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Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan, 1923-1970.

Majella Munro

© The Enzo Press

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Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan, 1923-1970 Published in the UK by Enzo Arts and Publishing Limited © Enzo Arts and Publishing, 2012. First edition 2012 The moral rights of all authors and and artists are recognised and asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means - graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or in information storage and retrieval systems - without the prior written permission of Enzo Arts and Publishing Limited, except where permitted by law. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to [email protected] Every attempt has been made to identify and contact copyright holders for the works reproduced within this volume. If you have enquiries regarding these permissions please contact [email protected] You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this condition on any acquirer. ISBN (print edition): 978-1-909046-03-0 Cover image: Kitawaki Noboru, Structure of Meaning (A+B)2, 1940 (detail). Reproduced courtesy of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

Contents

Biographies of Japanese practitioners discussed Glossary Preface

Introduction: Surrealism in Japan: A late-developing periphery? Eroticism and Psychoanalysis Surrealism within Japanese Culture Politics in the Japanese Movement Impact of Occupation In conclusion

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Chapter 1: Colonalism, Totalitarianism, Francophonie: the global spread of Surrealism and its scholarly reception as an international movement 27 Czechoslovakia Martinique Chapter 2: Encounters with the West Horiguchi Daigaku and the first Surrealist translations Travels in Europe: Okamoto Tarō, Nishiwaki Junzaburō, and Fukuzawa Ichirō Nishiwaki and his influence on the first Surrealist experiments Fukuzawa 1932: The Paris-Tokyo League of Emerging Artists Exhibition The Internationalisation of Surrealism, 1933-37 Seligmann in Japan 1937: The Exhibition of Surrealist Works from Overseas Regional practice The Imagined Community

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Chapter 3: Excavating the Subconscious: Psychoanalysis in Japan and the Surrealist Response 99 Psychoanalysis in the Japanese Context The Legend of Urashima Tarō Surrealism and the Shinkankakuha A Page of Madness Automatism: Takiguchi’s supremacy

Chapter 4: Surrealism in Japan: dialectics and pre-modern aesthetics Dada in Japan Shinkichi and Zen MAVO radicalism GGPG Surrealism and Japanese Culture Surrealism and Buddhism Kitawaki Noboru Komaki Gentarō Anti-academicism The institutional history Avant-garde Nihonga and the influence of Surrealism

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Chapter 5: The Surrealist Incident The Second Manifesto of Surrealism The Aragon Incident Nippona Artista Proleta Federaci The Surrealist Jikken: Takiguchi Shūzō The Kobe Poets Club Rien In Hiroshima Fukuzawa and the investigation of the Art Culture Society

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Conclusion

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Acknowledgements

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Chapter 6: Post-war Continuities The Political Situation of Post-war Japan A New Myth Isamu Noguchi Epilogue: The Discovery of the Image: Surrealist cinema in Japan Cinepoem Post-war Experiments Kitasono Katsue and Yamamoto Kansuke The Art Theatre Guild Bibliography

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Glossary

Ensō: a circle, painted in a continuous stroke as an active meditation; the fundamental iconography of Buddhist art. Kanji: Chinese logographs used in written Japanese. Katakana: Phonetic text used in written Japanese, often to transliterate European words. Genbunichi: series of reforms of written language instituted from the mid-nineteenth century onwards in order to reduce the number of kanji in circulation and thereby improve literacy. Shunga (meaning ‘spring pictures’): term used to indicate erotic woodcuts produced in Edo period (1603-1858) Japan. Sōsaku hanga (“creative prints”): autograph prints movement at the turn of the twentieth century in Japan; emphasised print making as an artistic, rather than artisanal, technique. Jikken: “incident”, a euphemistic term for political controversies. Tokonoma: an alcove in domestic architecture in which calligraphy and flower arrangements are displayed. Namban (“Southern barbarian”): refers to Portuguese traders and their cultural influence during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Namban painting is strongly influenced by European art. Nihonga (“Japanese painting”): term used from the mid-nineteenth century to indicate Japanese-style painting. Haikai (“comic/unorthodox”): poetic form heavily influenced by Bashō Matsuo’s (1644-94) interest in vernacular subject matters. Aesthetically, characterised by economic and restricted syllable structures, vulgarity, and spontaneity. Hiragana: Phonetic text used in written Japanese. Manji: a religious icon used throughout Asia; also known as a swastika. Yōga (“Western Painting”): used to described painting in modern styles using oil paint, in opposition to Nihonga.

Preface



Histories of Surrealism typically concentrate on the provocations of French practitioners against

the rise of totalitarianism in Europe, but the case of Japan, where Surrealists were directly imprisoned by wartime authorities, presents an apposite study of the interaction of state and avant-garde. Japan forms an excellent case study in the tensions and problematics inherent in Surrealism, since it encompasses tensions between East and West; Imperialism and anti-colonialism; totalitarianism and avant-garde radicalism; and issues of cultural assimilation and exchange.

Investigating the specific cultural and political contexts of Japanese Surrealism contributes

to an understanding of the Surrealist movement as an international whole. Japanese practitioners were thought to be isolated from the Parisian ‘core’ of the movement, but the relationships of Japanese artists with prominent European Surrealists allows the provincial, derivative character given to Japanese Surrealism in previous accounts to be confronted, and opens the critical reception and transmutation of European ideas to enquiry. By examining France and Japan comparatively, this volume provides a model of the dialogue between the Parisian ‘core’ and the Japanese ‘periphery’.

This volume, positioned at an intersection between discourse on the Surrealist movement as

an international collective; on Japanese modernism; and on the non-western avant-garde, contributes to several emergent areas of enquiry, and interrogates how cultural movements might transcend ‘nation’ and ‘ideology’ during times of conflict.

Notes

All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. Names of Japanese Surrealists are rendered surname first. Names of Japanese scholars writing in English are given in the order in which they appear in the cited text.

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Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction 6

Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

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Introduction

I insist on the fact that surrealism can be understood historically only in relation to the war [...]1 André Breton

The Second World War ended in Japan. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are, to date, the only deployments of atomic weaponry during conflict, and these events consistently provide the final punctuation to narratives of the war. Yet, aside from this exception, the Japanese wartime experience remains marginalised, particularly from the European perspective. The modern Japanese state is an intriguing object of study. Its status as the first Asian global economic power belies the tensions and dichotomies inherent in its rise to prominence. Japan resisted the advance of Western Imperialism by willingly importing Western culture; took an anti-Imperialist stance to disguise its own colonial adventurism; and was accepted as an ally by Axis powers despite its racial identity. Japan, as a totalitarian, Imperialist state, represented the antithesis of Surrealist ideals; yet Japan also conformed to a Surrealist conception of the Orient, the fantasised location of an alternative knowledge-system which, if discovered, could be used to undermine Western civilisation.2 The Japanese movement raises important issues about the development of Surrealism outside France; in countries that were non-Western; and under totalitarian regimes, making it a rich and complex case study. The period under consideration here (1923-1970) falls mainly under the Shōwa period (19261989), the dates of which correspond to the reign of the Emperor Hirohito. Shōwa followed the supposedly liberal Taishō era (1912-1926), during which Japan tried to carve an identity for itself as a modern, industrial power; an era characterised by protest, debate and radical political experimentation in the public sphere. In response to the confused and, at times, violent radicalism of Taishō, the Shōwa government attempted to stabilise the fledgling Japanese democracy, adopting a conservative stance which, for some historians, marked a descent into Fascism. The colonial expansion and devastating defeat that contain the Pacific War; the Occupation of Japan by US troops; and the emergence of Japan as a global economic hegemon, are encompassed by this historical period. Tensions between Westernisation and a nationalistic desire to maintain an Asian identity oscillated throughout the period, making modern Japanese history almost an object lesson in the historical dialectic.

It was in this dynamic and tense context that Surrealism arrived in Japan. Amongst avant-

1 Breton, “Situation of Surrealism Between the Two World Wars”, quoted in Breton, What is Surrealism, Franklin Rosemont, ed., Pluto Press, London, 1978, p243. 2 As evidenced by the Surrealist mandate to champion “East against West”. See Gerard Durozoi, History of the Surrealist Movement, University of Chicago Press, 2004, p84.

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Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

garde movements, Surrealism has particular relevance to discussion of international modernist dialogue since it had, as Anthony White has claimed, “the most pronounced international reception of all the European historical avant-gardes.”3 Given the broad international spread of the Surrealist movement, it is curious that accounts continue to privilege France. Surrealism enjoyed an enthusiastic reception in Japan; David Pellegrini ranks it, alongside abstraction, as one of two dominating trends in the pre-war art world.4 Yet Japanese Surrealism remains under-researched. Scholarship is dominated by publications arising from exhibitions of Japanese Surrealist painting held in both Japan and Europe from the 1960s onwards:5 as a result, discourse on Japanese Surrealism has been brief, generalised and restricted to the introductory pages of exhibition catalogues. As Alexandra Monroe has complained, the restriction of scholarship to this format has "perpetuated the notion, both at home and abroad, that Japanese modernism is essentially discontinuous and ahistorical."6 Through these essays, a conventional account of the movement has emerged. Isolated by geography, language barriers and a Fascist government, Japanese Surrealists were prohibited from gaining proper insight into the intellectual structures of Surrealism and, as a consequence, their production is deemed either substandard or derivative: furthermore, the ‘retarded’ introduction of Surrealism (commonly dated to the late 1930s) and the almost immediate investigation of Surrealists by military police in 1941 is held to have delayed full realisation until the post-war period. The good personal and professional links established between French and Japanese Surrealists during the 1920s and thirties would seem to undermine this conventional reading. In fact, the 1941 police investigation of prominent theorist Takiguchi Shūzō (1903-79) on suspicion of involvement in Communism interrogated his personal connection to André Breton (1896-1966),7 allowing Japanese Surrealism to be positioned in an international nexus. However, the relationship was not, to paraphrase William Gardner, a 'one-way conversation', where Japanese practitioners were aware of avant-garde experiments in Europe, but Europeans remained exclusively interested in traditional Japanese culture.8 In his Dictionnaire du surréalisme of 1973, José Pierre named a ‘canon’ of Japanese Surrealists, including Koga Harue, Fukuzawa Ichirō, Okamoto Tarō, Shigeru Imai, Noboru Kitazato,9 R. Otsuka, Shimozato Yoshio, Ayako Suzuki, Jiro

3 White, “Terra Incognita: Surrealism and the Pacific Region”, Papers of Surrealism, Issue 6, Autumn 2007, p2, available at http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurrealism/journal6/index.htm, accessed 10th December 2010. 4 Pellegrini, Avant-garde East and West: A Comparison of Prewar German and Japanese Avant-garde Art and Performance, unpublished PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2001, p7. 5 For a description of these, see Annika A. Culver, “Between Distant Realities”: The Japanese Avant-Garde, Surrealism, and the Colonies, 1924-1943, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2007, p10. 6 Monroe, “Introduction”, in Monroe, ed., Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., ex. cat., 1994, pp19-25, p20. 7 Takiguchi, Chronology in my Own Hand, quoted in John Clark, “Artistic Subjectivity in the Taisho and Early Showa Avant-Garde”, in Monroe, ed.,1994, pp41-5, p48. 8 Gardner, writing on the relationship of Japanese modern culture to that of the West, in Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s, Harvard University Press, London, 2006, p82. 9 This possibly refers to Kitawaki Noboru.

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Oyamada and Masao Tsuruoka.10 The list overlaps with that given by Breton and Paul Éluard (18951952) in their Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme (1938), which featured four reproductions of Japanese Surrealist works; this list had been provided to Breton by Takiguchi and mainly featured his close associates.11 Éluard, Georges Hugnet (1906-74) and Roland Penrose (1900-84) assisted Japanese practitioners in curating the 1937 International Exposition of Surrealism, held in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. In fact, Japanese Surrealists had been invited to exhibit in one of the earliest Surrealist international exhibitions, held in London in 1936, but this invitation failed to be taken up. A document issued on the occasion of this exhibition signed by English and French Surrealists, including Breton, noted the late emergence of an English Surrealist group relative to the development of the movement in a handful of other countries, including Japan.12 Breton further cited Japan as evidence of continuing international interest in Surrealism post-war.13 Practitioners loosely associated with Surrealism, such as Ezra Pound, also esteemed Japanese practice, praising “The NEW Japan. Surrealism without the half-baked ignorance of the French young.”14 This contemporary interest is in marked contrast to a retrospective disregard. Inside Japan, the most impressive interventions have been restricted to cataloguing or reproducing source material. The number of monographs dedicated to Japanese Surrealism is limited, and on the whole these do not take issue with the denigratory convention summarised above. Tsuchibuchi Nobuhiko, leading collector and curator of Takiguchi’s work, explains that: “some scholars may well say that there wasn’t Surrealism in Japan [other than] the devoted efforts of Takiguchi Shuzō, for political or [...] other 15 reasons. This would be an interesting point for study.” The view Tsuchibuchi paraphrases is found, for example, in the work of Ōka Makoto, who described Surrealism as influencing the technique of a small number of “very young” poets during the 1930s.16 A marked majority of Japanese scholars remain resistant to acknowledging a Japanese 17 Surrealist practice, speaking instead of the superficial influence of Surrealism on the avant-garde. Gardner, in his work on Japanese literary modernism, describes the denigration of Japan by Western scholars as: “[not] an ‘objective’ value judgement, [but] predetermined by an interpretative system in which truly authentic ‘modernism’ and ‘modernity’ can have occurred only in the West”,18 but this 10 Pierre, Dictionary of Surrealism, translated by W.J. Strachan, Eyre Methuen, 1974, p90. Original French publication 1973. 11 For example, Ayako Suzuki, who is rarely mentioned in any discourse on Surrealism, was Takiguchi’s wife: her inclusion depended on their personal relationship, rather than her renown as a Surrealist painter. Yoshio Shimosato is also known to have enjoyed a close friendship with Takiguchi. 12 International Bulletin of Surrealism, no.4, 1936, reproduced in Breton, 1978, p243. 13 Polizzotti, trans., Conversations: the Autobiography of Surrealism, Paragon, New York, 1993, p120. 14 Pound, letter to Kitazono Katsue, quoted in Sas, Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism, Stanford University Press, 1999, p81. 15 Tsuchibuchi in correspondence with the author, 23rd October 2009. 16 Ōka, “Takiguchi Shuzo et le surréalism au Japon”, André Breton et le Surréalisme International, special edition of Opus International, no. 123-4, April/May 1991, pp124-129, p126. 17 Tsuchibuchi in correspondence, 23rd October 2009. 18 Gardner, 2006, p13.

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Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

problem of authenticity is not exclusive to Western scholarship; given the dependence of Japanese accounts on Western art-historical models and the impact of the post-war US Occupation on the Japanese academy, which discouraged research into artistic radicalism and international exchange in pre-war Japan for ideological reasons, it is a problem also found in Japanese critiques. However, over the last twenty years some valuable and insightful accounts have emerged. A reassessment of Japanese Surrealism commenced with the 1990 exhibition Nihon no Shururearisumu 1925-45 (Japan’s Surrealism 1925-45) at the Nagoya City Art Museum, curated by Yamada Satoshi. The accompanying catalogue reproduces a variety of images, journals and extracts from texts, presenting a comprehensive inter-disciplinary survey of Surrealism and affiliated movements.19 Similarly, the encyclopedic catalogue to the Tokyo Montparnasse and Surrealism exhibition provides biographical outlines and examples of works for every Japanese painter affiliated to Surrealism,20 making it an extremely significant resource. There has been a trend in Japanese scholarship towards the cataloguing and reproduction of information about Surrealism without analysis or commentary. 1999 saw the publication of the first volumes of Wada Hirofumi's Korekushon Nihon Shururearisumu (Japanese Surrealism Collection),21 a fifteen-volume compilation of facsimiles of 1920s and 30s Japanese art periodicals, accompanied by scant commentary.22 However, an earlier text on Japanese Surrealism by Hirofumi, co-authored with Sawa Masahiro, does give biographies of key practitioners and commentaries on their work.23 More recently, curator Otani Shogo at the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo has succeeded in making original, revisionist contributions to scholarship through articles reconsidering the erotic elements of Japanese Surrealism and the experience of war.24 The first critical, book-length analysis of Japanese Surrealist painting, Hayami Yutaka's Shururrearisumu Kaiga to Nihon,25 appeared in 2009, a meticulously researched formal analysis of works by a small 'canon' of Japanese Surrealist painters. Thus the reassessment of Japanese Surrealism is a burgeoning undertaking, not only amongst Western scholars of Surrealism, but also in Japan.

Aside from contemporary commentaries, one of the earliest examinations of Japanese Surrealism is found in Jean-Louis Bédouin’s 1961 history of Surrealism, which included brief mention of the contribution of Japan, and of the challenges to existing conceptions of Surrealism 19 Yamada, ed., Nihon no Shururearisumu 1925-45, Nagoya Shi Bijutsukan, 1990. The catalogue is impressive in its scope; however, that it has only been issued in Japanese has limited its usefulness as source material for researchers internationally. My only criticism of this catalogue is that the period covered spans from 1927 to 1941; the promise to represent wartime production implied by the title is not upheld. 20 Tokyo Monaprunasu to Shururearisumu, ex. cat., Itabashi Kuritsu Bijutsukan, 1985. 21 Wada, ed., Korekushon Nihon Shururearisumu, Hon no Tomosha, Tokyo, 1999-2001. 22 Several of the facsimilies are partial, including texts from publications without the accompanying illustrations, which compounds the scholarly divorce of painting and literature. Several volumes are dedicated to the oeuvres of individual practitioners but again fail to represent accurately the extent of those practitioners’ interventions. 23 Sawa and Wada, eds, Nihon no Shururearisumu (Japan’s Surrealism), Sekai Shicōsha, 1995. 24 See Otani, “Images of Sex and Death in the Works of Japanese Painters who were under the influence of Surrealism: QEi, Hironobu Yazaki, and Hamao Hamada”, Bulletin of the study of Philosophy and History of Art in University of Tsukuba, no. 22, 2005, pp25-48, p27. 25 Hayami Yutaka, Shururearisumu Kaiga to Nihon: Imeji no juyō to Sōzō, NHK Books, Tokyo, 2009. Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

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PAGES FROM BRETON AND ÉLUARD’S DICTIONNAIRE ABRÉGÉ DU SURRÉALISME (GALERIE BEAUX-ARTS, PARIS, 1938) SHOWING (LEFT) SHIGERU IMAI’S A LA VOLÉE (1935) AND (BELOW) YOSHIO SHIMOSATO, L’EXAMEN DE MINUIT (1936); AYAKO SUZUKI, LE PAYSAGE (1935) AND R. OTSUKA, LES ATAVISMES DU CRÉPUSCULE (1936). REPRODUCED BY KIND PERMISSION OF ÉDITIONS CORTI, PARIS.

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Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

that the inclusion of Japan within an international discourse presented.26 Bédouin's insightful account was based on information provided by Takiguchi,27 who wrote to congratulate Bédouin on his scholarship, complaining that previous accounts of Japanese Surrealism had been filled with “errors” and “improprieties”.28 Bédouin’s contribution seems not to have impacted subsequent Western scholarship. However, in the late twentieth century, three significant studies appeared. The first of these, Vĕra Línhartová’s pioneering Dada et surréalisme au Japon (1987), provides Frenchlanguage translations of important poetic and theoretical texts, with perceptive commentaries on the contributions of key practitioners, including Takiguchi, Fukuzawa, and Kitawaki Noboru.29 The second, John Clark’s Surrealism in Japan (1997),30 gives a good overview of Japanese practice but is of limited length and has received limited circulation. The contributions of John Solt to the study of Japanese Surrealism, through his intellectual biographies of Kitazono Katsue, also merit mention here, and his critique of an ideological bias amongst US scholars towards studies of post-war Japanese art provides an excellent overview of the debates and obfuscations active in the field.31 The most significant contribution to the field is Miryam Sas's Fault Lines, which aimed to revise misconceptions active in the field. Sas examined Japanese deviation from French precedent in terms of memory and misprision, emphasising processes of misreading that allowed original poetic forms, distinct from those of the influence, to be created in Japan.32 Despite its utility for discussing development within cultures, this ‘anxiety of influence’ can be problematic in discussion of influence across cultures, as Solt has noted: “innovative theorizing is necessary to better account for what it means to import literary theory from one culture to another.”33 In place of methodologies that emphasise the reception of Surrealism as a French cultural phenomenon, instead this volume will attend to Surrealism as a collaborative, discursive practice undertaken by an international imagined community. Indeed, it is not possible to describe Surrealism as being received as a fully formed influence by the Japanese, as it was still in a process of formation throughout the 1930s, as Sas implies in describing Surrealism as “inscribe[d] in the very process of its making”.34 Deviations from French precedent are not, therefore, distortions of Surrealism, but rather contributions to its development. That Surrealism should have a different character in Japan than in France is better explained by a dialectically-orientated analysis of practice and context. Despite these reservations over methodology, Sas’ work remains remarkable for suggesting the possibility of revising the Japanese movement within an international context, and her 26 Bédouin, Vingt Ans de Surréalisme 1939-1959, Denöel, Paris, 1961, p102. 27 As suggested by letters from Roger van Hecke to Breton, August 1958, in the collection of the Jacques Doucet library, Paris; and from Breton to Takiguchi in the same year in the Keio University Art Center archive, Tokyo. 28 Takiguchi to Bédouin, September 1962, Keio University Art Center archive, Tokyo. 29 Lìnhartová, Dada et Surréalisme au Japon, Publications Orientalistes de France, 1987. 30 Clark, 1994, and Michael Lloyd, ed., Surrealism: Revolution by Night, ex. cat., Optus Communications, 1993, pp204-14. 31 Solt, Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning: Kitazono Katue, Harvard University Press, 1999, and “The Category Pre-World War Two Avant-Garde Japanese Art and Its Mysterious Disappearance in the United States”, available at http://www.literatureandarts.com/soltlacma.html, accessed 23rd March 2010. 32 See Sas, p38. 33 Solt, 1999, p5. 34 Ibid. Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

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investigations and suggestions have facilitated the scholarly scope of this enquiry. Sas’s text deals with Surrealism exclusively as a literary movement and accounts of Japanese production have been biased towards literary studies. Inside Japan, Tsuruoka Yoshihisa’s benchmark studies have exclusively attended to literature. While Japanese Surrealist literary experimentation is recognised as having commenced in 1925,35 Surrealist painting is thought to have reached its apogee in 1938; David Elliott even dated the "remarkable, if late flowering" of Surrealism in Japan to "the late 1940s".36 Such statements allow Japanese Surrealist painting to be seen as latedeveloping and, by implication, sub-standard, relative to both international artistic developments and domestic literary advances. The 1937 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, which toured Japan, has been privileged as a foundational event in the movement there. This volume will propose an alternative chronology of visual practice, and question the viability of divorcing literature and art. The Surrealist experiment was interdisciplinary, and in order to properly present the historical development of Surrealism in Japan it is necessary to re-integrate art and literature in a single narrative. Most recently, Annika Culver's research on Surrealism in Japanese colonies has analysed painting and poetry in tandem.37 Despite these significant scholarly contributions we still, as Michael Richardson has lamented, lack access to a proper scholarly survey of the movement.38 In order to address this, it is critical to adopt an interdisciplinary approach, examining the movement both within the Japanese historical context, and from the perspective of international Surrealist production. The account given here engages closely with both domestic and international contexts in the pre and post-Second World War periods. Four distinct, but mutually informing, areas of enquiry are investigated; firstly, the benefits and limitations of studying Surrealism as several movements in isolation or as an international whole are critically discussed. Secondly, an account of the particular development of Surrealism in Japan, referencing both domestic and international contexts, is given. Thirdly, by engaging closely with the arrests of prominent Surrealists, I aim to clarify the political position of the Japanese movement, and to root the arrests in a context of international intellectual exchange. Finally, the account spans the caesura of the war to argue for historical continuity. Together, these enquiries re-evaluate the contribution of pre-war Japanese Surrealists to the international movement.

35 Otani Shogo cites the emergence of Japanese Surrealist poetry to 1925; many other commentators cite Horiguchi Daigaku’s 1925 Surrealist translations as the starting point of literary experimentation: it is therefore a consensus that Japanese Surrealist literature commenced c.1925. See “Dreams of the Horizon- Introduction”, Dreams of the Horizon, ex. cat., National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2003, pp20-9. 36 Elliott, “Introduction”, in Elliott and Kaido, eds, Reconstructions: Avant-Garde Art in Japan 1945-1965, ex. cat., 1985, p10. 37 See op. cit. note 5. 38 Richardson, “Drifting Objects of Dreams: The Collection of Shuzo Takiguchi”, Papers of Surrealism, Issue 4, Winter 2005, pp1-5, p2, available at www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/publications/papers/journal4/acrobat%20files/ richardsonpdf.pdf, accessed 29th January 2007.

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Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

Surrealism in Japan: a late-developing periphery? Aside from the geographical remove of Japan from France, cultural and language barriers have allowed a lack of rapprochement between Japanese and French Surrealists to be assumed. Marc Dachy, for instance, the only westerner to produce a monograph on Japanese Dada, described Japan as “more isolated by language thanby geography”,39 a statement which mars his systematic investigation of dialogue between German and Japanese Dadaists. Continued adherence to a putative absence of contact with European avant-gardists, in spite of evidence to the contrary, allows Japanese experimentations to be dismissed as poorly informed. The idea that Japanese Surrealists lacked access to the French art world is undermined by the presence in Paris of leading practitioners, including Okamoto Tarō (1911-96) and Fukuzawa Ichirō (1898-1992). Poet and theorist Yamanaka Tiroux (190577) corresponded with a range of European Surrealists from the 1920s onwards. Though Takiguchi did not have opportunity to meet his French counterpart, André Breton (1896-1966), until 1958, they maintained an ongoing correspondence from at least the 1930s. These international exchanges are integral to my account, and it is for this reason that this volume attends to those Japanese practitioners engaged in international discourse, rather than the more diffuse influence of Surrealism throughout the Japanese avant-garde.40 The second chapter of this volume, therefore, reconstructs dialogue between French and Japanese Surrealists, using unpublished correspondence and previously untranslated publications to construct a new chronology of the advent of Surrealism in Japan, and to examine the reception of Japanese Surrealists by their international counterparts. In particular, the 1932 Paris-Tokio League of Rising Art Exhibition, curated by Breton and showcasing work by several European Surrealists, emphasises that Surrealist work was exhibited in Japan prior to the 1937 International Exposition. This chapter draws on Benedict Anderson’s work to place Japan within Surrealism’s “imagined community” as an antidote to the denigratory ‘core-periphery’ relationship discussed in the previous chapter. From this account of literary publications and correspondence I move on to discuss the impact of touring exhibitions of Surrealist painting, using these to account for the disaggregate and regionalised character of Japanese Surrealism, a characteristic which is integral to the movement’s identity in Japan and allows the full range and diversity of Japanese production to be appreciated. Eroticism and Psychoanalysis

Despite close contact with French Surrealism, many commentators perceive there to have

39 “Plus isolé tant par la language que par la géographie”. Dachy, Dada au Japon: Segments dadas et neo-dadas dans les avant-gardes japonaises, Press Universitaire de France, Paris, 2002, p50. 40 Access to resources is also a significant issue in determining the oeuvres to be examined. Lack of archival resources is the reason for the marginalisation of the significant Japanese Surrealist painters Ai Mitsu and Migishi Kōtarō in this volume, while the lesser-known painters Shimozato Yoshio and Hamada Hamao are included on the basis of their well- preserved archives. Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

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been oversights in the Japanese reception of Surrealism. For instance, Hoshino Moriyuki has observed that “the theme of eroticism, or even that of political engagement, themes crucial for the French Surrealists, were virtually inexistent in the Japanese Surrealist camp.”41 This overlooks extensive debate amongst contemporary Japanese avant-gardists on the appropriate degree of political commitment for Surrealists, a debate which led to the division of the Japanese movement into a radical and an apolitical camp, while the absence of a recognised Japanese Psychoanalytic Society until the post-war period has impacted on discussion of their psychosexual works. Solt argues that: “In Japan, Freudian psychology was not widely practised or understood. Rather than being interested in the unconscious per se, artists and writers in the movement were excited by [Western] surrealist imagery.”42 This raises the question of whether an interest in the subconscious was disseminated amongst Surrealist artists as a direct response to their reading of Freud’s texts, or were instead influenced by these ideas as they were manifested in contemporary art production. Since Breton’s application of psychoanalysis undermined Freud by celebrating mental disturbance (which perhaps accounts for the dim view Freud reportedly took of Surrealism), fidelity to Freudian concepts within the Surrealism as a whole is problematic. The criticism that the enquiry of Japanese Surrealist artists into the subconscious was a tokenistic exploration of dreams, sexuality, and the uncanny through imagery, rather than a considered response to advanced psychoanalytic knowledge, can equally be levelled at the French movement. The idea that there was a lack of psychoanalytic knowledge in Japan must also be challenged, as Sas has suggested.43 Scholarship on the Japanese reception of psychoanalysis is extremely limited, perhaps accounting for its marginalisation in existing art historical accounts. However, as I will outline, Freudian ideas were in circulation in Japan from at least 1926 and enjoyed some popularity during the 1930s, though the specific tendency of Japanese artists, psychoanalysts and commentators to link Freudian theory to indigenous ethical and religious systems has served to conceal the extent of their interest. Surrealism within Japanese Culture Clark has noted that “Japanese modernity is [...] not just ‘Japanese’ but forms a historical trajectory which runs in and out of European modernism itself”,44 pointing to a need to examine several different contexts: those under consideration here include its relation to the French and international movements, the historical development of modernism in Japan, and the position of Surrealism within Japanese art history, rooting this discussion within both international and domestic frames of reference. Two art-historical contexts are of specific importance: the emergence of anti-academic radicalism in 41 “Le théme de l’érotisme, ou celui de l’engagement politique, thémes cruciaux pour les surréalistes français, [...] étaient quasiment inexistants dans le champ surréaliste japonais.” Hoshino, “Le Surréalisme au Japon: Rupture et Continuité”, in Kato, Haruhisa, ed., La modernité française dans l’Asie littéraire (China, Corée, Japon), Presses Universitaire de France, 2004, pp233-246, 2004, p237. 42 Solt, 2001. 43 Sas, 1999, p104. 44 Clark, “Introduction”, in Menzies, Jackie, ed, Modern Boy and Modern Girl: Modernity in Japanese Art 19101935, ex. cat., Thames and Hudson, 1998, pp15-24, p21.

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the 1920s-30s avant-garde, as exemplified by the MAVO movement, and the synthesis with traditional culture found in Japanese Dada. The blending of contemporary French art with indigenous referents is understood by some commentators as an attempt by the Japanese Surrealists to comply with the nationalist orientation of the Shōwa state, but I will argue that the use of premodern precedent was also common to European Surrealism and Japanese Dadaist experiments made during the ‘liberal’ 1920s. While the Japanese Surrealist movement did not directly secede from Dadaism as it did in France, Takiguchi did accord importance to the anarchism of Dada in clearing ground for the more positively creative experiments of Surrealism, describing it as “a total insubordination on the artistic plane”,45 taking a similar (but less pejorative) stance on the role of Dada as a predecessor to that of Breton. Dada provides a context for the development of Surrealism in Japan, rather than its immediate origin: Dada has not, therefore, been included in my narrative of the introduction of Surrealism to Japan, but instead informs discussion of the development of the Japanese academy; the emergence of a critical, anti-academic avant-garde; and the Japanese Surrealist interest in dialectics, through which I will argue that concern with expressing national character was a problem within Japanese modernity from its inception, and which came to acquire anti-academic potential in the hands of the Surrealists. Politics in the Japanese Movement Complaints about a lack of radicalism amongst Japanese Surrealists raise significant questions: what were the defining characteristics of Surrealism, and how were these treated in Japan? Does the absence of particular characteristics preclude designation of the Japanese movement as Surrealist? The precepts of Surrealism as set forth by Breton in his First Manifesto (1924) provide frequently-cited working definitions of the intentions and potential manifestations of Surrealism. Less well known is Breton’s Limites non-frontières du surrealisme, which he was prompted to write by the London Surrealist Exposition, in direct response to a need to delimit Surrealism in the wake of its international spread. Interests in dialectic materialism, social revolution, psychic life and automatism were identified as key features.46 While an interest in social revolution was fulfilled by Parisian Surrealists through sporadic affiliation to the French Communist Party, this experiment ultimately failed. The political radicalism of Japanese Surrealism - or the lack thereof - has not been adequately addressed. This is curious since, as Culver has noted, fevered contemporary debate on the assimilation of Surrealism dominated Japanese periodicals.47 A lack of formal affiliation to political institutions extra to the movement, as there was in France, has made scholars such as Culver hesitate to confront the politics of Japanese Surrealism, but its pivotal importance to a proper understanding of the movement cannot be ignored. 45 “Un insubordination totale sur le plan artistique [...]” Takiguchi, “Chōgenjitsushugi Kaiga no Hōkō ni Tsuite” (On the Orientations of Surrealist Painting), August 1935 in Shihō, quoted in André Breton et Surrealisme International, 1991, p127. 46 Quoted in Bernard Lecherbonnier, Surréalisme et Francophonie: La chair du verbe: Histoire et poétique des Surréalismes de langue Française, Editions Publisud, France, 1992, p27. 47 Culver, p21. Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

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Chapter five addresses this lacuna. In order to gauge the radicalism of the movement, it is necessary to juxtapose it not only to French Surrealism, but also to other radical groups in the Japanese art world. The Proletarian Artists’ League, which was explicitly concerned with Communism, forms an ideal point of comparison.48 Amongst commentators, there is an inability to decide whether Japanese Surrealism was radical or not, and whether a lack of wider social concern calls its validity into question. For instance Solt’s essay on the politics of Surrealist photographer Yamamoto Kansuke (1914-1987) elides the inconsistencies that arise from a simultaneous emphasis on both a perceived lack of political interest amongst Japanese Surrealists and the arrests of leading practitioners through a claim that “[surrealism] was too western, and that was reason enough for Japanese to reject it.”49 The Japanese state did not, however, discriminate on the basis of style: Western-influenced styles were, for example, used in the production of official wartime propaganda painting, making this explanation questionable. While historical debates concerning the political orientation of the Japanese state are too exhaustive to confront within this volume, where state policy directly impacted on the development of art there exists a finite area of intersection which can be given detailed consideration. The supposition that the Japanese state was uniformly hostile towards the avant-garde arises from an assumption that all totalitarian states behave in similar ways towards free expression. The Japanese state did not undertake the same kind of rigid, systematic censorship as that showcased in the infamous Entartete Kunst exhibition, staged by its NAZI allies in 1937 (in response to which the French Surrealists codified their opposition to totalitarian art policies50). Japanese enforcers therefore did, to some extent, perceive a divorce between style and ideology. The implications of this are critical. Assessing the extent of Japanese state interference in the art world is also crucial to determining whether the Surrealist movement did indeed decline under government repression. While some have dated the decline of Japanese Surrealism - under state pressure - to the years 1937-1940,51 for others this period represents the apogee of production.52 This type of contradiction exposes problems arising from a failure to examine the interaction of the state and the Surrealists in an objective manner. Accounts tend to conform to one of two readings: either the ignorance of Japanese practitioners to French Surrealist politics or the repressive nature of the wartime government circumscribe the radicalism of the Japanese movement; or a connection to Communism resulted in its systematic 48 See Culver, 2007, p25. 49 Solt, 2001. 50 See Alyce Mahon, Surrealism and the Politics of Eros 1938-68, Thames and Hudson, 2005. 51 Durozoi’s summary provides an apposite example of the second school of explanations: “The relations between the surrealists and the Japanese communists led in 1940 to such extreme police repression that the surrealist movement in Japan died out.” Typical in its brevity, this does nothing to illuminate the subtle political contexts of wartime Japan (and, in fact, the arrests of Surrealists did not take place until 1941). See Durozoi, p336. 52 For example, in Lìnhartová, “Au Japon”, La Planènte Affolée, ex. cat., Direction des Museés de Marseille/ Éditions Flammarion, 1986, pp263-6, p264.

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eradication by the state. The two readings conflict with each other, since one presents the movement as apolitical, while the other presents it as highly radical, necessitating clarification.53 The nuanced political situation of Japanese Surrealism can be clarified through discussion of individual practitioners on a case-by-case basis, following Sas’s assertion that it is impossible to coalesce Japanese Surrealism into a single ideological force.54 Impact of Occupation Gardner notes that the intrusion of politics into art practice during the early twentieth century is a highly contested and ambiguous matter. For Taishō era modernists “[...] even an explicitly apolitical position would be perceived in political terms by critics on both the right and left [...]”,55 making it impossible for artists to avoid a political interpretation of their activities and hinting at a crucial issue: the discussion of political involvement on the part of the Japanese avant-garde is as much, if not more, to do with perception as with their intent. The particularly emotive narrative of Japan's involvement in WWII makes an objective assessment of Taishō and Shōwa history difficult, and as a result specific historiographic issues, rather than production itself, determine whether scholars understand the Japanese Surrealist movement as avant-garde or modern, radical or apolitical. As Takeba Joe has summarised "[...] tying [...] development [...] to social phenomena and historical events risks distorting historical fact, individual aesthetics, and the actual conditions of the times [...]”.56 The emergence of a Japanese-generated discourse on Shōwa history was delayed until after the death of Hirohito in 1989,57 out of respect for the Emperor who had reigned during the Second World War. Mark Sandler observes that this led to “the actions and thoughts of an entire generation of Japanese artists during the war years remain[ing] largely unexamined in public.”58 As a result American scholars, influenced by Occupation ideologies, were effectively given a monopoly on the production of historical discourse on modern Japan, creating models and arguments which were assimilated by their Japanese counterparts.59 Justification for the Occupation of Japan depended on presenting Shōwa as a Fascist state, distancing isolated, nationalistic, pre-war Japan from the world-leading economic hegemon it was intended to become.60 In art historical enquiry, this translates into a presentation of the Shōwa government as hostile to any free expression, which could only fully flourish under 53 Durozoi, p336. 54 Sas, p1. 55 Gardner, 2006, p47. 56 Takeba, “The Age of Modernism: From Visualization to Socialization”, in The History of Japanese Photography, Jane Tucker, ed., ex. cat., Yale University Press, 2003, pp 142-83, p144. 57 Mayu Tsuruya, Sensō Sakusen Kirokuga (War Campaign Documentary Painting): Japan’s National Imagery of the “Holy War”, 1937-1945, unpublished PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2005, p27. 58 Sandler, “The Living Artist: Matsumoto Shunsuke’s Reply to the State”, Art Journal, vol. 55, no. 3, Autumn 1996, pp74-82, p79. 59 As H.D. Harootunian put it, “Japan became Echo to America’s Narcissus”. In Harootunian, “America’s Japan/ Japan’s Japan”, Miyoshi and Harootunian, eds, Japan in the World, Duke University Press, 1993, pp196-221, p207. 60 See also Harootunian, 1993, p201. Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

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Allied leadership, a view which Japanese commentator Michiaki Kawakita assimilates and expounds: “[avant-garde] artists did not achieve prominence until the postwar period, when the new democratic spirit engendered in Japan by the occupation removed the restraints from avant-garde art and started literally dozens of new movements in various fields of modern painting.”61 Occupation historiography places Japanese Surrealism in an extremely difficult position. The arrests of Fukuzawa and Takiguchi are cited to prove that Japanese Surrealists were not collaborationist, allowing the rehabilitation of Surrealism in the post-war period. However, the immediate start of the Cold War meant that any argument for radical left-wing tendencies in the movement also had to be underplayed. Thus the movement has to be presented as sufficiently critical to have been oppositional to the state, but insufficiently radical to have adhered to the Marxist politics of its French counterpart. This creates a historiographic vacuum in which the political nature of the movement cannot be assessed. A reluctance to admit that some Japanese Surrealists may have supported the state, or that others may have been sympathetic to Communism, has led to an emphasis on formal analysis, inadvertently presenting the movement as ideologically deprived. While it is plausible that some practitioners may not have had developed political ideas, and may have executed their Surrealist works without any anticipation that these would further a particular revolutionary cause, the theory that the movement was apolitical needs to be investigated and evidenced, rather than posited as a way of avoiding issues that may be uncomfortable to analyse.62 Following the investigation of political orientation undertaken in chapter five, chapter six gives a critical account of this ideological influence on post-war scholarship of Japanese avant-gardism. A denial of continuity between pre- and post-war movements gives post-war Surrealist experimentation the character of a powerful revival after total decline. Of course, that Surrealism declined during the war is not unique to the Japanese case: the Second World War is also supposed to have stifled French production. But in contrast to the French case, where Surrealism is presented as a spent force after the war, in Japan post-war contributions have enjoyed a much higher profile than the pre-war movement. This is partly to do with the historiographic considerations outlined above, but is also due to new opportunities for state patronage and for international exposure in the post-war period, as in Okamoto’s production of monumental public sculptures for the 1970 Osaka World’s Fair, or the performances of the Gutai group at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Aside from Irmtraud SchaarschmidtRichter’s assertion that “Japanese Surrealism reached its zenith in the years just before, during and after World War II”,63 which hints at a continuity of practice, pre- and post-war Surrealism have rarely been analysed in a single historical trajectory. Not only does this create a period of “missing years” 61 Michiaki Kawakita, Modern Currents in Japanese Art, New York, Weatherhill, 1974, p130. 62 As Sas has also observed, to dismiss Japanese Surrealist production as ‘apolitical’ is an oversimplification. See Sas, p20. 63 Schaarschmidt-Richter, “The Growth of Modern Japanese Painting”, in Schaarschmidt-Richter, ed., Japanese Modern Art. Painting from 1910 to 1970, Edition Stemmle, 1999, pp13-18, p13.

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during the so-called “confusion era”64 of the early Occupation, it has also prevented a comprehensive analysis of the political stance of the movement: discussing pre- and post-war Surrealism in tandem exposes the possible range of expression available to Japanese Surrealists operating under a variety of political regimes, a task which I undertake in chapter six. In conclusion In one respect or another, each of the scholars discussed here asserts that Japanese practice does not fit a definition of Surrealism. This view is common to both Western and Japanese scholarship, with Joseph Love claiming that “there is [not] a Japanese Surrealism in the same sense of Surrealism in France”,65 while Ozaki Shinzin goes as far as describing it as “not so much a real as a pseudo-Surrealism [...]”.66 However, a normative Surrealism is not articulated, making the validity of these analyses difficult to assess. I assume that the benchmark against which Japanese production fails is taken from French Surrealism, but this implied comparison is never made explicit. Surrealist ideas were readily adapted to different contexts, as in Hoshino’s insightful observation that “the reality of Surrealism was at each turn reinvented in different historical contexts.”67 An international account of Surrealism can, as Jindřich Toman has argued in connection to the Czechoslovakian movement, challenge a conventional definition of Surrealism as anti-bourgeois, anti-social, interested in sexual taboo, and affectionate towards the Soviet Union,68 productively distancing commentary from a Paris-centric view of the movement. While interest in Surrealism in its international manifestations is burgeoning, Japan continues to be excluded from the discussion,69 making this volume a timely intervention. OKAMOTO, TAIYŌ NO TŌ (TOWER OF THE SUN), CONSTRUCTED BEFORE 1970 FOR EXPO’70, OSAKA, JAPAN.

64 As it is referred to by Sandler in The Confusion Era: Art and Culture of Japan During the Allied Occupation, 19451952, ex. cat., Smithsonian Institution, 1997. 65 Love, “Modern Currents in Japanese Art”, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 30, no. 1, spring 1975, pp96-8, p97. 66 Ozaki, “Japanese Surrealism in the late 1930s: The “Space of Formless Matter” and the “Space of Microscopic Creatures”, in Japanese Modern Art, ex cat, 1993, pp53-63, p53. 67 “l’Actualité du surréalisme a été chaque fois réinventée dans différents tournants historiques.” Moriyuki, 2004, p233. 68 Toman, Prague 1900-1938 Capitale Secrète des avant-gardes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, ex. cat., 1997, p274. 69 Recent publications and conferences dedicated to “International” Surrealism have tended to maintain a focus on Western European production, with perhaps additions of papers on Czechoslovakian or North American Surrealism (such as the “Across the Frontiers: International Surrealism” conference at the University of Cambridge, 13th of November 2009). Japanese, South America and other international movements continue to be excluded from the discussion. Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1923-1970 Introduction

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Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan 1925-70 by Majella Munro

ADVANCE INFORMATION Author: Majella Munro Market: Art History/Japanese Art/Surrealism ISBN: 978-1-909046-03-0 Publication date: November 2012 Extent: 280pp, 280mm x 216 mm, portrait; 100 colour illustrations. Binding: Paper Laminated Cover, also available as an e-book RRP: £39.95 $79.95

THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF SURREALIST ART PRODUCTION IN JAPAN • The first account to discuss Japanese Surrealism both as part of an international Surrealist movement and within its domestic art historical context; • uses Japanese production as a case study to advance understanding of Surrealism internationally; • offers a critical account of ideological influences active in previous scholarship on Japanese Surrealism; • unprecedented examination of the reception of the work of Japanese Surrealists by their French counterparts; • contributes a new chronology of the development of Surrealism in Japan; • the first examination of Surrealism in Japan





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as a disaggregate movement with distinct regional developments; includes an important reassessment of the political character of Surrealism in Japan, France and elsewhere; gives a new account of the extent and impact of state intervention in Surrealism within Japan; offers the first intervention towards a cultural history of psychoanalysis in Japan; the first discussion of Japanese Surrealism to include literary, sculptural, painterly and photographic outputs. includes 160 colour illustrations, many of which are previously unpublished or by artists unknown outside Japan.

Published by ARTS AND PUBLISHING LIMITED www.enzoarts.com/communicating-vessels [email protected] Nielsen booknet distributor code 00273070



ABOUT THE BOOK From the early subversive poetic experiments of the 1920s avant-garde to the startling thematic and aesthetic contributions of cinematic auteurs from the 1970s, Majella Munro’s history and analysis of the influence of Surrealism in Japan presents many startling, provocative and important art works to Western readers for the first time. Featuring work by Hiroshi Teshigahara, Terayama Shuji, Okamoto Taro, Takiguchi Shuzo, Kawabata Yasunari, Yamamoto Kansuke and many others, this new publication uses the Surrealists’ exploration of eroticism, the subconscious, and the nature of reality to provide an incisive and thoroughly researched account of the development of modernism in Japan. Histories of Surrealism typically concentrate on the provocations of French practitioners against the rise of totalitarianism in Europe. The case of Japan, where Surrealists were directly imprisoned by wartime authorities, presents an apposite study of the interaction of state and avant-garde, yet the Japanese contribution is marginalised in existing accounts. Japan forms an excellent case study in the tensions and problematics inherent in Surrealism, since it encompasses tensions between East and West; Imperialism and anti-colonialism; totalitarianism and avant-garde radicalism; and issues of cultural assimilation and exchange. Existing scholarship on Japanese Surrealism is limited, marred by inadequate attention to context; by ideological and connoisseurial biases; and, in the case of international exchange, by a paucity of archival research. Recently, increasing interest in Eastern European, Latin American and other Surrealist movements has created a new context for scholarship, in which discourse can be geographically expanded, and in which the Japanese movement can be reassessed. Investigating the specific cultural and political contexts of Japanese Surrealism contributes to an understanding of the Surrealist movement as an international whole. Japanese practitioners were thought to be isolated from the Parisian ‘core’ of the movement, but the relationships of Japanese artists with prominent European Surrealists allows the provincial, derivative character given to Japanese Surrealism in previous accounts to be confronted, and opens the critical reception and transmutation of European ideas to enquiry. By examining France and Japan comparatively, this new publication provides a model of the dialogue between the Parisian ‘core’ and the Japanese ‘periphery’. Majella Munro’s incisive text also contributes to the wider field of Japanese art history. Scholarship on Japanese art is dominated by enquiry into traditional, pre-modern art; research into modern and avantgarde art, particularly work produced before the end of World War II, has been less forthcoming. This new volume, positioned at an intersection between discourse on the Surrealist movement as an international collective; on Japanese modernism; and on the non-western avant-garde, contributes to several emergent areas of enquiry, and interrogates how cultural movements might transcend ‘nation’ and ‘ideology’ during times of conflict. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Majella Munro is an art historian, journalist and Japanologist whose research focuses on censorship and cultural repression. She is interested in art production under totalitarian political regimes, inter- and trans-national exchange within the avant-garde, and the sociological study of erotic art. After graduating from the University of Cambridge with first class honours, she completed her Master’s degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, specialising in the study of modern Japanese history; this work was awarded Ivan Morris Prize in 2009. Majella concluded PhD research on the Japanese Surrealist movement under the supervision of Professor Dawn Ades at the University of Essex in 2011, where she was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. During 2010 she was a Special Researcher at Saitama University, Japan, where she conducted much of the research for the present volume. In late 2011 she was a visiting academic at the University of Oxford. Her publications include Understanding Shunga: A Guide to Japanese Erotic Art (ER Books, 2008) and The Art Theatre Guild: Cinema and Subversion in Japan (forthcoming, The Enzo Press).



Communicating Vessels is published by ARTS AND PUBLISHING LIMITED www.enzoarts.com/communicating-vessels [email protected] Nielsen booknet distributor code 00273070