Volume 6 | Issue 3 | Article ID 2700 | Mar 03, 2008 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Into the Atomic Sunshine: Shinya Watanabe's New York and Tokyo Exhibition on Post-War Art Under Article 9 Jean Miyake Downey, Shinya Watanabe Into the Atomic Sunshine: ShinyaConstitution Watanabe’s New York and Tokyo Exhibition on Post-War Art Under Article 9 For sixty years, Article 9, the Japanese Shinya Watanabe talks with Jean Downey Constitution’s Peace Clause, has played a critical role in Japanese politics, in US-Japan relations, and may have served as a brake on nuclear arms proliferation in East Asia. The English-language media, however, has paid scant attention to the issue, and most Americans have never heard of it. Shinya Watanabe sought to heighten American awareness on these issues by bringing ”Into the Atomic Sunshine: Post-War Art under Japanese Peace Constitution Article 9,” an art exhibition that included two artists censored in Japan, to the Puffin Room Gallery, in the SoHo district of Postwar Japanese Art under Peace Constitution Manhattan, in January and February 2008. Article 9 The Japanese-born, New York City-based curator might easily be typecast as a spiky- haired, young Japanese interested only in The exhibit was in Tokyo from August 6-24, manga and hip clothing, but he is, instead, an 2008. An exhibit is also planned for Okinawa in intellectual deeply engaged with the world. The 2009. impetus behind his exhibitions goes back to a life-transformative period at the age of twenty, while an economics student at Senshu University. When Watanabe traveled "Aspiring sincerely to an international peace throughout Asia on holiday, many elder people based on justice and order, the Japanese people he met invited him for meals, and then began forever renounce war as a sovereign right of talking to him about their traumatic the nation and the threat or use of force as a experiences under Japanese colonial rule and means of settling international disputes. (2) In war. Becoming aware of history he had not order to accomplish the aim of the preceding learned in his Japanese high school, he began paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as to focus on the relationships between other war potential, will never be maintained. international economics and war, and the The right of belligerency of the state will not be effects of European modernism on Asia, recognized."　Article 9, Japaneseespecially as reflected in artistic expression. 1 6 | 3 | 0 APJ | JF After graduation, he spent a year studying involvement of their countries in perpetual war, economics at the University of Illinois, and then and their desire for an alternative international received an MA in Visual Art Administration order, resonated with issues that concern from New York University. millions of people, not only in Japan, but also around the globe. As a curator, he has committed to exploring critical public issues, especially the historical These are not new issues, of course. Ordinary relationships among nation-building,citizens in Japan, particularly in Okinawa, have militarism, colonialism, and war, and tograppled with the consequences of the U.S. exploring the possibilities of a more peaceful military presence in Asia and the Pacific from world order. His master’s thesis examined the the start of the Cold War, when the U.S. first influence of nation states on art, looking at sought to eliminate Article 9. When unindicted, Yugoslavia after the collapse of the USSR and Class-A war criminal Kishi Nobusuke became became his first exhibition, “Another Expo: prime minister with American support in 1957, Beyond the Nation-State,” which opened in he vowed to abolish Article 9. Yet popular Japan on August 15, 2005, the sixtiethresistance to this and subsequent attacks on anniversary of the end of World War II. Article 9 kept the Constitution intact even as Japan expanded its military power within the I met Watanabe at the Puffin Room, a socially framework of U.S. hegemony. In 2006, Prime engaged public art space overflowing with Minister Abe Shinzo, as if resurrecting the half- historical and contemporary reminders of the century-old promise of Kishi, his grandfather, pervasiveness of war in the twentieth and announced he would overturn Japan's Peace twenty-first centuries. Prior to “Into the Atomic Constitution within five to six years. Before Sunshine," the gallery exhibited Dorothea being voted out of office, he spearheaded Lange’s photographs of the Japanese American legislation that would lay the groundwork to incarceration from Linda Gordon’s and Gary revise the constitution. Thus far, however, Okihiro’s book, Impounded. “Shock and Awed,” remilitarization has proceeded within the Puffin’s permanent exhibition of Iraqi children framework of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty crayon depictions of “Operation Iraqiwithout constitutional revision. The Japanese Freedom,” was concurrently displayed on the military budget, at $41.1 billion, is presently lower-level gallery. the sixth largest in the world, and the Japanese government pays most of the costs of the After a tour of the exhibition, Watanabe and I ninety-one U.S. military bases in Japan, while continued our conversation at the home of New Japan’s own Self-Defense Forces number York-based Greek artist, Lydia Venieri, whose 240,000. In 1992, legislators authorized SDF "No Evil” series will be exhibited in Tokyo this participation in UN peacekeeping missions, and spring. Her huge photographs on satin depict in 2004, the government unconstitutionally the eyes of dolls reflecting not playroom deployed six hundred troops to Iraq as scenes, but instead images of state-perpetrated “peacekeepers” while refueling U.S. and allied global violence. Under their disturbing gaze, ships in the Persian Gulf. we talked with a Greek guest about similarities between Japan and Greece – their mythologies, Detractors in both Japan and the United States their landscapes of mountains and sea, and argue that Article 9 was a postwar American past CIA manipulation of their politicalcreation imposed upon Japan, an issue that systems. The backdrops of our dialogue, from remains controversial. What is certain, the Puffin Room to the artist’s loft, where however, is that Article 9 was passionately transnational artists spoke of U.S. military embraced and safeguarded by Japanese people, 2 6 | 3 | 0 APJ | JF who have often been criticized for notworldwide. In May 2008, the “Global Article 9 confronting Second World War history. Has Conference to Abolish War” will convene in their support for Article 9 been a quiet, Tokyo. unmovable statement unheard by most Americans and others who are unaware of the Understandably, Japanese artists have critically Japanese Constitution's Peace Clause? addressed issues of war and peace throughout the postwar period. In the 1990’s, several Although its letter and spirit have been artists were censored in Japan because their stretched over six decades, Article 9 and unflinching artistic criticisms of imperial Japanese civil society’s support for its pacifistic principles continue to check the government’s Japan’s wartime record raised the ire of right- militaristic ambitions. Article 9 stands in the wing groups that used violent intimidation way of the export of weapons, the possession, tactics against the galleries, museums and production and import of nuclear weapons (the communities that sought to present the artists three non-nuclear principles), and theand their work. In order to work without deployment of the SDF abroad for active inhibition, some artists, including Berlin-based combat. To underscore the last point,Yoshiko Shimada, moved abroad. Others, such supporters repeat that Japanese troops have as Oura Nobuyuki, featured in the “Into the not killed a single person overseas since the Atomic Sunshine” exhibition, had to change Second World War, in sharp contrast to the careers. In 1995, Yanagi Yukinori became the succession of Japanese wars over the previous first fine artist to specifically address Article 9. half century. Watanabe included his installation, “The In response to the heightened attacks on Forbidden Box,” in the “Into the Atomic Article 9 that began under Abe’s predecessor, Sunshine exhibition” as a tribute to his Koizumi Junichiro, democratic activists, across groundbreaking and provocative work. diverse sectors of Japanese society, have mobilized in recent years. In 2004, eminent The content of the other late twentieth and Japanese scholars and writers, including early twenty-first century artworks Watanabe novelist and activist Oda Makoto, philosopher selected for this show also reverberate images Tsurumi Shunsuke, and Nobel laureate Oe of national identity, political theater, Kenzaburo foundedThe Article Nine imperialism, war, dehumanized “Others,” and Association (Kyujo no Kai). American filmmaker the universal yearning for peace. Watanabe John Junkerman, participant in the “Into the chose not only Japanese but also American, Atomic Sunshine” discussion platform and European, and Latino artists, most with director of the 2005Japan’s “ Peace transnational backgrounds, who combine issues Constitution,” noted that popularization of that may seem disparate at first glance. These Article 9 has begun to spread, as the result of artists confront European, American, and spontaneous grassroots support inside and Japanese colonialism, wartime atrocities, the outside of Japan. (See a Japan Focus article on atomic bombings, and Okinawa’s precarious the subject.) In 2005, the Peace Boat, a Japanese peace, human rights, andhistory as a military colony under two empires. environmental NGO, and the Japanese Lawyers Many of their works juxtapose and layer International Solidarity Association (JALISA) imagery to reflect historical interlinkages that organized the Global Article 9 Campaign, now have become obscured over time and mirror supported by over sixty Japanese civil society the complex nature of individual and collective organizations, and hundreds of NGOsconsciousness. 3 6 | 3 | 0 APJ | JF during the Spanish Inquisition, the Third Reich, and the rule of Chinese statesman Li Si.