Socially engaged art in postcolonial Japan: an alternative view of contemporary Japanese art

Abstract

This study proposes an alternative view of contemporary Japanese art, which goes against the generally accepted discourse that it characteristically lacks a political edge. It examines how ‘socially engaged art’ practices of Japanese artists have tackled ‘postcolonial’ issues in Japan since the 1990s. Firstly, I analyse Japan's complicated postcolonial status to understand the nature of legacies of Japanese colonialism, which remained almost intact during the Cold War era, followed by three concrete case studies of how artists addressed those deeply contested legacies. The first case study is Takamine Tadasu's ‘Zainichi Series’, which is directly relevant to people called ‘zainichi’ Koreans and the historic and contemporary problems surrounding them. The second case study includes feminist artist Shimada Yoshiko's etchings and performance pieces, which explicitly dealt with the issue of ‘comfort women’, one of the most controversial legacies regarding sexuality and gender of wartime Japanese imperialism. The third and final case study presents the works by Yamashiro Chikako, an Okinawa-born video artist, who approached a geo-political agenda concerning the current situation of Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan, through art.