Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the way how film director Ozu Yasujiro is being discussed in the contemporary critical discourses in Japan, in relation to his involvement with war and its representation in his films, which helps better understand the changing context of Japanese criticism on the director.

Paper long abstract:

60 years since his death, Ozu Yasujiro is still regarded as the Japanese film director whose oeuvre represents Japanese national cinema as well as the national sensitivity. In fact, studies and writings on the director in Japan are ever increasing in recent years, reflecting his on-going popularity and symbolic status as a cultural figure. This paper will investigate this phenomenon through the lens of critical discourses recently published in Japan. As the scope of the discourses is very wide, I will narrow my main focus on the discussion of Ozu’s relation with war.

Ozu is often referred to as having made no war films during his career, and there was a critical tendency to articulate his noncombat involvement to direct a propaganda film in Singapore. This began to change in the 2000s when new primary materials such as Ozu’s diaries, notes and photographs were published, notably by Tanaka Masasumi. A critical turn, however, came in 2011 with a book A Trace of Empire: Showa History of a Soldier, Ozu Yasujiro (帝国の残影―兵士・小津安二郎の昭和史) by Yonaha Jun, who, based on the director’s experience in Chinese front, re-interpreted his wartime and postwar films. This was followed by an increasing number of critical studies, using more unknown resources and detailed analyses.

This paper will examine how these recent publications are viewing and evaluating the relation of Ozu and war. The focus will be paid to new materials and arguments these writings illustrate to suggest a discursive formation being shaped around the contemporary Japanese critical field. Some of the examples include Henmi Yo’s IKUMINA/1937, which exceptionally interrogates Japan’s war responsibility problem and Katayama Morihide’s Japan Unfulfilled (見果てぬ日本), which, in contrast, places Ozu in a nationalistic context.

The results can not only help draw a current discursive map about Ozu and war in Japanese criticism, but also more exactly understand its meaning in historical context, which has always been changing since the early works by Sato Tadao and Hasumi Shigehiko. I also expect the conflicting points in the discourse can suggest new ways of interpreting war related representations in Ozu’s films.

Paper short abstract:

This essay examines Hiroshima-based artist, Goto Yasuka’s (b.1982), contemporary portraits as historical portals that encourage viewers to imagine Japanese war painters as they were active in the 1940s, thereby making it difficult to support the notion that the painters were only “being artists.”

Paper long abstract:

Long Story Short: Militarism and Japan’s Art Historical Present

Goto Yasuka, a Hiroshima-based artist, born in 1982, has created portraits of renowned Japanese artists such as Fujita Tsuguharu, Miyamoto Saburō, and Koiso Ryohei, who were active as war artists or military men in the Fifteen-Year War, raising the sensitive issue of war-time responsibility that many in Japan would rather evade. Over two hundred visual artists were sent to the front between 1938-1945, many of whom resumed their artistic lives after the war with ease. Retrospectives on these artists often exclude paintings done during the war (or re-situate the artists as unfortunate victims of the times), but I argue Goto’s portraits return us to these historical elisions, thereby raising questions about how the current rise in Japanese nationalism is built upon the refusal to accept responsibility for Japanese Imperialism and all its violent consequences. Her works are not concerned with determining the degree of complicity for each artist; on the contrary, her works illustrate the quotidian nature of each artist-soldier’s activities, how they shared time together, how they survived, and how they created. At the same time, these small, everyday acts of painting, smoking, and existing on colonized land were still very much a part of the Japan’s fascist movement and enabled and abetted the violence and oppression that characterized Japan’s Fifteen-year war. Goto’s contemporary portraits invite viewers to learn more about each artist’s individual stories, including, rather than erasing, their involvement with fascism. Set within the contemporary gallery space, the framed artworks ask us to be critical about how these artists are situated in the present. This essay examines Goto’s contemporary portraits as historical portals that encourage viewers to imagine Japanese war painters as they were active in the 1940s, thereby making it difficult to support the notion that the painters were only “being artists.” By extension, I argue, Goto’s portrayal of these artists asks viewers to reconsider the “passive” role of the population as a whole during the war, and perhaps edges some to consider what a “neutral” political position might be risking in Japan today.

Paper short abstract:

Presentation will be devoted to the topic of war in Japan's influential postwar manga/anime artist Shigeru Mizuki's (1922-2015) manga. The author will analyze Mizuki's approaches to the war and his message within current world context.

Paper long abstract:

Presentation will be devoted to the topic of war in Shigeru Mizuki's (1922-2015) manga. Japan's influential postwar manga/anime artist famous for his graphic narratives of yokai, has a facet of his artistic output dealing with the horrors of war: manga works "Hitler" (1971), "Japan and War" (1991) , "Shigeru Mizuki's Rabaul senki" (1994) and others.

Mizuki, who during the World War II, at the age of 21 was drafted into the army and sent to New Britain island in Papua New Guinea, experienced all horrors of war, lost his left arm in the explosion, after returning safely to Japan devoted a number of his works to the idea of pacifism and goodwill.

The presenter will look into what elements in Japan's cultural heritage inspired Mizuki Shigeru in his postwar narrative of peace (apart from his personal experience) and what artistic techniques he applied to express his rejection of war.

The author will analyze Mizuki's approaches to the war and his possible message to the readers within current world context.