The Stakes of Exposure: Anxious Bodies in Postwar Japanese Art

313 Pages·2017·23.9 MB·English

by  Namiko Kunimoto

T H E S T A K E S
EXPOSURE
of

T H E S T A K E S
E X P O S U R E
of
••••••••••••••••••
Anxious Bodies in P ostwar Japanese Art
NAMIKO KUNIMO TO
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
Every effort was made to obtain permission to reproduce material in this book. If any
proper acknowledgment has not been included here, we encourage copyright holders
to notify the publisher.
Illustrations in this book were funded in part by a grant from the
Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award of the College Art Association.
Chapter 3 is an adaptation of “Tanaka Atsuko’s Electric Dress and the Circuits of
Subjectivity,” The Art Bulletin 95, no. 3 (September 2013): 465– 83, reprinted by
permission of the College Art Association, www.collegeart.org. Chapter 4 appeared in
earlier versions as “Shiraga Kazuo: The Hero and Concrete Violence,” Art History 36,
no. 1 (February 2013): 154– 79, reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons; and in
“Shiraga Kazuo: The Buddhist Hero,” in Shiraga/Motonaga: Between Action and the
Unknown, Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas and New Haven: Dallas Museum of Art and
Yale University Press, 2015), 74– 79, copyright Dallas Museum of Art; first published
in Between Action and the Unknown: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Sadamasa Motonaga,
Dallas Museum of Art, 2015.
Copyright 2017 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kunimoto, Namiko, 1974– author.
Title: The stakes of exposure : anxious bodies in postwar Japanese art / Namiko Kunimoto.
Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046647 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0095-3 (hc)
| ISBN 978-1-5179-0096-0 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Art and society—Japan—History—20th century. | Art—Political aspects—
Japan—History—20th century. | Human beings in art. | Sex role in art. | Katsura, Yuki, 1913–
1991—Criticism and interpretation. | Nakamura, Hiroshi, 1932—Criticism and interpretation. |
Tanaka, Atsuko, 1932–2005—Criticism and interpretation. | Shiraga, Kazuo, 1924–2008—
Criticism and interpretation.
Classification: LCC N72.S6 K843 2017 (print) | DDC 701/.03—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046647
To Max and Kazuo Jasper
•••

Contents
•
List of Illustrations ix
•
Note on Translations and Names xv
•
Introduction: Gendered Bodies and the Minamata Disaster 1
1 •
Katsura Yuki’s Bodies of Resistance 21
2 •
Nakamura Hiroshi and the Politics of Embodiment 67
3 •
Tanaka Atsuko and the Circuits of Subjectivity 113
4 •
Heroic Violence in the Art of Shiraga Kazuo 147
•
Conclusion: Thresholds of Exposure 183
•
Acknowledgments 197
•
Notes 201
•
Bibliography 239
•
Index 257

List of Illustrations
•
FIGURE I.1. Kuwabara Shisei, Ikeru ningyō (A Living Doll), circa 1962 1
•
FIGURE I.2. Kuwabara Shisei, Ikeru ningyō (A Living Doll), circa 1962 1
FIGURE I.3. W. Eugene Smith, Takako Isayama, a Congenital Minamata Disease Patient,
•
from the series Minamata: Life— Sacred and Profane, 1972 3
FIGURE I.4. “Eiyō shōgai mo wazawai: Machijū ga noirōze gimi” (Minamata strange
disease: Is manganese the cause?), Kumamoto Nichinichi Shinbun, February
•
14, 1957 6
FIGURE I.5. “‘Ikeru ningyō’ shōjo— yonenkan kaeranu ishiki” (Girl is a living doll:
•
Unconscious for four years), Asahi Shinbun, April 22, 1960 8
FIGURE I.6. Sugiura Yukio, Beiei tōhō tsuihō (Purging One’s Head of Anglo- Americanism),
•
from Manga, 1942 9
•
FIGURE I.7. Sugiura Yukio, Keshō (Makeup), from Manga, 1943 10
FIGURE I.8. “Akarui seihakuji Minamata” (Bright, mentally disabled in Minamata),
•
Asahi Shinbun (Kumamoto edition), June 9, 1958 11
•
FIGURE 1.1. Katsura Yuki, Ningen I (Human I), 1938 25
•
FIGURE 1.2. Katsura Yuki, Ningen II (Human II), 1938 26
FIGURE 1.3. Hasegawa Haruko, Nakada Kikuyo (Yoshie), Katsura Yukiko, and others,
Daitōasen kōkoku fujo kaidō no zu (The Painting of All Laboring Women in the
•
Empire during the Great East Asian War, Fall), 1944 28
FIGURE 1.4. Hasegawa Haruko, Nakada Kikuyo (Yoshie), Katsura Yukiko, and others,
Daitōasen kōkoku fujo kaidō no zu (The Painting of All Laboring Women in the
•
Empire during the Great East Asian War, Spring and Winter), 1944 28
•
FIGURE 1.5. Katsura Yuki, Enshū o oete (After Maneuvers), postcard, 1943 30
ix