We can make another future : Japanese art after 1989

19 18 WE CAN MAKE ANOTHER FUTURE: JAPANESE ART AFTER 1989 Though this came as a shock after such heady economic times, Japan was not the only country to experience sluggish growth in the early 1990s. What is unusual about the Japanese situation is the sheer duration of the country’s economic stagnation, which has now exceeded 20 years. Even allowing for the modest gains of the early 2000s, the term ‘lost decades’, originally coined to describe the 1990s, has now come to encompass nearly a quarter‑century of recent history. The reasons for precisely why this situation has come to pass have preoccupied economists for just as long. But if the causes of Japan’s long downturn remain open to question, its social effects have been eminently clear. Two of the most visible changes of the Heisei era have involved the decline of Japan’s manufacturing industries and the rise of precarious employment conditions. Labour arrangements that contributed to productivity and social cohesion during the Showa era have proven unwieldy and divisive in changed conditions. Lifelong employment has given way to part-time, casual and contracted wage labour, especially for younger workers, and almost a third of Japan’s labour force is now in ‘non-standard employment’, while unemployment rates have doubled. 2 The new sociological buzzwords describing the generation replacing ‘salarymen’ and ‘office ladies’ are considerably darker than their predecessors: ‘freeters’, ‘parasite singles’, ‘shut-ins’ and ‘suicide clubs’. 3 With government policy alternating between stimulus and austerity for a generation, the erosion of the social safety net has been a constant undercurrent of Japanese society, increasing anxiety for the slowly but steadily growing segment of the population at risk of underemployment. For a country that prides itself on its relatively equal distribution of wealth, this growing social tension has been profoundly unsettling. 4 FROM MEIJI TO MONO-HA In 1989, Japanese art was engaged in a process of significant internationalisation. The preceding years had seen the beginning of a period of historical retrieval and reassessment on the part of researchers and institutions in Europe and the United States, during which time the cultural transformations of Modernism in Japan were subject to competing interpretations. So, too, were external perceptions of contemporaneity in Japanese art, which tended to be structured by an opposition of postmodern amalgamation and orientalist essentialism. In Japan itself, contemporary art was becoming deeply engaged with questions and practices that found broader resonance elsewhere, while the exponential economic growth that gripped the country after 1985 and the extraordinary soft-power influence that accompanied it contributed in no small way to making international audiences more receptive to sophisticated expressions of Japanese cultural life. It is a view of Heisei Japan from a specific institutional and temporal perspective, but one constructed from a deep and abiding history of collective research and engagement. TILTING WORLD On 7 January 1989, Japan’s 124th and longest-ruling Emperor succumbed to cancer. Hirohito had reigned since 1926, a period that saw Japanese imperial and military expansion into mainland and South-East Asia, its involvement in World War Two, the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American occupation — during which time Hirohito had renounced his own divine status — and the economic ‘miracle’ of the postwar years. Perhaps Hirohito’s greatest legacy was his transition from the embodiment of Yamato godliness to the role of constitutional monarch, becoming the public face of a pacifist and economically buoyant nation. Hirohito’s oldest son Akihito succeeded him. According to protocol, Hirohito would be referred to after the name of his reign (the Showa period), while the new emperor decreed that the coming era, to begin the following day, on 8 January 1989, be called Heisei. Showa is an elusive term variously translated as ‘enlightened peace’, ‘radiant Japan’ or ‘Japanese glory’, a complex palette of possible interpretations (confounded by the use of the symbol wa , meaning harmony, also a euphemistic homonym for an unflattering ancient Chinese name for the Japanese archipelago). Heisei was more concrete, similarly invoking peace — albeit of a kind not etymologically coefficient with nation — suggesting ‘achieving peace’ and ‘peace everywhere’. Perhaps the most unfortunate English translation is ‘enduring peace’, a double entendre that offers the image of a trouble-free period that is nevertheless deeply troubled. In 1989, Japan’s economy was at its peak, having entered the 1980s with a sustained trade surplus. Loose monetary policy, easy credit and high consumer demand conspired to create an asset price boom that had quadrupled land and stock values over the decade. On 29 December 1989, at the height of the ‘bubble’, the Tokyo Stock Exchange Nikkei index sat at nearly four times the value of the US economy, while land prices in some Tokyo districts exceeded US$1 million per square metre. In an attempt to curb inflation, the Bank of Japan began raising interest rates, leading to the rapid default of the bad loans which were actually fuelling the speculation. Reopening after the new year on 4 January 1990, the Tokyo Stock Exchange began losing value. What became the Japanese stock market crash of 1990–92 was slow, prolonged and devastating — by 1 October, the market had shed almost half its value, or nearly US$2 trillion. Throughout this period, the real economy continued to surge — property values would not peak for another two years and consumer sentiment remained boisterous. However, market events foretold lean times to come and, after sustained drops over 1991 and 1992, GDP (gross domestic product) growth in 1993 sat close to zero. WE CAN MAKE ANOTHER FUTURE | REUBEN KEEHAN Yasumasa Morimura / Japan b.1951 / Blinded by the light 1991 / Type C photograph with surface varnish on paper on plywood in gold frame, ed. 3/3 / Triptych: 200 x 383cm (overall, framed) / Purchased 1996 with proceeds from the Brisbane BMW Renaissance Ball through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation. Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery’s Centenary 1895–1995