When the darkness is set free: woodcut and Ueno Makoto's palm-sized series The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki
2011; Routledge; Volume: 13; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14649373.2012.636876
ISSN1469-8447
Autores Tópico(s)Intelligence, Security, War Strategy
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements The Japanese version of this essay originally appeared in a special issue of Gendai Shisō, titled ‘Rethinking the Nuclear’ (August 2003). At that time of course, I never imagined the March 11th nuclear disaster and the increasing number of hibakusha. Now, such a shameful thing has come to pass thanks to the workings of Japanese ruling power. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Justin Jesty, an expert on the history of art movements in postwar Japan, for translation, Ueno Shu, son of Ueno Makoto, for his courtesy in letting me use his father's works, the Sakima Art Museum for visual materials, and Ikegami Yoshihiko, former chief editor of Gendai Shisō, for their support. Ueno Makoto's works are held at the Hito Museum's Ueno Makoto Print Gallery in Nagano's Nakajima township, at Okinawa's Sakima Art Museum located in Ginowan City, and at the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura. I would like to thank Ueno Shu who graciously allowed me to reproduce the works and Mizusawa Makoto, curator at the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Art who taught me about Ueno's materials and works. I would not have been able to complete this work without conversations with Machida Tadaaki. I was able to approach the world of art thanks to his deep passion for prints as a popular art. I give him my thanks. Whatever faults or mistakes there may be in the current piece are all my own. Notes See Mizusawa Citation(1998) and Kanagawa Museum of Modern Art (Citation1998). The account of Ueno Makoto's life here is based on the timeline included in Ueno Shu (Citation1981), supplemented by consideration of the conditions surrounding particular works. Tsuda Seifū (1880–1978), together with Arishima Ikuma and Fujishima Takeji, organized the Nika-kai (Second Section Society) in 1914 in reaction to the Kanten (Official Salon). Among his works from the 1930s are ‘The Bourgeoisie Diet and People's Life’ (1931), ‘Whirlwind and Surge Waves’ (1932), and ‘Victims (Torture)’ (1933). According to Tsuda's recollection, in July 1933 he was arrested for being involved with Kawakami Hajime, while in the process of producing ‘Victims (Torture)’. After searching his house the police confiscated ‘The Bourgeoisie Diet and People's Life’. He had been able to hide ‘Victims (Torture)’ just before they stormed in. Today ‘Victims (Torture)’ and the sketches for ‘The Bourgeoisie Diet and People's Life’ are both held at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. See Tsuda Citation(1963) and National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo (Citation1989). The direct motivation for making ‘Victims (Torture)’ was Kobayashi Takiji's death under police torture, but the figure of the youth tied up and hung upside down, dripping blood and gore is probably best understood more broadly as a type distilled from the experience of youth around 1933. In his autobiography, Tsuda relates that following his arrest in July 1933 he himself was not tortured, but he witnessed first-hand the torture of students, workers and Korean nationals, and registers his feelings of goodwill towards them. All of these tanka poems come from ‘On the sickbed, 1979-’, housed in the Ueno Makoto collection at the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Art. Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), born in Königsberg, Germany is a major female print artist who produced many works that depict women and children's suffering in the midst of war and poverty, including the Weavers cycle and Peasant War cycle. There are numerous collections of her works. Notable collections in Japanese include Kollwitz Citation(1970) and Tama Citation(1992). For diaries and correspondences, Kollwitz Citation(2003), the first edition of which was published in Citation1953 as Don't Grain Our Seeds: Diary and Letters of Käthe Kollwitz. Studies of her include Shinkai Citation(1950), Kerns Citation(1976) and Wakakuwa Citation(1993). According to Ueno's recollection, he first learned of Kollwitz's work through a reference given him by Liu Xian. But according to Mizusawa Tsutomu's analysis Ueno would have had the chance to encounter Kollwitz's work before his meeting Liu Xian in 1936, as many of Kollwitz's works were shared among young artists at the time. The author's research corroborates Mizusawa's analysis: the photograph attached to one of the two Kollwitz collections made by Ueno and kept at in the Ueno Makoto collection at the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Art, depicts what is thought to be a German edition of Kollwitz's work already in Japan, not the collection edited by Lu Xun that Liu Xian referred him to. According to Machida Tadaaki's recollection, Ueno Makoto kept a copy of ‘Sharpening the Scythe’ hanging in his studio his entire life. Interview with author, February 2003, Tokyo. On Liu Xian's life and works, see Lu Xun Research Monthly (Citation1990) and Liu Xian's obituary in People's Daily (Citation1990). On Lu Xun's theory of art, see Zhang (Citation1975–1976). On the prints movement, see Uchiyama and Nara (Citation1981). See Uchiyama and Nara (1981: 260–278) and Wataru Citation(1936). The photographs taken by Ueno and Liu Xian at the time are blurred and not taken from straight on, but parts of the works can be made out (Ueno Shu 1981: 215). Noma Hiroshi's analysis as carried in NHK Educational TV (Citation1981). To introduce the movement, see Takeyama and Iida (Citation2000), and a brief quote from Aoki (Citation2001: 59): The print movement around 1950 could also be considered a social movement in its appeal for a solution to war issues and the improvement of living conditions. It drew from the Chinese woodcut movement as led by Lu Xun and the proletarian movement in the arts that developed against the background of increasing circulation of socialist thought in Japan in the 1930s. It was formed by the artists Suzuki Kenji, Nii Hiroharu, Iino Nobuya, Takidaira Jirō, Ono Yoshishige and Ueno Makoto who lived in the prefectures of Tochigi and Ibaraki in the northern Kanto area. Kitaoka Fumio, who had returned to Japan from Manchuria at the end of the war and had been inspired by the Chinese woodcut movement, worked to produce a movement with a similar political tendency in Japan. … A similar approach to print art was later pursued as reportage art in the late 1950s, in a series on the Sakuma Dam by Toneyama Kōjin and the trial surrounding the Matsukawa Incident by Yamashita Kikuji. On the travelling exhibitions of Maruki Iri and Toshi's Hiroshima Panels, see Kozawa Citation(2002). The Niigata exhibitions which Ueno was involved with were the beginning of the paintings' second tour. In the wake of the Bikini tragedy, on the pages of the journal of the Japan Woodcut Movement, The Japanese Prints News (Machida Tadaaki personal collection of materials related to Ueno Makoto, and Mitsui Hisao materials at the Machida Museum of Print Art), evidence of print artists' involvement with the movement to abolish nuclear weapons appears in a number of forms: commentaries on works by members of workplace circles, calls for participation in a Nuclear Weapons Exhibit, a proposal to start a cycle of works on the hydrogen bomb, works to coordinate with the First International Meeting for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, and production of nuclear disarmament posters for labor unions and the like. Ueno Makoto, ‘Atomic Bombed Nagasaki and Me’ (1962) (Machida Tadaaki personal collection of materials related to Ueno Makoto and Ueno Makoto materials at the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Art ). This four page, B5-size piece of writing had neither a title nor page numbers on it, suggesting that it was a pamphlet distributed at one of Ueno's exhibitions around 1962. It is also possible that Ueno turned The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki into a collection of postcards, and that this explanatory pamphlet was included with them when they were sold at independent exhibitions and other gatherings around the country. Strategic bombing at the end of the war was not only a strategy of US forces. It is an aspect to the relationship between war and people, and is new to the 20th century, heralded by the Japanese bombing of Chongqing and the German bombing of Guernica (Maeda Citation1988). One of Ueno's research notebooks from around 1950 makes reference to Latin America and has reproductions of Mexican prints and murals. More consideration of Ueno's understanding of world popular culture is needed. This point came up in conversation with Higashi Takuma. Korean victims of the atomic bombings were the lowest in the colonial hierarchy of the Japanese empire and for that reason shed the deepest light on the contradictions at the end of the Second World War with the dropping of the atomic bombs (People's Coalition for Hibakusha Concerns in Korea 1988; Nagasaki People's Group for Human Rights of Korean Residents in Japan Citation1989). Author interview with Machida Tadaaki, February 2003, Tokyo. Here I will quote from Noma Hiroshi's introduction to The Complete Collection of Prints by Ueno Makoto: What is it to have survived? Ueno Makoto continues to seek, continues to etch, continues to thrust the question upon me. Within him there are countless answers, answers not yet answers, questions, more questions, and then more answers. Ueno has stood before this riddle which is so difficult to grasp. He couldn't refuse to stand there. He is a person who could do nothing but continue to pose questions and search for their answers in his own line and color. He is someone who drove himself further and further, but never lost sight of himself, knowing all along, from the base of his being, that he was standing there. (Ueno Shu 1981: 9) Additional informationNotes on contributorsWakabayashi Chiyo (Translated by Justin JESTY) Contact address: Okinawa University, 555 Kokuba, Naha, Okinawa, 902-8521 Japan Translator's biography Justin Jesty has a PhD from the University of Chicago and researches modern Japanese culture. Contact address: 6409 57th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98115, USA
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