Abstract: This special issue focuses on the design milieu of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which were held a year after they were scheduled, in the summer of 2021. In an era plagued by a synergy of social vulnerabilities and institutional failures to address natural and manmade disasters, the Olympic ideals hardly offered a platform that Japanese society or the world at large could aspire to as a place of collective reflection and action. The aim of this issue is to discuss how the material production of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics both reflected and affected the changing socio-political and cultural context of Japan from the bid for the Olympics to its realization, and further contributed to the experience of dissonance and lack of ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Translated by Reid Bartholomew and Yisheng TangWith its conclusion, the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games (referred to hereafter as the Tokyo 2020 Olympics) quickly grew distant from the concerns of the Japanese people. Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide's announcement of his decision to resign, made almost in tandem with the closing of the Paralympic Games, shifted people's attention immediately to the presidential election of the Liberal Democratic Party so that hardly a trace of the Olympics remained in their minds. From the chaos that began with the successful bid to host the Olympics, followed by numerous scandals surrounding the Japan National Stadium and the Olympic emblem, to the weakening of Suga's administration ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The rules related to entry to Japan are in accordance with Japanese authorities' requirements. They apply from 14 days before your travel and throughout your journey to Japan. […] Keep your physical contact with other people to a minimum during the 14 days before you travel to Japan.You must only leave your accommodation to go to official Games venues (as per your accreditation privileges) and limited additional locations that you have outlined in your Activity Plan, as defined by the list of permitted destinations.You must not walk around the city or visit tourist areas, shops, restaurants or bars, gyms, etc.The following series of photographs offers a spatial and visual portrayal of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Drawing on fieldwork conducted from 2016 to 2021, this article discusses the Tokyo 2020 Olympics' impact on public space in the city. It attempts to test a framing of the Olympic developments through political scientist Jules Boykoff's concept of celebration capitalism alongside an investigation of differing values and interpretations of public space in the National Stadium and Shibuya areas, with a focus on Meiji Park and Miyashita Park in particular.Prior to the preparations for Tokyo 2020, the quiet and unassuming Meiji Park lay spread across land occupied by sports venues, a long woody strip, a small lawn area, and a plaza. Sitting in the shadow of the original National Stadium and located a short distance from ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Translated by A. Byron and Munia HweidiThe Olympic Games is an event that attracts worldwide attention in the globalized society of today. While some look forward to viewing exceptional performances by athletes, for others the Olympics is an occasion to reaffirm their national identity with flags and anthems. Additionally, some see the Olympics as a business opportunity, while others oppose the gentrification that accompanies hosting the event. The Olympics are controversial in every respect, with both its positive and negative aspects facing heavy debate.As with previous Olympics, many troubles arose for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games (hereinafter referred to as the Tokyo 2020 Games). For example, during ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: There are a number of attributes, aesthetics, and processes that define graphic design today. These include complexity, contradiction, being dystopian or non-utopian in nature, using juxtaposition, recontextualization, layering, interaction between text and imagery, hybridity, and appropriation.1 Of all of these constituent parts of contemporary graphic design, perhaps the most contested, yet widely practiced is appropriation. In graphic design, appropriation, the act of adopting visual styles or motifs created by others without permission, is so widespread that it often goes unnoticed. Yet, there are different forms of appropriation—for example, there is appropriation as an act of pastiche, wherein the audience of ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Sports pictograms featured prominently in the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Portrayed by a small team of actors with props in a swift sequence of poses, this performance was inspired by the so-called "kinetic" sports pictograms of Tokyo 2020, which were based on static sports pictograms designed by Hiroma Masaaki and animated by Iguchi Kōta.1 It was the first time in Olympic history that pictograms were animated. They were used on digital signage, in television broadcasts, as well as on the Tokyo 2020 website and social media channels. According to the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, these pictograms played a "key role in enhancing the experience of athletes and spectators alike" during the Olympic ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: At its best the Olympic Games is an event that can shape a national narrative, providing a point for historians to use as representative of a time period and a marker of changing eras. Like fashion itself, it can be a visualization of historical transformation. This was certainly the case for Japan in 1964, when the Tokyo 2020 Olympics served as the stage for a new national style, especially visible in the realm of fashion, to represent a nation gloriously reborn and rising after devastating nuclear defeat. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics, held in the summer of 2021, also aspired to similar symbolism and was filled with progressive sartorial gestures, yet was constantly beset by a potent, scandal-heavy, counter-narrative ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In 1964, as Japan surged with national pride over economic growth and the global showcase of the summer Olympics that year, artists such as Nakamura Hiroshi (b. 1932), critiqued the use and abuse of civilian bodies in the name of patriotism.1 Nakamura had expressed concern with laboring male bodies and their relation to the state prior to the 1960s, and his provocative paintings during the 1960s Olympic era, such as Sightseeing Empire (1963) and Sacred Torch Relay (1964), vividly linked Olympic grandstanding and tourism with Japan's past. In the past five years prior to the 2020 Olympics, a younger generation of artists including Sakuragawa Takatoshi, Sakauchi Miwako, and Hashimoto Satoshi, as well as amateur ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Contemporaneous with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics preparations and fanfare, the planned reprisal of a 2015 art exhibition that had examined the censorship of art became itself the target of rightist threats and denunciations by rightwing populist officials. After a series of abortive openings and cancellations, the Non-Freedom of Expression Kansai (Hyōgen no fujiyūten Kansai) exhibition opened in Osaka on July 16, 2021, the result of citizen efforts demanding the right to see and evaluate the works for themselves. The following account by scholar and participating artist Yoshiko Shimada considers these contentions and their significance during the fraught spectacle of the Olympics. An epilogue by historian William ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Translated by Elsa Chanez, Alana Stone, and Eve ThomasThe Olympics are an important event to a child. A major occurrence that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. It's even possible that their future might be determined by the things they see there.At the time of the first Tokyo Olympics in 1964, I was ten years old. I was taken by my father to visit the Yoyogi National Stadium, where the swimming contests took place, and I was amazed. I had never seen such an attractive building. Two enormous concrete pillars stood tall, reaching up toward the sky, and between them stretched a thick cable from which hung the large, curved roof. At the time, Tokyo was blanketed with small, wooden buildings, so the ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The design critic, historian, and advocate for design as cultural heritage, Kashiwagi Hiroshi, Professor Emeritus at Musashino Art University, died in Tokyo on December 13, 2021, aged 75.Kashiwagi-sensei was born in Kobe in 1946, during the Allied Occupation of Japan. He studied industrial design at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. After graduating in 1970, he worked as an editor while independently researching the history of the concept of industrial design in Japan in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. His first book, Industrial Design Thought in Modern Japan (Kindai Nihon no sangyō dezain shisō), appeared in 1979 from humanities publisher Shōbunsha.With its combination of cultural history and ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In keeping with the overarching Olympian theme of the present issue of the Review of Japanese Culture and Society, this section presents a selection of new translations and short essays that capture distinctive glimpses of the relationship between the world of Japanese literature and Tokyo Olympics past (1964) and present (2020). As preeminent international sporting events, the Olympic Games possess the potential to seize the popular imagination, particularly that of the host country, but also ignite controversy. The resonance of the Olympic movement in Japan reaches far beyond the domain of sport, penetrating into politics and society, infrastructure and the culture industries, shaping literary production as well ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Translated by Paul McCarthyThose opposed to the current Tokyo Olympics have a point, of course, but as I watched the Opening Ceremony under today's sunny skies, my candid reaction was: "I'm glad we're doing this. If we didn't do it, the Japanese people would become ill." They longed for it and strained to achieve it. For many years it has weighed on their minds and hearts, until at last their sincerity has moved heaven's heart, allowing the Opening Ceremony to be held on this perfectly clear and bright autumn day, all the more refreshing after several cloudy ones. The idea of the Olympics, pent up in the hearts of the Japanese people for so long, was at last wondrously set free. When, at the end of the ceremony, I ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Translated by Nobuko Yamasaki and Hanako YamasakiIs there anything but gymnastics that resides right on the water's edge between sport and art' There, the sea of sport and the land of art subtly intermingle and violate one another. What was sport at high-tide turns into art at low-tide. The higher the value of form for form's sake, the closer it is to art. Sports evaluated in terms of efficiency— speed or height—remain in the realm of sports, no matter how beautiful the form may appear. Yet, in gymnastics, form is important in and of itself. To put it the other way around, gymnastics paradoxically proves that the essence of art, ultimately, comes down to form.That is what I was thinking on the night of October 20 ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Translated by Nobuko Yamasaki and Hanako YamasakiThe finals in the men's 1500-meter freestyle: Sasaki appears. He is the only Japanese competitor to remain. He undresses on one of the plastic chairs beside the pool. The chair is vermilion-colored. Taking off his navy-blue socks, he places them in his sneakers. The sneakers are white canvas with black lines. Even before this brilliant stage, such quotidian tasks are performed in solitude. A nude figure clad only in a navy-and-white swimsuit appears. His body is fit, with a fox-like hue. Now, at last, this gleaming Olympian will release himself from the grasp of everyday life. From there, he will take off.From the starting block, Sasaki glances at the swimmer in the ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Translated by Andre HaagIn all sporting events there is contained a small dose of sentimentalism, which functions not unlike a small serving of alcohol. This alcohol content reaches its maximum concentration at certain moments, like the evening of the twenty-third, with the victory of the women's volleyball team. One would expect that the Olympic Games' closing ceremony too would be served up with a generous sprinkling of this intoxicating sentimentalism. It would only be natural given the nature of the Japanese national character.And yet, it turned out that this was not the case. The closing ceremony ended in a bright, lively carnival of release and freedom. Judging from its results, the closing ceremony proved to ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: It is impossible to overstate the importance of the medium of television to the legacy of the Tokyo 1964 Olympics. Known colloquially in Japan as the Terebi orinpikku (TV Olympics), the 1964 games were the first to be broadcast live and in color to an international audience, a feat rendered possible by significant advances in information communications and satellite technology. Domestically, too, the games engaged a public eager to absorb the images of the world's athletes flickering across the screen. With televisions situated in more than 87% of Japanese homes by 1964, over 97% of the population (a figure approaching 98 million) is thought to have watched some portion of the events on TV.1Given the significant ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Translated by Yoshiko FukushimaShimada Masahiko (b. 1961) is a prolific, award-winning Japanese novelist, operatic librettist, and educator, who has been active on the intellectual scene for almost four decades. As a member of the same generation as Shimada, I can remember how I felt when I read his debut novel, A Divertimento for the Soft Left-Wingers (Yasashii sayoku no tame no kiyūkyoku, 1983), which he composed while still a student majoring in Russian at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Looking over his works from the past decades, Shimada's ideological tendencies are consistently rebellious and revolutionary. The soft-leftist Shimada has always sought to make his fiction the vehicle to trigger major ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: On August 8, 2021, the finale of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Closing Ceremony took the audience on a tour of the galaxy, courtesy of renowned poet Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933). Acclaimed actress Ōtake Shinobu appeared onstage alongside seven members of the Suginami Junior Chorus to perform Miyazawa's original song "A Stroll Amongst the Stars" (Hoshi meguri no uta).Sharing the stage with the eight performers, a single telescope suggested the spatial transformation of the ceremony venue into a pedagogical site, where the relationship between Ōtake and the members of the Suginami Junior Chorus shifted into that of teacher and students. This simulation of a science class was a clear nod both to Miyazawa's own history as a ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This issue's "Japan in LA" section features the exhibition "RECONNECTING: A Vision of Unity by Kengo Kito" at JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles (June 16–September 6, 2021). Presented during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kengo Kito's (b. 1977) expansive, amorphous installation, consisting of 2,021 multi-color linked hula-hoops and thematizing unity, was also intended to commemorate the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games. While this artwork is centered on the breaking and dislocating of plastic hoops, it is also about the practice of assembling and building, one thing after another. The installation is, therefore, a space of transformation, reconnection, and galvanization in a time of intense stagnation, disconnection, and anxiety. ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Since early 2020, because of the lockdowns and restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been missing close contact with each other and yearning to reconnect with their families, friends, and communities. In the summer of 2021, as California began easing restrictions and re-opening businesses and public places, JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles opened a unique exhibition that celebrated the coming together of communities after months of isolation.The exhibition, which was held from June 16 through September 16, 2021, featured a site-specific installation by Japanese artist Kengo Kito (b. 1977) using hula hoops to explore ideas of connection and reconnection. In his hula hoop installations, Kito opens up ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The connection between new artwork and Zen Buddhist thought and imagery can be explored through a consideration of the circle. I would like to examine in brief the origin of the ensō or Zen circle in the Buddhist tradition in general and in Zen Buddhism in particular, and the roots of the idea behind the practice of using a brushstroke to make a circle. A current day example of this practice can be seen in Reverend Shumyo Kojima's (Zenshuji Temple, Little Tokyo) creation of the ensō, literally, a circle, or a circular form, which is often executed with a single brush stroke (fig. 24.1).Ensō by Reverend Shumyo Kojima, taken from a JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles webinar recording.The kechimyaku is a document or a lineage ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Translated by Rika HiroI am an artist based in Gunma prefecture, a professor, and a gallery director.You perform various roles and have many responsibilities. Do many artists in Japan engage in a range of activities like you' Or are you a rarity, Kito-san'There are almost none, I think. Some artists also act as investors, Murakami Takashi for example, albeit on a different scale. But almost no one is doing what I do. As far as I know, I have not heard of anyone in Japan.You have been curating for a while, haven't you'That's right. My hope was to contribute to the Japanese art scene even in a small way. Of course, galleries contribute to the art scene, but having gallery representation doesn't mean that everything ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Aiko Hachisuka (b. 1974, Nagoya) uses a mixture of old and new garments in her artwork, sewing them together in the forms of sculpted paintings or free-standing barrel-like masses. As seen in Hard in the Paint (2011), Hachisuka's work is voluminous and simultaneously amorphous because her layering of hues, patterns, and shapes suggests movement. Furthermore, as these garments are individually stuffed, body shapes gradually emerge through abstract impressions. These bodies, losing and regaining forms, make the work more vibrant although they are tightly linked and sewn, in this case, onto a cylindrical core.During her high school years, Hachisuka relocated from Nagoya, Japan, to Pensacola, Florida as an exchange ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In 1964, when the Olympic Games were first held in Asia, host city Tokyo was bombarded throughout the year by a plethora of cultural activities. Apart from official programs, such as the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo's Masterpieces of Modern Japanese Art: Art Exhibition During Tokyo Olympics, numerous "unofficial" but in retrospect memorable offerings were held by practitioners of Japan's thriving art vanguard. Indeed, 1964 was a banner year for the Anti-Art (Han-geijutsu) tendency, despite the much-discussed termination of the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition. By now well-known, for instance, Hi Red Center's so-called Cleaning Event was held on October 16, 1964, the seventh day of the Games. Its formal ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Guest EditorsIzumi Kuroishi is Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Architectural Theory and History at the University of Pennsylvania, under the direction of Joseph Rykwert and Marco Frascari. Kuroishi has been an invited researcher at the Canadian Center of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, Hong Kong University, Bartlett School of Architecture, Virginia Tech University, and TUDelft. Her publications examine interdisciplinary issues of architecture, specifically the works of Kon Wajirō, the role of ethnography, sketches and stories in architectural design, the idea of housing, and the design of crisis. She has contributed chapters to many books and journals: Design and Modernity ... Read More PubDate: 2024-05-02T00:00:00-05:00
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