The construction of history is dedicated to the memories of the unnamed

“The construction of history is dedicated to the history of the unnamed” is the third installment of Hattori’s project to present the ACAC’s collections from an artist’s point of view. Carefully considering the contents and history of the original Keiko Kan museum, Fujii focused his exhibition on the rule and oppression of Japan’s indigenous northern communities by both the Japanese shogunate in the feudal ages and then by the national Empire during the modernization period. We decided to include this exhibition as a poignant example of curatorial activism that clearly centers absence as its driving force—Fujii reframes the recent closure of the folk museum itself as an extension of Japan’s colonial legacy, arranging the collection in such a way to bring the policies of forced assimilation and militant ‘Japanization’ that were enforced on the indigenous populations. Following the 1899 passage of the cunningly crafted “Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act,” all Ainu people were designated as ‘formerly’ indigenous, automatically amalgamating them as citizens under the Japanese Empire and effectively denying them the right to maintain any cultural, religious, and linguistic differences. In this way, even before the 20th century, Ainu histories have been all but erased from the national consciousness of the Japanese nation. In fact, it was not until almost a hundred years later in 1997 that the “Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act” was repealed and preservation of Ainu culture or history became part of any governmental policy in Japan—and not until as recently as 2019 that Ainu were recognized by the government as indigenous people (four years after Fujii directed this exhibition at ACAC).  

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Fujii’s exhibition at ACAC foregrounded the memories and histories of these communities that have been rendered invisible in Japan, not simply by displaying Ainu artifacts for the public to see, but rather by putting the collections into relation with the ACAC’s artifacts and archives that document the forced assimilation policies in the Aomori region. As such, he attempted to re-record the Ainu and Aomori region’s intertwined histories by setting up the collections into five specific stages, each designed to resemble movie sets scattered with various silent objects that Fujii asserts are able to ‘speak’ and ‘share histories’ with audiences. Each scene is arranged so that the hierarchy of materials is clear, allowing audiences to witness the unequal relations between Ainu materials and Japanese materials that at first glance appear to have similar cultural value. By setting each section like a movie set, Fujii literally worked to  ‘construct’ a new historical narrative that resists the national amnesia and generational trauma that the Ainu community has experienced over hundreds of years of oppression. As such, Fujii engaged with an exceedingly overlooked part of Japan’s internal history of marginalization, one that is usually eclipsed by Japan’s colonial expansions in the Asia Pacific outside its national borders —this exhibition focuses on Japan’s national policy of Ainu elimination to recuperate this narrative as a colonial history in and of itself.

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ARTiT Exhibition Review (JP)

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Fujii Awarded 2017 Nissan Art Award Grand Prix

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