Interview with kyoko michishita by jesse cumming

December 3, 2022
This interview has been edited for the sake of space and clarity.

Kyoko Michishita is a Japanese artist, writer, and translator based in Tokyo. With her belief in pacifism, feminism and art, she has been writing and translating books and articles for almost four decades. Born in Kholmsk, Sakhalin in 1942, she and her family escaped to Hokkaido, Japan the year after the end of World War II. She studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1967. From 1970 through 1997 she served as the Arts Program Specialist of the Tokyo American Center, where she presented work by Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas, Nam June Paik, Bill Viola and many others. [Photo credit: Laurie Toby Edison from Women of Japan]

Jesse Cumming (he/him) is a curator, writer, and researcher. He has served as a Programmer with Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and as a Programming Associate with the Wavelengths section of the Toronto International Film Festival, in addition to Consulting roles with the Berlinale Forum and Open City Documentary Festival. In 2016 he developed Vertical Features, a Toronto screening series dedicated to non-fiction film and video. He has curated, co-curated, and presented programs with The Museum of Modern Art, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Tallinn Photomonth Biennal, Collectif Jeune Cinéma, Anthology Film Archives, the Volksbühne Berlin, La Cinémathèque québécoise, VIVO Media Arts, and more. His writing has appeared in Cinema Scope, The Brooklyn Rail, MUBI Notebook, Filmmaker Magazine, Hyperallergic, Canadian Art, Another Gaze, C Magazine, Berlin Art Link, and more. He was a founding collective member of MICE Magazine, a publication dedicated to Moving Image Culture, Etc., and formerly served on the steering committee of the Toronto Film & Media Seminar. He is currently a Media Lecturer with Ryerson University’s Cairo Campus.

Jesse Cumming: How are you today?

Kyoko Michishita: I’m fine. I've been watching all of the Video Portraits you sent me.

JC: Have you enjoyed them?

KM: Yes. I was impressed. You know, I didn't have any recollection at all about the details.

JC: I can imagine.

KM: But the things they say don’t seem outdated at all. I mean, if I told you they were recorded just yesterday, people would believe it. And especially [novelist, columnist, and singer] Akiyuki Nosaka. It was recorded 40 years ago but the situation in Japan—whether political or women’s—remains pretty much the same. Everything he touched on is contemporary, it’s absolutely amazing.

JC: Maybe we can position the series first by talking about what you were doing before you made these Video Portraits. The project directly before was Dinner with My Friend in 1980, which is interesting because it's also conversation based.

KM: Which was also in the series Being Women in Japan, right?

JC: I didn’t realize you considered that to be part Being Women in Japan [alongside Living with the Ocean (1974), Liberation within my Family (1974) and the 16mm film Women Get to Play the Starring Roles Twice in Their Lives (1976)].

KM: Well, actually, everything I do is related. The bottom line is my adamant position against discrimination. I’m always in search of questions related to aesthetics, fairness, and democracy, whether I’m writing, filming, or videotaping. Fairness, democracy, peace, beauty, pleasure, sincerity, and honesty, they are all equally important to me.

JC: Even if there is a conceptual link I do see a certain formal shift from some of the projects that you were doing a bit earlier, in the mid-1970s, which were generally more observational in style, with more material shot outside using handheld cameras. With the 1980s you begin to focus a bit more on contained, interior spaces.

KM: Yeah. Movement stopped.

JC: What drew you to that sort of approach, and the desire to produce a more conversation-based work?

KM: I didn't do it consciously, and actually wasn't aware until you pointed this out. I just moved in that direction. “Follow your bliss,” as Joseph Campbell says, you know. If I feel that a conversation is the best way for pursuing the subject I have in my mind, then I adopt it. I don't set up any style first. Because when you are impressed by the scenery—snow or whatever—you don't need a style, right? For me the style isn’t as important as the content. What matters is how effectively I can communicate ideas to the audience. This is true in whatever I do, across writing, film, and video.

JC: I’d love to hear where the original idea for this Video Portraits series came from, at that particular point in time and place in your career.

KM: Well, I had already been writing and translating. My first published book translation was called What Is Real Femininity? [1975] in Japanese. The original title in English was A Male Guide to Women's Liberation [1972] by a male American journalist living on the west coast, Gene Marine. So it’s something I already had certain clear ideas about. I could verbalize it, thanks to some studying about the basic structures of a discriminatory society, as Japan still is.

I had been criticizing male chauvinist pigs, as the then slogan goes, but no one enjoys hearing criticism, including even those who are moderately on the side of feminists. So the idea came to me: why don't I introduce affirmative examples by choosing appropriate human beings—men—who seem to be fairly free of chauvinism, or as best as I could find in Japan at the time. Not macho men, but true to oneself, beautiful and natural human beings. Because the men and women we see on the planet right now are not natural, they're heavily conditioned, socially, historically and politically.

It was difficult to choose—finding appropriate Japanese male figures was like finding a diamond in the sand on the beach. Many of them are my friends, and some I only knew about because they were well-known artists in Japan as well as abroad. A few, like fashion designer Issey Miyake, I had never met personally. Fortunately I had met Nosaka just before the publication of my first book. I had kept writing to him, asking him for an endorsement for the cover, and he wrote that men had been blind for all these years, but with this book, they would wake up from darkness to light and equality. A greatly insightful and kind endorsement!

I carefully chose 15 men, though one of them should be taken out of the series, because he turned out to be quite a chauvinist. But otherwise they are all democratic, egalitarian, pacifist, fun-loving artists, each with unique and great artistic accomplishments. They were people you could respect and look up to.

Earlier, when I was in New York, I visited an old factory-like building where Nam Jun Paik lived with his wife Shigeko Kubota, who was a renowned video artist, herself. And he was absent at that time, but I met Joan Jonas, another well-known video artist. 

JC: Oh wow.

KM: She was also a close friend with [video and artificial fog installation artist] Fujiko Nakaya. It was possibly on Fujiko’s recommendation that I went to see her, and she was working on a portrait series of American artists. Only a few of the works were of men, but I got the idea that you could use video for this purpose rather than writing profiles—it was more artistic and interesting to watch. That was a couple of years before I started making Video Portraits - Men with my own ideas of anti-machismo. Later, in 2018, Joan Jonas received the Kyocera Kyoto Award for her great accomplishment as one of the most innovative avant-garde video artists of the past half century.

JC: I’d love to ask a bit about the actual production. I'm curious off the top how Sony was involved, as they are thanked in the credits. When we spoke about the difference in style with this series we didn’t mention that it’s your first time working in colour video.

KM: I made these video portraits the very first year Sony came out with the colour Portapak. It was 1982, so the colour was not that great. There were many colour lines in the image. The very first work I shot with this new equipment was Yuya Uchida, a well-known rock singer and pioneer of the Japanese rock music. I somehow wanted to interview him on the ocean, so we—along with a few instantly recruited assistants—went to a famous French restaurant on the ocean side in Kanagawa Prefecture. I interviewed him with his back against the rail and the ocean behind him, but it didn't come out looking like the ocean, it looked more like many rainbow-coloured lines. As I said, Sony’s colour Portapak had just been released, and Sony lent me the unit and all necessary equipment for free. They also provided a studio where we could edit, as well an assistant, because I couldn't operate the studio. So that's why the “Thank you” to Sony Corporation.

JC: And what about when you were working on the actual productions? Was there any sort of team with you or were you working alone?

KM: No no, it was me alone. The only time I recruited some assistants was when I shot the Yuya Uchida’s piece—we needed a car and a driver to get to the site. Otherwise I was mostly on my own. The camera came in a little suitcase, and in my backpack I had a tripod, a converter, and a big 500-watt bulb. I remember it weighed 30 kilograms or so all together, and I used to travel mostly by public transportation. The production money came from me, so it was produced, directed, and filmed all by myself. 

JC: And what about working with the men in the videos? Obviously most are structured around conversations, but the stylistic choices in each are all quite different. In the conversation with [artist and writer] Sakumi Hagiwara, for example, we only see his shadow for most of the video, before he reveals his face. I'm curious about these decisions, and how collaborative some of the productions were. 

KM: Many of them brought their own style. Hagiwara, Ryoichi Enomoto, [graphic designer and filmmaker] Kohei Ando, they're all close friends with one another, like three peas in a pod. They are each unique, but share many ideas. Enomoto here presents himself using a method of parody. It's really funny, isn’t it?

JC: It’s great. He took your proposal of a video portrait and turned it into a broader commentary on portraits and portraiture. It’s almost meta in its approach, in a way that's very playful.

KM: Incidentally, Enomoto and Hagiwara are putting a huge long running show that will continue until April, 2023 at Setagaya Art Museum. They will show everything they made in the past half a century. It’s interesting, because when you look at Sakumi’s video you see his obsession in shadows and in time passing. And the same with Kohei Ando.

JC: Yes. I was going to ask about that one too.

KM: He filmed the train—dun dun, dun dun—which also symbolizes a heartbeat and tick tack of a clock. Ando and Hagiwara were both conscious of time, and interested in time passing.

JC: One element I find very compelling is that there are so many ways to reveal someone’s personality, and the use of different techniques across the videos is very rich. With Sakumi Hagiwara he chooses to abstract himself, while in the video with [illustrator] Makoto Wada, we see you two having dinner together. In this case he reveals himself in relation to others, and I think that's a very interesting choice.

Finally, in your attempts to portray artists you often do so through their work—it’s something we see in many of these videos. The Kohei Ando piece, for example, includes clips from his film Like a Passing Train [1978]. There is a real emphasis on the creative nature of the people we see in the videos, and creativity in general. I'd love to hear you speak a bit more about this overarching interest and your approach to its portrayal.

KM: I mean, the three you mentioned now—Hagiwara, Ando and Enomoto—they are the ones who actually constructed their pieces. When we met, they told me what they would like to do, and I felt it was fine. So it’s thanks to them! It was easy for me because they made all the plans for me.

JC: Something else that's interesting to me are the actual subjects under discussion. Obviously, the project is conceptually grounded in questions of gender and masculinity, but these are topics that rarely come up explicitly in the portraits themselves, and it’s more often about their lives and creative work. I'm curious about the decision to let these themes exist in the background rather than having them foregrounded in the conversation, as some might expect.

KM: To tell you the truth, having released two books—the translation of Male Guide to Women's Liberation and a collection of my essays entitled Sensual Life [1980]— I felt that I had already written what I had to say at the time. Through these books I was trying to raise the consciousness of Japanese readers, especially that of women, so that they too would become aware of their oppression, become angry and want to change our society to make it a better place for everyone to live.

I criticized “male chauvinistic pigs”, male supremacism, patriarchy, etc. a lot in my writing, translating and speaking. But then, I felt it would be better to present good examples of men who were less culturally conditioned by our patriarchal system, instead of only criticizing the system. That’s how the series was born.

Looking back, all of my works in video and film were made in the consciousness raising era of the second wave of feminism, prevalent from the mid-60s through the mid-80s, although I was not aware of it at the time. It was an era when just about every discrimination against women—social, political, economic, sexual and so on—was explored in lectures, essays, books, films, music, plays, dance, and more, by angry, courageous, and inspired women throughout the world. Now, as you know, electing more women lawmakers in every level of legislature, from the federal to the local, is the utmost priority of us women throughout the world.

I am sorry to say, but after 50 years of this second wave, most discussions of gender issues in Japan today are predominantly about sexual violence. It is a crime against women’s most fundamental human right, but that's not the only issue which is important to women.

Now in Japan we have these right-wing groups, and they're all anti-women because they are pro-war. They're moving rapidly toward the possibility of making a war. They’re regressing, and that's exactly what Nosaka was talking about in this interview I conducted 40 years ago. He spoke about the connection between right-wing fascism and discrimination against women, something spelled out in slogans such as the “Good Wife and Wise Mother” [ryōsai kenbo], that started in Meiji era. But that kind of male figure—a feminist who also has wide access to media outlets— doesn’t exist in Japan today. Beyond writing novels he would write regularly in weekly magazines on current affairs or appear in TV interviews, but Nosaka is no longer around, and no one can replace him.

JC: Can you say more about how the work was shown when it was done? As far as I understand, they were shown over three nights of screenings in late October 1982 at a place called Gallery Spoon. 

KM: It was the first presentation, and it drew a full house. Wow, it was fantastic. And I was there serving wine. Enomoto was the master of ceremonies, and we had dialogues before showing the pieces. [Photographer] Koichi Inakoshi and I carried on a sort of discussion. It was called Gallery Spoon, but I think Parco was a sponsor.

JC: Yes, it says Studio Parco on the flyer. Can I ask about after this presentation? Did it show in galleries, or on television? Anything like that?

KM: No, not at all. That was the only time.

JC: At least until now…

KM: That's why I don't remember. I didn’t have any record of it. And then if you hadn't saved them, no one would have ever seen them, including me, because we don't have the equipment to play them anymore.

JC: It’s just great to be able to share them again. I wanted to ask you about any additional reflections you might have had watching the work again for the first time in 40 years.

KM: Well, when I talk about affirmative examples of beautiful, balanced human beings, none of this is outdated. And I think young people today, regardless of sex, can learn from them. And not just learn, but take artistic, intellectual inspiration because there will be no more individuals like Issey Miyake on this planet again.

JC: His video is very special. He's got a great smile.

KM: He's sincere, warm-hearted and kind. The ultimate message he kept saying was, “I wish I could be a person like a breath of fresh air” [sawayakana hito].

JC: That quote is included in the flyer for the Gallery Spoon screening: “When I work, I don't think I'm a man or a Japanese. I want to be just a person like a breath of fresh air.”

KM: In fact that's what we are all doing or should be doing––no matter what field we may be in. We don’t think of our nationality, sexuality, generation or anything. When we work, we try to do our best with a determination to create something which will be truly natural and satisfactory to ourselves.

JC: That’s a really nice note to end on. Thank you again for speaking with me.

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