Identity Crisis:
Yukinori Yanagi and Japanese Postmodernism
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The past hundred years have not been uneventful for Japan or the Japanese people, in Japan or abroad. From the colonization of Korea to the Second World War and conversion to a world economic power only fifty years after near destruction during that war, Japan has been a regular chameleon for over a century. Such rapid and sometimes forced changes have created a ‘hot-bed’ for modern artists and culture.
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| Japanese national identity has suffered several blows in the last fifty years, from the failed attempts to create an empire of a “‘Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere,’ a zone that centered on Japan, Manchukuo, and China and … included both French Indochina and the Netherlands’ East Indies” (McClain, 470) to a humiliating defeat and surrender at the end of World War II. Not only that, but the emperor declared his divinity to be false and for the second time in less than a century allowed American agendas to govern his country as MacArthur followed in Perry’s footsteps. Following the surrender and during the American occupation, the subsequent demilitarization and westernization of Japan caused its people to begin questioning the identity that had taken centuries to form. In the generations born in postwar Japan, more individuality was stressed than ever before. “From the late Meiji period through the Greater East Asia War, educational policy had placed a strong emphasis on moral training and on preparing individuals to be loyal, responsible citizens who would support their government,” but after 1947 “the basic objective of the education system was to help each child reach his or her full potential as an individual.” (McClain, 623) The belief in the superiority of the Japanese as a people was supplanted by the superiority of the individual. |
  
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| Another blow to the Japanese psyche was the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989 and his earlier humanization. After his death, several of the emerging artists in the late 1980s and 90s, like Yukinori Yanagi, broached the taboos of questioning the emperor and nationalism. They come from the first postwar generation and are generally middle class. “The young don’t view the emperor with the traditional respect and affection – they think of the emperor as being equal to themselves.” (Irokawa, 123-124) This change in perspective allows for the criticism of traditionally untouchable subjects. |
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Yanagi was born in Fukukoa, Japan in 1959 and received his BA and MFA from the Musashino Art University in Tokyo and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in the United States. All of his works are laden with socio-political messages, critiques and symbolism. One of his most famous installations was a series of national flags from around the world made out of sand and connected to each other with plastic tubing. Inside of the tubing, ants were released to tunnel through the flags, mixing the sands and the identities of the flags, much like the mixing of cultures and ideas in the modern world. It illustrates the idea that no nation can be an ‘island unto itself,’ not even Japan. Several other famous works include Japanese symbols for the emperor or the imperial family. They include the hinomaru, or Japanese flag; haniwa, or the clay markers for imperial graves during the Kofun era; and the chrysanthemum, which is the symbol for the imperial family.
Being based in New York, Yanagi has not forgotten to turn his eye toward the United States on several occasions. “At Yale Yanagi represented America as a star-spangled blue car running in a giant hamster wheel painted with red and white stripes, and he proposed another such wheel in which a military tank would go around in circles.” (Koplos) He has also done various projects on Alcatraz in the former high security prison like a map of the United States made out of broken glass and an installation of former President Kennedy’s words on a blanket in a prison cell. (fig 2,3,4) |
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This generation of Japanese artists is trying to find and come to terms with a new Japanese national identity as well as personal identities. What does being Japanese mean? Where does Japan stand in the world? And where is it going in the future? Through his works confronting the past and present, Yanagi, among others, is helping to forge Japan’s future.
Selected Bibliography
Munroe, Alexandra. Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky. New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1994
McClain, James L. Japan: A Modern History. New York, W.W. Norton & Co. 2002.
Irokawa, Daikichi. The Age of Hirohito: In Search of Modern Japan. New York, The Free Press. 1995.
Yanagi Studios. http://www.yanagistudio.net.
Hinomaru Illumination |