We can make another future : Japanese art after 1989

151 CHRONOLOGY | REUBEN KEEHAN 150 WE CAN MAKE ANOTHER FUTURE: JAPANESE ART AFTER 1989 1995 17 JANUARY A 6.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Kobe shakes the heavily industrialised Hanshin region in Japan’s west, killing 6434 people and leaving 300 000 homeless. The Great Hanshin Earthquake causes US$100 billion in damage and triggers a 1000-point drop in the stock market. The government’s slow response is criticised and the important role of volunteer organisations in filling the vacuum is recognised. 19 MARCH Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT), opens with the survey exhibition ‘Art in Japan Today: 1985–1995’, featuring substantial contributions by 18 artists. 20 MARCH The Aum Shinrikyo cult perpetrates simultaneous sarin gas (odourless nerve gas) attacks across Tokyo’s Metro networks during morning rush‑hour, leaving 13 people dead and 50 with critical injuries. This extraordinary incident of domestic terrorism leads to a period of national introspection. MARCH Guest judge Nobuyoshi Araki awards the Grand Prize at the 4th Canon New Cosmos of Photography to 19-year-old artist Hiromix. ‘Girl photography’ — casual, diaristic, highly-intimate snapshots and digital images by young women — soon becomes an established genre. 11 JUNE Katsuhiko Hibino, Yoichiro Kawaguchi, Hiroshi Senju and Jan Eun Choi represent Japan at the 46th Venice Biennale. 29 OCTOBER Dumb Type co-founder and artistic director Teiji Furuhashi dies from an AIDS-related illness in Kyoto at the age of 35. 1996 7 JANUARY Taro Okamoto, the Japanese surrealist whose Tower of the Sun creation dominated Expo ‘70 in Osaka, dies at age 84. SPRING Takashi Murakami founds Hiropon Factory in Saitama, north of Tokyo. 27 SEPTEMBER QAG’s ‘Second Asia– Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ eschews nation-based installation in favour of a more integrated approach. Emiko Kasahara, Yasumasa Morimura, Takashi Murakami, Kimio Tsuchiya and Yukinori Yanagi are the participating artists from Japan. In his catalogue essay, Japanese co‑curator Fumio Nanjo frames the selection as reflecting a shift away from Mona-ha’s focus on nature toward a preoccupation with the contemporary city, the influence of consumer culture and what he defines as Japan’s ‘postmodern condition’. Works by Kasahara, Morimura, Murakami and Tsuchiya enter the Collection, while a set of Yanagi prints is acquired later. 1997 27 MARCH For its fifth instalment, Nippon International Contemporary Art Fair (NICAF) relocates from Yokohama to Tokyo’s International Exhibition Center, known as ‘Tokyo Big Sight’, on the artificial island of Odaiba in Tokyo Bay. 19 APRIL NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) opens in Tokyo Opera City Tower in Hatsudai as a facility dedicated to collecting and exhibiting media art. MAY Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu is established as a city-run exhibition and residency centre in Fukuoka Prefecture. 15 JUNE Rei Naito represents Japan at the 47th Venice Biennale. 21 JUNE On Kawara is the sole Japanese artist to feature in ‘Documenta X’. 2 JULY The Asian financial crisis starts in Thailand and sweeps the region. With major property investment in South-East Asia, Japan’s economy suffers a severe blow, with numerous bankruptcies precipitating another slide into recession. 1994 5 FEBRUARY The major postwar survey exhibition ‘Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky’ opens at Yokohama Museum of Art. Featuring over 100 artists, it encompasses Gutai, postwar Modernism, the Yomiuri Indépendant, Butoh and obsessional art, Tokyo Fluxus, Mono-ha, abstraction, and experimental film and video; the survey ends with the 1990s. 8 MARCH Dumb Type premiere the performance S/N at the Adelaide Festival. Artistic director Teiji Furuhashi’s most personal work, it confronts the AIDS epidemic through questions of gender, sexuality and nationality. Tadasu Takamine is among the cast. MARCH Makoto Aida and Tsuyoshi Ozawa form The Group 1965, with Chie Kaihatsu, Parco Kinoshita, Hiroyuki Matsukage and Oscar Oiwa. APRIL Masato Nakamura organises a follow-up to ‘Ginburart’ — ‘Shonen Shinjuku Art’ in Kabukicho in Shinjuku, Tokyo, in which 85 artists participate. JUNE Young critic Noi Sawaragi’s first book, Simulationism , is published, bearing the slogan ‘Steal it!’, and features appropriation artists Taro Chiezo, Kodai Nakahara, Yukinori Yanagi and Kenji Yanobe. 13 OCTOBER Kenzaburo Oe is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1994. His Nobel Lecture, ‘Japan, the Ambiguous and Myself’, diagnoses the split between Westernisation and Asian-ness in Japan as an incomplete development of humanism, a condition evident in attempts to amend the country’s pacifist constitution and a concomitant rise in historical revisionism. Installation view of And then, and then and then and then and then 1994 and Mr DOB, Usshisshi 1995 by Takashi Murakami in the ‘Second Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT2), QAG, 1996 / Photograph: Ray Fulton / © Takashi Murakami. All rights reserved. Takashi Murakami with The hellish madness of the game has come to an end leaving you hanging 1994 in APT2 / Photograph: Ray Fulton / © Takashi Murakami. All rights reserved. Kimio Tsuchiya installing Landscape in silence 1996 for APT2 Yukinori Yanagi with Asia–Pacific ant farm 1994 in APT2 Asia–Pacific ant farm 1994, detail with Japanese flag, in APT2