We can make another future : Japanese art after 1989

159 CHRONOLOGY | REUBEN KEEHAN 158 WE CAN MAKE ANOTHER FUTURE: JAPANESE ART AFTER 1989 2008 6 MARCH Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki Co. opens a gallery in Azabu in Tokyo. 28 MARCH New Tokyo Contemporaries, an association analogous to the G9 group of galleries of the 1990s, holds its first event. 19 APRIL The Japan Foundation’s ‘Kita!! Japanese Artists Meet Indonesia’, a freewheeling residency and exhibition project marking 50 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, opens in venues in Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta. 24 APRIL The Japan Times reports that The Art Newspaper consistently overlooks attendance figures at Japanese museums, finding that Japan achieved seven of the world’s top ten average daily attendances for 2007. 13 MAY The exhibitions ‘Daido Retrospective 1965–2005’ and ‘Daido Hawaii’ open at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography showcasing Daido Moriyama’s practice. 6 AUGUST Curated by Shinya Watanabe for the Puffin Room in New York, ‘ Into the Atomic Sunshine: Post-War Art under Japanese Peace Constitution Article 9’ opens at Hillside Forum, Daikanyama in Shibuya, Tokyo; artists include Yasumasa Morimura, Yoko Ono, Yuken Teruya and Yukinori Yanagi. 13 SEPTEMBER The 3rd Yokohama Triennale opens in bayside Minato Mirai; reviews are mixed, with some commentators questioning everything from the relevance of the event and its all-star curatorial team to the locale. 10 OCTOBER The Global Financial Crisis hits Japan, with the bankruptcy of Yamato Life Insurance Company. Property companies fold, the value of the yen soars and Toyota records its first-ever annual loss. Japan re‑enters a recession, with GDP (gross domestic product) shrinking 12.7 per cent. 21 OCTOBER Artist collective Chim↑Pom spark controversy when they commission a skywriter to spell out the word ‘ pika ’ above Hiroshima, a slogan from Pokémon, but also the onomatopoeic word for ‘flash’. The gesture provokes a storm of criticism from bomb victims’ associations, and results in the cancellation of the group’s exhibition at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, which had been scheduled to open on 1 November. NOVEMBER Taro Okamoto’s anti-nuclear war mural Myth of tomorrow , executed in Mexico in 1968–69, is installed in Shibuya Station in Tokyo. Lost for years, the work was located by Okamoto’s widow in a Mexico City warehouse and restored by the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. 2009 24 FEBRUARY Organised by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, ‘Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years’ opens at the MCA, Sydney. 10 MARCH The Nikkei index falls to a 27‑year low, having shed more than 80 per cent of its value since 1989. 16 APRIL Citing historical sensitivities, the Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum bans Nobuyuki Oura’s lithograph Holding perspective 1982–85 from its showing of the exhibition ‘Into the Atomic Sunshine: Post-War Art under Japanese Peace Constitution Article 9’. 23 MAY Commissioned by the Japan Foundation, ‘Winter Garden: The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art’ opens at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, before an extensive tour of Europe, North America and North Africa. Artists include Chim↑Pom, Tam Ochiai, Hiroshi Sugito and Koki Tanaka. 7 JUNE Miwa Yanagi presents her ‘Windswept Women’ series in the Japanese Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale. SUMMER Having published its final print issue, ARTiT goes online in June with a revamped website featuring social networking functions. 24 SEPTEMBER Hiroshi Sugimoto is awarded the Praemium Imperiale for photography. 26 OCTOBER Izu Photo Museum opens in the Clematis no Oka cultural complex in Shizuoka Prefecture. 5 DECEMBER ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT6) opens at QAGOMA. Japanese artists include Kohei Nawa, Shinji Ohmaki, Hiraki Sawa and YNG (Yoshitomo Nara and graf). Sawa and YNG’s works enter the collection, while Nawa’s PixCell-Double Deer#4 2010 is purchased the following year. 25 DECEMBER The new Democratic government announces the largest-ever budget for the Agency for Cultural Affairs, but signals the need for an outcome-based appraisal process. JUNE Tsutomu Mizusawa announces an international curatorial team for the Yokohama Triennale; Daniel Birnbaum, Akiko Miyake, Hu Fang, Beatrix Ruf and Hans Ulrich Obrist assist in the preparation of an exhibition titled ‘Time Crevasse’. 31 JULY With the sale and closure of Festival Gate, remo (Record, Expression and Medium Organisation) suspends its activities. 25 SEPTEMBER ‘Beautiful New World: Contemporary Visual Culture from Japan’, a major Japan Foundation project commemorating 35 years of normalised relations with China, opens in Beijing’s 798 district across three venues, Long March Space, Inter Arts Center and BTAP, as well as Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou. The project features 34 artists and is curated by Mami Kataoka, Fumihiko Sumitomo and Seoul-based curator Sunjung Kim. 5 OCTOBER The Japan Society, New York, hosts the exhibition ‘Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York’, a 33-artist survey of émigré artists curated by Eric C Shiner. 13 OCTOBER The second Roppongi Crossing exhibition, subtitled ‘Future Beats in Japanese Contemporary Art’, opens at the Mori Art Museum; 36 artists participate. 27 OCTOBER ‘Space for Your Future: Recombining the DNA of Art and Design’, curated by Yuko Hasegawa, opens at MOT in Tokyo. 29 OCTOBER ‘© MURAKAMI’, a retrospective of work by Takashi Murakami, opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the exhibition tours to the Brooklyn Museum, New York; MMK, Frankfurt; and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. Members of graf installing Y.N.G.M.S. (Y.N.G.’s Mobile Studio) 2009 for ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT6), GOMA, 2009 / Photograph: Natasha Harth Gallery visitors with PixCell-Elk#2 2009 by Kohei Nawa in APT6 / Photograph: Ray Fulton Shinji Ohmaki presenting an APT6 artist talk with his installation Liminal Air – descend – 2007–09 / Photograph: Natasha Harth Shinji Ohmaki’s Memorial Rebirth 2008 in APT6 / Photograph: Natasha Harth