National Amnesia:
Combating Ethno-Nationalism in Japan

National Amnesia: Combating Ethno-Nationalism in Japan is a digital curatorial research project created for the Fall 2020 graduate course, “Case Studies in Curatorial Activism” with Professor Grace Aneiza Ali in the Department of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

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Despite the 75 years that have passed since Imperial Japan’s surrender to the Allied Forces in 1945, the Japanese nation’s role in the Asia-Pacific War (and WWII) has been contested long into the 21st century. Framed either as a “war or aggression” or as a “mission of advancement,” the perspectives on Japan’s coercive expansions throughout the Asia Pacific have been subject to historical erasure both domestically and abroad, especially with regards to the nation’s Imperial war crimes and ongoing colonial legacy. These historical erasures have frequently been sanctioned by the authority of the Japanese state, put into practice through continuous governmental denial and refutation, compulsory national history education, and increasing occurrences of top-down censorship of media and the arts.

The objective of our curatorial project National Amnesia: Combating Ethno-Nationalism in Japan is thus to bring together six recent art exhibitions that have critically engaged with significant absences in national history as way to shed light on the condition of “national amnesia” that has been perpetuated within Japanese society.

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Japan’s dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has become increasingly nationalistic in the past few decades, contending that negative coverage of Japan’s past will lead to a lack of youth patriotism and pride in their nation. Especially under the extended leadership of recently resigned Prime Minister Shinzō Abe throughout the 2000s, the normalization of ultra-rightwing (uyoku) nationalist ideologies and the widespread myth of Japan’s ethnic homogeneity have proliferated in the public realm. From censorship and deliberate alterations made to the depictions of Japan’s actions in compulsory textbooks, to stringent restrictions placed upon media outlets, Japan’s colonial history and war crimes have been eliminated gradually from the nation’s archives and cultural memory.

Our project will highlight a disturbing trend in the past five years demonstrating that academic institutions and art museums have become the latest target of historical omission and control.

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Historical events that have been subject to national erasure include numerous cases of extreme violence and brutality against local populations that were committed by the Japanese Empire during the Asia Pacific War. Most disturbingly, this includes the dismissal and denial of the sexual enslavement of approximately 360,000 girls and women throughout Japan’s colonial territories (euphemistically referred to as “comfort women,” 1938-1945), the Nanjing Massacre (also known as the Rape of Nanjing, 1937), and the state-enforced mass suicides of Okinawan soldiers and civilians at the Battle of Okinawa (1945) by the Japanese Empire. Japan has also frequently omitted from history its colonial expansions into the territories of Taiwan, Korea, China (Manchuria), Philippines, Guam, Saipan, and the Dutch East Indies, as well as the lasting annexation and subjugation of Japan’s indigenous populations of the northern of island of Ezo (presently Hokkaido Prefecture) and the former Ryūkyū Kingdom (presently Okinawa Prefecture).

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Because Japan’s colonial expansions are intrinsically tied to transpacific migration and forced assimilation policies, many of Japan’s erased narratives are heavily linked with the marginalization of minority ethnic groups residing in Japan. These ‘revised’ historical narratives have thus given rise to an extremist form of chauvinistic ethno-nationalism within Japan. By erasing Japan’s colonial legacies in the Asia Pacific, the state continues to position Japan’s ethnic minorities as outsiders, perpetuating racism and xenophobia through public policies and through social norms. By assembling a collection of exhibitions that engaged with Japan’s national history, we hope to contribute to the work of the activists that are currently at the front lines battling racism and xenophobia within Japan. Even as ethno-nationalism is becoming more and more widespread, there has been a wave of politically engaged artists that are openly critical of the state in their art practices. We aim to place these practices into relation with one another as a way to create new lines of inquiry and underscore their bold efforts to combat national amnesia, while also highlighting the urgency of the need for socio-political activism in contemporary Japan.

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However, assembling exhibitions that specifically engage with these contested histories has not been an easy task. Japan’s domestic art system as it still exists today was only introduced in the late 19th century, modelled after national museums of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France; they became a key component of the nation’s efforts in establishing itself as a modernizing, ‘Western’ force to set itself apart from its neighboring Asian countries. Correlating with the increase of fascist militarism, these sites quickly became symbols of the country's rapid modernization and imperial glory. The colonial legacies of these foundations can still be witnessed today as institutions in Japan are beholden to the state, and are thus often restricted to apolitical themes lest they be subjected to censorship. Even today, many curators and institutions engage in proactive self-censorship so as not to attract unwelcome restrictions and cancelation of state funding.

For this reason, censorship is another main theme of our project of bringing attention to national amnesia; in fact, no less than three of our six projects have been subject to various forms of censorship by the Japanese state.

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Ambitions to downplay Japan’s role in colonization, war crimes, and internal ethnic assimilation policies have begun to seep out of its national borders in recent years. Under the current climate of Japanese nationalism, the swift silencing of histories pertaining to injustice have become widely scrutinized by the international community, particularly Japan’s public withdrawal of funding for projects engaging with the nation’s wrongdoings. Particularly seen in the arts, many exhibitions have fallen victim to a systematic shuttering of artworks that touch upon issues of Japan's national amnesia and ethno-nationalism.

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As such, our curatorial project explores the following six different cases of  activism against the erasure and suppression of the nation’s problematic past. “Loose Lips Save Ships” was a contested exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in 2015, in which questions of curatorial power in the face of censorship and historical revision entered the limelightin the Japanese art scene. “The construction of history is dedicated to the memories of the unnamed” and “Public archive” are exhibitions that both centered around marginalized histories‚ engaging respectively with the forgotten cultural history of the Ainu indigenous population in northern Japan, and a nationalized campaign to deny the existence of “comfort women” in Japan and around the world. “ 'Un-Freedom of Expression Show'…and After” and “Japan Unlimited” serve as poignant case studies showcasing the increasingly blatant censorship of politically engaged artworks by the Japanese government. The “Un-Freedom of Expression” exhibition was held as part of the Aichi Triennale in Japan while “Japan Unlimited” was held in Vienna, Austria, demonstrating the differences between censorship of such contents within Japan and abroad. Finally, the “Peace Learning Tour: Love and Guns” exhibition embodies a form of interactive curatorial activism through the personal accounts of local Okinawan residents, engaging robustly with the complexities of the U.S.-Japan-Okinawan geopolitical ties through the lens of political satire.

By tying together six exhibitions that may initially appear disparate and disjointed, we seek a curatorial path forward that renders visible absences in Japan’s national narrative. It is our hope that this curatorial project will allow both Japan's domestic audience and the international community to imagine a future that does not shy away from historical realities, no matter how harsh they may be.

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*please note that throughout this project Japanese names are written in the typical Japanese order (Last name, First name)