Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 34

A Restatement: The Art of ‘Ground Zero’ (Part 11)
Nukes and Niigata – Addendum I


Installation at Yukihiro Yoshihara’s solo exhibition “Pleasure Dome” (1989) at Spiral Garden, Tokyo, 100 television monitors, five video projectors, 600 x 600 x 700 cm. Photo Naoya Hatekeyama.

As a result of my discussion of the Water and Land – Niigata Art Festival over the three installments of this series titled “Nukes and Niigata,” my relationship with Niigata prefecture has grown in an unforeseen way. This time, in resuming the series “A Restatement: The Art of ‘Ground Zero,'” I would like to report on this as well as provide an addendum to those three installments. (Come to think of it, Makoto Aida, whom I have also discussed over three installments of this column, also hails from Niigata.)

Incidentally, although this may be seen as leaping from one topic to another, on May 27 a local referendum was held in the Tokyo suburb of Kodaira, the first to be held in the metropolitan area. The subject of the referendum was the construction of a four-lane road that would run north-south through the suburb for around 1.4 kilometers, requiring the clearing of one of only a handful of remaining woodlands that preserve the appearance of the old Musashino uplands and the redevelopment of the Tamagawa Josui walking path that runs through it. The plan prompted calls from citizens concerned about the destruction of the environment for a local referendum to ensure that it properly reflected the wishes of the residents. In the end, however, because at 35.7% the voter turnout was lower than the 50% threshold set by the city authorities, the referendum was deemed invalid, and the votes were not even counted. It was a truly unfortunate result. (1)


The woodlands of Kodaira Chuo Park

As a matter of fact, I have many personal memories of this walking path. Some 20 or so years ago when I had classes at Musashino Art University, which is practically adjacent to the walking path, I usually took a bus from Kokubunji Station to the school gate, but if I had time to spare, for example, I would get off the train at Takanodai Station on the Seibu Kokubunji Line and turn left right after exiting the station and enter the woodlands. Strangely enough, while walking the short distance to the university surrounded by the cheerful green colors and smells of the trees, various ideas would occur to me quite unexpectedly. As I noted on Twitter, as someone who studied philosophy in Kyoto, that walking path, while it may not quite be in the same league as Heidegger’s “holzwege” in terms of facilitating contemplation and composing, was very much the Musashino version of Kyoto’s famous Philosopher’s Walk.


Installation view of Jong YuGyong’s solo exhibition “Subjective Contours” in the first floor gallery of the art building at Korea University, Tokyo (April 16-23)

The other day I passed these woodlands for the first time in a long time when I went to Korea University, whose campus adjoins that of Musashino Art University, to see “Subjective Contours,” a solo exhibition by Jong YuGyong held at the university’s Graduate School of Art that was also open to the public, and nothing at all had changed from 20 years ago. Of course, in spite of the fact that I passed it every week, I had absolutely no idea that Korea University was the only university in Japan operated by Chongryon, the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, and that it had a Graduate School of Art. In recent years it seems there has been some interaction with Musashino Art University, so it will be interesting to see how the relationship between the two develops.

For all these reasons, rather than seeing the referendum mentioned above as somebody else’s business, I followed it closely, and when it was reported before the deadline that the turnout was low, to be honest I felt somewhat disheartened. I will refrain here from touching on the analysis of the details of the voting behavior, other than to say that the reason I felt “disheartened” was not simply because of the disappointing result. By this I am referring to the fact that in the town of Maki (now part of Nishikan-ku in an expanded Niigata City), which I visited in May this year after hearing about it at the Water and Land – Niigata Art Festival, the country’s very first local referendum was held on August 4, 1996, on the subject of the Tohoku Electric Power Company plan to construct a nuclear plant in the town, attracting a voter turnout of 88.29% (60.85% were against the plan, with 38.55% in favor). The subjects of a public road and a nuclear power plant are of course quite different. But then again, they are the same in the sense that they both involve the loss of the blessings of nature. Not to mention the discussions that are currently going on under the declaration of a nuclear emergency situation in the wake of March 11. In the case of Maki, in light of the referendum result the plan to build the nuclear power plant was brought to a standstill, so one cannot simply interpret the difference between 88% and 35% as a difference in figures alone.

During my visit in May I was able to speak at length with Fumio Saito, the local photographer who recorded in detail events surrounding the referendum in Maki. Saito will soon publish a photobook comprehensively documenting the changes that have occurred in Maki over the last few decades, and I look forward to discussing this in detail when it comes out. This time, however, I would like to focus on another subject relating to photography in Niigata in the form of a certain photo studio in Shibata, which is on the Japan Sea coast north of Niigata City. Coincidentally, the Yoshihara Photo Studio has a close connection with Maki.


Yukihiro Yoshihara giving his 63rd Photography Day lecture (May 31, Shufu Kaikan Plaza F, Tokyo). Photo courtesy Japan Photo Culture Association and Eizo Kikaku Ltd.

I am writing this on June 1, which is Photography Day in Japan, in association with which a talk session organized by the Japan Photo Culture Association was held yesterday at Shufu Kaikan Plaza F in Yotsuya, Tokyo. Divided into two parts, the first comprising a lecture by artist and Yoshihara Photo Studio owner Yukihiro Yoshihara entitled “140 years of the Yoshihara family,” and the second a tripartite talk in which Yoshihara was joined by actor Shiro Sano and photographer Itaru Hirama entitled “Born in a photo studio,” this event was conducted from start to finish in a friendly yet spirited atmosphere, an atmosphere that carried over into the social gathering that followed. It was not solely out of an interest in photography, however, that I attended this event. The main reason was that from the late 1980s to the early 1990s when the figure central to this day’s proceedings, Yukihiro Yoshihara, was based in Tokyo, we enjoyed a close relationship as critic and photographer (to tell the truth, for a while I was a regular along with Yoshihara on a late night TV show on Fuji Television), and that after that, in 2012, by which time we had long since lost contact with each other, I came across his work for the first time in a truly long time at the main venue of the Water and Land – Niigata Art Festival.

This work was a refreshing surprise. The reason I say this is because it was an utterly unvarnished video work quite unlike the installations combining the dynamically flickering artificial light of television and sculpture that I had earlier encountered at Yoshihara’s exhibition “Pleasure Dome” (1989) at Spiral Garden (Aoyama) and around the same time at Gallery Face (Jingumae). As I have already touched on this work, Shibita, in an earlier installment of this series, I have no intention of commenting on it again. However, there can be no doubt that a lot must have happened before Yoshihara, who was so full of vigor and about to launch out into the world, was able to settle down as the owner of a provincial photo studio, a position he no doubt never imagined himself inheriting, and reconcile this position with the image he had of himself then. Given this, it is only to be expected that his style changed over this period.

Despite this, however, as I listened to Yoshihara’s lecture at Yotsuya and at the same time recalled Shibita, I became aware that perhaps even without Yoshihara himself realizing, the memories of the photo studio in which he was born and raised had cast a shadow over that earlier “Pleasure Dome” exhibition, too. Perhaps the white diorama resembling a set in a photo studio along with the artificial light reflected off it as though it were a screen represented different aspects of the studio and darkroom in the photo studio that still existed inside of Yoshihara long after he had “abandoned” his hometown. Mention was also made of the discovery in 2010 in none other than Maki of a precious dry plate depicting an elderly Renjo Shimooka, one of the pioneers of modern Japanese photography who had close links to the history of the Yoshihara Photo Studio, at which point archetypal images of other as yet unseen photographs and photographers that must have abounded across the entire Niigata area flashed across my mind. These have an inseparable relationship with the land improvements and natural disasters that have occurred in this region from the modern era through to the present, as well as with the more recent nuclear power plans. (To be continued)

 

 

    On the other hand, it drew attention once again to the fact that the same mayor who “belatedly” introduced this 50% threshold was actually elected with a voter turnout of just 37.28%.

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

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