Okamoto Taro: Militarism and Japan’s Art Historical Present

Gotō Yasuka, a Hiroshima-based artist, born in 1982, has created portraits of renowned Japanese artists such as Fujita Tsuguharu, Miyamoto Saburō, and Okamoto Tarō, who were active as war artists or military men in the Fifteen-Year War, raising the sensitive issue of war-time responsibility that many in Japan would rather evade. Goto’s works are not concerned with determining the degree of complicity for each artist; on the contrary, they illustrate the quotidian nature of each artist-soldier’s activities, how they shared time together, how they survived, and how they created. At the same time, depicting the small, everyday acts of painting, smoking, and existing on colonized land were still very much a part of the Japan’s fascist movement and enabled and abetted the violence and oppression that characterized Japan’s Fifteen-year war. This essay examines Gotō’s contemporary portraits as historical portals that encourage viewers to imagine Japanese war painters as they were active in the 1940s, thereby making it difficult to support the notion that the painters were only “being artists.” By extension, I argue, Gotō’s portrayal of these artists asks viewers to reconsider the “passive” role of the population as a whole during the war, and perhaps edges some to consider what a “neutral” political position might be risking in Japan today.