Araki's Terminal Boredom
I discover a lot of Japanese literature (or books about Japan) through the Twitter account Asian Review of Books. That’s how I came across Izumi Suzuki’s Terminal Boredom, the first English-language translation of, the publisher informs us, “a legend of Japanese science fiction and a countercultural icon”. Writing for ArtReview, Daniel Joseph, one of the translators, dove into the background of this artist who, after a stint as a model, attempted to break into the very male-dominated world of science-fiction writing before taking her own life at age 36.
I’ve read two of the stories in the book so far, and they were both incredible. In one, a society is described that only consists of women. Men have disappeared from view, and women now fill the roles of both genders (the story was written long before today’s expanded views of gender). But there are men, and they’re described as brutish and uncivilized (this is not such an unfair characterization, is it?). They’re hidden away in what might be prisons of sorts, serving the one purpose that the women can’t do on their own (it’s mostly hinted at in the book, and it’s pretty obvious). I don’t want to give away more, but it’s a very good story.
Much like all the science fiction that I’m personally attracted to, the book centers less on some highly advanced society that has a lot of technology at its disposal and more on an alternative version of our world or maybe a world in which today’s developments have been followed through to their extreme end. Of all the writers I’ve read, Philip K Dick is very good at describing the latter idea. For example, in one of his books people have traveled to Mars to colonize it, but now they are bored ouf of their minds because there’s nothing to do there.
Suzuki’s writing operates in very similar ways: it’s essentially writing about the now (in this case Japan in the 1970s and 80s), which unmasks a lot of its flaws by describing an alternative version that isn’t necessarily better.
Writing about Suzuki’s modeling career, Joseph mentions “controversial photographer Nobuyoshi Araki”. This gets at the one thing that has bothered me about the book and its coverage. By coincidence, I came across an Instagram post that showcased a book Araki had produced with photographs of Suzuki and her husband (free-jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe). All of the pictures I’ve seen (incuding the cover image) appear to have been taken by Araki.
I think the pictures are mostly at odds with the intent and content of the writing: after all, a cutting-edge writer trying to break into the then very male dominated genre of science fiction maybe ought not to be depicted using pictures from an earlier modeling career, where she posed for someone like Araki?
There is quite a bit of a discussion to be had about Araki. If you have access to academic accounts, good places to start are Christian Kravagna’s Bring on the little Japanese girls! and especially Hagiwara Hiroko’s Representation, Distribution, and Formation of Sexuality in the Photography of Araki Nobuyoshi. It’s too bad these articles are hidden behind corporate paywalls.
I suspect if they were more widely known the discourse around Araki would be a lot more advanced in photoland than it is now. OK, I’m probably being a little bit optimistic with what I just wrote. I’d like to think it would be mostly correct, though.
I have the articles, and I thought that I might as well tell you about them. Kravagna’s article with its somewhat offensive title is subtitled “Nobuyoshi Araki in the West”. It originally was published in a catalog of a 1997 exhibition and then made it into Third Text in 1999. It centers on the following question:
How can someone’s photographic practice so obviously based on the commodification of the sexualised female body be acclaimed in a context that has become highly sensitive to the representation of gender power relations? (p. 65)
Kravagna first outlines recent discourse around what has become known as the male gaze, quoting Laura Mulvey:
In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. (p. 66, including a reference to its original piece)
The critic’s main conclusion how photoland avoids talking about this problem in the context of Araki is based on a number of observations. To begin with, there is the “notion of the modernist artist” – the Picasso model: “the myth of the hypercreative obsessive driven by a mission to transform the world into images” (p. 67) Furthermore, there is photoland buying into Araki’s claim that he essentially is “a copier”, with everything being so important that it has to be photographed. As Kravagna points out, this is blatant nonsense:
(I)f we were to take this construction seriously (…) we would have to come to the conclusion that, except for Araki, there are practically no men living in Tokyo. (p. 67)
How, though, does photoland justify its refusal to deal with the obvious contradictions and problems? Kravagna says that it’s the fact that Araki is Japanese, and Western audiences project their own Orientalist prejudices onto the country:
Doubly fascinated with cultural difference and the unfathomable in female sexuality, literature on Araki fits into an old pattern that links exoticism with eroticism (…) A simlar concept exists in Orientalism in which ‘Asian women’ are seen to be obedient and erotic at the same time. (p. 69)
Things get even more interesting in Hagiwara Hiroko’s article, published in positions in 2010. Hagiwara had read Kravagna’s article. There were some interesting proceedings around it, given that the Japanese-English catalog of the same exhibition that went back to Japan omitted it. At the same time, the main editor of the Japanese journal of photo criticism Déja-vu bis wrote an article about whether or not Araki is sexist, which, as Hagiwara dryly notes, would not be readable or understandable by Japanese readers, given they didn’t know part of what was being discussed: Kravagna’s article. “Inclusion or omission of an essay reveals the subtle manipulation of meaning production around Araki’s work.” (p. 237)
“Meaning production” is a key phrase in the Japanese critic’s article as she convincingly argues that there is a whole industry around Araki that has been spurning out hundreds of books – which contradicts the talking point that the photographs are personal:
How can we see these publicly and widely distributed photographs as personal? And if they are really personal, why is it necessary to repeatedly view this man’s “private” life? (p. 238)
Both Kravagna and Hagiwara point out that the meaning of photographs is now seen as being produced in a social context. “Both the text and the reader are conditioned historically and socially.” (cf. Roland Barthes) This fact undercuts some more of the justifications built around Araki as discussions of the work inevitably and very consciously have to deal with the context it is being placed in.
Hagiwara then points out that the same exhibition (or catalog) might in fact be slightly different in Japan and in the West, giving a specific example. A Frankfurt/Main (Germany) show would include a photograph of formal portraits of Japan’s Emperor and Empress, which would not be shown in Japan (“to avoid attacks from ultranationalists”). However, in Japan there were images shown that were omitted in Germany: “images of women that crudely show physical violation by another party also in the picture”.
This brings the Japanese critic to the point made in a similar way by her Austrian peer. Writing about the perception of the work in the West, she writes
Common among these reviewers is unquestioned dualism between Japan and the West. Japan is a reverse world, where people might be more strictly disciplined or less hostile toward carnarl pleasures. (p. 242)
Diving deeper into this idea and taking Western critics’ words at face value, Hagiwara arrives at what I read as a searing indictment of treating Japanese bondage as something comparable with, for example, the country’s tea ceremonies:
Such a touristic facade of “traditional” art will never provide a contemporary photographer with a metaphorical frame to critically express the rigidity of Japanese society. (p. 243; my emphasis)
In the final part of her article, Hagiwara dives into how to discuss Araki’s photography of women. They are, after all, “key images of his work”, and they “never allow the viewer to be sexually neutral” (p. 244) Are they sexist, though? This is where it gets incredibly interesting:
To argue in the conventional feminist way that these images are sexist, offensive, degrading, or pornographic is unproductive. The result would be censorship or personal negation rather than serious questioning. (p. 244)
Hagiwara notes that explict mention of the models’ consent is usually included in discussions of the work – an attempt to preemptively disarm criticism. Her approach, however, sidesteps conventional criticism and instead talks about what she feels should be at the center of a possible discussion:
Araki’s work, which produces and reproduces the viewers’ sexually seggregated gaze, keeps the viewer from asking the questions, “In what way is my own male or female sexual pleasure directed b seeing these pictures?” “What must I do to forge other types of sexual gaze and have other forms of sexual pleasure, rejecting the sensational but routinized gaze and pleasure Araki’s work encourages?” “As a male viewer, will I not be trapped if I continue to accept these images as confirmation of my male sexual pleasure?” (p. 246)
In a nutshell, instead of labeling the images “sexist,” which implicitly accepts their terms, Hagiwara challenges her readers to instead discuss the overall terms themselves, given that “as viewers we are caught up and formed in the process of viewing the images and that we are involved in constructing the meaning.” (p. 249) This is brilliant, given it not only allows for a deeper understanding of the work but also of ourselves – while removing the narrow binary choice “sexist” - “not sexist”.
Maybe now you can understand why I think that these two articles ought to be a lot more well known than they are. There’s much to learn especially from Hagiwara Hiroko’s approach to facing loaded binary choices (“sexist” vs “not sexist” etc.): we are much better off talking about the underlying societal/social frame work because it is here, where we might find a way out.
As always thank you for reading!
– Jörg