Thinking “the other” with foreigners in Tokyo

On Friday, July 16th, I had a lecture called Thinking “the other” - Inside and Outside of the Nation, as a part of CAMP discussion series at Tokyo Wonder Site.

Even though the announcement period was shorter than one week, around 30 people showed up, and the discussion following the lecture became exciting one. Half of the participants are Japanese people who speaks English, and the other half are foreigners; from Australia, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Macedonia, Singapore, United States, Vietnam, etc.

For all of the participants, the ideas of nation and nationalism were different, and the concept of “the other” by Emmanuel Levinas was not well comprehended in historical context. Therefore, first, I talked about the historical background of the birth of the nation, mainly through Napoleonic War, and then talked about the nationalism in modernity and artistic production.

For me, it was challenging to talk about history which is related to Iran and Israel in front of Iranian and Israeli participants. However, through this challenge, I could expand the possibility of exchanging information, if we do not fully share the idea of nations in their sense.

In this lecture, on the issue of nation, I just wanted to avoid the situation that the discussion will be held in Japanese in Japan, and the whole discussion became extremely domestic and nationalistic one. By offering the place where non-Japanese speaking person can join comfortably, I think I could offer the arena of discussing nation and nationalism in Japan for broader participants.

Because of its geographical separation, Japan as a island country had no need to build a strong relationship with surrounding countries, and this situation created Japan conservative, or even nationalistic, and generated lacks of communication with “the other”. To change this situation, everybody needs to work hard to understand the others, and join the community of the world. I would like to keep working hard to make Japan more open country to outside nations.

Lecture: Thinking "the other" - Inside and Outside of the Nation 18:00 - 21:00 Friday, 16 July 2010 in Tokyo

Talk & Discussion Series:
Nationalism and Artistic Production

"Nationalism and Artistic Production" is a series of five talks organized by CAMP with invited curators, artists and thinkers. This is not only an attempt to look at different phenomena of nationalism in Japan - including xenophobia and exclusive nationalism - and various cultural production that enunciates, represents or challenges nationalism. It also aims to contemplate, through discussion, on participants' own sense of nationalism and views on community, identity, and otherness. In order for that, the talk series will explore and analyze what a nation is and how we as subjects relate to a nation, and further reflect on the potential in which artistic production can critically engage with nationalism formed by various kinds of power.

Thinking "the other" - Inside and Outside of the Nation
18:00 - 21:00 Friday, 16 July 2010

[ Speaker ]
Shinya Watanabe (independent curator)
[ Moderator ]
Che Kyongfa (independent curator)

Venue: Tokyo Wonder Site Aoyama: Creator-in-Residence (Map)
Language: English
Admission: Free
Capacity: 30 (Booking Required)
Booking: Send an email with its subject as Thinking "the other" to
notesoncamp@gmail.com
, including your name and E-mail address.
Supported by: Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture, Tokyo Wonder Site / Otto Mainzheim Gallery

[ Outline ]
The nation-state and nationalism are complex constructs that have an influence on art making and evaluation of it. The concept of "nation" has been created in the process of modernity, but the recognition of its historical structure is not simple in contemporary society. The aim of this lecture is to clarify the origin of the nations, and its influence on modern and contemporary art making.

Part 1: Inside and Outside of the Nation
The impact of Napoleonic War and the Formation of Yugoslavia
Part 2: Nation and Artistic Production
Pablo Picasso, Tony Shafrazy, Jean Mitchell Basquiat and Brassai
Francisco Franco and Victor Erice's "The Spirit of the Beehive"
Hayao Miyazaki's Anagram of Nations – Totoro, Lupin the III, Poco Rosso and Ponyo
Soseki Natsume and Japanese Modernity
Isamu Noguchi, Kenzo Tange and Li Xianglan
Allgiero Boetti and Juxtaposition
Bruce Lee in Bosnia
Elmgreen and Dragset
Tellervo and Oliver Karlinen
Yukinori Yanagi, Yuken Teruya and Kota Ezawa

Related Books and Writings:
"Totality and Infinity" by Emmanuel Levinas
The Influence of the Nation-State on Art - The Case of the Former Yugoslavian Countries
http://www.spikyart.org/nationstate/nationstateintroduction.htm
The Breakaway from the Century of War - Article 9 as the Overcoming of European Modernism
http://www.spikyart.org/atomicsunshine/ny/article9textbyshinya.html
Why Japanese People Hunt Whales? Whale Mound and Shinto Religion in Shinagawa, Tokyo
http://parrhesia-shinya.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-japanese-people-hunt-whales-whale.html

Related Movies:
"The Spirit of the Beehive" Directed by Victor Erice
"Lupin the III: The Castle of Cagliostro" by Hayao Miyazaki

[ Biography ]
Shinya Watanabe
Born 1980 in Shizuoka, Japan, Shinya Watanabe is an independent curator based in Tokyo/New York. After acquiring his MA at New York University, Watanabe have traveled thirty-six countries mainly as a backpacker, and started to curate contemporary art exhibitions, mainly focusing on the issues of the relationships between nation-state and art. His curatorial exhibition are "Another Expo—Beyond the Nation-States" (White Box, NY, 2005), "Action Painting Street Battle! Ushio Shinohara vs. Ryoga Katsuma" (Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, NY 2006), "Into the Atomic Sunshine — Post-War Art under Japanese Peace Constitution Article 9" (Puffin Room, NY, 2008, Hillside Forum, Tokyo, 2008, Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan 2009), and "Volcano Lovers - From Iceland and Japan" (Ise Cultural Foundation, NY, 2009-10).

Che Kyongfa
Che Kyongfa is an independent curator based in Tokyo. Her curatorial projects include "Fog Dossier" (2010, Seoul), a collaborative project with the artist Jeuno Kim; a two-year project called "Electric Palm Tree" (2009, Amsterdam & Jakarta), co-curated with Binna Choi and Cosmin Costinas; "Recycled" (2008, Oslo) an exhibition by Oslo-based artist unit Danger Museum; and "OK Video Festival" (2005, Jakarta) co-curated with Jakarta-based artists' initiative Ruangrupa. She also organizes workshops, lectures, and discussions.


Check out this ustream Show: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/notes-on-camp

Picturesque Takamagahara - Ireland and Japan as a Periphery

While I was doing a research on the concept of "Picturesque", I found some interesting descriptions.



As an idea of romantic appreciation of beauty, the concept of "picturesque" was established in England in the 18th century, and at that time, there was a reflection toward modern aesthetics which went too far by rationalism.

A philosopher Edmund Burke who debuted as an esthetician such as discussing the issue of picturesque thought that the experience of appreciating beauty is not simply a rational judgment, but a person's basic instinct. He thought that comparing the "system" which is created as a result of piling up ancestor's wisdom, rational intelligence of human is so small with full of defects.

Through such an aesthetics approach, Burke advocated the foundational danger of overconfidence of Cartesian rationalism and suggested the re-consideration; it will be easy for us to understand this by comparing the continental rationalism (= Cartesian) and British empiricism (= Irish Burke). Moreover, Burke is well known from his denial of French Revolution, and that is because he values not the "Social Contract" proposed by the French Revolution, but the "Fundamental Contract".

One interesting thing is that Masaru Sato, a well known Japanese author nicknamed　"Rasputin of the foreign ministry" pointed that Berke's philosophy is similar to the philosophy of "Takamagahara" (translated as the "High Plain of Heaven), Japanese Shinto’s philosophy. As a Christian went through the history and politics of Russia, Masaru Sato became able to acquire this long view.



I think why Irish artists such as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett could bring cultural impacts to the 20th century European continent is that when continental rationalism came to the deadlock, the periphery, from the perspective of Rome, was able to bring the fundamental collapse to the center. Finnegans Wake, Waiting for Godot, Francis Bacon's paintings, etc... These fundamental collapse were well contextualized by the continental rationalism, and I could feel that when I saw the video installation of "Waiting for Godot" performed in Paris, in the corner of the dawn of contemporary art, as the permanent exhibition of ZKM in Karlsruhe.

It is easy to imagine that the tendency of empiricism is stronger than rationalism in these islands, which is located geographically far from of Rome, and the flow of Christianity is comparatively delayed.

Moreover, after the concept of picturesque had been established, compare to the rational, geometrical garden in France, Britain developed British style garden which tries to pursuit the spectacle of the natural beauty, and on that extension, the aesthetics of "Ruins" such as rusty gardens emerged. I think that today’s boom of industrial ruins in Japan might be a picturesque Natural recurrence with modern essence, but I think one of the prototypes of the aesthetics of ruins might be able to find in Ginkakuji temple, the symbol of Higashiyama (literally means east mountain) culture.



Shogun Yoshimasa Ashikaga transferred his royal authority to his infancy son Yoshihisa in 1473, during the harsh battle of Ounin. After the battle end in 1477, he started to create Ginkakuji temple as a retirement house in 1482.

In 1460, about 82,000 people died of hunger only in two months, and Kyoto was such as hell. In this tragic situation in Kyoto, Yoshimasa Ashikaga proceeded the aesthetics called Higashiyama, which is such as zen gardening, paintings, writings, the Japanese poem, the linked poem, the Noh music, flower arrangements, and tea ceremonies; in other words, I think that the culture of wabi-sabi had been created as an empirical aesthetics, and also the beauty of ruins.



In our time of developed media, these themes need to be considered as a transcontinental level, in multilingual arena.

How much happiness can we carry? - FIFA World Cup

How much happiness can we carry? That is the question. For this question, I want to think through, and act for it.

I love soccer more than any other sports. In FIFA World Cup, when I see Diego Maradona hustling and directing on the pitch, I could feel that he always do his best, and enjoying the every single moments of his life. Showing his surging passion on soccer, Maradona must have the great happiness than any others.

As if proving the existence of the self, coach and the players desperately try to do their own best. Toward the high which you've never seen, and even try to get higher, the players show the whole faces of happiness of life. The chain of the happiness of life creates the touching aspect of soccer as a team play.

Yesterday, Japan lost against Paraguay, but Japan showed their best without doubt. The wall of the world class soccer is still thick and high, but Japan gained the experience of world class soccer. Congratulations, and thank you!

Lupin the III: The Castle of Cagliostro and the dress of Princess Norinomiya

Recently, I joined the service of Tsutaya Discas, the Japanese version of Netflix. So, I rented the Hayao Miyazaki's 1979 film "Lupin the III: The Castle of Cagliostro" which I’ve never seen before.

In this film, I could examine then 38 years old Hayao Miyazaki's profound resources of his animation making. The movie is based on the thief Lupin the III, a Japanese manga character who supposed to be the grandson to French master thief Arsene Lupin in Maurice Leblanc’s novel. (for more details, please read here)

In the last scene, Lupin finds final treasure of Cagliostro, the ruin of Roman City under the lake next to the castle, and Lupin could not steal this treasure, since “this treasure is too big to my pocket”. This scene is a citation from Maurice Leblanc's "The Girl with the Green Eyes", and Miyazaki's exciting re-interpretation of Leblanc is that Roman ruins had been saved by Gothe tribe for last 400 years. The final battle of Lupin and Cagliostro held on the clock tower is a quote from Kuroiwa Ruiko and Edogawa Rampo's "Ghost Tower", which is also Japanese adaptation of Alice Muriel Williamson's "A Woman in Grey" in Meiji era.

There is a longstanding rumor in American anime circles that Steven Spielberg considered Castle of Cagliostro "the best action movie ever made", and I also think that Spielberg got a lot of influence from this film.

When Stephen Spielberg released the new prints of E.T. as its 20th anniversary, he modified the last scene; when the children on the bicycles with E.T. in the basket flying to the full moon sky, the policemen point the guns to them. However, in the 20th anniversary print, by using CG technology, the gun was turned into walkie-talkie. I think one of the reasons why Spielberg edited the last scene of the policemen is that comparing the last scene in Miyazaki's animation, the one of E.T. is too harsh for children.

In Lupin the III, the police leader Mr. Zenigata tries to arrest Lupin, but the heroin princess Clarisse in white wedding dress asks him not to capture Lupin, since he did not steal anything. Then, Zenigata reply to Clarisse, “Yes, he did steal - your heart”. Then, all the Japanese police members under the leader Mr. Zenigata smiles to the princess Clarisse, then they start chasing Lupin who left Clarisse. This smile shows so much personality of Miyazaki, and his characteristic continues to appear in his next film “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”.

After I watched the film, I read an interesting story about Princess Norinomiya, the 3rd child and the only daughter of Emperor Akihito. In the interview of NHK, one of her classmate told that Princess Norinomiya was a big fun of Miyazaki's Cagliostro film, and she made a drawing of princess Clarisse in the white wedding dress with Lupin(In the film, Lupin stole Clarisse on the wedding day). Norinomiya wore a white dress, which is almost the same one as Clarisse on the wedding day. Had worked as an ornithologist specialized in kingfisher, her sensitivity had an antenna to catch Miyazaki’s thoughtful and touchy message.

Why Japanese People Hunt Whales? Whale Mound and Shinto Religion in Shinagawa, Tokyo

I often think that Japanese people are not good at explaining their own cultures to non-Japanese people in English. The issue of whale hunting is the good example which is caused by luck of explanation and mutual understanding. So today's entry, I would like to try to make an effort to make non-Japanese people able to understand, or at least able to imagine, why Japanese people persist in their culture of whale hunting.



To renew my driver's license, today I went Shinagawa, the waterfront of Tokyo. Shinagawa had been the 1st stop of the Tōkaidō (東海道, which literally means East Sea Road, the most important routes of the Edo period, connecting Edo (=Tokyo) to Kyoto) which is famous for Hokusai's Ukiyo-e prints, so there are many lodgings and sushi restaurants.



On the way back, I visited Shinagawa Shrine.



At the entrance, Daikokuten (大黒天=god of great Darkness) welcomed me, and "The Seven Gods of Fortune" (七福神, pronounced Shichi Fukujin) including Daikokuten was installed at the site of the Shrine.





The seven gods are often depicted on their treasure ship called "Takarabune". This is the Japanese mythology, but the hilarious thing is that six out of seven gods are foreign gods, from China and India; in other words, the god of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. After importing from India, Daikokuten in Japan became a mixture of Shiva and Ohkuninushinomikoto, the god of Earth and the counterpart of Amaterasu, the god of Sun. By importing these foreign gods and the structure of religion, Japan formulated the structure of Shintoism. The only Japanese original god of these seven gods is Ebisu, famous from Yebisu Beer. Believe it or not, Ebisu is the god of Whale.

One of the biggest attraction of Shinagawa Shrine is Fujizuka (富士塚), a replica of Mt. Fuji, the holy mountain, made from volcanic stones.







As I mentioned, Shinagawa was the first stop of Tōkaidō Road, and Mt. Fuji is located approximately 100km away. Fujizuka was created for the local civilians who cannot visit Mt. Fuji to pray. Therefore, local people climbed this imitation Mt. Fuji to pray. The oldest Fujizuka is created in 1780, and the one in Shinagawa Shrine was built in 1869, one year after Meiji Restoration.

In the process of climbing, Sarutahiko Ōkami (猿田彦大神), a powerful guardian kami (god), was dedicated.



On the back of this Fujizuka, there is a sculpture of Kaeru (frog) with Japanese joke, "Buji Kaeru (can be read as “Mt. Fuji’s frog" in Japanese), which means “safely back”.



In this shrine, there is one more interesting monument. This monument is called Houchou Zuka (包丁塚), a tombstone dedicated for kitchen knife.



In Edo period, Shinagawa was the important lodging, so there are many chefs cooking Japanese foods for the travelers. These chefs believed that the cooking knife has a spirit of the chef, so when the cooking knife became old, chefs buried their cooking knifes in the shrine. In Japanese animism, not only Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and Shinto god, but also whale, mountain, or even kitchen knife has a spirit, and became the objects to pray.



I left Shinagawa Shrine, passing a clinic with an cute illustration of whale and walked 10 minutes, I found Whale Mound（鯨塚）in Kagata Shrine. Whale Mound is located approximately 100 places all over Japan, but Shinagawa is the only one existing in Tokyo.





In 1798, because of the typhoon, 17 meter whale lost in the cove of Shinagawa was hunted by local fishermen. The whale became news, so even Shogun from Tokugawa family visited the whale in Hama Rikyu Park. The whale was sold, and the head bone was buried here, then the Whale Mound was built for commemoration.

Japanese people appreciated the stray whales as a god, and they made a monument, for the gift of nature. Whaling skill has been sophisticated in Japan, and all parts of Whale were used for their living.





Right next to this Whale Mound, there is a public art of whale with children's toys. Maybe some westerner may get confused why people appreciate whale as a god, and eat and pray at the same time. However, this is all related to the history of Japanese animism, or in other word, the absence of monotheism. The dividend of subject and object was imported to Japan at the time of Meiji restoration, but this dividend is still somewhat unclear in Japanese society, therefore the self and the nature is still not completely divided. Therefore, the whale is sometimes the object of worship, and sometimes the object of worship could be considered a gift of nature, so people eat this, with lots of appreciation for nature.

For some of the Japanese traditional people, the denial of whale hunting could mean the denial of their own tradition and religion. These people can get frantic by the criticism of non-Japanese people, since they do not have a word or media to explain their thought.

To explain own culture is challenging. However, it cannot be an excuse of the fact that most of the Japanese people did not make an enough effort to explain. On the other hand, many of the non-Japanese people did not have a patience to hear someone different, and accept the difference. As a person born in a fisherman's family in Japan and receive education in the U.S., I wanted to speak out a little on this issue.

I do not want to judge what is right or wrong, but I would like to share the information, and would like to think the possible future. To end this essay, I would like to quote my favorite prayer, which might have a universal meaning.

The Serenity Prayer
by Reinhold Niebuhr

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

PS: Do you know Godzilla is a mutant Kujira (whale in Japanese)? Whale get radiated by the U.S. nuclear test in Bikini Island, and the radiated whale (kujira) became Godzilla (Pronounced as Gojira, this is kind of anagram in Japanese).

Year 1936 at Marienbad - Lacan and Modernity

When I visited my Austrian curator friend Walter Seidl’s exhibition “Psychoanalysis” at Tokyo Wonder Site, I suddenly started to wonder why a philosopher Masato Goda intentionally wrote the part that the presentation of Jacque Lacan’s “Mirror Stage” was held in year 1936 in Marienbad. Then, I started to think that in the film “Last Year at Marienbad” by Alain Resnais, the word “Last Year” may refer the year “1936”.

The original name of Marienbad, a spa town in Czech, is Mariánské Lázně. The city became German speaking area between World War I and World War II, and the city had been called “Marienbad”. Therefore, the setting of the film “Last Year at Marienbad” supposed to be in this period.

In the film “Last Year at Marienbad”, truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. The screenplay may have been based on “The Invention of Morel”, a science fiction novel published in 1940 by an Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares, since the review of the French translated version of this book was written in 1953 by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the scriptwriter of the film.

As we can read in the novel “The Invention of Morel”, the metaphors of dream and mirror are repeated often, which also appears in the film. These metaphors create the characteristics of trick novel, and show fictions in fictions such as nest box.

When Jacque Lacan did the first analytic report of the “Mirror Phase” at the Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in Marienbad in 1936, Ernest Jones, the chairman and the Freud’s biographer, interrupted and ended Lacan's reporting. Lacan left the congress with anger, and it became his trauma for quarter century.

In the novel, the part of dreams show the symbolic phase of the story, which is almost such as a footnote. As story continues, these dreams started to create the dramatic impact, such as.

1. I was at the mental hospital.
2. At certain moment, I was the director of the hospital.

In the novel, the storyteller Morel’s “self” and the “other” became unstable, and it became similar to the one of “Mirror Phase”. In modernity, the self and the other is divided, therefore the topic of “love”, to be united with others, became the special topic. The Invention of Morel is the answer to this dividend as a novel, and the self, which is inside, was absorbed into outside, and only the outside continues to exist permanently.

In conclusion, I think Masato Goda metaphysically tried to show the challenge of Europe for overcoming of modernity, and this challenge was well curbed in the film, in the setting of Marienbad during World War I and World War II, where Europe reached the zenith of the contradiction of modernity, and lost its otherness.