The “Japanese Gaze” and Racism | 「日本人の視線」とレイシズム

Abstract In this essay, Japanese artist Hikaru Fujii introduces his media installations works, which trace the history of the “gaze” at racialized Others present throughout Japanese art history, especially as Japan grappled with its own modernization as a nation-state. Hikaru Fujii incorporates his research into his own media works, specifically addressing the questions of how the “Japanese gaze” has shaped the visuality of others in Japanese paintings, world’s fairs, and art institutions, such as in the case of the 15th-century Nanban Folding Screens (Southern Barbarian Screens), which depicted Portuguese and people of African descent (most likely enslaved by Portuguese). He traces how the formation of Japaneseness has consistently required and depended on the categorization of others, particularly those colonized by the Japanese Empire (e.g. Koreans and Taiwanese) as well as those who have settled in contemporary Japan as refugees and immigrants. He calls for our renewed interests in the art to think about how the Japanese public as well as our own “gaze” may be destabilized by critically engaging with artworks.

English translation by Ikumi Yoshida

芸術がレイシズムに無関心でいられない理由の一つは、ジャーナリストが社会問題として取り扱うのとは違い、芸術機構(美術館、美術史、美術教育など)それ自体が人種的抑圧の増幅に加担してきた主体だからであろう。作品の形式や批評言説、美術史の記述によって構造化されてきたレイシズムに私が気づき始めたのは、一人の教師の次のような呼びかけだった。 

「なぜ、この学校には黒人がいないのだ。それについて話そう」

私はパリの美術学校の教室にいた唯一のアジア系の学生だった。学内では、警察官から突然に身体検査を受けることも、露骨な人種差別主義者に遭遇することもない。そこは安全であるだけでなく、人道的な空間であることが保証されていた。しかし、いま・ここにいなくてはならない黒人がいないという現実は、私がいる教室もまた暴力と支配の歴史と地続きの空間であること意味した。美術学校の教室で黒人の不在をまなざすことは、過去数世紀にわたって形成されてきた美術教育、西洋美術史、美学体制の問い直しを迫るものだった。それは20年以上も前のポスト・コロニアルな学びの経験だったが、世界は今、レイシズムを全面的かつ不可欠なものとして発動させる戦争が繰り広げられ、植民地化されたエスニシティ概念を解放させる(スチュアート・ホール)どころか、移民と難民を標的とした剥き出しのレイシズムが至るところで吹き荒れている。 

この世界的動向に日本も完璧なまでに同期している。しかし、「日本人の99%は人種差別主義者ではない」という信仰のようなものが支配的であり、レイシズムが国民的議論になることはない。むしろ、無関心性の方が際立っている。この状態は、私がかつてパリのアート・コミュニティの内に安住して見えてはいなかった黒人の不在のように、社会のなかで構造的に分離され、抑圧された者たちを不可視にする制度化されたレイシズムの全面化を意味するのかもしれない。本稿では、日本で制作したこれまでの作品を手がかりに、「視線」という観点から日本人のレイシズムの歴史をたどってい く。

数年前になるが、私は作品制作の依頼を受けた国立国際美術館の約8000点の所蔵作品を調査していた。アーティストが自分が従属する作品の形式に批判的であろうとするならば、作品が展示される場所を検証することもまた自然なことだった。美術館のコレクションは、その組織のあり方が具体化されたものだが、私の目には日本人の写真家・奈良原一高の作品が留まった。それらはポルトガル・リスボン国立古代美術館に所蔵されている日本人画家が描いた15世紀の絵画「南蛮屏風」を美術館の依 頼で撮影した「複製品」だった。 

「大発見時代」という名称は日本では使われないが、日本に初めて上陸したポルトガル人を驚かせたのは、日本人が同国人を家畜のように安い値で売ることだった。日本人カトリック司祭・原マルティノ(1569-1629)は、ローマ教皇グレゴリウス13世を謁見するための航海中に、世界各地で奴隷として売り払われた多くの日本人を目撃している。「わが民族のあれほど多数の男女やら童男・童女が、世界中の、あれほどさまざまな地域へあんな安い値で獲って行かれて売りさばかれ、みじめな賎役に身を屈しているのを見て、憐潤の情を催さない者があろうか」と嘆いている。ポルトガルが中国・マカオを拠点にアジアに勢力を拡大していたその頃はまだ日本は国家として完全には統一されていなかった。原マルティノの「わが民族を憂う」その心情は、日本にナショナリズムが形成されていく芽生え とも読み取れる。 

その一方で、「白くて美しい色をしたアダムとイブ」を人間の起源だと信じる日本のキリスト者は「劣等な諸民族がいる諸方の国に散らばって行って、そこで野蛮な、色の黒い人間の間で悲惨な奴隷の境涯を忍ぶのはもとより、虚偽の迷妄をも吹き込まれるのを誰が平気で忍び得ようか」と民族の優劣を生物的性質である肌の色と結びつけている。巧みなラテン語の演説で人々を驚かせた原マルティノだが、彼の人種概念は、ヨーロッパの宗教・言語・文化に由来するものなのだろうか。それとも原マルティノが「黄色い皮膚」のままに「白い仮面」を身につけてさえいなければ、幸福と調和を約束された楽園でレイシズムなど知らない日本人でいられたのだろうか。 

それでは日本人画家による「大発見時代」のポルトガル人来航のさまを描いた絵画「南蛮屏風」を観ておこう。美術館に展示された奈良原の複製写真を前に、コンテンポラリー・ダンサーのピーター・ ゴライトリーは次のように即興で語

漆だな、ということは中国に行ったのだろう

あの男はトルコ人かモロッコ人だろう

アフリカ人もいる

多くはアフリカ人奴隷だろう

ヨーロッパ人はポルトガル人だと思う

船の中央のマストにいる奴が一番気に入った

すごく高いところに登っている奴らもいい

男の子は不気味だな

あの状況で大丈夫だったら良いけど

靴 裸足 猫と犬 性器をいじる幼い子…

ピーター・ゴライトリーにはそれらが見えた。荷下ろしをする肌の色の濃い男たちや船のマストで危険な作業をする裸足の黒人がはっきりと見える。画中に隠された児童性愛、男色、娼婦たちの存在がはっきりと見える。描かれた人物の階級序列を的確に捉え、人種の身体的差異を正確に識別できたのは、彼の想像力によるものなのだろうか。それとも、アフリカ系アメリカ人というアイデンティティーがそうさせたのか。そのどちらだとしても、日本人画家がそのように描いたことが第一の事実だろう。日本には「血統」に基づく厳格な身分制があった。人間を非人として売買する社会を画家は知っていた。人種というものが序列化されるのではなく、人間と人間を差別化する血で描かれた「線」が先にあり、そこに人種・肌の「色」を当てはめていくことで絵画が完成したのではないのか。 

ピーター・ゴライトリーは見たものを言葉にすることができた。しかし、人は見たいものしか見えない。美術史家で黒人文化研究者の萩原弘子は、「南蛮屏風」に関する日本の歴史記述において、画中に描かれた色の黒い人間たちに関する言説が「不在」であることを明らかにしている。「南蛮屏風」を前に「日本人の視線」はまったく別のものをまなざしていた

リスボンの美術館に所蔵されている「実物」が日本に運ばれてきたのは、万国博美術展(1970年)でのことだった。この展覧会こそが国立国際美術館の設立の起源となるのだが、日本初の悲願の万国博覧会の開催にあたって、西洋美術史を相対化しようと「世界美術史」なるものを打ち出したその美術展の図版解説には次のように記述されている。 

「ここには、珍奇・奇獣・霊薬の数々を積み込んで、日本人の想像を越えた世界からやって来る巨大な、異様な船、豪華な美しい服装に身を包んだ鼻の高い大男達、黒い袖長い修道服姿の宣教師、それらを眺める画家の強い好奇心の目と驚きが生き生きと表現されている…」。 

日本美術の公定の歴史は「鼻の高さ」という細部に偏執しながら、「南蛮屏風」を日本人が始めてヨーロッパ人と出会った歴史的事件を記録した芸術として評価する。50年後の今日においてもその解釈の枠組みに変わりはない。「日本人の視線」は、画面左の巨大な外国船から右へと移動し、ヨーロッパから来た「大男」と対面する「日本人」へと着眼する。その視線の運動は、「西洋」と「東洋」の交流というオクシデンタリズムのナラティヴを完成させる。しかし、次の瞬間、画中に描かれた異邦人100人中57人ものグローバルサウスの非白人たちは見えなくなる。奴隷たちとの「南北の交流」、すなわち植民地的出会いを不可視にする。黒人や肌の色の濃い男たちは、日本とヨーロッパの出会いを黄金色に輝かすための陰暗の存在となる。美術という視覚装置が人種的抑圧の増幅に加担してきた所以 である。 

日本に「美術」という言葉が誕生したのは、日本政府が初めて公式参加したウィーン万国博覧会の時だったが、20世紀に入ると日本でも万国博覧会を模した展覧会が開催されるようになる。『日本人を演じる』はその時代を再現するワークショップの記録となっている。出演者である参加者が、それぞれの目の色、肌の色、骨格、頭の形、体格といった生物的性質を観察し合い、「日本人」という想像の共同体を創りあけていく。その一方で、「日本人」らしくない者たちを見定め、「われわれ(日本人)」とは異なる者たちとして、彼ら生身の人間を展示して、一方的に表象していくという日本版「人 間動物園」を再演するものである

19世紀半ばに後発の位置から国民国家の形成を開始した日本が帝国として立ち現れようとしていた世紀転換期、世界の大部分の地域は欧米列強国の資本主義経済システムに組み込まれていた。日本政府は海外製品を排除する保護主義の政策を転換させ、輸入品の出展を初めて認める博覧会を開催する(1903年)。そこで日本人が鑑賞したのは、世界各地の目新しいモノだけではなかった。当時、欧米の万国博覧会で流行していた「民族学的展示」が催されている。 

日本では「学術人類館」と名付けられたそのパビリオンには、連日数千人の観客か来場するほど人気があった。エントランスには、イギリスで前年に出版された人類学書『現在の人種(The living races of mankind)』に掲載された各国の民族写真が大きく引き伸ばされ展示されている。ハヒリオンを訪れた観客に民族写真をまずは見せ、その後に、それぞれの伝統的住居空間を模倣した建造物の中で生活する生身の人間を直接に観察させる。「日本人の視線」は、西洋の知識を利用しながら、人間を物体ないしは標本とみなす科学的レイシズムへと発展していく

しかし、欧米の人種理論や社会進化論をむやみに日本社会が受容する時代ではなくなっていた。「学術人類館」の出品資料の整理に協力した東京大学の人類学者・松村瞭(1880-1936)は次のように書き残している。「(展示された)写真は専門学者の選出したものてはないから、とかく異様の風をなし、野蛮気に見ゆるもののみ多く、全世界に行き渡らないで、欧州人、アメリカ人、ジベリア人等の絶無なるが如きは、甚だ遺憾とする所である」と学会誌で批判している(東京人類学会雑誌、1903年4月20日)。「学術」らしさは演出されるものの、「野蛮」の見世物小屋と化したパビリオンの実態か伝わってくるが、若い学者を失望させたのは、欧米人を含む「全世界」を対象にすることが叶わなかった人類学の理想だろう。その壮大な学知的欲望を「科学的」とするのか「帝国的」とするのか判断することは難しいが、かつて劣等な黄色人種とされてきた日本人が欧米との生存競争に必要な国力を持つようになり、白色人種と黄色人種は「同等」であると学校教育で教えられていた時期でもある。欧米の「人種は固定されたもの」とするレイシズムに対抗する若き知識人に内面化されたナショナリスムに留意しておく必要があるだろう。 

それでも近代日本のナショナリズムは、世界の序列空間を組み替えようとする力の源泉であり、レイシズムそれ自体を否定するものではない。黄色人種のなかの「優秀人種」である「日本人種」をアジアの主導者とする新秩序を打ち立てようとする。その欲望に応える視覚装置が「学術人類館」だった。松村の文章から日本人にまなさされる客体となって展示された者たちを確認しておこう。 

「今日その内に生活しつつある者を、種族別にすれば次の通り。アイヌ七名(内女二名)、琉球人二名(女)、生蕃タイヤル族一名(女)、熟蕃二名(男)、台湾土人二名(男女)、マレー人二名(男)、ジャヴァ人一名(男)、印度人七名(内女二人)、トルコ人一名(男)、サンヂバル島人一名(男)。これらの他にかつて朝鮮人の女二名居たのであるが、ある事情のため今日では解雇してし もうた」。 

アジアを超えてアフリカ・インド洋域にまで「日本人の視線」は伸びてはいるが、その視界は、松村が言葉を濁らす「ある事情」のために遮られる。展示される側からの猛烈な抗議運動が起こったの だ。いわゆる「人類館事件」が勃発する。 

その予兆は博覧会が開催される前からあった。展示されることが予定されていた中国人を外すよう清国公使から外務省に抗議が行われていた。外交関係の悪化を懸念した政府は将来的に重要な貿易相手である中国人を展示から外すことで対応する。人類館に「学術」という名称が付け加えられたのもこの時期だった。開催から8日後には、朝鮮人の展示も問題視され、先述した「解雇」へとつながる。「わが民族を憂う」ナショナリズムは周辺国でも形成されていた。ここでは、中国人、朝鮮人に続いて抗議の声があがった琉球人の『人類館を中止せよ』(沖縄新報社説、1903年4月11日)から引用する。

「私たちは日本帝国にこれほど冷酷で貪欲な国民がいることを恥じている。彼らか他府県における変わった風俗を展示せずに、特に台湾の生蕃や北海道のアイヌなどと共に沖縄県民を選んだことは、私たちを野蛮人、アイヌと同一視するものであり、私たちに対する侮辱としてこれほど酷いものはあるだろうか。沖縄県民がいかに無神経といえども、いかに意気地なしといえども、こんな侮辱を受ける訳にはいかない。沖縄県における社会教育は現在急速に向上しつつあり、服装についても、男子は十中八九すでに改まっており、女子であっても服装を新しくしている人数は毎年勢いよく増加している。本件についても、藩を廃止、県となって以来、一視同仁という天皇の恩恵に預かり、以来、純粋でないものは純粋にし、風俗の異なるものについてはこれを直して、全国すべて同じにすることに戻 るべくひたすら努めている」。 

日本の安全保障上の重要な拠点として琉球王国が併合されてから24年が経っていた。彼らが同一視されることを拒んだのが、日本列島北部に古くから存在する先住民族のアイヌ人や植民地台湾の先住民だった。彼らを「野蛮」として見下す沖縄のまなざしは、「日本人の視線」に単に一体化するものではない。自らの言語と文化を強制的に奪われた沖縄の怒りは「すべてを平等に慈しみ差別しない(一視同仁)」という天皇の矛盾をその理念を反射させ突いている。日本人のレイシズムを支える天皇制を問い直すことはもはや避けられないだろう。 

日本各地で「人間の展示」が開催されていた時代、植民地台湾の民政長官で生物学者でもある後藤新 平(1857-1929)は、日本人を高級魚の「タイ」に、台湾人を「ヒラメ」に喩えて、「頭の一方についているヒラメの目を、タイのように両方につけ替えへることはできない」として、台湾人の旧慣習には無干渉とする政策を取っていた。また「優等人種」は「野蛮人種」と接触すると破滅をもたらすといった優生学も存在し、日本人と台湾人との結婚を生物学的側面から排除する法律も存在した。 

しかし、人間は交流し、混じり合い、多元化していく生き物でもある。両者の境界線はいずれ「融和」していくだろう。「日本民族」が混血民族であるということは植民地支配の正当性にとって脅威となってくる。「日本人種」の優位性を維持するための「神話的血液」が植民地に大量に流し込まれていく。それは、日本が近代国家の建国の際に「発明」し、政体の大動脈に流し込んでいきたもの、すなわち「皇室の血」たった。 

男系の血を途絶えることなく受け継いできたとする「万世一系」の天皇を父とする家族国家イデオロギーが植民地で全面化する。言語・慣習、宗教・氏名・地名に至るまて日本に「同化」させ、沖縄のように「純粋でないものは純粋にすること」が求められた。それでも、宗家皇室の純粋な血を分かち合う血統集団「日本民族」とは差異化され、日本の本土=内地の自然・気候・地質・言語を継承する「日本人種」とは異なるものとして差別化される。植民地出身者の「血」は戸籍にも烙印され、天皇を家父長とする「縦」の序列の最下層に固定化されていく。

日本の本土では、政治・社会・文化の各方面で民主主義の発展がみられた「大正デモクラシー」の時代となっていた。その中心である東京に朝鮮人の留学生たち数百名か集結した1919年2月8日、彼らは民族解放運動の開始を宣言する。しかし、その直後に警察官が集会場に乱入し、学生たちを反逆罪の容疑で次々に逮捕していく。彼らは政治体制を破壊する内容の文書を配布した罪で牢獄に服役することになるが、日本から脱出した学生によって「2.8独立宣言書」は朝鮮半島へと渡り、翌月に植民地期最大級の抵抗運動「3.1独立運動」へとつながっていく。ここでは、朝鮮近代文学の父ともいわれる イ・ガンス(1892-1950)が、第一次世界大戦末期に提唱された民族自決の原則に勇気づけられ留学生時代に起草した「2.8独立宣言書」から抜粋する。それをだたどたどしい日本語で朗読するのは、東南アジアの「留学生」であり、彼らは21世紀の日本社会の「労働力」として期待されている。 

「(略)わが民族に対し参政権、集会・結杜の自由、言論・出版の自由などを一切許さす、甚だしきは信教の自由、企業の自由に至るまでも拘束している。行政、司法、警察などの諸機関で朝鮮民族の私権さえも侵害しないものはない。公的にも私的にもわか民族と日本人との間に優劣の差別を設け、わが民族には劣等の教育を施し、永くわが民族を日本人の使役者にしようとしている。歴史を書き改め、わが民族の神聖な歴史的、民族的伝統と威厳を破壊し、さらに凌辱を加えている。少数の官吏を除くほかは、政府の諸機関、交通、通信、兵備などの諸機関の全部あるいは大部分には日本人を使用し、わが民族に永遠に国家生活の智能と経験を得る機会を与えないようにしている。わが民族は、このような武断専制の不正、不平等の政治のもとでは、決してその生存と発展を享受することができな い(略

公的にも私的にも社会に埋め込まれたレイシズムが克明に記述されているが、この告発がなされてから100年後の2019年、日韓関係はかつてない緊張のなかにあった。私はこの作品を展示をするためにSeMa(ソウル市美術館)へ赴いたが、外務省は日本人の韓国への渡航を注意喚起するほどに事態は緊迫していた。その要因は、植民地支配による被害の賠償を求める韓国側に対して、「当時は国際法上で合法だった」とする日本側の主張が激しく対立していたことにある。現在まで続くこの歴史認識の問題を複雑に入り組んだものにしているが、韓国が民主化される前の独裁政権時代に日本の植民地支配の歴史を「不問」とした事情もあるが、日本が人種主義イデオロキーに基づく植民地支配の加害の歴史を徹底的に見つめ、考え、議論させる教育をしてこなかったからに他ならない。

その内省の機会を最初に失ったのが、1945年8月15日、天皇が史上はじめて人間として公然に語りかけたその時に求めるのはあまりに現実離れしているだろうか。それでも、天皇はラジオを通して、屈辱的な敗北の宣言を、日本の戦争行為の再肯定と自らの超越的な道徳性の再確認へと転換するという不可能を可能にした(ジョン・ダワー)。ならば、その想像力をもって別の未来の可能性を開く合図もできたのではないのか。天皇は「東亜ノ解放」のために戦争協力したアジアの国々に深い遺憾の意を「終戦の日」に表明した。その「聖戦」は、アジア諸民族の家長として欧米の植民地支配を終結させるという天皇総帝論(八紘一宇)に支えられていた。その大義を戦時下のイデオローグであり哲学者の西田幾多郎の理論を援用しながらレイシズムの歴史に引きつけて概略化するとこのようになる。天皇を中心に世界が「統一」された時、初めて人類が「平等」になる。なぜなら「白人」によるの植民地支配は、絶えず白と黒を「差別」するが、天皇による世界形成の原理は「統一」によってなされる。西洋の「多様」な世界は「対立」を条件とするが、天皇による世界新秩序の建設は「単一」によって 近代を超克するという。

日本帝国のモノクロームな世界観を見事に美学化した映画が台湾国立歴史博物館に所蔵されている。1940年代の日本統治下の台湾で制作されたそのプロパガンダ映画の再演を『無情』という作品で試みた。「日本人でない状態から日本人である状態に変える(変わる)」ための軍事色の強い教育施設「国民道場」の舞台をしつらえ、日本在住の移民の若者たちが日本語で軍歌を唱歌し、戦意高揚のスローガンを復唱する。天皇への忠誠心を誓う国家神道の宗教的儀礼(禊)よって、かつて台湾人の青年たちかトランス状態となりそれぞれの個性を消失させ「統一」されたように、自己の人間性の一切を排除した「無私」の境地へと向かっていく人間を演じる。その「無私」の臨界点が、第二次世界大戦中に植民地出身の若者たちも参加した自殺攻撃部隊「神風」たろう。その自死は国家のためではないと京都学派を代表する哲学者の田辺元は論じる。同胞のため、愛する家族のために身を捧げ死を超越せよ、すなわち日本という種族のなかに死ぬことによって永遠に生きることを意味するのだと学生 を戦地へ送った。

それから78年後の今日、「日本人種」という言葉は使われなくなった。SNS上では「日本には人種差別は存在しない」という言葉さえ溢れている。「日本民族」によるレイシズムの全面化は過去のものとなり、歴史の片隅で忘れられたのかもしれない。かつて「日本人の99%は人種差別主義者だった」という歴史を信じるものはいないのかもしれない。しかし、作品の制作を通して私か出会ってきた日本在住の移民や難民の若者たちには(それぞれ固有の名前のある私の友人たちには)、日本社会に生きる経験として歴史の連続性が見えている。 

『無情』の出演者の一人は、自分の労働力を取引する職業選択の自由もなければ、失業の自由さえもない。そのような身分を日本では「技能実習生」と名づけているか、人類の歴史は「奴隷」と定義して解放をめざしてきた。制作スタッフの一人は「日本では人間扱いされない」とつぶやく。彼らの生を条件付ける入管法が、旧植民地出身者の管理・抑圧あるいは排除のための過去の法律を引き継いたものであることを彼らは知っている。また難民として子供の頃に来日した若者は、未だ移動の自由か制限されている。他の都道府県を越境することは許可制となり、第三国に出国することも、大学に行くことも、労働することも認められていない。未来を構想できないその生活は、拡張された強制収容 所での「生きながらの死」なのだと私に教えてくれた。 

「われわれ(日本人)」とは異なる彼らには、公的にも私的にも社会に埋め込まれた過去から続くレイシズムが見えている。しかし、人は見たいものしか見えない。「日本人の視線」にはそれは見えない。見えないことでレイシズムは発動し続けられる。今も誰かが日本という種族のなかで「無私」の状態を強制されている。「日本人種」の幸福のために犠牲になっている。芸術はその現実を前に無力である。それでもなお、作品をまなざす一人の視線に賭けるしかない

English translation by Ikumi Yoshida

One of the reasons why the arts cannot be indifferent to racism is that, while journalism has dealt with it as a societal problem, institutions of art (e.g. museums, art history, and art education) have participated in racist oppression itself as well as its expansion. I have gradually become aware of structural racism reinforced by art history. It was my teacher’s remark that sparked such a realization. This teacher asked, “Why are there no Black people at this school? Let’s talk about that.”

I was the only Asian student in the classroom of my art school in Paris. I was never stopped on the street and questioned by the police, nor was I ever exposed to overt racial discrimination. Not only did I feel safe, but also it was made sure that the classroom was a secure humanitarian space. However, it was the fact that in here and now, there was not a single Black person, which caused me to acknowledge that such a classroom also exists as an extension of the history of violence and domination. For me, casting my gaze at the absence of Black people in the art school classroom meant questioning and reflecting on art education, Western art history, and the aesthetic regime of the past couple of centuries. Although it has been more than twenty years since I was in that classroom, when I look back at my experiences, I feel that it was a lesson in postcolonialism. However, now I look around and the world is filled with wars, which are both borne out of and further entrench racism. As Stuart Hall noted in 1988, and remains true today, colonized nations and ethnicities are far from being freed.¹ Rather, severe racism targeting refugees and immigrants is rampant in many places.

Japan is not an exception; in fact, it is perfectly synchronized with this trend. Yet there is a dominant belief that ninety-nine percent of Japanese people are not racist and that racism is not relevant to nationwide dialogue. Instead, most people seem indifferent. This situation could be compared to me feeling safe in the art community in Paris while observing the absence of Black people. This environment, which structurally divides people, renders the oppressed invisible and enables racism to remain widespread. In this essay, I draw on the works I have created in Japan and attempt to reflect on Japanese people’s history with a focus on the concept of their gaze (shisen).

A few years ago, I was conducting research on some eight thousand items in a collection at the National Museum of Art, Osaka. There, I was commissioned to create a piece to exhibit. It is only natural that an artist will critically examine the place where their work will be displayed alongside other works. The collections at any museum manifest what kind of institution it is. On that occasion, Ikkō Narahara’s photography caught my eye. Narahara was asked to produce a collection of photographic  copies of Southern Barbarian (Nanban) screens: A series of the paintings produced by fifteenth-century Japanese artists, which are currently housed in Lisbon’s National Museum of Ancient Art.

While Japan did not use the term “Age of Discovery,” it was during this period when Portuguese people were shocked by Japanese people, who were selling off their own people at low prices as if they were livestock. One Japanese Catholic priest, Hara Martinão (1569–1629) witnessed how many Japanese people were sold as slaves on his voyage to see Pope Gregory XIII. He wrote, 

If anyone can see how many of my people —men, women, boys, and girls —are sold off to all kinds of places around the world with almost nothing and forced to work in unbearably miserable conditions, they would feel tremendous sympathy for my people (waga minzoku wo ureu).²

When Portugal was expanding their influence in Asia from China and Macau, Japan had not yet become a unified country. And so, Hara’s sentiment of “sympathy for my people” could be seen as the sprouting of a seedling of Japanese nationalism.

Despite this sentiment, Hara believed that there was a correlation between skin color and different ranks among humans and claimed that the origin of human beings was “white and fair coloured Adam and Eve.” He continued writing that “[Japanese] people are sent to the countries where inferior races reside, and there, they have to witness black-coloured savages as miserable slaves, and have to be told lies and false delusions. Who can stand that?”³ Does this mean that even Hara, who impressed people with his eloquent Latin speech, understood race informed by European religions, languages, and cultures? Or does it mean that Hara, a Japanese who kept his yellow skin without a white face, was still promised happiness and harmony in paradise? There, he was able to remain a Japanese person who did not even need to learn about racism.

Let us take a look at the Southern Barbarian screens, painted by a Japanese artist in the Age of Discovery. Kyoto-based contemporary dancer of African descent, Peter Golightly, improvised the following lines in front of Narahara’s work at the museum:

That’s lacquer, so they probably went to China.

I think that man is Turkish or Moroccan, or from somewhere in Africa.  

There are lots of people who are probably African slaves. 

The Europeans are Portuguese, I think. 

But that guy at the rigging, at the very bowel of the ship. 

That’s my favorite, I really like that one. 

Also the guys were really high.

That little boy, he’s kinda creepy. 

I hope he was ok. 

Shoes. Bare feet. Cats and dogs and that little boy playing with himself. 

Peter Golightly was able to see all that. He was able to identify the men with darker skin offloading cargo, the Black workers who were assigned with dangerous tasks while working barefoot. He was able to clearly see pedophilia, homosexuality, and prostitution hidden in the images. He was able to grasp class differences and racial differences depicted in the images. Was it because of his imagination or was this informed by his identity as an African American? In addition to Golightly’s own aesthetic framework, the primary reason for such an understanding is the original Japanese painter’s way of depicting the scene. This painter must have lived in the strict class hierarchy founded on bloodlines, in a society where people sold outcastes (hinin) to other people. While the concept of race may have not been something to be hierarchized for the painter, he still saw the social division drawn by blood. It was likely that he completed the picture by filling those spaces with colors of race or skin. 

Peter Golightly was able to put what he saw into his words, but humans can only see what they want to see. The art historian and researcher of Black culture, Hiroko Hagiwara, revealed the “absence” of discourse around Black people in this painting from Japanese historiography.⁴

The actual painting, which had been originally housed at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, was presented in Japan for the first time in 1970 at the world’s fair. This fair ultimately became the origin of the National Museum of Art, Osaka. Being a host of the world exposition was Japan’s earnest wish, and on such an occasion in 1970, officials tried to provincialize Western art history by proposing the field of “world art history.” The following is an excerpt from the illustrated description prepared for the exhibition:

Depicted so lively in the picture is the strange gigantic ship that came from Japanese people’s imagination of the world beyond, filled with rarities, exotic beasts, and elixirs of the world, big men with big noses in luxurious, beautiful clothes, the missionaries in long-sleeved robes, and the artist’s eyes sparkling with wonder and curiosity before them.⁵

The official Japanese art history is fixated on the “big noses” and praise the “Southern Barbarian screens” as a historically important record of an important historical event where Japanese people encountered Europeans for the first time. It has been fifty years since the exhibition and such a framework does not seem to have changed much. Japanese people’s gaze moves from the huge ship on the left to the right, and lands on a Japanese person who meets “a big man” from Europe. This eye movement completes the Occidentalist narrative of contact between the East and the West. However, in the next moment, out of the hundred people depicted in the picture, fifty-seven non-Western people of color were rendered invisible. The audience does not see the “exchange between the North and South” through the presence of slaves or such colonial encounters either. When shedding light on the meeting between Japan and Europe, people with “darker skin” are pushed aside into the shadows. This is how and why art as a visual machine has contributed to the expansion of racial oppression.

The Japanese word bijutsu (art) was coined during the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair, where the Japanese government officially participated for the first time. In the twentieth century, Japan started organizing domestic art exhibitions mimicking world’s fairs. My moving image installation, Playing Japanese is a recorded series of workshops, which recreate that era. The participants are performers, who observe one another’s phenotypical features such as eye color, skin color, bone structure, head shape, and body type, constructing an imagined community as Japanese. At the same time, the participants judge who does not look Japanese and label them as different from “us” (the Japanese), showing what it means to exhibit human beings in such a one-sided representation. It was a restaging of a Japanese version of a “human zoo.”

The mid-nineteenth century was when Japan started its journey to nation-building before eventually becoming an empire. Most areas of the world had been absorbed into the capitalist system of the Western powers. The Japanese government shifted away from protectionism, which had barred imports, and held an exhibition in 1903 where foreign items were openly displayed. They were not only trade goods, but also people in “anthropological exhibitions” presented to the audience, which was a popular feature of world’s fairs in the West. 

The exhibition was labeled the “Anthropological Pavilion of the Human Races,” and attracted a few thousand people every day. The entryway welcomed visitors with enlarged ethnographic photos from The Living Races of Mankind, a book published in England the previous year. The audience members were to see these images first, and then guided into an exhibition hall where each ethnic group’s traditional residence was recreated. There, visitors were expected to observe living human beings. The “Japanese gaze” took advantage of Western knowledge and developed it into scientific racism, which regarded human beings as things or specimens.

Over time, Japan did stop blindly accepting theories of race and evolution. In an April 1903 article, anthropologist at University of Tokyo, Matsumura Ryō (1880–1936)—who helped organize documents related to the exhibited items—wrote in the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Tokyo that the “photographs were not chosen by specialists, and the chosen ones look particularly strange and seemingly savage. The geographical areas are limited, too, and I feel extremely disappointed and regretful that there are no photographs of Europeans, Americans, or Siberians.” What was intended to be a staged academic setting turned out to be what Matsumura perceived as a freak show of savages. What frustrated this young researcher the most was that the ideal of anthropology of objectifying the world did not include white Westerners. I am not sure if we should call his grand desire scientific or imperialistic, especially given the era. The West labeled Japan as a country of the yellow race and thus inferior. But at the same time, Japan was finally keeping up with the West to be able to compete equally; even schools taught that the white race and the yellow race were equal. We should be mindful of the fact that, even for this young scholar who wanted to challenge Western racism’s idea that race was immutable, nationalism was something already internalized.

Modern Japanese nationalism was a wellspring of the force that aimed to change the hierarchy of the world and did not denounce racism itself. Rather, the Japanese race was framed as a superior race to the yellow people, and thus the Japanese race must become the leader of Asia to bring a new order. Therefore, the anthropological display in Japan was a visual machine, which worked to satisfy such desires. Now, let us read Matsumura’s text to see who was to be gazed upon by the Japanese viewers: 

The following is a list of races of people who are living there today: Seven Ainu (including two women), two Ryukyuans (both women), one Atayal (a woman), two wild Aborigines (both men), two Taiwanese Aborigines (a man and a woman), two Malays (both men), one Javanese (a man), seven Indian people (including two women), one Turk (a man), one Zanzibari (a man). There were also two Korean women, but because of a certain situation, they were let go today.

The “Japanese gaze” went beyond East Asia and traversed around the Indian Ocean, but it was also obstructed by the “certain situation,” to which Matsumura so vaguely alluded. In fact, the exhibition was met with resistance, which was referred to at the time as the “Anthropological Pavilion of the Human Races Incident” (Jinruikan jiken).

There were signs of objections even before the exhibition. A minister of the Qing government officially demanded that the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs remove Chinese people from the planned exhibition. Japanese government wanted to avoid harming its relationship with China, which was emerging as Japan’s most important trade partner. It eventually agreed not to include Chinese people in the exhibition. It was during this time when the exhibition added the term, “academic” (gakujutsu), which meant “anthropological,” to its title. On the eighth day of the exhibition, the inclusion of Koreans in the show was also problematized, resulting in Koreans being “let go,” as Matsumura put it. The nationalistic sentiment of “sympathy for my people” was formed in neighboring countries, too. Here is a quote from “Cancel the Anthropological Pavilion of Human Races,” an editorial published in Okinawa shinpō on April 11, 1903, following the protests from Chinese and Koreans.

We are ashamed that there are so many cruel and greedy citizens in the Japanese empire. They did not choose anyone from other prefectures but chose Okinawa prefectural citizens to be exhibited alongside wild Aborigines from Taiwan or Ainu from Hokkaido. This means that they see us Okinawans as equal to Ainu. Is there any worse insult than this? Okinawa prefectural citizens might not be so sensitive or brave, but there is no way we can stand this insult. Okinawa prefectural efforts for social education have been improving rapidly, and even as for clothes, 80 to 90 percent of boys wear them properly and even the number of girls who renew their attire has been drastically increasing. That is because we have been appreciating and believing in the emperor’s impartial gaze upon all of his subjects (isshin dōjin) since the abolition of feudal domains and establishment of prefectures; we have strived to purify impure things and fix old customs, so that we can return to becoming identical to the rest of Japan.

At that point, it had been twenty-four years since the Ryukyu Kingdom was annexed into Japan as one of the most important locations for Japanese national security. Okinawans refused to be regarded as the same as Ainu and Indigenous peoples in colonized Taiwan. To be clear, the Okinawan “gaze” at the so-called “savages” in this context should be differentiated from the Japanese gaze. Okinawans were forcefully robbed of their languages and cultures, which shaped their fury exposing the contradictory notion of the Japanese emperor’s “impartial gaze upon all of his subjects.” Given this, we cannot help but think of the emperor system as sustaining Japanese people’s racism. 

At the time where “exhibitions of human beings” were held all over Japan, in colonial Taiwan, biologist and the head of civilian affairs, Gotō Shinpei (1857–1929), compared Japanese to a high-grade fish such as red snappers while comparing Taiwanese to flounders. He wrote, “We can’t move a flounder’s eyes from one side to the other so that they would have eyes on either side of their heads as red snappers do.” Based on this logic, he established policies not to interfere with Taiwanese customs. This aligned with some eugenic theories, which claimed that superior races would be spoiled in contact with savage races, leading to legislation banning inter-ethnic marriages between Taiwanese and Japanese. 

However, people interact, commingle, and diversify. The border between these two would eventually be reconciled (yūwa). The miscegenation of the Japanese people became a threat to their justification for colonial control; a tremendous amount of the mythical blood was injected into the colonies to sustain superiority of the Japanese race. By “mythical blood,” I mean to point to the idea that such blood was invented in the birth of Japan as a modern nation, which was poured into the blood vessels of the political body, symbolizing the blood of the imperial family.

The ideology that the emperor possesses bansei ikkei (an unbroken bloodline) and is the father of the nation state was spread all over the colonies. Languages, customs, religions, names, and places were assimilated into the Japanese way, and people were forced to purify impure things, such as in Okinawa. Still, people were labeled differently from a Japanese ethnic group, which was supposed to share the pure blood line trickling down from the royal family, spreading into metropolitan Japan/the mainland’s nature, climate, geology, and language. The types of “blood” of people from the colonies were marked in koseki (family registers) and placed as a fixed category at the bottom of the “top-down” hierarchy of racial classification (with the emperor as the patriarch).

The era of “Taishō democracy” (1912–1926) brought democratic developments in political, societal, and cultural areas in mainland Japan. In Tokyo, Japan’s metropole, a few hundred Korean students gathered on February 8, 1919, and declared the start of their own liberation movement. However, soon after this declaration, police officers burst into their gathering place and arrested the students for treason. Although many of them had to serve time in prison for the crime of distributing documents, which called for the destruction of the existing political system, some of the students escaped Japan and brought the February 8 Declaration of Independence to the Korean peninsula, leading to the March 1st Movement, the biggest resistance movement of the imperial period. Here, I quote Lee Kwang-soo (1892–1950), known as the father of modern Korean literature, who was a student in Japan at the time.⁶ He was inspired by the principle of self-determination of peoples and one of the leaders who drafted the February 8 Declaration of Independence. 

In my film installation 2.8 Declaration of Independence: Reading in Japanese, the declaration was read aloud by exchange students from Southeast Asia, who are expected to be part of a labor force in twenty-first-century Japan. 

Our people are not allowed to vote, nor are we given freedom of assembly and association, freedom of speech or publication. We’re even limited in our freedom of religion and freedom of enterprise. There are no organizations for administration, judiciary, or the police, which do not infringe on Korean people’s human rights. Our people are discriminated against as inferior to the superior Japanese, who are trying to make us their slaves both publicly and privately. They alter history and destroy our people’s sacred history and traditions and dignity and inflict more indignities. Except for a few officers, most of the institutions of government, transportation, communication, and military employ only Japanese people, depriving our people of opportunities to know and experience what it means to lead a life in a nation-state. Our people shall never enjoy survival nor development as a people under the injustice of a military dictatorship.

This declaration shows how clearly racism was embedded in social and private life. A hundred years later, the Korea-Japan relationship again faced a severe crisis. I was to visit the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) at that time, but Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs alerted Japanese citizens about the risk of travelling to Korea. The cause of this crisis was that Japan rejected Korea’s demand to be compensated for losses and damages caused by colonization, claiming that “it was legal under the international law.” Neither party yielded to the other’s claims. Until this day, the two countries have not reached the same recognition of history. It is true that there are many reasons for this, including the previous South Korean dictators who neglected to ask Japan for its accountability for its deeds during colonization. Nevertheless, Japan has also been avoiding gazing and reflecting upon its own history, neglecting to thoroughly discuss its role as a colonial aggressor based on the ideology of racism.

Would it be too far-fetched to say that Japanese people lost their chance to reflect on their history as an aggressor on August 15, 1945, a crucial moment when the emperor spoke to the public for the first time as a human being? Maybe so, and because the emperor, speaking through the radio, declared Japan’s miserable defeat, I cannot help but suggest that this actually made it possible to redefine Japanese military aggression as something positive to reinforce Japan’s moral superiority. Such impossibility was made possible because of the emperor’s speech (see John Dower’s work on this topic), even though this imagination could have been used to open a totally different door to a different future.⁷ The emperor expressed his deep regret and remorse on the “day the war ended” for the Asian countries, which collaborated with Japan for “the liberation of East Asia (Tōa no kaihō).” This “sacred war” was carried out with the cause of so-called hakkō ichu (assembling all the world under one roof) to end Western colonialism in Asia, and in the process, claiming Japan as the head of the Asian family. Let me interpret this cause in the context of the history of racism by drawing on Japanese wartime ideologue and philosopher Nishida Kitarō. This cause could be interpreted as saying that equality among human beings is only possible by making the world unite with the emperor at its helm. This is because the principle of the new world order founded by the emperor is the unification, while white people colonize with the principle of the incessant distinctions between black and white. The “diverse” Western world is preconditioned by “conflicts,” but the new world order formed by the emperor conditions “oneness” and goes beyond the early modern period.

The National Taiwan Museum houses films which aestheticize the monochrome worldview of the Japanese Empire. My film installation, Mujō (The Heartless), attempts to restage a performance of propaganda films shot in Taiwan under Japanese rule in the 1940s. The stage was set to create an army-style educational institution, the so-called Civilian Training Center (kokumin dōjo), which aimed to change the trainees “from being non-Japanese to being Japanese.” There, young immigrants in Japan sing army songs and repeat wartime slogans out loud. Through misogi of State Shintoism (ritual purification by washing one’s body), young Taiwanese men fell into a trance and lost their individuality as “unified” human beings, having become stripped of their humanity and approaching a “lack of self” (mushi). 

This critical point of a “lack of self” indeed forms the core of Kamikaze pilots, which involuntarily included young men from the colonies. Sending the students to war, Kyoto School scholar Tanabe Hajime preached to his students that their suicides were not for the country but that their deaths as part of the Japanese race would allow them to live eternally, so they need to give their bodies and souls up for their comrades and families they love.

It has been seventy-eight years since the end of the Second World War, and no one uses the term “the Japanese race” anymore. On social media, I see many people post that “racial discrimination doesn’t exist in Japan.” Full blown racism by the “Japanese ethnic group” is seen as a thing of the past, forgotten in a tiny corner of history. Maybe at this point, no one will believe that 99 percent of Japanese people were racists. However, while working on Mujō (The Heartless), I have met various young refugees and immigrants (who have names and who are my friends), and they testify from their own experiences that such racist tendency continues today.

One of the cast members in Mujo has no freedom to choose their occupation, cannot negotiate their own labor agreement, and they cannot even leave their current job. In Japan, this group of people is labeled “technical intern trainees.” Historically, however, they have been informally defined as “slaves,” who have survived for liberation. One of the production staff members mumbled, “We’re not treated as human beings in Japan.” They all know that the immigration law that conditions their survival stems from the past legislation, which aimed to control, suppress, and even eliminate people from the former colonies. There was this person who came to Japan as a kid under refugee status. Those in a similar situation are not allowed to move around as they wish. They need a permit to go to other prefectures. They are not allowed to go to other countries, attend college, or work. They cannot possibly begin to construct their future. He told me that it was as if you were “living as dying” in a large-scale concentration camp.

Positioned as different from “us” (the Japanese), they see and experience racism buried in the society both publicly and privately. However, people only see what they want to see. The “Japanese gaze” cannot recognize racism. Racism is not witnessed by the “Japanese gaze.” Even at this moment, those who are classified as “others” by the Japanese gaze, such as refugees and immigrants are forced to condition themselves as “selfless,” and sacrifice themselves for happiness of the “Japanese race.” Art may be powerless when faced with this reality. But we still have the gaze, the gaze of that one person who is beholding that piece of art, which may still destabilize and change the audience’s gaze toward the Others.⁸

Notes