Manga-ka Kei Ishizaka's Protest

The Mainichi is reporting that manga-ka Kei Ishizaka (石坂啓, b. 1956) has leveled criticism at the Japanese government for ‘wasting’ 11.7 billion yen of taxpayers money on a new arts facility that will display anime and manga art. Ishikaza won the prestigious Grand Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival in 1999 or her manga I’m home (アイムホーム) which was adapted into a live action drama by the NHK in 2004 starring Saburo Tokito (時任三郎) and Misako Konno (紺野美沙子). The Aichi-born manga-ka claimed that manga fans would not appreciate original drawings displayed in frames and that she was so ashamed by the project that she would return her 1999 award and ask that the facility not display her works there.

To a certain extent I do agree with Ishikaza. Art in Japan is so under-funded compared to other developed countries, it would be a shame if 11.7 billion yen were just being spent on a museum rather than towards grants for nurturing the talents of both up-and-coming and established artists who have to scramble for funding or take commercial jobs in order to make a meager living. On the other hand, I disagree with Ishikaza’s statement about manga lovers not being able to appreciate original drawings. While living in Tokyo I went to exhibitions of manga and animation artists and found them phenomenally inspiring. In fact, a very small gallery exhibition by Tomoyasu Murata is what inspired me to focus this blog on Japanese visual culture and the book I am writing about Japanese art animation. An exhibition about the life and art of Osamu Tezuka that I saw at the Showa-kan was also a unique experience. Original art has, in the words of Walter Benjamin, an aura about it that reprints cannot quite capture.

The articles that I have tracked down on this statement by Ishizaka do not give the official name of this new ‘facility’, so it is also not clear to me if it will just me a museum or also a place for artists to meet or work. If anyone knows any more details of this project, do let me know.

Tabaimo at Moderna Museet

Earlier this year (31 Jan – 19 April), installations by Tabaimo (束芋) were featured at the Moderna Museet on Skeppsholmen Island in central Stockholm, Sweden. The exhibit was curated by Lena Essling.

The event included a screening on February 5th of films by Keiichi Tanaami and Shuji Terayama that were chosen by Tabaimo. A summary of the event can be found on the Moderna Museet’s website here. They also posted a video of an interview with Tabaimo about her art. Her views on animation and spectatorship are quite fascinating so I’ve provided a transcript (with some minor grammar revisions) of the English subtitles below.

In this interview with Ulf Eriksson, Tabaimo discusses in depth the three installations used in the exhibition: public conVENience (her contribution to Tokyo Loop which she has transformed into an installation/2006), dolefullhouse (2007) and midnight sea (2006/2008). Tabaimo seems to do a combination of careful planning (researching locations) and letting her art evolve as she works. The latter of which really surprised me as her films seem so meticulously planned and yet she claims to have a working method as fluid as the sea that inspires her.

Interview transcript:

By connecting [a] series of drawings, I can express things in a way [that] a single image could never convey. I was with this aspiration to achieve a greater impact [that] I embarked on animation. Viewers need to be active and participate in my installations. Even if approaching the piece creates a sense of discomfort. I create situations that make viewers feel uneasy and participate more actively.

I try to capture the images and themes that come to me while I work. Later all these images are integrated into a whole, the piece itself. Hopefully, that’s what creates magic. . . that images evolve that I hadn’t even pictured beforehand. That’s my creative process: not being able to predict the outcome. Hopefully, the results will even surprise me.


[re: public conVENience, 2006]

The interesting thing about public lavatories [is] how your privacy is maintained only by thin walls between the stalls. That’s why I chose the setting, in spite of its dark connotations. During the research phase, I videotaped public toilets and collected lots of footage from typical lavatory environments in order to create this piece. I let the lavatory be a stage. Then I thought about what might happen, such as a door swinging open. . . someone fixing their hair, or washing their hands. Then I created characters to populate the space. Then I leave them on their own. I have no idea what they will do. I simply follow their leads.

A public lavatory at a park is generally something you want to avoid. they aren’t usually very clean. Even though they are meant for public use, they are often fairly sleazy. Lots of things happen in lavatories. People like to gossip there. But there are also men who like to take pictures of women in secret. Most anything can happen. Crimes can be committed, while extremely commonplace activities also take place [there].

There is an interesting similarity between public lavatories and the internet. People have always scribbled things on the walls of the stalls. Nowadays people post similar messages on internet sites and bulletin boards. In both forums, generally anonymous authors direct their messages to a faceless crowd. The same anonymity exists. So the lavatory is a metaphor for this kind of internet communication.


[re: dolefullhouse, 2007]

In “dolefullhouse” it’s important to be observant. The question of whose hands are involved is very important. “Dolefullhouse” resembles a Western-style dollhouse. But you can sense that another, real, house encompasses this ideal miniature. A world exists on the outside. I want to create layers of worlds. The main thing in this piece is how viewers see themselves in relation to what’s going on. Could it be their own hands moving the furniture? Or do they identify with the dolls inhabiting the house? Or do they view the house from above, as pure spectators?

In this piece, it’s important which world you would choose to inhabit. You will also experience the piece differently depending on where you are in the room. I don’t determine who’s who or who does what. I want people to have a regular-sized dollhouse in mind when they look at the large dollhouse projected in front of them. That will cause different sensations depending on how close they are to “dolefullhouse”.


[re: midnight sea, 2006/2008]

This piece is called “midnight sea.” The dark sea at midnight both frightens and fascinates me. It’s like the very darkness of the water is pulling me under. I’m not entirely sure what creatures are moving under the surface, but I tried to create the sense of hairs passing inside the body. I tried to follow the movement of these hairs under the skin. The Japanese word for wave also means wrinkle, and the shifting surface is like the skin of an elderly person. Under the surface you can see things, they’re actually organs or bones. I wanted to create a sense of a foreign object moving inside a body.

This is something very abstract that I don’t really understand myself. As I mentioned earlier, about the way I like to work, I want to create something I cannot predict beforehand. “Midnight sea” is one of the pieces that represents this concept the most. The ancient tradition of a connection between the human body and water is deeply imbedded in my consciousness.

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT TABAIMO, GO TO HER OFFICIAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE REPRESENTATIVE: JAMES COHAN GALLERY. YOU CAN FIND INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS, AND NEWS ABOUT UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS THERE.

If any of my readers has attended an exhibition by Tabaimo, I would love to hear about the first hand experience either in my comments or by e-mail. I have only seen her work on video or in photographs/prints.

Tokyo Loop

Animation

Écrans d'asie

Martin Vieillot of EigaGoGo sent me a little note last week telling me about the debut of a new free online magazine dedicated to Asian film. If you can read French, I highly recommend that you take a peek at Écrans d’asie (Screens of Asia) put together by Damien Pacciellieri and his small band of collaborators: Erwin Cadoret, Christophe Falin, Nolwenn Leminez, Li Xin, and Martin Vieillot.

The debut edition, with its beautiful image quality, was timed to coincide with the Cannes film festival which saw six of the twenty films competing for the top prize coming from Asia. Palme d’or contenders included the thriller Vengeance by Johnnie To (Hong Kong), the vampire movie Thirst by Park Chan Wook (South Korea), romantic tragedy Spring Fever by Lou Ye (China), graphic crime film Kinatay by Brillante Mendoza (Philippines), and a movie about a Taiwanese director trying to make a film in Paris called Visage by Tsai Ming-Liang (Taiwan). Mendoza ended up winning the best director award, while Park Chan Wook won a jury prize. Many other Asian films were represented in other categories, such as Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film Air Doll (Kūki ningyō) which screened in the Un Certain Regard programme.


In the preamble to the magazine, Pacciellieri writes of the need for more film criticism of the wealth of new films coming from the east. A case in point might be the special section the magazine dedicated to Ozu’s aesthetics by Nolwenn Leminez. The article trots out the old arguments about Ozu’s ‘zen aesthetics’ and being ‘the most Japanese’ of all directors – overly simplified concepts in desperate need of debunking once and for all. Fortunately, Leminez counterbalances these views with Japanese critics who argue that Ozu has been exoticized by Western critics. Yoichi Umemoto places the blame squarely on Donald Richie’s shoulders. While Richie deserves much praise for bringing the splendor of Japanese cinema to a wider audience outside of Japan, at the same time he and Noel Burch have a lot to answer for when it comes to the ‘othering’ of Ozu. As Leminez concludes, much of western criticism of Ozu has taken a much too narrow view of his art. Far from being the most ‘Japanese’ of directors, in my own personal opinion the reason for Ozu’s continued renown as a film director is the universality of his themes.


The debut edition of Écrans d’asie also includes a fascinating piece on the role of cats in Japanese animation by Martin Viellot (screencap above) as well as reviews of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Sitll Walking, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, and Miyazaki’s Ponyo by Damien Pacciellieri. Not to mention, of course, pages and pages of articles and reviews of films from across the rest of Asia including the Middle East. This magazine is clearly a labour of love and I look forward to reading future editions. For more information, check out their Facebook Group.

Tokyo Sonata

Japanese Movie

Still Walking (Aruitemo Aruitemo) (English Subtitles)

Japanese Movie