The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 16 | Issue 15 | Number 2 | Article ID 5180 | Aug 01, 2018

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Olympic Dissent: Art, Politics, and the Tokyo Olympic Gamesof 1964 and 2020

Namiko Kunimoto

Precis

Through an examination of Olympic-related artand the gendered, labored bodies that producethe Olympic spectacle, “Olympic Dissent: Art,Politics, and the Tokyo Games” revealscontinuities in the political and artistic stakesof the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964 and 2020.

Keywords: 1964 Olympics, art and politics,2020 Tokyo games, national identity,Nakamura Hiroshi, Takayama Akira

The 1964 Tokyo Olympiad was intended toconfirm Japan’s role in the new world order,implicitly celebrating both its so-calledeconomic miracle and the central placeaccorded Japan in the U.S. strategy for the“containment of Communism in Asia.”1 Thestakes of pol it ical hegemony becameparamount, encompassing spatial, cultural, andnational identity. Noriko Aso has cogentlypointed out how “…culture (bunka) has served,as in the prewar and wartime periods, as a keyterm in postwar articulations of nationalpolity.”2

As the Tokyo Games approached, the rhetoricaround the role of so-called “national culture”crystallized, and designers, art museums,exhibitions, and artists were mobilized in amanner that recalled the patriotic fervor of the1930s and 1940s during Japan’s 15-year war.Some artists, like Kamekura Yusaka, readilytook up the Olympic cause, while other

Japanese artists, including groups such as HiRed Center were openly critical of the games.Nakamura Hiroshi, an artist and illustratorborn in 1932, focused on the unequal positionsof America and its vassal state, Japan, withinthe Cold War’s political and cultural order. Thisessay discusses Nakamura’s response to the1964 Tokyo Olympic games and closes with abrief look at contemporary artwork byTakayama Akira, a performance artist born in1969, whose work addresses the upcomingTokyo 2020 Olympics in similar terms.

Nakamura was previously a reportage painteraffiliated with the Japanese Communist Party,and his resistance to the 1964 Tokyo OlympicGames grew from his involvement with left-wing activist groups such as the Japan ArtAlliance and his awareness that the state wasmarshaling art to forward its liberal capitalistagenda. The patriotic flavor of the state’sOlympic rhetoric, which called on citizens toactively clean up their neighborhoods, fundlotteries to benefit the Olympics, and totolerate heightened policing and intensiveconstruction was distasteful to Nakamura andhis peers.3 Although the state sought toleverage the Olympics to disassociate Japan’sfascist, wartime identity from its postwardemocratic and internationally-engagedidentity, the Olympiad demonstrated manyholdovers from the Imperial period. Thesecontinuities included mass mobilization, thepromotion of a unified Japan, and, not least, therole of the Emperor in building Olympicmomentum and presiding over the openingceremonies.

Nakamura used his art to emphasize the

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continuities between the past and the presentthrough color, the refiguring of Olympic motifs,and the representation of the steam engine.The young artist wished to interrogate thestate’s heavy reliance on visual culture and, ashis writings have shown, he believed thatinnovative art tactics, along with actions in thestreets, were a vital means to achieve change.He understood the Olympics to be a keymoment for the state to express a fullyconsolidated postwar identity, one that wouldideally cement Japan in place as a loyalsubordinate of American power. Nakamura alsounderstood this to be a key moment to assertresistance to this agenda, and perhaps also togarner recognition as an avant-garde artist.

The games would not only be the first in Japan,but the first held in Asia, (indeed in any non-Western country). The perceived ‘symbolism ofglobal comity’ would ironically render invisibleJapan’s reconfigured postwar economicimperialism. Nakamura, who had been activelyinvolved in the anti-ANPO movement opposedthe state’s narrative of harmony andcollaboration with the United States. Moreover,the state was keen to standardize andcommercialize a new national identity thatwould finally escape the shadow of Japan’swartime aggression and demonstrate to its owncitizens that the deprivations they had enduredin the 1930s and 1940s would never occuragain. Tokyo underwent vast architectural andinfrastructural development in preparation fortourists and worldwide viewing audiences, andtrains re-emerged as a highly visible symbol ofJapan’s new modernity, a point that Nakamuradid not miss.

The state was also well aware of the impact andimport of the visual, be it art, design, andarchitecture, and invested in Olympic brandingthat would assert Japan’s leadership position inAsia as a peace-loving, economically powerfulnation without reference to the power of theUnited States. Cutting-edge design teamsorganized by Japan’s Olympic committee set to

work, rapidly creating a cohesive approach tosymbols, pictograms, and typography thatbecame a model for future Olympic designplanning.

Kamekura Yusaka’s Olympic emblem designconspicuously incorporated the red circle fromthe Japanese flag, the hinomaru, positionedlarge and bright above the Olympic rings(Kamekura Yusaka’s Olympic emblem design,1964). The image suggested the significance ofthe 1964 Olympic Games to Japan’s resurgenceless than twenty years after the end of thePacific War. According to Kamekura, the designwas also intended to suggest movement toconvey the kinetic feel of the Olympics, whichsimultaneously implied Japan’s upwardmobility.4

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Nakamura’s painting, Sacred Torch Relay, from1964, also engaged the image of the hinomaru,but in a critical manner (Nakamura Hiroshi,Seika senriko (Sacred Torch Relay), Oil oncanvas, 1964, Copyright Nakamura Hiroshi,Courtesy of the Takamatsu City Museum ofArt). The work was Nakamura’s contribution toan Olympic-themed exhibition at the SixthContemporary Art Exhibition of Japan, anindependent exhibition sponsored by theMainichi Shimbun. In this oil-on-canvascomposition, the billowing edge of thehinomaru flag floats upward to reveal six steamlocomotives, their engines emanating outwardlike cannons. Just when the state was proudlydisplaying it’s new shinkansen (bullet train)lines, and leaning heavily on imagery of thetrains to promote Japan as a futuristic nation,Nakamura used the emblem of the steamlocomotive as an explicitly historical and potentreminder of the continuities between past andpresent.

Nakamura references Sakai Yoshinori, the boyborn in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, andchosen by the Olympic committee to be thefinal bearer of the torch, as a symbol of Japan’sability to overcome the atomic bomb with graceand agility. According to Yoshikuni Igarashi,the media heightened this sense of recovery bymaking reference to Sakai’s aestheticallypleasing body and running style.5 But in Sacred

Torch Relay, the artist multiplies the bodyacross the center of the canvas, his torso itselfa torch, overtaken by flames, creating an eerieline of homogenous figures somewhatreminiscent of the military. Kamikaze planessky-write large Olympic rings that areseemingly blown sideways from the force of theengines, again summoning the viewer toconsider the continuities between imperialdesire in the 1930s and 1940s and Japan’snationalistic desires in the postwar period.Although hallmarks of celebratory patriotismsuch as the hinomaru flag, the Olympic rings,and the Olympic torch are clearly visible in thework, the image s tops short o f puretriumphalism. The flag is cut from the frame,billowing up and revealing a teeming group ofabstract mechanical red forms, lending thepainting a menacing edge. In the foreground,waves rush toward the frame of the painting,seemingly about to overtake a lone plant(extending from the whale’s spout) standingamidst the waves. Sacred Torch Relayrepurposes recognizable Olympic motifs andexpresses ambivalence toward the state,targeting Japan’s implicit nationalistmotivations.

Still, Nakamura later found the ambivalence hehad expressed in Sacred Torch Relay

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insufficient; indeed, in a recent interview hewas rueful about not taking his 1964 critiquefurther, remarking that at the time he fearedhe would not be included in the exhibition norhave a chance at winning any awards if hesubmitted a heavily politicized artwork.6 Yet,Sacred Torch Relay and Sightseeing Empire,completed in 1964 (Nakamura Hiroshi, Kankoteikoku Sightseeing Empire, Oil on canvas,1964, Copyright Nakamura Hiroshi. Courtesyof the Yokohama Museum of Art), as I see it,connect the disastrous consequences ofimperial Japan’s ambitions to the rhetoric ofnew state power embodied by the postwaremphasis on infrastructure and economicgrowth. In other words, his work critiques the‘construction state’ dokken kokka, the sturdytriangular relationship between the LDP, majorbanks and construction firms that would definethe landscape of postwar Japan.7 Again, in thisartwork, Nakamura opts for the steamlocomotive, an emblem of the mechanized past,rich with nostalgia. The image situatesmasculinized machinery as a national emblemof power and disaster. Nakamura’s trains are avibrant crimson, the hue of the hinomaru flagand his color of choice for many works in thisperiod. The engines in Sightseeing Empire,exuding excessive amounts of red steam (thesame color as the hinomaru), are so powerfulthey have literally gone off the rails.

Soon after completing this painting, Nakamurasought other means to critique the visualrepresentations of Olympic fanfare. He joinedforces with Tateishi Koichi (born 1941), andfounded the Sightseeing Art Research Institute(Kanko Geijutsu Kenkyujo). In March 1964,Nakamura and Tateishi (also known as TigerTateishi) began to exhibit their work outdoors.Moving outside the structured spaces ofbuildings offered a way for these artists to feelas though they were escaping the heavy handof the state’s drive to coopt and control culturalcapital. That the Sightseeing Art Researchgroup began in 1964, as tourists flooded intoJapan in unprecedented numbers for the

Olympics, makes the organization’s titularirony plain. Nakamura has pointed out thatwhile the term “sightseeing” conjures visions offun and visual pleasure, businesses thatpromote sightseeing are, by their nature,concerned firstly about profit.8 Tateishi andNakamura’s use of the term “sightseeing” alsocaptures the importance of vision, and theyhoped the movement would bring about a re-examination of painting, representation, andviewership.

That same year, Nakamura and Tateishi pushedmovement and art together more forcefully byorganizing a one-day guerrilla-style event onthe banks of Tokyo’s Tama River, under arailway bridge for the Chuo Line. Tateishi hadcreated a large image (approximately sevenmeters by four meters) of Mount Fuji – thesingle most powerful symbol of unified Japan –that was too large to display elsewhere, so thepair opted for an illegal site. Sam Francis,Yoshiaki Tohno, and other artists attended theevent, dubbed “The First SightseeingExhibition,” in reference to Mount Fuji as aninternational tourist draw for Japan.9 Someartists crossed the river to join them, wadingthrough it barefoot. Once at the site, Tateishiand Nakamura rapidly created and thendestroyed various artworks, thereby locatingthe art object within performative action,defying the cycles of visual commercialism thatOlympic tourism brought with it.10 According toNakamura, the event was meant to critique thenotion of sightseeing: for most viewers, theterm suggested whimsy and enjoyment, butNakamura states they wanted to point out thatsightseeing is usually an operation by tourismcompanies that are only interested in financialgain.11 Their actions were part of a broadermovement to take art of out the museum andinto the streets in the 1960s.

The Sightseeing Art Laboratory disbanded afterabout one year, in part because the topicality ofcritiquing Japan’s Olympic fever had waned,and in part because Tateishi and Nakamura

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had arrived at the limits of their commonground. Tateishi went on to complete artworksrelying heavily on motifs of Japaneseessentialized masculinity, such as the samuraiwarrior, as in Samurai, the Watcher (Koya noYojinbo) (1965). It is tempting to describe hislater work as ironic, but the art market hasswallowed them whole, keen to embrace thetraditional Japanese hero represented in amodern medium. In 1964, Artists went on to beinvolved in undocumented art activist eventslike NOlympic held at Hijikata Tetsumi’sAsbestos Hall, but by 1970, Nakamura’s beliefin the ability of artists to step outside thesystem he wished to critique had also beentempered:

I think that anything we callartwork can never escape from“the museum.” So that means ourlife itself cannot escape from thestate or from class relationships.Oh, damn it! (aaa, iyada! iyada!).Even if a piece of art does escapefrom “the museum,” outside,another “museum” awaits – thestate. Then, escaping from themuseum only means getting closerto the state.12

With the 2020 Games on the horizon, Japan’sstakes have shifted but much remains thesame. Rather than celebrating its emergence asa world power, Japan’s leaders aspire to proveit is still a leading economy, despite lacklustergrowth in the post-bubble years of the 1990sand 2000s and the surging Chinese economyreplacing Japan as the second largest economyand leading trading nation. A youngergeneration of artists has begun to critiqueanew the state’s embrace of capitalism and itsdisregard for economic inequality. Artists suchas Takayama Akira have created performanceart and installations that critically engage withthe use of athletic and laboring bodies for thebenefit of state development.

Takayama Akira founded “Port B,” anexperimental theatre company, and organizedan event called Tokyo/Olympic in 2007. (Thecompany is named after the Spanish bordertown where Walter Benjamin, 1892–1940,ended his life). For his first Port B project,Takayama gathered a group of 30 volunteers inthe Sugamo Jizo-dori shopping district,chartered a Hato tour bus, and spent a half daycrisscrossing the city to visit places that wereestablished for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games,including Yoyogi National Stadium and theBudokan. The theatrical work featured actressNeko Akiko, posing as tour guide, as the busmade its way around the city, reproducing theperformative, spatial, and durationalcharacterist ics of a typical Japanesesightseeing tour bus. Instead of a nostalgictour, participant Ozaki Tetsuya said, “the touraimed to dissect images, sensations andexperiences from the ‘high times’ of the 1960sand reconnect them with the present globalisedcityscape of wider Tokyo.”

Gathering in front of Yoyogi National Stadium,an iconic Olympic site designed by TangeKenzo (1913—2005), the audience waspresented w i th the f i r s t o f severa lcommemorative photographs taken by a rovingphotographer with a telephoto lens. Otheraspects of the tour were more disruptive; forexample, while walking down Takeshita-dori inHarajuku, the group listened to recordedinterviews of workers on the strip, many ofthem undocumented workers, conveyingconcerns about personal security and anxietyabout the future. Participants also experienceda demonstration explaining how tour guideswere trained to stand and present to audiences:one foot strategically placed, tucked behindand at 45 degrees to the other, a ballet positionemphasizing decorum and idealized femininity.These kinds of deconstructive activities raisedcritical awareness about the ways the Olympicsmarshalled bodies in the past and the ways itwill do so in the future.13

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In an installation work displayed in 2016 at theMori Art Museum, Takayama took a differenttactic, this time drawing viewers into thecomplex relations between bodies and Olympicbuilding (Takayama Akira, Babel: The City andits Towers (detail), 2016, Published in My Body,Your Voice: Roppongi Crossing 2016, (Tokyo:Mori Museum of Art, 2016), 48-9. CopyrightTakayama Akira). In his piece Babel: The Cityand its Towers, Takayama projects videointerviews with two elderly men: one is thefounder of a lucrative construction company,who previously participated in planning someof the high-rise buildings in down town Tokyoin the 1960s, while the other man is a migrantday-laborer from Niigata, who workedconstruction in Tokyo during the period leadingup to the 1964 Games.

Sitting in his makeshift home, sporting anOakland Raiders cap, and surrounded byDoraemon toys and misplaced umbrellas, theworker known as “Makoto” describes being ascaffolder during the intense period ofconstruction leading up the 1964 games. Now,he says, they are cleaning up the city for the

next Olympic Games, and he will have nowhereto live.

On the other side of the wall, separate videoprojections display life-sized images of fourmigrant workers from Iran, Ghana, Turkey, andVietnam, posing in front of the construction sitefor the 2020 Olympic Games (Figure 5,Takayama Akira, Babel: The City and its Towers(detail), 2016, Published in My Body, YourVoice: Roppongi Crossing 2016, (Tokyo: MoriMuseum of Art, 2016), 48-9. CopyrightTakayama Akira). In a voice-over, they tellfolktales about building towers in theirrespective native languages. The same story issimultaneously voiced over in Japanese andtranscribed in English. The blend of the voicesenacts the titular reference to the story ofBabel, wherein God is angered by theirhubristic tower-building and confounds theircommon language. In Takayama’s video art,after each person speaks, their bodiesgradually become indistinguishable from thewhite around them, rendering them invisible,much like the invisible labor they haveperformed to create the next Tokyo Olympicspectacle.

Takayama’s dissent speaks in urgent tonesabout the exacting toll on human bodies,making clear that it is those most vulnerable, interms of class and race, who must make thegreatest sacrifices for the nationalist spectacleof the Olympics.

As the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games draw closer,another No Olympics group, referencing the

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1964 name, has organized numerous politicalevents. The anti-Olympic Arts Council Tokyorenames the Olympics “Fest iva ls o fRepression.” Takayama is an active member ofthe group. In conclusion, both Nakamura’s andTakayama’s artworks call direct visualattention to the infrastructure of the Olympicsand the national and/or imperial desires thatfoster Olympic development. They make similarpoints, although perhaps Takayama pays closerattention to the human costs of Olympicspectacle. Though Takayama too mayencounter an exasperating inability to escapeJapan’s tight state-capital nexus, his voice andvision will be added to Nakamura’s and othersof the postwar generation, encouraging criticalengagement and solidarity in the arts andbeyond.

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Namiko Kunimoto(https://apjjf.org/admin/staff_manage/details/%20https:/osu.academia.edu/NamikoKunimoto)is associate professor of modern and contemporary Japanese art at Ohio State University andauthor of The Stakes of Exposure: Anxious Bodies in Postwar Japanese Art (University ofMinnesota Press, 2017).

Notes1 Noriko Aso, “Sumptuous Re-past: The 1964 Tokyo Olympics Arts Festival” positions: eastasia cultures critique, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 14.2 Noriko Aso, “Sumptuous Re-past: The 1964 Tokyo Olympics Arts Festival” positions: eastasia cultures critique, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 10.3 Noriko Aso, “Sumptuous Re-past: The 1964 Tokyo Olympics Arts Festival” positions: eastasia cultures critique, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 15.4 National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Design Project for the Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games(Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art, 2013), 122.5 Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture,

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1945-1970 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 153-55.6 Author interview with the artist at Fuma Contemporary, Tokyo, May 23, 2017.7 For more on the construction state in Japan, see Gavan McCormack, The Emptiness ofJapanese Affluence, Japan in the Modern World (Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1996); ThomasFeldhoff, “Japan’s Construction Lobby Activities - Systemic Stability and Sustainable RegionalDevelopment,” ASIEN 84 (January 1, 2002).8 Author interview with Yoshiko Shimada and the artist at Fuma Contemporary, Tokyo, May23, 2017.9 Fujieda Teruo, “Painting After the End of the Avant-Garde” From Postwar to Postmodern:Primary Documents, (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2012), editor’s notes, Note 1,page 305.10 As a result, the works are no longer extant and cannot be included in this essay.11 Author interview with Nakamura Hiroshi, Tokyo, May 23, 2016.12 Nakamura Hiroshi, “Akasegawa Genpei: A Proletariat with an Object” in Kagaisha（Tokyo:Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2003), 147.13 For more on this, see Kyoko Iwaki, “The Politics of the Senses: Takayama Akira’s atomizedtheatre after Fukushima” in eds. Barbara Geilhorn and Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt,Fukushima and the arts: negotiating nuclear disaster (London: New York : Routledge, 2017),199-220.