essay: Shuhei Hosoya / 細谷修平

Archive of Action: Zero Jigen’s Media Strategy and Image Amplification

In the 1960s a variety of avant-garde art movements developed in Japan, transcending existing frameworks and genres. In the visual arts, the artistic practice exploded out of museums and galleries and onto the streets in the form of vigorous creative actions, including performance art. In recent years these activities have increasingly been showcased in exhibitions in Japan and overseas, in the form of archival materials, photographs, and documentary footage from the time, but these efforts are still quite insufficient in terms of presenting a concrete and comprehensive picture of the social context and political import of these activities. In particular, the projects of the Zero Jigen (Zero Dimension) group, which carried out an enormous number of anti-art and anti-establishment actions over a long period of time, call for further reexamination and reappraisal.

This essay will discuss the Zero Jigen Yoshihiro Katō Archive (referred to below as “the Zero Jigen Archive”), through which I am working to lay the groundwork for such a reappraisal, with a focus on the distinctive nature of Zero Jigen’s media strategy. This essay will also discuss perceived problems and obstacles facing this particular archival project and examine what can and cannot be achieved in the realm of “archives of actions.” My hope is that this will surface crucial issues, and present a useful overview of the roles and challenges of art archives today.

Zero Jigen’s Philosophical Background

The activities of Zero Jigen have been clarified through extensive surveys and research conducted by KuroDalaiJee, including on groups that executed “anti-art performances” that were designated as Rituals.[1] To begin, let us review the beliefs on which their activities were based by tracing the philosophical roots of core members Yoshihiro Katō and Shinichi Iwata.

Yoshihiro Katō was born in 1936. He lived in Manchuria during World War II and upon repatriation to Nagoya, was immediately evacuated. After Japan’s 1945 defeat he returned to Nagoya, where he witnessed the sights of a city reduced to rubble and became antagonistic toward the United States. As a child he attended a children’s art school run by the painter Tamiji Kitagawa, and continued to draw and paint. Around the time Katō began high school in 1952, the Osu Incident occurred. In this seminal postwar street conflict, demonstrators without official authorization clashed with the police in Osu, Nagoya. This incident coincided with the beginning of his engagement in leftist political activism, then in its more radical, pre-Rokuzenkyō phase.[2]

Katō: For me, making art meant becoming a Marxist. Guys who didn't study Marx and left-wing thought weren’t qualified to be artists. Becoming a leftist, or getting into that mindset, was all part of fighting the system through art. I believed art was a battle. This reminds me of that Mexican teacher [Tamiji Kitagawa, who was active in Mexico pre-World War II]. He taught us to paint so as not to have our humanity crushed, to paint to stay alive, and it made no difference whether someone told us it was beautiful or skillful or something. When I started out I was thrilled just to be painting from a nude model, but I got into some pretty heavy stuff and everything changed. Then in high school I got involved in left-wing activism. I went to school in the daytime, and I would write messages and stick them under the desk for the night-school guys to read. The core guys who were most active in the movement all went to night school.[3]

After these experiences with leftist activism, Katō moved to Tokyo and enrolled at Tama Art University, where he studied under the art historian Ichimatsu Tanaka. Katō subsequently adopted the stance of studying history and philosophy on his own and taking self-directed revolutionary action, rather than relying on academic education handed down from above. Katō’s style of absorbing various Eastern and Western ideas and philosophies through reading—as a form of dialogue with others—and exploring them through creative expression including agitation, was sustained throughout his life. With his childhood experience of continental Asia (Manchuria) as a point of departure, Katō’s thinking was forged in the rubble of war and evolved through the progressive and innovative drive to engage in combative left-wing action and independently shape a new era.

Shinichi Iwata was born in 1935. He returned to his home city of Nagoya after being evacuated during the war and gained knowledge of art as a child through the encyclopedic Sekai bijutsu zenshū (History of world art). After enrolling at the same junior high school as Katō, he participated in militant Communist Party activism, producing activist flyers and making the rounds of labor sites with a kamishibai act—storytelling accompanied by a series of illustrated boards in a stage-like contraption. Later he too experienced the Osu Incident but began having reservations about the rationality of left-wing activist tactics and turned instead toward artistic expression.

Iwata: We clashed with the cops and they fired on us. At the trial they debated whether it was provocation or repression on the part of the police. I had made a cudgel and I was prepared to go at them, even if we weren’t provoked. There was a police station right nearby, and we were headed down there to occupy it. That was my intent, anyway, but after the incident the Communist side made it sound like we were just victims of police violence, and that was when I started having doubts about the Party. I felt like we geared up to fight of our own accord, but afterward they claimed that the police provoked us. That’s not how it was.[4]

Iwata, like Katō, got involved in radical politics, but his sense of right and wrong made him grow disillusioned with the movement. He enrolled at Musashino Art School (now, Musashino Art University), and subsequently studied painting under a master of Shinto shrine and Buddhist temple restorations. Iwata, too, was largely self-taught in his acquisition of artistic processes and techniques.

Both artists cultivated a strong will to follow their own chosen paths, and a sense of right and wrong thoroughly opposed to the unjust and unreasonable, from their youthful activist days onward. They formed their own styles and philosophies through conflicts with others and self-education. Later, the members of Zero Jigen crawled on the ground through the streets of a modern city transformed by rapid economic growth, embodying the true, dirty and disheveled nature of human beings; they would also endeavor to counter with their naked bodies the pretense of Expo ’70 Osaka with its slogan of “Progress and Harmony”. Both actions clearly reflected the two men’s beliefs [fig. 1]. Their involvement with the Osu Incident and postwar leftist activism gave them experience with autonomous direct action on the street, and a sense of the power of live, on-site, bodily expression, which connected to later avant-garde art activities. 

“Rituals” and Media Strategy

In 1964, Zero Jigen expanded its activities to Tokyo. In Tokyo, Katō took on a leading role, while Iwata, who was still located in Nagoya, often participated in Rituals. These Rituals were one-time-only bodily actions, which Zero Jigen documented in photographs and films from the beginning. In addition to group members documenting their own actions, they called on the photographers Minoru Hirata and Mitsutoshi Hanaga, who had recently begun photographing avant-garde artists and aimed to produce documentation with visual value. These images were then published in magazines as photo-essays, promoting Zero Jigen’s activities.

The earliest article of this kind currently known is Suiri Story (Detective story) published in March 1965 by Futabasha with the headline “Our Dimension: A Collective of Urban Eccentrics,” consisting of photographs and text by Hirata [fig. 2]. The article follows Zero Jigen from Nagoya to Tokyo, covering a series of Rituals: the Naked Ketsu-zō-kai Ritual at Kashima Shrine (Zenra ketsu-zō-kai gishiki, 1964); Eros Museum (Erosu hakubutsukan), as part of Yoshihiro Katō’s solo exhibition at Naiqua Gallery (November 1964); and Ginza Panty Procession (Ginza pantī kōshin, December 1964). The photo-essay also shows the two at their day jobs, Katō running an electric company and Hirata working as a journalist. In February 1966, Futabasha’s News Tokuhō (Special news report) published an article entitled “Men in the Eye of the Typhoon, Raise All Your Rear Ends in Zero Jigen!” (Taifuū no me no otokotachi, Zero Jigen ni sōjiri okose yo!) Meanwhile, in December 1966, MAC-J’s Muse Weekly ran photographs by Hirata with texts by Katō and the art critic Yoshida Yoshie, highlighting the group’s various collaborative relationships [fig. 3].

As the above examples illustrate, Zero Jigen’s activities were frequently featured in mass-media publications rather than art magazines. And in fact, this orientation toward disseminating creative expression through the popular media was a conscious strategy on Katō’s part.

Katō had enthusiastically produced lithographs during his time at Tama Art University; he turned his attention early on to mechanical reproduction of images, due in part to the influence of Walter Benjamin. He was also inspired by then-contemporary works of Pop art, especially Andy Warhol’s silkscreens with motifs drawn from popular culture. One-time-only performances, by contrast, were fated to be experienced only by those on the scene at the time, but Katō applied the duplication approach to performances as well, focusing on amplifying, broadcasting, and replicating these ostensibly spontaneous events by staging them repeatedly. Rather than creating “works of art” revered as objects of “aesthetic appreciation,” he set off “art as a bomb” in popular magazines accessible to all. By targeting mass-market publications with larger circulations rather than art magazines with small print runs and a limited readership, the group’s activities went beyond the established art world framework and reached the general public. One can imagine that articles on Zero Jigen, with their accompanying photographs, were a boon to these general-interest magazines focused on the sensational new topics of the month. Through Katō’s media strategy—which was synonymous with creative activity—Zero Jigen deliberately appeared in the context of public spectacle, transcending systems and genres. As such, the group took on great importance in the development of Japanese counterculture.

Development of Autonomous Media

Katō’s media ambitions went beyond generating sensational coverage in existing mass media and extended to launching media of his own. Black and Red Nutsack No. 1 (Kuro aka kintamabukuro sonoichi), published in March 1967 as a minikomi (an independently distributed publication), is a grab bag of a booklet [fig. 4] including text, prints, photomontages, and photographs of Rituals by Katō, text by Kanji Itoi a.k.a. Dadakan, a penis-shaped cutout also by Itoi, the silkscreen print Running Man by Shinichi Iwata, and Kabuki paintings by Kaku Matsue of Kurohata (Black Flag group).

Whether “Black and Red” refers to anarchists and Bolsheviks is unclear, yet it seems possible in light of Katō’s above-described combative mentality and the involvement of the anarchist-affiliated Kurohata. In December of the same year, Kurohata joined Zero Jigen, the Kokuin (Heralding Shadow) group, Kanji Itoi, Makio, and others in staging a National Memorial Ceremony for the Late Chūnoshin Yui [fig. 5] in response to the Esperantist Chūnoshin Yui’s self-immolation in protest of the Japanese government’s support for US bombing of North Vietnam. For the event the extraordinarily skilled fire handler Kaku Matsue set a fire in Shinjuku Station West Gate, Tokyo.[5] Here both the political context of the time and the participants’ political stance need to be taken into account.

The booklet was billed as “No. 1,” but no surviving copies of subsequent issues can be located. However, reading through the text it is evident that the intent was to publish four times a year. Contributors were sought out on the condition that they must be “unknown members of the lunatic fringe,” and the specified format was “free-form: literature, philosophy, religion, printmaking, photographs, manga, kiri-e [paper-cutting pictures], etc. (please bring these in person and submit them.)” It goes on to specify, “There is no limit on the number of pages, but you must submit 200 copies of your work. Text can be mimeographed, typeset, or recopied, and there are no restrictions on paper quality. For printmaking works, monotypes, montages and kiri-e are also accepted.” It is clear from this text that Katō intended to continue producing this publication, and to expand his network of associates into new regions.

For major Rituals, Zero Jigen mailed Katō’s unique pictorial handbills to a wide variety of recipients, in addition to producing silkscreened posters. Among them is a large-format poster by Kaku Matsue for the Lunatics’ Convention: Year-End Underground Festival at Iino Hall, the last joint event by the ritualists in 1968 just prior to the formation of Expo ’70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group (Banpaku Hakai Kyotō-ha). It is printed with kanteiryū—stout, flowing, energetic lettering based on the style of Kabuki signage—and in multiple color variations, making it an eye-catching artwork in its own right [figs. 6, 7].

In addition to releasing documentary photographs, such autonomous print media can be seen as an integral part of the Rituals and an important mode of expression within Zero Jigen’s activities. Unlike mass-media publications, minikomi functioned as a communication channel that connected Katō not only to Itoi in Sendai and Iwata in Nagoya, but also to artists in various other locations. Iwata published his own Underground Bulletin (Angura tsūshin), while Kokuin issued the Kokuin Bulletin (Kokuin tsūshin) and Koebukuro, creating their own circuits of communication.

Alliances with Filmmakers

In addition to exposure in print media, appearances in various films were another core element of Zero Jigen’s activities. The earliest example, Some Youths: Love Vibration (Aru wakamonotachi: Ai no baiburēshon, 1964) by the avant-garde documentary filmmaker Chiaki Nagano, which also featured Ushio Shinohara, Yoko Ono and others, is a valuable document in that it not only records a Ritual staged on the street but also shows Katō discussing Rituals in his own words. In the late 1960s Zero Jigen appeared in a succession of works by underground figures pursuing avant-garde filmmaking: Rikuro Miyai’s Phenomenology of Zeitgeist (Jidai seishin no genshō-gaku, 1967), Michio Okabe’s Crazy Love (Kureijī rabu, 1968), Donald Richie’s Cybele (Shibēru, 1968), Katsu Kanai’s The Desert Archipelago (Mujin rettō, 1969), and Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no sōretsu, 1969) [fig. 8]. In these films, the group did not execute Rituals as instructed by filmmakers; rather, the production of films was a collaborative effort within the same avant-garde space-time field, in which the sensibilities of filmmakers and Zero Jigen members intersected. In particular, Phenomenology of Zeitgeist is a rare and valuable work shot in a remarkably guerrilla-like style, in which Miyai shares Zero Jigen’s on-site, one-time-only ethos and genuinely captures the zeitgeist on film. They also appeared in Sadao Nakajima’s Bizarre sex zone (Nippon ’69 SEX Ryōki Chitai, 1969), which differs from underground films in its focus on urban sexual mores. In addition to a Ritual on the street, the film documents a large-scale Ritual featuring chindon-ya, costumed musicians hired to march through the streets to advertise store openings and the like, on a set at Toei Movie Studios.

The underground film scene in Japan traced its origins to the United States but developed along its own unique path. In particular, the return from the US to Japan of film critic and photographer Kenji Kanesaka and filmmaker Masanori Ōe had a great impact on the experimental nature of film and political aspects of visual vocabulary, and Katō was inspired by their sensibilities and ideas, aligning himself with the movement. Marshall McLuhan’s media theory, translated into Japanese around this time, was also an influence on Katō.

Katō: The part of The Medium is the Message that impressed me the most was when the American boxer Cassius Clay (soon to become Muhammad Ali) opposed the Vietnam War, and appeared for an interview dressed in this kind of Arab sheik outfit, resisting the draft and claiming conscientious objector status. I saw him on TV saying he was now a Muslim minister and war was against his religion. The manner in which he refused––that was thrilling. Most Americans thought he was just a dumb boxer. Because he was a pop culture figure, not an artist or a philosopher, and he was opposing the war, they had the nerve to ask, “By the way, Mr. Clay, do you know where Vietnam is?”

KuroDa: That’s a really insulting question.

Katō: It’s totally insulting. They were implying, “You have no idea, do you?” But then the way he responded was incredible. Around that time I was hugely into McLuhan, and I read everything that was translated into Japanese to the point where I practically had it memorized. Anyway, in the room where they interviewed Ali there was a TV, and a report on the Vietnam War was just coming on. He pointed to it and said, “It’s right here. That’s where it’s happening. You tell me you all can’t see that?” Wow. I was bowled over. That was really something else.[6]

I am unable to verify how closely this account resembles the actual broadcast interview, but Katō’s remarks are further evidence of his strong media affinities. By absorbing a moving-image sensibility, Zero Jigen, which developed as an avant-garde art group that distanced itself from rigid ideologies both far-left and far-right, progressed from a surrealist to an underground sensibility and entered the new stage of a “revolution of the senses.”

With its systems of control by the state and capital, co-opting the state-of-the-art technologies and artistic styles of the day, the 1970 Osaka Expo was anathema to this underground revolutionary spirit. Zero Jigen was committed to an uncompromising resistance against illegitimate control of the body and mind, and Katō joined Vitamin Art’s Tetsuo Koyama, Kenji Kanesaka, and Kokuin, with whom he had been collaborating as ritualists, in forming Expo ’70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group. Rebelling with their naked bodies, they mounted the Anti-Expo Black Festival at the Ikebukuro Art Theater in 1969 [fig. 9]. The next day, the “Anti-Expo Express” caravan set off to make the rounds [fig. 10]. Around the same time, Katō penned the “First Manifesto of Expo Destruction Action” (Banpaku hakai katsudō dai'ichi sengen) [fig. 11], the first of four declarations published not in an art magazine or political journal but in the magazine Eiga Hyōron (Cinema criticism), edited by film critic and fellow activist Jūshin Sato.[7]

After the Expo ’70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group disbanded, Katō directed the film White Hare of Inaba (Inaba no Shiro Usagi, 1970) with cinematography by Masanori Ōe, and subsequently released Brahmin (Burāmin, 1971-76) [fig. 12]. His films presented a vision for a new era, involving the joy of human beings’ inherent Eros and a new mode of “family” that breaks free of feudalistic social constraints, and brought his creative activities to fruition.

Issues Specific to the Zero Jigen Archive

As we have seen thus far, Zero Jigen deliberately utilized the media as a means of publicly presenting their activities. They did not insist on the one-time-only nature of their performances; the performances’ documentation, reproduction, and distribution via media such as photography and film were in and of themselves happenings and forms of creative expression. While accepting that this documentation would differ from the realities on-site, they employed the media to amplify and publicize performances that could only truly be experienced in person.

From a general, archival perspective, a mass-media publication containing photographs of a performance is nothing more than a historical document showing what an artist was doing at a certain point in time. However, in the case of the Zero Jigen Archive at least, popular general-interest magazines from that era are part and parcel of their performance activities and should be viewed as a crucial element of their media communications. Failure to do so would mean misunderstanding Zero Jigen’s approach. Here it is important to note that Katō himself kept until his final years a large quantity of these popular magazines, which at the time were mass-produced on a huge scale to be read and discarded.

In addition to the Zero Jigen project, I am currently involved with the related HM Archive documenting the activities of Minoru Hirata and also follows the activities of the Expo ’70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group in photographs. Tracing the arc of Hirata’s activities through an analysis of archival materials, it is evident that mass-media publications were an important forum for him as well. For Hirata, who was far removed from the salon-like world of art photography, avant-garde artists who eschewed museums and galleries and carved out their own channels of communication were fascinating figures and worthy photographic subjects. As someone who wanted to make his work known to a wider swath of the general public, Hirata self-publicized by having his photographs run in popular general-interest magazines alongside texts he had written himself. Thus, the combination of Hirata’s ambitions as a photographer and Katō’s media strategy made it possible for Zero Jigen to appear more often in print media. Surviving copies of mass-media publications are important in a dual sense, as documents of both Minoru Hirata’s photography and Zero Jigen’s activities.

As discussed above, the films The White Hare of Inaba and Brahmin, philosophically influenced by cinema of the same era, were produced by Katō and in addition to summarizing Zero Jigen’s activities thus far, also presented his vision for a new collectivism. Notably, both films were also devices that expounded their performances and were intended to represent Zero Jigen as a whole. After several people including Katō were arrested on charges of public indecency for their participation in the Expo ’70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group’s activities, outdoor nude performances had to be conducted with extreme caution under the supervision of governmental authorities. Also, as photographs of indoor nude Rituals were presented as evidence and led in part to the arrests, it became risky for artists to strip naked whether indoors or out, and film became a crucial means of visual representation for Zero Jigen.[8] Until late in life, Katō continued screening The White Hare of Inaba along with his own artistic agitations as integrated presentations, while both The White Hare of Inaba and Brahmin have frequently been reedited and screened in accordance with the times, with agitations taking the specific audience into account. Katō acted as expositor of the films, engaging in tactics intended both to draw audiences into the world of Zero Jigen and the 1960s underground, and to awaken them to a “revolution of the senses” in the present day. Katō documented each of these screenings in still and moving images, turning the screening of Zero Jigen films into artistic actions that became new Zero Jigen pieces in their own right. Until the end, Katō never ceased amplifying Zero Jigen through media, and continued until his final years making paintings informed by the montage technique, which he mastered through filmmaking. [fig. 13]

For the Zero Jigen Archive, it is crucial to recognize the nature of the media strategy and image amplification that Katō pursued until the end of his life and, based on this understanding, to preserve as “media communications” what would generally be termed “works of art” or “archival materials.”

Tracking the Expansion of Avant-Garde Art and Expression

Of course, Zero Jigen was not the only group that engaged in vibrant, interdisciplinary avant-garde activities during the 1960s and 1970s without leaving a legacy in the physical form of art objects or paintings. The fact that certain artists and groups are subject to future critical reappraisal and are remembered by posterity because their works survive and are easy to exhibit is only one aspect of history. As previously mentioned, one task of researchers is to follow the trajectory of groups and artists that have been overlooked because their creative activities stylistically diverged from the norm, and to build a foundation for reappraisal. For that purpose, it is necessary to trace developments in the expansion of creative expression, map them out, and continually redraw these maps, but this may seem difficult to accomplish when research is typically conducted within only one specialized field such as art, music, film, theater, dance, or manga. If the subject of study is interdisciplinary, the research also needs to be interdisciplinary. Of course, some kinds of research and analysis can only be conducted in a specialized field, and research may advance in these fields, but in the current era there is a need for collaborative research that can only produce results when expertise is shared. This research makes it possible to gain a picture of artists’ activities, backgrounds, and interpersonal relationships, all of which have been overlooked so far. This essay has discussed the importance of social and political context in exploring ideological underpinnings of art of the past, and in studies like this one, it may be necessary to adopt research methods and perspectives of sociology and social movement theory. In fact, Zero Jigen’s activities not only spanned multiple artistic disciplines, but also encompassed discussion sessions and Rituals at the Festival of Humans and the Earth (1971), a peak moment in the Japanese counterculture, as well as at campus barricades by student activists and the Nihon Genyasai Festival in Sanrizuka (1971) during the conflict over the construction of Narita Airport. Meanwhile, in addition to documenting the ritualists, Minoru Hirata often visited Okinawa, which was then at a critical turning point politically, to document the conflict and the impending reversion of the US-occupied territory to Japan.

The above highlights the fact that when handling and organizing archival materials, we can learn about artists’ activities and comments from related persons by reading articles not only in special-interest publications such as art magazines, but also in popular general-interest magazines, self-distributed publications (minikomi), scrapbooks made by persons involved, and other printed matter such as leaflets and university newsletters. Looking through unrelated articles in these kinds of publications also gives a picture of the social context and the activities’ relevance at the time. Such archival materials are often discarded when someone dies, but even compiling data on the materials and books that people collected can be a valuable means of gaining information.

However, in Japan today such salvaging activities are often carried out pro bono by researchers and those with a personal interest. Under current circumstances, even if materials can be discovered and salvaged there are many challenges regarding where and how to preserve them. In Japan there are no major national institutions specializing in archives, and it is unlikely that any will be established in the future. In my experience, it is more realistic for research institutes, museums, and various archive projects to collaborate unofficially in this country, and expand their networks so as to gather materials and work toward their preservation. Examples of potential participants include the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, public museums, libraries, university research institutes, and the National Film Archive of Japan. In terms of the salvage activities I am currently engaged in, it has been valuable in practical terms to share cataloging, materials handling, and organizing methods. Through such interactions and ongoing discussions, it is possible to attain mutual understanding of each participant’s perceived challenges, what can be shared, and potential areas of cooperation. By strengthening networks, better research results and discoveries can be obtained. There are significant discrepancies in perceptions of preservation and exhibition standards even between art and film, and understanding these differences, while promoting mutual understanding, is of utmost importance to preserve artists’ legacies, works, and archival materials. We need to clarify in specific terms the procedures to be carried out before these works and materials enter the collections of public institutions—procedures that include some degree of cataloging, organization, and analysis—and promote ongoing, joint research even after acquisition by institutions. From the standpoint of global history, international collaboration—with Collaborative Cataloging Japan, of course, and also other overseas institutions—must continue in the future. Solid advances in research can be achieved by partnering with the Oral History Archive of Japanese Art, which is working on an oral history of the parties concerned. Moving forward, there will be a need for steady and sustained efforts, but I believe synergies can be achieved if all participants work together from their respective positions.

Due to their idiosyncrasies, the activities of Zero Jigen and their fellow ritualists tend not to be categorized in any specific artistic genre or field of political activism. It is vital that we not only salvage and preserve their works and archival materials but also weigh in on how these should be publicly presented and analyzed so as to give them the scrupulous examination and reassessment they deserve. In terms of public presentation, there are obviously exhibitions and screenings in Japan and overseas, but it is important not merely to display but also to practically grasp the symbolism of materials and works in a manner only possible through properly curated exhibitions and screenings.

In Zero Jigen’s case, amplification of the image was central to the artists’ intent. Adopting a curatorial approach like that of more straightforwardly visual art, while taking this stance into account and maintaining awareness of distinctive qualities of media such as film, photography, and posters, could shed light on diverse aspects of Zero Jigen and offer new perspectives on avant-garde art. This will also necessitate, at times, discussions at symposiums and elsewhere to explore possibilities revealed by public presentations and their working processes and contribute to the progress of reappraisal.

For some artists and works, systemic and physical limitations emerge if venues are limited to white cube-style art spaces or theaters, and it is crucial to consider appropriate venues for artists and works, and whether works and venues can contribute to one another’s value. With regard to archival materials, construction of a digital archive can link multiple materials and make it possible to grasp interpersonal connections and gain an overall picture of the era that would not be visible through any one document. However, we must acknowledge the impossibility of conveying the radical actions of a past era if limited to certain formats such as exhibitions and screenings. Research will be expected to play an essential role in accurately recognizing and responding to the challenges posed by the radical actions of the past.

At the beginning of this essay, I noted that in recent years there have been an increasing number of exhibitions in Japan and abroad focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, and monolithic, Tokyo-centric interpretations of history are being challenged, albeit gradually, through endeavors in various areas of Japan to shed light on the avant-garde in regions outside the capital. We are also starting to see more exhibitions and studies that take social and political context into consideration. On the other hand, it is difficult to break the hold of existing art-historical perspectives and academic research procedures, and there is a tendency to go no further than dichotomies such as “Tokyo vs. outside Tokyo” or “politics vs. art.” Certainly there was awareness of the Tokyo vs. non-Tokyo divide even during the period in question, but there was always interaction and communication among artists and related persons through self-produced publications (minikomi) and correspondence, regardless of location. We must grasp the nature of this network as a whole in addition to the peculiarities of specific regions. Regarding politics and art, there have been examples of research that examines the political nature of creative activities during these years, but in the end it does not venture beyond politics vs. art as a dichotomy; from this perspective “direct action” can only be seen as a rigid political concept. It must be affirmed, and continually reaffirmed, that the “revolution of the senses” as an extension of art in the 1960s is a movement that transcends such dichotomies, and that direct action is an expression of collective identity, of people united in action against systems of authority and control.

[1] See KuroDalaiJee, Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan (Tokyo: grambooks, 2010).

[2] “Rokuzenkyo” is an abbreviated form of Dai roku kai zenkoku kyogikai (the Sixth National Conference) of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), held in July 1955. After this conference, the JCP shifted direction, from the far-left militarist internationalism of its past toward the developed-nation-model nonviolent progressivism of today.

[3] Yoshihiro Katō, “An Oral History,” interview by Shūhei Hosoya, KuroDalaiJee, and Noriyuki Kurokawa, Oral History Archives of Japanese Art, August 21, 2015, http://www.oralarthistory.org/archives/kato_yoshihiro/interview_01.php  

[4] Shinichi Iwata, “An Oral History,” interview by Shūhei Hosoya, KuroDalaiJee, and Noriyuki Kurokawa, Oral History Archives of Japanese Art, August 28, 2015, http://www.oralarthistory.org/archives/iwata_shinichi/interview_01.php

[5] Kanji Itoi, interview with the author (January 1, 2009).

[6] Yoshihiro Katō, “An Oral History,” interview by Shūhei Hosoya, KuroDalaiJee, and Noriyuki Kurokawa, Oral History Archives of Japanese Art, August 22, 2015, http://www.oralarthistory.org/archives/kato_yoshihiro/interview_02.php

[7] These declarations were published in the May, June, August, and September 1969 issues of Eiga Hyōron.

[8] Photographs of the Anti-Expo Black Festival Rituals at Ikebukuro Art Theater (1969), in particular, were mobilized as evidence in these arrests.

Shuhei Hosoya
Born in 1983, Shuhei Hosoya is a scholar on art and media, as well as a videographer. He is chief representatives of the Zero Jigen Katō Yoshihiro Archive, as well as the HM Archive which holds materials by Minoru Hirata. After he studied symbolic iconography, and book and film editing at university, Hosoya is engaged in art documentation through interviews and research of artists’ practices. His main research field is art and politics, as well as media in the 1960s, about which he has published videos and books, and organized symposia. After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Hosoya continues his thinking and practice on art and documentation. Further, he was responsible as the special researcher for the Zero Jigen Collection for the Performance Art Archive at Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, Korea. His co-authored works include: Shibusawa Tatsuhiko Again (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2017), Japanese Terror: Era of Bombs 60s-70s (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2017), Peninsula Theory (Kyobunsha, 2018).

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