Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 3 Number 2, August 2002
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Mayo,
Marlene J. and Rimer, Thomas with Kerkham, H. Eleanor (eds.)
Reviewed by
War,
Occupation, and Creativity
is a collection of
essays exploring the relationship between war and art. The
essays in this volume primarily focus on Japan's central role in the
development, management and
censorship of East Asian art and artists before, during and after World War II.
The book is divided into three parts.
Part One, Empire: Occupied Territories, focuses on Japan's
military and aesthetic influences in Korea and Taiwan shortly after the First
World War.
Part Two, Conflagration: World
War II in East Asia and the Pacific, examines the artistic, ethical, social
and political struggles of Japanese artists during the Second World War.
Part Three, Aftermath of Total War:
Allied-Occupied Japan and Postcolonial Asia, explores issues related
to Japan's defeat and occupation by American forces after World War II.
Taken
as a whole, this book illustrates an ironic reversal in Japanese power and
artistic influence between the 1920's and the 1960's.
By the 1920's, Japan had established itself as a domineering military and
cultural force in Eastern Asia. Yet, by
the 1940's it would itself become an occupied nation, subject to foreign
domination and control. Whereas
Japan was once the standard bearer for high culture in Eastern Asia,
after World War II it would be forced to submit to Western cultural domination.
As
an occupying nation, Japan's influences on its foreign territories were varied
and conflicting. On the one hand,
Japanese aggression spawned resistance, rebellion and resentment.
On the other, it generated a sense of admiration for Japanese virility
and cultural sophistication. These
two responses to Japanese imperialism were not always clearly separate from one
another, and thus there is a strong element of ambivalence towards Japan in the
works of East Asian artists during the period of Japanese imperialism.
Some
of this ambivalence is illustrated in the essays comprising Part One.
David R. Mccann, in Korea the Colony and the Poet Sowol,
demonstrates how even a folk poet such as Sowol, whose works never explicitly
make reference to Korean national identity or to foreign occupation, can
be read as struggling implicitly with the influences of Japanese
domination. The melancholy tone of Sowol's writing gives voice to the common
experience of the Korean people: a
feeling of dislocation and alienation from their past.
...Sowol's poems articulate or negotiate the unresolved political
ideological dilemma of their day: how
to be both modern and Korean as a writer (p. 48). In Sowol we find expression of a nostalgia for the past, as
well as a recognition of the realities of the present and the future.
Japanese occupation forced the people of Korea to confront themselves,
their national identity and their place within the world. Though painful and
difficult, this chapter in their history nevertheless contributed to a Renaissance
of Korean intellectual and artistic activity (p. 62).
Angelina
C. Yee and Wang Hsiu-hsiung further illustrate the complicated dynamics involved
in Taiwanese creativity during periods of Japanese domination.
Yee, in Writing the Colonial Self,
focuses on Yang Kui, a Taiwanese writer who maintained an ambivalence
toward Japan and Japanese culture (p. 85).
Yang's resistance to colonial tyranny took the form of an individual
self-creation that transcended national boundaries. Instead
of rejecting Japanese culture altogether, he accepted his indebtedness to it
while also asserting his independence from it.
Hsiu-hsiung's The Development of Official Art Exhibitions in Taiwan
during the Japanese Occupation examines how the Japanese cultivated and
encouraged the development and diversification of Taiwanese painting styles and
techniques. In the final essay of
Part One, Artistic Trends in Korean Painting during the 1930's, Youngna
Kim offers similar insights into Korean painting and its development under
Japanese occupation.
It
might be overgeneralizing to claim that all great art is the result of struggle
and social oppression. However, it
is clear that such discord often provokes questions about the meaning and
significance of worldly hardships, and since much great art finds it's roots in
these questions, it should be no wonder that during periods of war we find some
very profound and interesting examples of artistic creativity.
Though human suffering is itself ugly and awful, artists have the
capacity to transform that ugliness into something affirmative.
The essays in Part One of _War, Occupation, and Creativity_ clearly
illustrate that the relationship between the dominated and their dominators is
not a simple one. Rather, there is
a complex interplay between the two sides in such power struggles that
contributes both to chaos and creativity.
The
second part of this collection refocuses our attention away from the struggles
of conquered people back towards the struggles of artists within Japan during
the 1930s and 1940s. The four
essays in this section explore the ways in which Japanese artists used and were
used by their government during a time of total war. During its struggle against
China and the West, Japan mobilized its artists in order to produce wartime art
and propaganda. Novelists,
playwrights, painters and filmmakers were all enlisted in order to give creative
expression to a very particular, officially sanctioned perspective on wartime
activity.
In
The Many Lives of Living Soldiers, Haruko Taya Cook recounts the
experiences of Ishikawa Tatsuzo, a Japanese novelist commissioned by the
government to write a novel about the war in China. The novel was eventually suppressed and censored, not only by
the government, but also by the publisher and even the author himself.
Censorship was not imposed only by the authorities...
Authors became active participants in the process of thought control by
limiting their subjects, their language, their expression, and even, perhaps,
their field of vision (p. 167). Just
as inhabitants of conquered nations find themselves being influenced by their
dominators, so to do the citizens of conquering powers find themselves being
molded, perhaps unconsciously, by the official policies and directives of their
own nations. In exchange for the
freedom to practice their craft and to receive official recognition, artists may
often willingly compromise their own unique style or vision of reality.
Artistic
collaboration with the government is further illustrated in papers by J. Thomas
Rimer and Mark H. Sandler. In Paris
in Nanjing, by Rimer, we are introduced to the playwright Kishida Kunio who
was commissioned by the Japanese government to observe the war in China and to
create works that supported the official perspective.
In A Painter of the 'Holy War', Sandler tells the story of the
controversial painter Fujita Tsuguiji, whose epic war paintings glorify war and
militarism, yet also depict the horrors and ugliness of battle.
Finally, there is Japanese Filmmakers and Responsibility for War,
by Kyoko Hirano. In this paper the
author examines the critical attitudes of the filmmaker Itami Mansaku and his
ambivalence towards his own work and government.
Whereas
Part One presents the complexities involved in the relationship between Japan
and the artists in its colonies, Part Two presents the equally complex
relationships between Japan and its own native artists.
Very often, the price for criticism of the government during wartime is
censorship and public disgrace. When
given the choice between complicity with government sanctioned attitudes or
professional obscurity, many artists choose complicity.
However, as is demonstrated in this book, complicity is not always
conscious, nor is it always coerced. Some
artists may authentically share the militaristic aims of their government.
Others may unwittingly be influenced towards participation in government
sanctioned propaganda. Still others
may remain troubled and ambivalent about their sometimes conflicting roles as
artists, citizens and human beings.
Part
Three of this collection examines the struggles of Japanese artists after the
defeat and occupation of their country by Western powers.
In this section, we see the ironic reversal of international power
relationships as Japan itself is molded and shaped by foreign forces. Where once
Japan dominated, controlled and directed the cultural and aesthetic development
of East Asian colonies, it now found itself being dominated and controlled by
the West.
I
found this final section to be the most interesting and engrossing part of the
collection. Whereas the book's
earlier sections are predominately focused on recounting the history and details
of particular artistic decisions and struggles, this final section deals more
predominately with a number of interesting philosophical questions.
Is it possible for an artist to retain personal integrity and yet still
change with the times? How do artists redefine themselves once their political
and philosophical allegiances crumble into nothing?
Can you alter the values of a culture and still retain its traditional
forms of expression? How does a nation heal old wounds and yet authentically
address the injustices of the past?
In
The Double Conversion of a Cartoonist, Rinjiro Sodei recounts the
psychological and philosophical struggles of Kato Etsuro, a Japanese political
cartoonist who swung radically between left and right wing politics before and
after World War II. His double
conversion consisted in the switch, first, from a left-leaning liberal
(p. 236) to a supporter of Japanese fascism, and then, after the war, to a
supporter of communism. Kato's
various conversions
were not a simple matter of political expediency, but were in fact motivated by
a real concern for the public good. For Kato, cartoons were tools for the
expression of political and social messages.
Cartoonists that did not take this duty seriously he called nonsense
cartoonists. According to him, nonsense cartoonists remained uncommitted to
any political or social doctrines, and so it was easy for them to be pulled this
way or that according to whichever power held sway over the country at a
particular time. This lack of
intellectual integrity troubled and disgusted Kato.
Despite his own changing political allegiances, Kato's philosophical
commitment to the delivery of serious political messages remained unchanged
throughout his career.
The
theme of conversion is again addressed in Marlene J. Mayo's To Be or Not to
Be. In this paper Mayo
discusses the sorts of interpretive struggles that occurred when the US
established a policy of cultural reeducation in postwar Japan.
American occupiers were concerned that kabuki performances embodied a
feudalistic spirit that was counterproductive to the modernization of Japan, and
so they set out to control, suppress and censor the exhibition of this
traditional art form. However, the
Japanese continued to perform banned kabuki plays despite American warnings and
sanctions. Recognizing that the
total elimination of kabuki was impossible, American censors instead embarked
upon an effort to modernize the message of these plays by endorsing performances
that emphasized modern, Western values. Performances
were to present militarism and obedience to traditional authority in a negative
light, while presenting a positive image of individualism.
In the end, American officials found ways to draw parallels between
traditional Western drama and kabuki, thus offering an interpretation of this
traditional Japanese art form that made it palatable to Western tastes.
Thus, the American interpretation of the meaning and significance of
kabuki underwent just as much conversion as did the style and performance of
kabuki itself. Some of these
same issues are raised in H. Elanor Kerham's essay, Pleading for the Body.
In
the wake of war-time defeat, cultural transition and change were inevitable for
the Japanese. Yet just as their
earlier domination of foreign colonies was occasioned by conflicting responses,
so was Western domination of Japan occasioned by complex and ambivalent
outcomes. As the US influenced the creative currents in Japanese culture, so was
the West exposed to, and influenced by, Japanese creativity.
What we see here is a replaying of the dynamic relationship between the
conquered and the conquerors. This
relationship is not one-sided. The
influences go in both directions, forever altering both of the players in the
drama.
The
final essay in the collection is a fitting conclusion to the themes explored
throughout the book. Alan Wolfe, in
From Pearls to Swine, discusses the work of Sakaguchi Ango, whose writing
explores the issues of decadence and rebirth in Japan.
Wolfe likens Ango's writing that of the European Existentialists.
Both deal with the problems of alienation, otherness, and anxiety
about change. After experiencing
the horrors of war, the East and West have been bound together by shared
suffering and a descent into the abyss of human decadence.
While such a descent signals a painful awareness of human depravity and
corruption, it also offers the possibility for eventual renewal and regrowth.
The
essays in _War, Occupation, and Creativity_ provide a wonderfully vivid picture
of the relationships that hold between creativity and warfare.
What is made especially clear throughout this book is that conflict and
war often have the effect of binding the oppressed and their oppressors together
in a strange, complicated and ambivalent fashion.
These patterns of conflict seem to have a way of repeating themselves,
and throughout the recurrent cycles of aggression and tumult, warring nations
and their citizens are inevitably exposed to, and influenced by, one another's
artistic and creative interpretations. The
products of this exposure serve to enrich world culture, showing that even if we
never learn how to get along with one another, we might at least become more
profound in the process of our struggles.