Mishima Yukio committed suicide at the Ichigaya Camp of the Japan Self-Defense Forces Tokyo headquarters on November 25, 1970. The date marks a so-called "yukokuki ("anniversary of a patriot’s death"). I wonder what Mishima would have said if he was still alive and heard about an event held exactly 37 years later in Shinjuku… The title of the event was something along the lines of "Symposium 'Imperial Palace vs. Tokyo' commemorating the Lisbon Architecture Triennale". Discussed there (at the seminar room of Living Design Center OZONE) was the conception of the "Imperial Palace Museum".
The Lisbon Architecture Triennale was held this year from 5/31-7/31, on the central theme of "Urban Voids". Architecture historian Igarashi Taro curated the "Tokyo Revolution" themed Japanese section at the Triennale around the central idea of erecting a "large-scale museum gathering outstanding works of Japanese art" as proposed by artist Hikosaka Naoyoshi inside the Imperial Palace. Four month after the Triennale closed, OZONE hosted a "welcome home" sort of exhibition, including this symposium as a related event.
Igarashi moderated the 4-hour debate by panelists Hikosaka, Mikuriya Takashi (political scientist), Suzuki Kunio (political activist), Hara Takeshi (political scientist), and architects Minami Yasuhiro and Shinbori Manabu. Igarashi kicked off the conversation by stating that there haven't been many projects or discussions of this kind since the "concept for an Imperial Pace Culture Center" Tange Kenzo unveiled in 1958, and that plans related to the Imperial Palace are close to zero also in art and design universities' architecture departments. After that, Hikosaka briefly introduced his concept and explained the backgrounds.
* In the past ten years, there have been more than 30,000 suicides every year in Japan. Cases of social withdrawal and even crime have increased as well. This is supposedly related to developments in the post-Meiji modernization. As Noguchi Yukio claims, there has been continuity between Japan during the war and present-day Japan, and not, as Sawaragi Noi proposes, a "reset after the lost war".
* The art of Jackson Pollock and American rock music are aware of the fact that the United States of America was built on the foundation of indigenous inhabitants' corpses.
One essential function of art that justifies its existence is that of a "requiem", but here in Japan it does not carry out this duty properly.
* I formulated an "artistic constitution", which includes bringing the emperor back to Kyoto, having him do a requiem for the dead, and wrap up the story of post-Meiji Japan to reinstall a "praying and honoring nation", complete with its vanishing culture and tradition.
* The plot is to erect a 1000-metre-tall museum on the precincts of the empty palace the emperor leaves behind in Tokyo. It will accommodate important treasures of Japanese art, including the Great Buddha of Kamakura affected by acid rain, and such "top class" architectural masterpieces as the five-storied pagoda of the Muro-ji temple, which was damaged in a typhoon. This will help display the pacifistic Japanese position, and attract visitors from abroad.
"Top class" is a term that Hikosaka uses according to his very own definition, based on his conception of various "classes" of art, whereas he rates works that display "symbolic", "imaginary" and "real" elements, and further combine aspects of solid, liquid and gaseous art, as the most fantastic among the pieces of top class art. That’s a bit above my head so I can't really tell you more about it, but I think I got his basic idea behind the concept of the "Imperial Palace Museum".
Next was Mikuriya Takashi, the author of "A History of Modern Japan 3: 1890-1905", who spoke with an occasional touch of humor, yet very clearly, about the historical relationship between the emperor and Tokyo, and the issue of relocating the capital. While Emperor Meiji, who was "abducted" to Tokyo, was strongly attached to Kyoto, Emperor Showa (Hirohito) preferred Tokyo, and opted against returning to Kyoto after the war. Ozawa Ichiro’s discussion of a relocation of the capital function in "Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation" (1993) originally included the line "considering a relocation of the Imperial Palace", which was eventually deleted.
Suzuki, known as a "polemicist of the new right", called Hikosaka’s proposal "interesting", and set the audience roaring with laughter with the following comment. "Isn't that a nice idea? Let’s take the emperor back to Kyoto, return the power to the Tokugawa Shogunate, and rule the country all together! We'll turn talent agencies into political parties, which actually wouldn't be too much of a change, considering the roles of today’s politicians as entertainers. I just wonder, why don't we call it 'Edo Castle Museum'?" Hara, who wrote the elaborate "Kokyomae Hiroba" ("The Palace Plaza"), explained, "The media haven't been reporting on the imperial family’s rites since 1967, as a result of which the imperial court has turned into a largely closed-door affair. On the other hand, opportunities to experience history on a more generally national level are few." His remark that the (Yasukuni Shrine’s) "Yushukan" was about the only place of that kind caused wry smiles in the audience.
Triennale participant Minami "extracted aggregations of voids" from three central Tokyo districts, and emphasized that it’s not quite as simple as Roland Barthes concludes in his line about the Imperial Palace, "It does possess a center, but this center is empty" (from "Empire of Signs"). There are waterways, green spaces, highrise buildings, straight roads, embassies, rooftops, highways, parking lots, back alleys, subway lines and many other places and constituent objects of the city that one can classify as "voids". Shinbori somewhat double-crossed Hikosaka’s proposal with a PowerPoint demonstration of the result of a simulation experiment, from which he came to the conclusion that "this ontology of 'voids' isn't merely about the absence of architecture, but it’s rather about the absence of cerebration.
I'm very sorry for the patchy report, but I felt like writing this down because this kind of experimental thinking has surely become rare these days. The somewhat anachronistic moral tone of considering talk about the imperial system taboo, and indulging in self-censorship might play a role, but rather than that, it just seems as if the world is infested with some kind of brain freeze. The problem is not so much the realization of a museum, even if it’s supposed to be "1000-meter-tall", but, as Shinbori puts it, the voids in our brains rather than those in the city.
All in all it was a rewarding event with a good lineup of participants from all concerned fields, staged under the moderator’s clever bulkheading. Both exhibition and talk event will be documented in a book that Asahi Shimbun Publishing is planning to put out, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing that.
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO