Organizer and Chair: Ann Sherif, Oberlin College
Discussant: Norma M. Field, University of Chicago
This panel proposes to examine issues surrounding the realm of the public sphere in Japan during the 1960s. One impetus for the panel is the tendency of much scholarship on the sixties to emphasize the widening gap between the isolated individual (the micro-utopias exemplified by "my-car/my-home"), and the increasingly centralized state and culture industries. Consequently, many discussions ignore the vigorous public sphere-the discourses of criticism, protest, and the aesthetic realm instrumental in forging public opinion-that characterizes this decade of high economic growth. This panel will explore the activities of prominent public intellectuals, artists, filmmakers and political activists (both marginalized and mainstream), with the aim of problematizing the notion of mid-postwar Japan as a culture of consensus.
Wesley Sasaki-Uemura discusses the efforts of local groups in the 1960s to redefine the public sphere through direct political engagement, such as the dissemination of "mini-komi" newsletters concerning state projects and pollution. Sharalyn Orbaugh looks at Ichikawa Kon's cinematic rendition of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and its challenge to operative constructs of race and nation. Reiko Tomii examines Akasegawa Genpei's 1000-Yen-Note trial, and the dynamics of the media, art world, and courts' dispute over charges of counterfeiting and avant-gardism. Ann Sherif considers the 1960s writings of literary critic Eto Jun, and the role of the public intellectual in forming public opinion about the military, gender and the nation.
From Public Phones to Community Newsletters: The Localization of the Public
Sphere in the 1960s
Wesley Sasaki-Uemura, University of Utah
This paper examines attempts by local groups to redefine the notion of the public sphere through protest of the contradictions of rapid economic growth during the 1960s. The spread of public phones in the previous decade illustrates how the term public (koshu) implied something dispensed from on high for the use and material well-being of the masses within the field of the nation. However, state projects aimed at the "public welfare" (ranging from massive industrial complexes to national railways to international airports) prompted protests from local communities that had to sacrifice their environment and well-being. Accused of "local egotism," these protesters grew distrustful of "public" institutions and mass media and sought to create a civil society in which they could reclaim their subjectivity. They turned from an electoral politics of representation to a politics of direct engagement, and developed alternative "mini-communications" networks as a vehicle of expression.
This paper looks at examples of "mini-komi" newsletters like "Hyomantei tsushin" (Humanity Bulletin), "Shin kamotsu sen hantai undo nyusu" (News from the Movement to Oppose the New [Yokohama] Freight Line) and "Kokuhatsu" (Indictment) from Minamata to see how these groups tried to change the connotation of "public sphere" to that of politically engaged citizens and communities independent of the state.
Raced Bodies and the Public Sphere in Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad
Sharalyn Orbaugh, University of California, Berkeley
Director Ichikawa Kon is a noted master of the transferal of narrative text from one medium to another, such as his cinematic presentations of Soseki's Kokoro, or Takeyama's Harp of Burma. In 1964, when Japan became the first Asian country to host the Olympics, Ichikawa tackled new kinds of text (the Games) and medium (the documentary). His 1965 Tokyo Olympiad became the highest grossing film in Japan and won international acclaim.
Can Ichikawa's film, produced twelve years after the Occupation and during the Cold War, be regarded as a visual text for international consumption that glosses over a nation's deepest rifts by creating a (temporary) cathartic sense of presence and unity? Does the "text" of the Olympics diffuse recognition of the true "unsportsmanlike" state of the world? Or does it act as a catalyst to change by giving voice and image to ideals of progressive humanism?
Television coverage of the 1996 Games featured a tribute to Martin Luther King, and Mohammed Ali, two African-Americans who persevered in their oppositional stance against the state. Does Tokyo Olympiad, a cinematic version of already carefully orchestrated events, similarly function as part of a Habermasian "public sphere" at its most confrontational?
Ichikawa's documentary uses narrative and visual focus on the body to create a powerful statement about race and nation in a context of global power relations. This paper examines the potential of the "public sphere" through a textual analysis of Ichikawa's film in its historical moment.
Guilty Verdict: Akasegawa Genpei and the 1000-Yen-Note Trial
Reiko Tomii, Independent Scholar, New York City
In January 1963, the 25-year-old artist Akasegawa Genpei sent his friends an announcement of his forthcoming solo exhibition at a Tokyo gallery. The announcement, mailed in the postal service's cash envelope, consisted of a piece of paper printed on both sides: the front was a monochromatic mechanical reproduction of the 1000-yen note and the back bore the customary exhibition information. Over the next year or so, Akasegawa created four 1000-yen-note "models."
Akasegawa's numerous but subversive Anti-Art gestures, however, had grave legal consequences in the real world. By January 1964, Akasegawa's 1000-yen-note project became known to the police; following an indictment for the imitation of currency, the case went to trial in August 1966. The infamous 1000-yen-note trial, signaling the end of avant-gardism in the history of postwar Japanese art, still provided a rare occasion for art to articulate its meaning to society at large.
My paper examines the public discourse surrounding the trial, both in the general media (which predictably derided and scandalized this "self-proclaimed avant-garde artist") and art press. It is significant that while many of Akasegawa's Anti-Art colleagues and critics naturally sided with him, some felt that a guilty verdict should officially complete his act of "transgression." The state's judicial authority, whether knowing their opinion or not, found Akasegawa guilty as charged in June 1967. The verdict was appealed twice but eventually upheld in 1970.
The Politics of Loss: Eto Jun and Public Discourse in the 1960s
Ann Sherif, Oberlin College
As part of a larger critical re-examination of the relationship between the public, private subjects, and the state in the period of high economic growth in postwar Japan, this paper will discuss the critical and literary discourse concerning the possibility of national, cultural, and psychological integrity in the traumatic aftermath of the Pacific War.
One text produced in the 1960s that remains controversial to Japanese readers today is Eto Jun's seminal work Maturity and Loss: The Collapse of the 'Mother' (Seijuku to soshitsu: 'Haha' no hokai, 1965-66). A literary critic, Eto ostensibly presents a critical discussion of literary texts by three contemporary novelists, but this discourse on the employment of the Symbolic Order and especially the notions of Mother and Father in postwar culture reaches far beyond issues of individual psychology to notions of global politics, nationalism, feminism, and family structure.
In turn, some issues articulated in Eto's mid-sixties text resonate with his subsequent activities as a public intellectual with outspoken (and notably conservative) political views about Japan-U. S. relations during the Occupation period, and Japanese rearmament and military power. I examine the evolving roles of the intellectual in a confrontational public sphere, and specifically the dialogue on the part of social scientists and feminists concerning Eto's vision of the symbolic order in postwar Japan.