Paper short abstract:

This presentation examines Yamashiro Chikako’s 2009 video dealing with the memory of the Battle of Okinawa. Comparing this work to the anti-war creative practice of Shikoku Gorō, the paper reflects on the (im)possibility of passing down unspeakable war memories to younger generations through art.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation reflects on the (im)possibility of preserving and passing down to younger generations the unspeakable memory and lived experience of atrocities and crimes perpetrated during WWII through visual arts practice. To illustrate and theorize on this (im)possibility I propose a comparative study of Okinawa-born video and performance artist Yamashiro Chikako’s video piece Your Voice Come Out Through My Throat (2009) and a selection of Hiroshima-related works by Shikoku Gorō (1924-2014). Yamashiro’s single-channel video deals with the memory of the Battle of Okinawa (Okinawasen) (April 1-June 21, 1945), the last major battle of WWII. The video was produced through collaboration with an elderly Okinawan survivor of the battle whose mother and sister committed suicide to avoid capture by the invading American troops. Shikoku Gorō was a visual artist, poet, essayist, and anti-war and anti-nuclear activist who spent three and a half years after the war as a POW in a Siberian internment camp and lost his younger brother due to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. After the war he fought through his art and activism against the legacies of war and imperialism, which produced inhumane atrocities such as the Holocaust and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The question of the (im)possibility of narrating or representing the memories of these tragedies in literature, film and the visual arts has been debated in countless scholarly and popular writings. Building on the reflections of Dominick LaCapra, Jacques Rancière, Lisa Yoneyama, and Yuko Shibata, I would like to explore the potential of expressing indescribable war experiences and traumatic memories in Yamashiro’s Your Voice Come Out Through My Throat and other videos as well as in Shikoku’s postwar creative practice. While the respective approach and media used by the two artists differ considerably from one another, their work at once queries and articulates in powerful ways the visual arts’ role in and capacity for passing down unspeakable war memories and traumas to younger generations and to the future.