postwar Japanese art

Folding screens, known as byôbu in Japanese, are treasures within any museum’s collection and are beloved by the general public. This beautiful publication brings together the very finest screens from the world-renowned collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum. The featured works range from an extraordinary pair of landscapes by Sesson Shukei, a Zen-Buddhist monk-painter of the late 16th century, to daring contemporary works from the late 20th century.

The first half of the Edo period (1615–1868) is especially well represented, with a dozen screens from the 17th century by such masters as Kano Koi and Tosa Mitsuoki. The contemporary scene is also well covered, with ten examples from the 20th century—proving the longevity of this art form and its currency among modern-day artists. Enlightening essays by important scholars in the field cover topics like the emergence of screens as an art form and a novel discussion of the relationship of Japanese screens to those made in other countries.

This is Chapter Three of Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York. It charts Kusama's early career from Japan to her development in New York.

The 1960s was a time of incredible freedom and exploration in the art world, particularly in New York City, which witnessed the explosion of New Music, Happenings, Fluxus, New Dance, pop art, and minimalist art. Also notable during this period, although often overlooked, is the inordinate amount of revolutionary art that was created by women.

Into Performance fills a critical gap in both American and Japanese art history as it brings to light the historical significance of five women artists-Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, and Shigeko Kubota. Unusually courageous and self-determined, they were among the first Japanese women to leave their country-and its male-dominated, conservative art world-to explore the artistic possibilities in New York. They not only benefited from the New York art scene, however, they played a major role in the development of international performance and intermedia art by bridging avant garde movements in Tokyo and New York.

This book traces the pioneering work of these five women artists and the socio-cultural issues that shaped their careers. Into Performance also explores the transformation of these artists' lifestyle from traditionally confined Japanese women to internationally active artists. Yoshimoto demonstrates how their work paved the way for younger Japanese women artists who continue to seek opportunities in the West today.

A radical artist in subject matter and in photographic style, Tomatsu Shomei (1930-2012) undoubtedly laid the foundation of modern avant-garde Japanese photography. Throughout Tomatsu Shomei’s extensive photography career, he presented an array of intensely expressive photographs of the influences upon and reaction of the Japanese people to continuous trauma throughout the 20th century. Joining the blossoming post-war Japanese art scene, Tomatsu enforced the importance of photography that departed from conventional realism in the pictorial press. During the 1960s, when some of Tomatsu’s most prolific photos were taken, Tokyo was faced with rampant corruption and instability in social institutions and political powers in the already dark shadow of the war.

This dissertation project investigates the transcultural encounters of Japanese avant-garde calligraphers of the 1950s and 60s with the contemporaneous Euroamerican abstract artists. It is based on the analysis of the activity and works of the prominent Japanese avant-garde calligraphy group Bokujinkai ("People of the Ink") headed by Morita Shiryū (1912-1998), Inoue Yūichi (1916-1985) and other calligraphers.

The Bokujinkai—or ‘People of the Ink’—was a group formed in Kyoto in 1952 by five calligraphers: Morita Shiryū, Inoue Yūichi, Eguchi Sōgen, Nakamura Bokushi, and Sekiya Yoshimichi. The avant-garde movement they launched aspired to raise calligraphy to the same level of international prominence as abstract painting. To this end, the Bokujinkai collaborated with artists from European Art Informel and American Abstract Expressionism, sharing exhibition spaces with them in New York, Paris, Tokyo, and beyond. The first English-language book to focus on the postwar history of Japanese calligraphy, Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde explains how the Bokujinkai rerouted the trajectory of global abstract art and attuned foreign audiences to calligraphic visualities and narratives.

https://brill.com/view/title/55005

Toshikatsu Endō (b.1950) is an artist who is often described as being a member of the Japanese group the Post Mono-ha, and he is acknowledged to have been one of the first Japanese contemporary artists to have achieved recognition and success in the international market. His career is viewed to have escalated within the developing late-modernist transnational field of contemporary art in the 1980s, synchronically with his creation of the Allegory series. 

Endō’s Allegory series has not yet been realised as a united series or analysed as such. When the works are examined in this thesis, it is clear that the three works are significant. They are a valuable and timeless iconographic representation of the challenges that faced practicing
Japanese contemporary artists in the 1980s and some of the theoretical concerns that underpinned their work.   

This thesis explores and analyses Toshikatsu Endō’s Allegory or Gūwa series (1984-1988) and locates it within a postcolonial field of ‘International Contemporaneity’ or ‘Kokusai bijutsu.’  The works in this series, Allegory I-III are for the purpose of this thesis suspended in a theoretical framework that includes the Japanese and international Avant-Garde movements, the legacy of which were still having effect on Japanese artists in the 1980s: the Mono-ha and Post Mono-ha, Gutai, and Arte Povera. In addition, this thesis looks within the Japanese concept of 間Ma, a Japanese theoretical concept of the absoluteness of existence in which lie the polarities of absence and presence, and the sacred and silent: elements which are present in these works.

In examining the Allegory series with reference to theoretical art historical considerations, this thesis looks beyond Endō to include his contemporaries and influences. Personal recollections and correspondence I had with the artists Toshikatsu Endō (b.1950) and his close friend and  colleague Shigeo Toya (b.1947) enhanced this thesis                                                       
and expanded on its theoretical underpinning.

The Bokujinkai—or ‘People of the Ink’—was a group formed in Kyoto in 1952 by five calligraphers: Morita Shiryū, Inoue Yūichi, Eguchi Sōgen, Nakamura Bokushi, and Sekiya Yoshimichi. The avant-garde movement they launched aspired to raise calligraphy to the same level of international prominence as abstract painting. To this end, the Bokujinkai collaborated with artists from European Art Informel and American Abstract Expressionism, sharing exhibition spaces with them in New York, Paris, Tokyo, and beyond. The first English-language book to focus on the postwar history of Japanese calligraphy, Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde explains how the Bokujinkai rerouted the trajectory of global abstract art and attuned foreign audiences to calligraphic visualities and narratives. https://brill.com/view/title/55005

Dissertation for BA History of Art during final year at SOAS, University of London

Yayoi Kusama has continuously described herself as a person who suffers from episodes of extreme hallucinosis, and dissociative disorder.1 In past interviews Kusama has described circumstances where she feels her whole bodily functions breaking down, with feelings of becoming absorbed by or dissolved within her surrounding environment.

My Independent Study Project addresses the conflicts Yayoi Kusama has experienced through her mental illness and how these issues have benefitted or weakened her strength as a successful artist. I explain this is three parts: her struggles during childhood, her beginning stages as an artist in Japan, her time in New York City, and her return to Japan when emitted into a Mental Hospital. I argue that Kusama’s time spent in New York City during the 1960s exaggerated her mental disorder and how her artwork became her only cure for her daily hallucinosis. I also argue the notion of the success of Kusama’s artwork to be a primary result of her illness. I deliberate these arguments through extensive research through dialogue presented by Kusama herself, comparing and contrasting her most famous works of art and through research on the mental conditions she suffers from. I conclude with a summary of how mental illness has shaped not only Kusama as an artist but how each of her works of art reflects her suffering.

In David Bindman, Suzanne Blier, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art, vol. 6 of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., The Image of the Black in Western Art (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017)

SPACE PLAN began in November 1968 with a manifesto, and the members produced work that took on styles of Minimalism. While showing work at civic halls and galleries, the members also actively attempted to organize outdoor exhibitions in and around Tottori City, for example, the Aoshima Island, an islet in the Koyama pond, or the front garden of Jinpukaku, a French Renaissance style residence that dates back to the Meiji era. Noteworthy is the Second Exhibition, which showcased Minimalist works on a grand scale in the Tottori Sand Dunes. Although the group garnered local media attention at the time, their activities were restricted to the Tottori region and therefore never became nationally famous.
How did their style, which stemmed from a modern art movement like Minimalism, evolve in the latter half of the 1960s in the local region of Tottori? This paper examined the group’s activities while tracing the circumstances surrounding the culture of Tottori during the 1960s and the 1970s, and within various historical contexts—the age of youth rebellion, Gutai’s outdoor exhibitions, the open-air sculpture exhibitions of Ube (Yamaguchi) and Suma (Kobe), Fukushima Noriyasu and the Kitashirakawa Art Village in Kyoto, and the development from Minimalism to Post Minimalism.

In Buddhist culture, the young and beautiful female as corpse has often been presented as a sight of soteriological potential, a demonstration of the illusions of beauty, permanence, and identity coherence. A series of paintings  by Matsui Fuyuko 松井冬子 (b. 1974) is only the most recent example of the genre known as “kusōzu” 九相[想]図 (Pictures of the Nine Stages [of a decaying corpse]) (henceforth kusōzu),  which depicts the subject.  Some half-century earlier, Itō Seiu 伊藤晴雨 (1882-1961)  had also produced a substantial corpus of kusōzu. This essay examines the ways in which these artists treat the theme and how the work of Seiu and the visual culture of his time are discernible in the art of Matsui. Matsui distinguishes her series from the genre as it is generally understood by presenting the nine states of decomposition as the results of nine motives for suicide. This, in addition to a number of other aspects of her work makes the series considerably different from its purported model, and links it to an alternative cultural genealogy. To show this, I will summarize the general understanding of kusōzu as it has been presented so far in scholarship and discuss the erotic and grotesque aspects of kusōzu, before introducing the works of Seiu, with a brief explanation of eroguro. I then position Matsui’s series against both premodern kusōzu interpretations and within modern Japanese visual culture. The introduction serves to support my suggestion that her visual influences, which I locate in the cultural history and images of anatomical dissection, the nude in Japanese art, and of self-mutilation/suicide, are all what we might call, if not Buddhist “corpse contemplations,” “dismemberment contemplations” of one kind or another. By reconceiving the genre within this broader category we can release it from a hermeneutics that confines it to a “religious” framework. Other works of her oeuvre support this, and help to shift interpretation of her kusōzu series away from the contention that it is a simplistic reworking of Buddhist imagery. The origins of this “contemplation of dismemberment” are to be found not only in Buddhist thought and practice, but in the aesthetic of the grotesque, which was properly developed in Japan, especially as eroguro エログロ (“erotic-grotesque”), during the modern period and which engages all three visual influences—anatomical dissection, the nude in Japanese art, and self-mutilation/suicide—I mention above. Thus, we find a convergence of Buddhist ideas and visual culture with those of the grotesque, a convergence that helps us to reappraise both. I additionally propose that while the gazes prompted by the subjects of depictions of bodies of the dissected, of the nude, of suicide, and the grotesque, and the functions of those gazes appear to be significantly different, they in fact present similarities with those ideally galvanized by the kusōzu. The principle similarity is the treatment of unstable boundaries and [dis]memberment. They also present comparable anxieties concerning the act of looking.

Visual and cultural analysis of Nihon no hana 日本の花(1946), a book pairing pictures and poetry by diverse artists and poets on the theme of flowers. The book is part of the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/462/title/1.

S u m m e r 2 0 1 1 This paper attempts an analysis of Japanese photographer Domon Ken's work in the immediate postwar years, in particular between 1950 and 1958. This period encompasses the rise of the so-named realism in Japanese photography, as it was advocated by Domon himself. Starting in 1950 as monthly contributor to the journal Camera he not only developed and publicized his ideas on the notions of photography, but at the same time intensively shaped a generation of younger amateur photographers, thereby leaving his personal imprint on the subsequent direction of Japanese photography. The paper focuses on a discussion of the medium of photography itself and its interpretation through Domon by means of a close reading of his work Hiroshima (1957). Here, in order to establish an essential theoretical background for Domon's understanding of realism, I draw from his own treatises on photography and the writings of philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō, by whom Domon was greatly influenced. I intend to illustrate that the immediate postwar years were a period of major changes in the use of photography, especially triggered through Domon's own approach to and understanding of this medium.

Le concept de l’imitation est longtemps resté une notion ambiguë dans l’art contemporain. En Occident, l’imitation et le simulacre ont permis aux penseurs et aux artistes de s’affranchir des concepts modernes. Mais au Japon, ils ont été aussi des moyens pour apporter un nouveau regard sur les sources de l’art japonais et de la culture occidentale. Pour les artistes utilisant l’imitation et la copie, il s’agit de créer des échanges et des dialogues entre les époques, les cultures et les regards. Ils déconstruisent l’acceptation moderne de l’acte mimétique, ainsi que ses idées reçues, au profit d’une nouvelle vision sur l’imitation. L’imitation devient alors le vecteur d’une nouvelle expression plastique. Dans ce cadre, il n’y a plus de modèle et de récepteur, mais la construction d’un rapport réciproque entre l’image ou l’artiste cité, et l’artiste contemporain. Le but de ce texte est de montrer comment s’est construit ce rapport de réciprocité actif dans l’art japonais, entre les œuvres convoquées et les artistes contemporains afin de saisir ce que signifient le Postmodernisme et le Simulationnisme au Japon. En effet, artistes et chercheurs ont tenté de trouver une alternative à ces deux concepts pour réinvestir un discours spécifique sur la création japonaise et son identité propre. Toutefois, l’acte mimétique et l’appropriation des œuvres d’art occidentales sont également pour les artistes un moyen pour comprendre les autres cultures, créer des ponts, et tendre un miroir différent de Soi pour y trouver un Autre.

Among approximately one hundred pavilions built at the Expo '70, the Textiles Pavilion, sponsored by the Japan Textiles Association, stood out as an anomaly, because its bizarre design was incongruous with the overall futuristic, technological look of the Expo '70. The pavilion was supposed to express the theme "Textiles Enrich Human Life," but the link between the pavilion's design and its sponsor, the textiles industry is obscure, at best. What was the thinking behind this eccentric pavilion? How did such a pavilion come to exist in the tight competition of corporate and national advertisement at the Expo '70?
* This is the final proof PDF copy of the article. For more information, see http://www.josai.jp/en/jicpas/RJCS/2011.html

This is my introduction to a double special issue of the journal FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism titled "Japan's Social Turn." http://field-journal.com/

The TOC for the Spring issue is below. Another group of papers will be appearing in the Fall 2017 issue.

“Japan’s Social Turn: An Introductory Companion”
Justin JESTY

“Isolation and Neighboring Relation in Osaka's Kamagasaki, the Gaps and What Breaks Through Them. To Express is to Live.”
UEDA Kanayo

“Don’t Follow the Wind: Chim↑Pom and the Creation of a Collective Imaginary”
Miwako TEZUKA

“After the Exhibition Artists and the Disaster: Documentation in Progress”
TAKEHISA Yuu

“Localizing Socially Engaged Art: Some Observations on Collective Operations in Prewar and Postwar Japan”
Reiko TOMII

“Japanese Art Projects in History”
KAJIYA Kenji

“Socially Engaged Art in Japan: Mapping the Pioneers”
Adrian FAVELL

Nagasaki is the most important site to consider regarding post-war Japanese sculpture.
This is because the Peace Park in Nagasaki is a peace “sculpture” park, containing Seibo Kitamura’s Peace Statue and various other peace sculptures donated from all over the world. Kitamura, who was known during the war for creating sculptures that lifted fighting spirits, had always excelled in the male nude figure, and utilized this particular skill to create a statue of male divinity and called it “Peace Statue,” and attached the artist’s own words “a signpost in the struggle for global harmony” and “the highest hope of all mankind.” This situation points to the deep connection between war, peace, and sculpture.

Irisawa Yasuo provided 161 endnotes to his own poem, parodying the methodologies used in scholarly editions of classic texts. Citation: "A Translation of Irisawa Yasuo’s _Waga Izumo, Waga chinkon_ (Part II)." Monumenta Nipponica 72:2 (2017), pp. 223-264.

This paper aims to explore the spectacular forms of life in the digital environments and their ontological dimensions, by calling such conditions as ‘an ethics of flatness.’ What follows is an in-depth analysis of the Japanese experimental art collective known as teamLab (2001-current), which can be subdivided into three stages. The first is a survey of teamLab’s art historical contexts. teamLab represents a generation that has undergone a series of events which include the economic rise and downfall of the postwar Japan, and natural/social disasters such as earthquakes and the subway gas attack in the 1990s. Second, by analyzing the select works of teamLab made in the last ten years, this paper claims that their work prompts an unstable sense of community. Third, this paper proposes a theoretical framework with which to explore a world of flatness without being subjugated by its negative connotations. Bringing forth such a framework accompanies the following set of discourses: the concept of body raised by Baruch Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze, a new materialist approach to the world of experience by John Frow and Yuk Hui, and theories of the spectacle raised by Jean Baudrillard and Jean-Luc Nancy that read the Debordian idea against the grain.

Resumo O mangá e o animê como os conhecemos hoje surgiram no pós-guerra japonês marcados por forte influência ocidental. Em várias obras podemos encontrar relatos, memórias e reminiscências da Segunda Guerra Mundial de forma explícita ou metafórica, como explosões nucleares ou cidades reduzidas a ruínas. Seguindo os estudos de Paul Gravett e Takashi Murakami, podemos traçar uma linha do tempo na qual se pode perceber um imaginário bélico na cultura pop japonesa bem como uma importante função social ocupada por obras de mangá e animê após a reestruturação do país.

The Stakes of Exposure
Anxious Bodies in Postwar Japanese Art
Namiko Kunimoto

The first major English-language study of some of Japan’s most important postwar artists

How would artistic practice contribute to political change in post-World War II Japan? How could artists negotiate the imbalanced global dynamics of the art world and also maintain a sense of aesthetic and political authenticity? While the contemporary art world has recently come to embrace some of Japan’s most daring postwar artists, the interplay of art and politics remain poorly understood in the Americas and Europe. The Stakes of Exposure fills this gap and explores art, visual culture, and politics in postwar Japan from the 1950s to the 1970s, paying special attention to how anxiety and confusion surrounding Japan’s new democracy manifested in representations of gender and nationhood in modern art.

Through such pivotal postwar episodes as the Minamata Disaster, The Lucky Dragon Incident, the budding anti-nuclear movement, and the ANPO protests of the 1960s, The Stakes of Exposure examines a wide range of issues addressed by the period’s prominent artists, including Tanaka Atsuko and Shiraga Kazuo (key members of the Gutai Art Association), Katsura Yuki, and Nakamura Hiroshi. Through a close examination of their paintings, illustrations, and assemblage and performance art, Namiko Kunimoto reveals that, despite dissimilar aesthetic approaches and divergent political interests, Japanese postwar artists were invested in the entangled issues of gender and nationhood that were redefining Japan and its role in the world.

Offering numerous full-color illustrations of previously unpublished art and photographs, as well as period manga, The Stakes of Exposure shows how contention over Japan’s new democracy was expressed, disavowed, and reimagined through representations of the gendered body.