laboratory. Of course, Nakahara never lost interest in cybernetics in a broad sense. He continued to take an enduring interest in this field through his interest in such things as the invention of machines and perpetual motion and his peculiar view of nonsense as expressed through tautology. And yet this interest was always dogged by a paradox in that Nakahara was both attracted to and repelled by the subject. In fact, there are already indications of this vacillation in "Sozo no tame no hihyo." Precisely for this reason, this "ambiguity" also gave Nakahara's criticism a complex nuance that pushed it beyond plain science and technology criticism.

In this sense, when reading Yusuke Nakahara's "Sozo no tame no hihyo," one must not only closely examine the contents, but also consider the historical background to Nakahara's writing at the time. In March 1954, the year before the essay's publication, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru was exposed to radioactive fallout from a nuclear test on Bikini Atoll. This led to the rise of a massive anti-nuclear movement in Japan, which in turn was used to the advantage of the pro-nuclear lobby, who began to promote "the peaceful use of atomic energy (Atoms for Peace)." That same year there was another major shift in the field of atomic energy research. In February, the month before the Bikini incident, amidst political maneuvering by a group centered on Yasuhiro Nakasone, Japan's first ever atomic energy draft budget of 250 million yen was submitted to the Diet, where it promptly passed through the House of Representatives. "The scientists are vacillating," said Nakasone, "so we're slapping their cheeks with bundles of money."

This statement by Nakasone was a denial of everything to do with Japan's basic research into atomic power. Japanese scientists had built a cyclotron as early as the 1930s (4), and during the war, research into atomic weapons was conducted in secret by the likes of Hantaro Nagaoka and Yoshio Nishina. After the war, the US prohibited all such research, although the theoretical knowledge was passed on to people such as Hideki Yukawa and Shinichiro Tomonaga. Yusuke Nakahara, the scientist-turned-art critic, shared this same pedigree.

Nakasone's statement was also a clear expression of Japan's policy of dispensing with its own program of nuclear reactor development and importing nuclear reactors already developed in the UK and US. In fact, the reactors in Unit 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant were built by General Electric. It is not inconceivable that this gave rise to a disparity between the power generation technology used in commercial nuclear reactors and the academic research into theoretical physics being conducted at Japanese universities, as a result of which basic research into such things as the kind of response necessary during an emergency involving a light-water reactor atrophied. In fact, looking back over the almost frightened conduct and untruths that emanated from this country's foremost "scholars" and "experts" who seemed at a loss for what to do when confronted with the nuclear reactor meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, this should immediately be obvious.

Yusuke Nakahara's switch to cybernetics criticism and art criticism came against the historical background of this sequence of events concerning the peaceful use of atomic energy. Precisely for this reason, as an art critic myself I feel obliged to consider again what Nakahara, who became an art critic as these events were unfolding, would have thought upon witnessing explosions at a nuclear power plant, a product of the cybernetics whose development had to be abandoned in his own country. (To be continued)

1. "The Now, Post 3.11: What might Yusuke Nakahara have talked about," a dialogue between Noi Sawaragi and Fram Kitagawa staged to celebrate the release of the second volume of Nakahara Yusuke bijutsu hihyo senshu (Selected works of art criticism by Yusuke Nakahara) held April 24, 2012, at Hillside Plaza, Tokyo.
   
   
2. Held at Benesse House, Naoshima on September 5, 2010. Panelists: Yusuke Nakahara, Fram Kitagawa, Noi Sawaragi, Katsuhiko Hibino and Akira Tatehata (moderator).
   
   
   
3. Yusuke Nakahara, "Sozo no tame no hihyo" (Criticism for creation) Nakahara Yusuke bijutsu hihyo senshu, dai-ikkan: Sozo no tame no hihyo – sengo bijutsu hihyo no chihei (Selected works of art criticism by Yusuke Nakahara, Volume 1: Criticism for creation – Perspectives on post-war art criticism), (Tokyo: Gendai Kikakushitsu + BankART 1929, 2011).
   
   
4. It is thought that following Japan's defeat in the war, the three cyclotrons built in Japan (at the Riken Institute and at the Imperial universities in Osaka and Kyoto) were sent to the bottom of Tokyo Bay, Osaka Bay, and Lake Biwa, respectively, by the US occupation forces. Could it be that they still rest at the bottom of those waters?

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

A Restatement: The Art of 'Ground Zero' (Part 5)
Iwaki Yumoto III




On March 21 of this year I flew to Hakata with the artist Takashi Murakami. We went there to visit the artist Mokuma Kikuhata. As soon as we landed we made our way to the Fukuoka Art Museum, from where, together with the curator who had arranged our meeting, we headed off to Kikuhata's residence, which doubles as his atelier.

It was my first meeting with Kikuhata. And yet he is someone to whom I am greatly indebted. For it was my encounter with a collection of Kikuhata's writings published by Kaichosha, Ekaki to senso (Painters and War), that originally got me interested in "war paintings," which have long been one of the main focuses of my criticism. Indeed, it is unlikely that either my first foray into this subject, Nihon-gendai-bijutsu (Japan-Contemporary-Art) (1998, Shinchosha), or the concept of Japan as "a bad place" that I arrived at in the course of writing it, would have come about if not for my reading Kikuhata's book. Certainly as an artist, but also as a writer, Kikuhata is an incredibly important figure in my life.

For his part, Kikuhata greeted us with a smile, saying, "I've wanted to meet you for some time. But I just haven't had the opportunity." Kikuhata had previously contributed an article to the periodical AIDA (No. 116) that was extremely supportive of my book Senso to banpaku (World Wars and World Fairs, 2005, Bijutsu Shuppansha), a sequel of sorts to Nihon-gendai-bijutsu. Anyway, we sat there in front of Harukaze (2011), a recent, large painting by Kikuhata that dominates his atelier (it is a phenomenal work that combines an emanation of youthful energy beyond all expectations with a coolheaded materiality), and listened as the artist offered valuable insights on a range of topics.




Cover of Okoku to yami (The Kingdom and Darkness) (1981, Ashi Shobo), a collection of works by Sakubei Yamamoto.


The content of our discussions I will have to return to on another occasion, because what I would like to touch upon here is the series of "coalmining paintings" (as opposed to "war paintings") by the Fukuoka-born artist Sakubei Yamamoto (1892-1984) that depict the harsh working and living conditions faced by coalminers in Chikuho, paintings that were last year included in UNESCO's Memory of the World register of documentary heritage. Sakubei, who worked in the coalmines from the age of seven, retired as a coalminer at the age of 63 and became a security guard at the coalmine office, whereupon he began to produce - with no instruction whatsoever - paintings based on his own memory and the meticulous records he kept in the form of diaries, amassing a collection of over 1000 works by the time of his death at the age of 92.

In fact, Sakubei's paintings, which are so widely known today, were not in the spotlight from the very beginning. They only came to the attention of the world at large due to the activities of none other than Mokuma Kikuhata, who tirelessly introduced and publicized them. In particular, he contributed his own lengthy criticism for a collection of works by Sakubei titled Okoku to yami (The Kingdom and Darkness) (1981, Ashi Shobo). The printing of this publication, with which Kikuhata was so closely involved he is said to have checked the color proofs himself, is astonishingly clear, with attention paid to even the smallest detail. Looking at this work, a large-format, boxed edition, which should perhaps be regarded as an artist's multiple, the image of another coalmine artist I met in Iwaki Yumoto crossed my mind.

Earlier in this series I noted how the history of the Joban region - while once serving as an important energy supply base due to its possession of so many coalmines spread over such a wide area so close to the metropolitan area, and as a major coalmining labor center on a par with the likes of Yubari and Chikuho - had somehow been wiped from our memories. At the same time, this same region has a close association with hot springs, so much so that when someone mentions "Joban" we immediately think of the Joban Hawaiian Center. This in spite of the fact that the construction of this facility was the result of locals creating a tourism industry based on the hot springs that had existed since long ago out of necessity after one mining operation after another was forced to shut down in the wake of major changes in the course of the country's energy policy since the 1950s and the liberalization of energy imports.

It was in the course of making trips to and from Iwaki Yumoto that I first understood how indescribably harsh conditions were for those working in the coalmines there. At the same time, I learned how the coalmining industry in Iwaki Yumoto was in a "battle" with the region's hot springs, which in normal circumstances would be regarded as a blessing. Here, the word "battle" has a double meaning. First, the hot springs were so plentiful that extracting coal in Iwaki Yumoto involved a battle with constantly spouting hot water. And second, conflict arose with the hot spring resorts, several of which operated in the area. Due to the coalmining operations, which started in the middle of the Meiji period, the amount of hot water welling up fell dramatically, with large amounts of hot water that otherwise would have impeded mining being drawn up and dumped (at the rate of 14 tons a minute) in rivers, as a result of which the water temperature near the outfall in the Shin River that flows through what was then Uchigo City reached 46 degrees, turning the river itself into one huge open-air bath and destroying the balance of the inns with hot spring facilities. (To digress a little, in considering this latest nuclear accident, it is worth bearing in mind that the whole area from Kitaibaraki to Hamadori in Fukushima Prefecture contains a massive coalfield that extends all the way to the Pacific Ocean, as well as huge reserves of underground water. If a nuclear fuel assembly were to melt and contaminate this underground water, even if a phreatic explosion were not to occur, it is clear that the result would be water pollution both on a scale beyond anything we could imagine and from which it would be impossible to recover.)



Shoveling coal (c. 1944). Mineshaft diorama at the Iwaki City Coal and Fossil Museum. Photo courtesy the Museum.


The Iwaki City Coal and Fossil Museum in Iwaki Yumoto is a good source of information about these and other developments in the coalmining industry as it pertains to the Joban region. In particular, the extensive underground displays including dioramas that recreate working conditions in the coalmines at the time are worth seeing. Working in the mines was also a relentless battle against things like invisible toxic gasses and punishing humidity, and looking at the exhibits of the detection equipment, gas masks, and so on that were used to combat these dangers, the similarities between working conditions in the coalmining industry and in the nuclear industry become obvious.

Might there have been something similar to the paintings Sakubei Yamamoto produced in Chikuho in the Joban region, which must contend with these peculiar circumstances? Of course, there were. They were not produced by a single person, however. And while they do not have their own exhibition facility, we can view these paintings at the Iwaki City Coal and Fossil Museum mentioned above. Mind you, perhaps because they are difficult to classify, these paintings seem to lack a place of their own, and are hung here and there in places like stairway landings, passageways, and exits. And yet artists like Taro Kumasaka (1910-92), who was born in Fukushima and belonged to the art club while a student at Joban Junior High School, but who gave up the idea of going on to further education at art school in view of the family finances and found employment in a coalmine, where he worked in the security department while teaching himself how to paint, eventually exhibiting work in Tokyo, surely deserve renewed recognition at a time like this.




Taro Kumasaka - Kobansho (Shift Office). Photo courtesy Iwaki City Coal and Fossil Museum.



Taro Kumasaka - Tankozu (Coalmine Picture). Photo courtesy Iwaki City Coal and Fossil Museum.


In 1941, while still employed at the coalmine, he tasted success for the first time when his painting Tanko fukei (Coalmine Scene) was accepted for the 28th Nika Exhibition. He was accepted numerous times in the years that followed, with G tanko no ichigu (One Corner of Coalmine G) (1947, 34th Nika Exhibition), Tanko shayo (Setting Sun at a Coalmine) (1949, 4th Kodo Exhibition), and Tanko no fukei (Scene at a Coalmine) (1956, 1st Shinseiki Exhibition), and even after retiring in 1963 he continued to paint locally. It would be true to say that he gained a certain level of recognition in art circles even when he was still alive, but while his paintings lack the singular originality of those of Sakubei Yamamoto, this does not alter the fact that they are a valuable resource in gaining a renewed appreciation through art of the origins of the circumstances we find ourselves in today. (To be continued)

Archive
Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

A Restatement: The Art of 'Ground Zero' (Part 4)
Iwaki Yumoto II





All photos ART iT (March 2012)


I returned to Tokyo from Iwaki Yumoto and in the New Year, on Tuesday, January 24, 2012, I set foot for the first time inside TEPCO's head office building in Uchisaiwaicho.

I had gone to attend one of the press conferences held twice a day at designated times in the morning and evening(1) to brief the media on the radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Of course, although I am an art critic, I am not a journalist as such. However, I do have a membership card issued by the International Association of Art Critics, or AICA. As it is not widely known, I should mention that the AICA membership card is an authentic press pass issued by the association's headquarters in Paris, and on principle holders of this card can attend press conferences almost anywhere in the world. Even if the conference has no obvious connection with art, for example, because it is the writer's privilege to determine what is or isn't art-related, this is never a hindrance. Of course, no one is better at sniffing out information important to their work from seemingly unrelated fields than a journalist with a keen sense of smell. And while I certainly do not fit into this category, I had been asked at the time to write a piece looking at "3.11," so I was keen to confirm with my own eyes and ears the current situation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and how this was being conveyed to people by TEPCO.

Incidentally, since I have brought up the subject of press cards, let me also mention that in respect to this ID card alone, members of the organization known in Japan as the Association of Art Critics should properly be described as art journalists as opposed to art critics. However, among the members of the Japanese Association of Art Critics (the Japanese branch of AICA) there are no so-called newspaper reporters. This might strike readers as odd, but there is a kind of a twist here. By this I mean that in Europe and North America, the overwhelming majority of the journalists who contribute by-lined articles to newspapers are freelancers. This also applies to art journalists. In other words, these individual journalists are not protected by any kind of organization. When push comes to shove, they are weak. Which is precisely why, despite their independent status as individuals, it was deemed necessary to form an association in order for them to protect their rights and enable them to continue working freely.

In Japan, on the other hand, the majority of newspaper articles are written by employees of newspaper companies, and the right to gather news is guaranteed not to individuals but to companies. For this reason, there has been no need here to go to the trouble of insisting on the right of individuals to gather news or write stories. Not having checked the membership in detail, I cannot be positive about it, but one would expect that freelance art journalists make up the largest group within the European and American branches of the Association of Art Critics. Or rather, instead of being the preserve of researchers affiliated with universities or art museums, "art criticism" itself is largely independent of these institutions and more journalistic in nature.

In Japan, however, the number of such freelance journalists is incredibly small. Outside the art world, the existence of the "kisha clubs" that have recently become the target of scathing criticism partly explains why such opportunities to gather news have been restricted to the major media organizations. But in terms of the sparseness of freelancers, the art world is without parallel. In fact, looking at the makeup of the Association of Art Critics, while its members include not a single active newspaper journalist from any of the major media organizations that are so numerous in Japan, freelance journalists are still in the minority. Instead, the organization is dominated by members of established organizations, many of them university researchers or art museum professionals, such as directors or curators. This in itself is in a sense an imbalance, and I remember listening in astonishment once as one leading member seemed to ridicule the position of those members who did not belong to any particular organization. Despite the fact that AICA is an association established to protect individuals who do not belong to an organization, in Japan its priorities are grossly wrong, with some members even making a display of their status as individuals protected by an organization. Indeed, for someone like myself who is affiliated to a university, this is more than a little thought provoking.







Why is it thought provoking? Because for journalism, the status of a freelancer carries a great deal of meaning. If the core of journalism is keeping tabs on authority, then today, the media itself is none other than one big authority structure. And when it comes to the mass media, as typified by newspaper and television companies, in one sense it is the ultimate authority. In other words, for journalists today, keeping tabs on and criticizing such media companies should be an extremely important principle governing their conduct. But here there arises a contradiction. If journalists, who ought to keep tabs on the exercising of power at large, are members of this same institution, and in some cases even involved in the exercising of this power, how can they criticize the prejudice or corruption that occurs within it? For the notorious "kisha clubs," too, leaving aside the question of their monopoly of information, this kind of self-contradiction (keeping tabs on authority ultimately entails criticizing the organization to which one belongs, rendering unrestricted media criticism impossible) is the most pressing issue.

In fact, this is something that applies to current events with far greater social significance than art, for example, and as far as the art world is concerned, those in authority would probably even prefer it if even more journalists attended their press conferences. Art, as it is known in Japan in particular, is a field whose very viability is often called into question, to the extent that requiring the adherence to principles such as keeping tabs on authority is meaningless. This being the case - notwithstanding some degree of inconsistency - it is actually unavoidable that the activities of those working in the field become multifaceted. In extreme cases, such as that of Takashi Murakami, there emerge artists who double as critics and who at the same time must make it a part of their job to stage events and manage galleries, for example. Rather, it is this that is the true originality of Japanese artists. In a place like Japan, there arises the need for those with authority to be able to accomplish everything that can be done.

So the problem probably comes down to the self-awareness of the individual, and the extent to which they can remain conscious of this contradiction and maintain the kind of tension that can only be maintained on the basis of this consciousness, and where and how they can use this as a foundation for building the kind of creativity that can only arise from such a congested state of affairs. If, conversely, they relax for a moment, everything becomes a matter of "collusion," with the scene inevitably turning into a private hangout in the form of a "contemporary art village" or "nuclear power village" (and in fact one cannot say that such a state of affairs does not already exist).

We seemed to have strayed from the topic of the TEPCO press conference, but in fact all the things I have mentioned are closely related. This is because in the wake of last year's disaster we need to adopt a fresh, more flexible approach to such fields as criticism, creativity and reporting, based on a new kind of tension, and boldly open them up to new, as-yet-unnamed fields of activity. This is precisely why I have visited the stricken area whenever I have had the chance, and continue to incorporate what I have learned there in my own criticism. And in order to lend further support to the things I witnessed in Iwaki Yumoto, I feel I need to intervene in a more journalistic fashion in circumstances as they are currently unfolding.







But let us return to the original topic. Carrying my AICA press card and the magazines with the articles I had written about the disaster to date, I made my way to the TEPCO head office to continue the preparatory work for the series of essays I was writing on the disaster. I had chosen to attend the evening press conference starting at six o'clock. As I walked through Ginza on my way from Shinbashi to Uchisaiwaicho, I was reminded of the fact that the area around Uchisaiwaicho where TEPCO's head office is located is the heart of corporate Japan, where buildings housing the headquarters of the likes of Mizuho Bank and NTT Communications stand side by side. In fact, if I had continued straight along Hibiya-dori to Tokyo Station, I would have passed the Imperial Hotel and the head office of the Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company (familiar to those in the art world as the sponsor of the "VOCA" exhibition held each year at the Ueno Royal Museum, which has close links with the Imperial family), which served as the headquarters of MacArthur's Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) during the occupation, and eventually Nijubashi bridge at the Imperial Palace. Unless one thinks about it, it is easy to overlook the fact that this neighborhood is one that has flaunted a symbolic power that has continued uninterrupted from the dawn of modernity to the present. That evening, however, I got a very strong sense of this.

And so I made my way alone to TEPCO's head office, where the lights had been dimmed so excessively that I had trouble finding the front entrance, to attend the company's regular press conference. (To be continued)

1. The press conferences are usually held twice a day, from noon and from six in the evening. On Saturdays and public holidays, however, there is no midday press conference.

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6