Stifled by freedom of expression: The “Statue of a Girl of Peace” and the legacy of colonialism and historical revisionism in Japan

Q2 Social Sciences

First Amendment Studies Pub Date : 2020-07-02 DOI:10.1080/21689725.2020.1837651

Soo-Hye Han

引用次数: 0

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay provides a closer look at the controversy over the shutdown of an art exhibit titled “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’” at the 2019 Aichi Triennale in Japan. While heated debates over freedom of expression ensued following its closure, larger structural issues underpinning the incident and the “Statue of a Girl of Peace,” an artwork symbolizing the victims of sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese military, were left unexamined by the media and the public. This paper takes issue with such absence and explicates how debates over free speech that fails to address colonial legacy, historical revisionism, and obstinate racism can sustain the suppression of the marginalized. This paper considers hypocritical deployment of free speech arguments that perpetuates the subjugation of racial minorities in Japan and concludes with a call for transnational coalitions to combat a growing tide of nationalism, historical revisionism, and misogyny in Japan and beyond.

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被言论自由扼杀:“和平少女像”与日本殖民主义和历史修正主义的遗产

这篇文章对一场名为“在言论自由之后?”的艺术展被关闭引发的争议进行了更深入的探讨。在2019年日本爱知三年展上。虽然关闭后围绕言论自由展开了激烈的争论，但围绕该事件的更大的结构性问题，以及象征日本帝国军慰安妇受害者的艺术品“和平少女像”，却没有受到媒体和公众的关注。本文对这种缺失提出了质疑，并解释了关于言论自由的辩论如何未能解决殖民遗产、历史修正主义和顽固的种族主义问题，从而维持对边缘群体的压制。本文认为，言论自由的论点是虚伪的，它使日本对少数民族的征服得以延续，并呼吁跨国联盟来对抗日本及其他地区日益高涨的民族主义、历史修正主义和厌女症。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

First Amendment Studies Social Sciences-Law

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期刊介绍： First Amendment Studies publishes original scholarship on all aspects of free speech and embraces the full range of critical, historical, empirical, and descriptive methodologies. First Amendment Studies welcomes scholarship addressing areas including but not limited to: • doctrinal analysis of international and national free speech law and legislation • rhetorical analysis of cases and judicial rhetoric • theoretical and cultural issues related to free speech • the role of free speech in a wide variety of contexts (e.g., organizations, popular culture, traditional and new media).