Godzilla’s grandchildren
In Japan there is no kudos in going to jail for your art.1
Bending the rules, let alone breaking them, is largely taboo.
That was one reason Toshinori Mizuno was terrified as he
worked undercover at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear-power4
plant, trying to get the shot that shows him in front of the
mangled third reactor holding up a referee’s red card. He was
also terrified of the radiation, which registered its highest7
reading where he took the photograph. The only reason he did
not arouse suspicion, he says, is because he was in regulation
radiation kit. And in Japan people rarely challenge a man in10
uniform.
Mr. Mizuno is part of ChimPom, a six-person
collective of largely unschooled artists who have spent a lot of13
time getting into tight spots since the disaster, and are
engagingly thoughtful about the results.
It is easy to dismiss ChimPom’s work as a publicity16
stunt. But the artists’ actions speak at least as loudly as their
images. There is a logic to their seven years of guerrilla art that
has become clearer since the nuclear disaster of March 11th19
2011. In fact, Noi Sawaragi, a prominent art critic, says they
may be hinting at a new direction in Japanese contemporary
art.22
Radiation and nuclear annihilation have suffused
Japan’s subculture since the film Gojira (the Japanese
Godzilla) in 1954. The two themes crop up repeatedly in25
manga and anime cartoons.
Other young artists are ploughing similar ground.
Kota Takeuchi, for instance, secretly took a job at Fukushima28
Dai-ichi and is recorded pointing an angry finger at the camera
that streams live images of the site. Later he used public news
conferences to pressure Tepco, operator of the plant, about the31
conditions of its workers inside. His work, like ChimPom’s,
blurs the distinction between art and activism.
Japanese political art is unusual and the new34
subversiveness could be a breath of fresh air; if only anyone
noticed. The ChimPom artists have received scant coverage in
the stuffy arts pages of the national newspapers. The group37
held just one show of Mr. Mizuno’s reactor photographs in
Japan. He says: “The timing has not been right. The media will
just want to make the work look like a crime.”40
Internet: <www.economist.com> (adapted).