The Japan Society Review 63
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 63 Volume 11 Number 3 (June 2016)

For two days in May Japan, and specifically Ise-Shima,
was the focus of the world’s media as it played host to
the 42nd G7 summit. The summit, however, was largely
eclipsed by President Obama’s visit to the Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum and Park. At the centre of his
speech were the hibakusha. But the hibakusha have by nomeans always been at the centre of the nuclear narrative,
and in Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War Susan Southard
presents the life stories of five hibakusha. Amazingly, she
is among the first to document the post-bomb history
through the eyes of the survivors with such emotional
detail. In her review, Elizabeth Ingrams reminds us thatthe bombing of Nagasaki has its own particular resonancein the West for the fact that the city was for a long timeat the centre of Japan’s global interactions. Douglas
Clark’s Gunboat Justice focusses on a specific aspect ofthese relations, surveying the key players from the daysof the extra-territorial courts in Japan and China. The
three volumes focus largely on China, but Chris Robertssuggests that they add significantly to our understandingof the Japanese aspect for the light they shine on theextra-territorial courts in Manchukuo, expanding a history
that typically ends in 1899 and bringing it up to 1941.
In 2015 Penguin re-released Alex Kerr’s seminal
Lost Japan, part ode to Japan’s cultural inheritance, part
polemic on the country’s neglect of that inheritance.
Originally published in 1993, Lost Japan has been out of
print for some time, and in his review Harry Martin hopesthat it will now come into the hands of and inspire a newgeneration of Japan enthusiasts.
Koreeda Hirokazu is well established as the masterof the Japanese family drama, and Susan Meehan tells usthat Our Little Sister is a significant addition to his oeuvre,
taking a gentler direction to recent films I Wish and Like
Father, Like Son.
Lastly, the striking image above was taken at
International Dance Festival Birmingham, where sculptor
Ito Shun and choreographer Miyata Kei collaborated on apiece of performance art at the Municipal Bank. Dominika
Mackiewicz was there for the Japan Society.
William Upton

Contents
1)

Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard

Editor2)

Gunboat Justice: British and American Law Courts in
China and Japan by Douglas Clark

William Upton

3)

Lost Japan by Alex Kerr

Elizabeth Ingrams, Dominika Mackiewicz, Harry Martin, Susan Meehan

4)

Our Little Sister written and directed by Koreeda Hirokazu

5)

Ito Shun at IDFB 2016: Cosmic Birds

Reviewers
and Chris Roberts(Image: Ito Shun’s Cells. Photo: Robert Day.)

Nagasaki: Life
After Nuclear War
by Susan Southard
Souvenir Press (2015)
ISBN-10: 0143109421
Review by
Elizabeth Ingrams
At a recent event I attended at the Daiwa
Foundation, someone asked how it
was that widespread
ignorance about thedangers of nuclear
warfare had managed to arise. Many of
the answers are to befound in Susan Southard’s magnificent, some mightsay, epic, work based on the official and unofficial
history of the second atomic-bombed city, Nagasaki.
Here on 9 August 1945, upwards of 70,000 people diedand tens of thousands more have died since from theeffects of the atomic bombing.
Nagasaki is a lot smaller than Hiroshima, withan estimated population of 240,000 at the time of
the atomic bombings. Yet its history is perhaps moresignificant in the story of Japan’s relations with theWest. A cultural melting pot ever since the Portuguese– including St Francis Xavier – arrived in the 16th
century, the city is probably the only one in Japan
which could have been described as at all multi-ethnic.
It has always been allowed some, if limited, foreign
trade and included Western, Chinese and Southeast
Asian residents, up until 1941 when foreigners were
expelled.
Southard’s work joins an increasing number ofbooks in fiction and non-fiction about the enormityof suffering undergone and delivered by the Japanesemore than 70 years ago. As a theatre maker and aformer resident of Yokohama, who first visited Nagasaki
around 40 years ago, Southard’s motivation to research
the story of the hibakusha (meaning literally ‘explosion
affected person’) was crystallised when she met
with Taniguchi Sumiteru, the president of one of theNagasaki survivors’ ‘hibakusha’ organizations, in 1986.
Taniguchi was then at the beginning of his career as aworldwide spokesperson for the hibakusha. Last year,
aged 87, he could be seen live on NHK World speaking
out against the revisions of the peace constitution
2

in front of Prime Minister Abe at the 9 August Peace
Memorial Ceremony.
Southard’s first interview with Taniguchi gave
her insight into the scale of suffering and the silencesurrounding it. It is telling that of the many hibakusha
in Nagasaki, only 40 were kataribe, or public witnesses,
when Southard was working there. Southard, as a US
citizen, was concerned that the US had, in her words,‘trampled on’ the rights of the Japanese in the Postwar period of occupation (1945-1952). One of her
motivations was to illuminate the ‘mushroom cloud’ of
misinformation, censorship, denial and counter-denial
by historians on both sides of the Pacific.
Southard moves expertly between the life storiesof the survivors she has interviewed (Doh Mineko,
Nagano Etsuko, Yoshida Katsuji, Wada Koichi andTaniguchi) and others whose stories she has read; andthe history of the end of World War Two. She claims in
her introduction, that her aim is to ‘bring coherence’to the chaotic nature of hibakusha stories, which has
been exacerbated by the absence of serious researchin to the life stores of those affected by ‘whole bodyradiation’ over time.
The US withdrew press and publication freedom
in Japan from 1945-49; all film, photo, medical records,
and written archives were shipped to the US and had
to be reassembled decades later. Japanese scientificresearch on the atomic bombings was unpublishedeven up to 1952. Official US censorship was also
combined with unofficial Japanese stigmatisationof radiation sufferers, at a time when Japan was still
licking the wounds of defeat.
The book covers events leading up to the
dropping of the atomic bombs in the US – Truman’s
decision to drop the bomb and the accompanying
misgivings of scientists, journalists and generals,
including Eisenhower – as well as the Japanese story.
We read about the total militarisation of Japanesesociety, the kokutai (national militarisation of society),the much-hated secret police and peace preservation
laws; the desire for peace but weakness of the Emperor
and the divisions among the ‘big six’ in Japan’s war
cabinet in discussions around surrender in July andAugust 1945. Some may be surprised by the fact that
the Soviet incursion into Manchuria and Kuril islands
on 8 August played a larger role in final surrender
discussions than either of the atomic bombs. Thishistory, drawn from recent research, is now becoming
the accepted view although it still does not make it intoeither the Japanese or US official version of surrender.

Issue 63 Volume 11 Number 3 (June 2016)‘Now, to be A-bombed, [there]
cared for family members who reis nothing really abstract in that’
sented them for surviving when othwrote Oyama Takami; and Southers died. The book’s black-and-whiteard’s advantage in discussing theinset photographs bear witness tohistory is to keep it closely anchoredan extraordinary triumph of the huto what can be seen through theman spirit alone. They start with theeyes of the survivors, as well as theatomic desert of 1945, with pictures
POWs and other visitors to Nagasaki
of mutilated sponge-like faces andin the aftermath of the bomb. Not
bodies of hibakusha and continue tocontemporary portraits of the surviwanting to be drawn into the gamevors speaking at international conof blame and counter-blame which
ferences, constructing memorials forstill accompanies historical discusthe dead; running peace NGOs.
sions about World War Two, SouthIt took thousands of survivors’
ard brings the hibakusha stories to
Susan Southard is a creative writer
life through face-to-face interviews, and theatre director based in Arizona. accounts, movies and books tophotographic portraits from youth to old age, as well counter the cover-up of holocaust denial. Theseas life histories recounted in families, radio and TV in- five survivors perceive the same counter-narrative isterviews and official and private publications.
needed before the atom-bombed cities are lost in the
In an interview, Southard confessed that the ‘hole of history’; for them there is no enemy apart fromresearch itself had a traumatic effect on her and indeed, war itself; they want to promote a 21st century which is
to miss reading this book is to miss being traumatised based on compassion and sensitivity rather than selfby the massacre that occurred at Nagasaki. If you destruction. They are true internationalists who find
do not read it, you will miss eye-witness accounts that with the whisper of life they have been granted –of the hibakusha trailing their flesh like rags, arms although the verb they use is the ambiguous ikasareta
outstretched like blind people; of parents and children, (to ‘be allowed’ or ‘made to live’) – they want to help
colleagues and friends, preparing fires to burn their others understand. It is hard to think of another book
loved ones’ corpses to ashes before succumbing to like this, which conveys the emotional detail of how
radiation sickness themselves; of the Urakami valley the stories are told, not only then but now. The only
(the bomb’s unintended target) smelling of charred comparable book is perhaps John Hersey’s well-known
human flesh for months; of the place of ‘tears turning Hiroshima. Emotional details leap from the page: likeblack’ where they fell and of ‘no birdsong’ even that of a survivor ‘choking’ as they recall a story; anotherwhen the Allied troops arrived three months’ later; tells us that at night when she takes a bath, the scenesof hibakusha captured on film, days and weeks after of seventy years before still recur to her.
the bombing, mouths stretched open calling for theirSome criticisms can be mentioned: Southard’s
mothers as they died; of mothers giving birth to dead view is that democracy and a peace constitutionchildren in the ‘graveyard’ that was the ruins, only to were ‘forced’ on the Japanese when in fact millions
be levelled with bulldozers by American troops weeks were relieved when the war ended and embraced thelater; of doctors treating thousands of untreatable occupation as it brought progress and democracy; itvictims despite their revulsion; of local ‘remedies’ for could also be argued that additional discrimination
hibakusha – persimmon tea, engine oil, vitamin shots was levelled against the hibakusha of Urakami
and hot springs.
valley because many were Catholics and some were
However you will also miss out on the burakumin, the Japanese ‘untouchables’. These
extraordinary motivation of these five survivors and criticisms aside, this great contribution to atomic bomb
their predecessors to find decency and respect, research could not be timelier or more welcome.
let alone the words to tell the stories: to overcome
discrimination or the desire to kill oneself. Taniguchi, Elizabeth Ingrams is a researcher on the lives of thefor instance, begged nurses to let him die rather than hibakusha of Hiroshima. For more information visit:
treat him until he could move, which took three years. thelastsurvivorsofhiroshima.wordpress.com.
Many more hibakusha suffered the guilt of sur- Her book Japan Through Writers’ Eyes was republishedvival (when so many had died) and the constant fear in 2015 by Eland, price £12.99, ISBN: 978-1906011-08of cancer (to which many have succumbed); they also 6, travelbooks.co.uk.§
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

3

Gunboat Justice: British andAmerican Law Courts in
China and Japan
by Douglas Clark
Earnshaw Books Ltd. (2015)
Volume I: White Man, White Law
and White Gun (1842-1900), ISBN13: 978-988-82730-8-9
Volume II: Destruction, Disorder and Defiance (19001927), ISBN-13: 978-988-82730-9-6
Volume III: Revolution, Resistance and Resurrection(1927-1943), ISBN-13: 978-988-82731-9-5
Review by Chris Roberts
Douglas Clark is a practising lawyer in Hong Kong
who has lived and worked there and in China, Japanand Korea for over 25 years. In these three volumes,
he looks at the workings of the British and American
Courts in China and Japan during the days of extraterritoriality. This subject has been achieving greater
coverage in the literature in recent years. Clark’s
particular contribution is bringing these courts tolife through the personalities of the judges who sat
in them, the lawyers who appeared in them and alarge number of the litigants – both well-known (ornotorious) and those who would otherwise haveremained unknown to history.
He uses the individuals’ life-stories and the humanside of the cases that came before the courts to tell
the story not only of the extra-territorial system itself
in Japan and China but also of expatriate life in those
two countries – particularly Yokohama and Shanghai.
Clark has scoured the archives, journals andrelevant family records for photographs and sketchesof the principal legal players so as to build up a fairly
comprehensive picture gallery of them all – the mostcomprehensive one published to date. In addition, thetext is lightened by apposite cartoons and sketchesfrom contemporary publications. He has, where
possible, spoken to descendants of those involved inadministering British and American justice in Japanand China and recorded much anecdotal family
information. This all adds to the highly personal andcolourful nature of the book. He has also examined
the personal papers of Sir Hiram Shaw Wilkinson, oneof the British lawyers and judges – in both Japan and
China, that are held in the Northern Ireland Public
Record Office and brought to light new points on
Wilkinson’s career.
4

Of course, extra-territoriality had a longer history
in China (1842-1943) than in Japan (1859-1899) andso nearly two thirds of the narrative focuses on China.
Japanophiles will be principally interested in Volume
I, the first third of Volume II and the huge middle
section of Volume III. Volume I’s coverage is divided
almost equally between coverage of Japan and China.
It covers the period from 1842, when the British firstobtained extra-territoriality in China, through 1859
(when foreign extra-territoriality came to Japan) up
to 1899 when Japan ended all foreign extra-territorial
rights in its territories. This switching between Japanand China demonstrates how, during this period, thepractice of foreign laws was intermingled between
the two countries. Not only did the individual judgesof the time have first-hand personal experienceof both countries; but so did many of the lawyers.
Decisions and approaches in one country influenced
approaches in the other. There was also considerablesocialintercourse
betweenthe
expatriate
communities in both countries – particularly as many
expatriates in China saw Japan as a place of retreat
from hot Chinese summers.
The first third of Volume II will interest Japanophiles for two reasons: one, it covers Wilkinson’s Chief
Justice-ship (1900-1905); secondly, it looks at the 1907
and 1908 trials of Ernest Bethell in Seoul at the instanceof the Japanese authorities there. Thereafter, Volume
II is principally of interest to Sinophiles; as is, in many
ways, Volume III. However, Japanophiles may find Volume III interesting for its coverage of the inter-play
between the British (and American) authorities andthe Japanese authorities in 1930s China in relation to
extra-territoriality: particularly in China’s North-Eastern
provinces which were the puppet-state of Manchukuo
occupied by Japan. Histories of extra-territoriality andJapan usually end in 1899 so this coverage adds aninteresting perspective. Here, Japan, for its own geopolitical reasons, continued to recognise the existenceof British and American extra-territoriality until 1941.
Despite the length of each volume, they all
move at a cracking speed as Clark weaves the story
around individuals and the court cases. The fast pacemeans that the reader never becomes bogged downin detail – an issue all too common with other bookson the subject. It does, however, lead to one criticism:in order to give an aura of excitement and interest to
the subject, Clark has a fancy for the dramatic subject
title (such as ‘The Japanese Empire Strikes Back’).
Further, he neither allows a good or amusing, wellknown and oft-repeated, story to be side-tracked by
Issue 63 Volume 11 Number 3 (June 2016)

an examination of its detailed accuracy nor does he reexamine the traditionally viewed short-comings of thesystem in order to assess their validity: he takes themat face value rather than questioning them.
That said, the volumes will be of interest to thegeneral reader interested in the Japan and Shanghai ofthe time – particularly expatriate life. As for the moreacademic historian, the sketches and photographsthat Clark has collected and the personality insightsthat he gives add considerably to the corpus ofknowledge of the system – even though the Japan

Lost Japan
by Alex Kerr
Penguin (2015)
ISBN-10: 0141979747
Review by Harry Martin
Since its original publication in 1993, Lost Japan
by Alex Kerr has stoodwithin the ranks of themore revelatory and nuanced works in a long lineof publications unpicking
the seeming exoticism and essential unfamiliarity ofJapanese history and culture. From the very first page
readers find themselves being guided through the author’s extraordinary Japanese journey through vivid
accounts of traditional Japanese life, from the dramatic
landscape of Shikoku to the dressing rooms of Tokyo’s
most exclusive theatres and tea houses. The narrative
throughout expresses not only the author’s passion,
but also a personal lament for what he perceives as
the deterioration and loss of Japan’s native traditions,comprising an ardent and heartfelt plea to Japanesereaders to sit up and take pride in their national heritage before it is gone forever.
The somewhat esoteric and obscure themes
explored by this connoisseur of Japanese culture areenlightening and novel, featuring subjects such as
traditional thatching (a subject on which had a great
deal of first-hand experience having twice rethatched
the kayabuki roof of his two-hundred-year-old Japanesehouse in the Iya Valley), kabuki rituals and a brief historyof the exquisite world of Japanese calligraphy andantiques. Kerr’s passionate, animated writing stylelifts these weighty subjects off the page and into theLatest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

Society’s Biographical Portraits series has, in recent
years, covered the Japan experience of a number ofthe individuals.
The volumes remind us yet again that, while thelife of British and American communities in Treaty PortJapan and China is already fairly well-covered in theliterature and commentary on extra-territoriality has
increased recently, there is nothing published (in the
English language at least) on the, admittedly smaller,
communities of other nations, or the workings of their
extra-territorial systems, in Japan and China.§

reader’s imagination, bringing to life vivid scenes froma past world. Although the primary focus of the author
is very much on the past, he does not neglect modern
Japan, and presents sobering and insightful accountsof contemporary Japanese politics, economy andarchitecture to set the scene in a much wider context.
Like many who have spent long periods in Japan,
Kerr has a distinct conflict of emotions regarding thecountry he now calls home, and his writing frequently
lays this bare. On the one hand he expresses
impassioned admiration and praise for the native
culture, while on the other he suggests a thinly veiled
sense of disapproval for what he sees as the modern
Japanese disregard for their past. This reprimand sets
the tenor of the book and seems to be directed at alargely apathetic urban Japanese audience which theauthor feels needs reminding of its nation’s origins.
As acknowledged by the author in his prelude, Lost
Japan was intended for the Japanese reader (it was
first published as Utsukushiki nihon no zanzō, Last
Glimpse of Beautiful Japan), with the translationand publication for western audiences somewhatof an afterthought; as a non-Japanese reader I did
indeed feel a little outside of his focus at times, butnevertheless found the themes and subject matter
stimulating and compelling.
With Penguin’s re-release of Lost Japan there is
now the opportunity for a new generation of Japanenthusiasts to wander through this curious and complex mixture of biography and history. This nostalgic
and evocative world is brought to life by Kerr’s expressive writing, which issues a clear and heart-felt call forthe preservation of the fading jewels of Japanese culture. His stories evoke a vivid sense of a disappearing
past which is likely to capture the imagination of any
reader and inspire a desire to (re)visit and read further
into this fascinating culture and history.§5

Our Little Sister
Director and scriptwriter: Koreeda Hirokazu, based on
Umimachi Diary by Yoshida Akimi
Curzon Artificial Eye
DVD, 128 minutes, PG
Review by Susan MeehanWith Our Little Sister Koreeda Hirokazu has produced
another gentle masterpiece – a family drama dealing
with death, desertion, vulnerability, responsibility
and loss. It is far from harrowing, however, unlike the
distressing Nobody Knows (2004) and Like Father Like
Son (2013). The tone is altogether lighter, more open,
optimistic and with humour. The subject matter, family
life, may not be to everyone’s taste, however.
That the four main protagonists are women withstrong, weighty roles give it a great touch, and that thisin itself seems surprising or unusual, says a lot about
the film industry, or at least about the majority of films
shown in the UK. It was incredibly gratifying to see
these women in such complex and interesting roles.
The principal characters, the Kodas, are threesisters in their twenties who have been living by
themselves in a large house in Kamakura for the last
fourteen years. Their parents divorced, the father moved
out and their mother followed suit within a year. The
girls simply got on with their lives, with the eldest, Sachi,
taking care of the household and becoming the parent
figure, or ‘dorm mother’, at the expense of her childhood.

Having had almost no contact with their parents
since being deserted, the sisters they decide to travelto their father’s funeral. It is here that they meet
Asano Suzu, their half-sister, and herself an orphan,with only a self-absorbed step-mother left to callfamily. Suzu is self-composed, welcoming, poised andmature beyond her fourteen years, having nursed
her father in his last days. She loves the father whom
Sachi remembers as merely careless with money andfond of women.
Suzu jumps at the offer of moving in with the
Kodas, and Koreeda shines in his skilful interweavingof the sisters’ family and professional lives and his
portrayal of an open, loving and honest sisterhood.
There is a strong sense of transience here, as it soon
becomes clear that their comfortable, supportive life
together can’t last forever. Tensions simmer below
the surface as serial dater Yoshino, the easy-going
Chizu and the stern Sachi come into conflict. Was
Sachi bringing Yuzu into the fold a last vain effort tosustain the family bond?
This is a film in which emotions are discussed
openly and issues are confronted head-on. The women
have all experienced parental desertion and death andthe consequent loss of childhood, but somehow it isSuzu, whose parents had both died by the time she was
fourteen, who seems to deal with the loss best. Thereis little focus on repressed selfless selves, a common
Japanese stereotype; only Sachi finds it hard to cast off
the responsible persona she has had to develop.

Our Little Sister, starring Ayase Haruka, Hirose Suzu, Nagasawa Masami and Kaho.
6

Issue 63 Volume 11 Number 3 (June 2016)

The film’s Japanese scenery is breathtakingly
photogenic as the different seasons are skilfully
captured over the course of a year and dinky onecarriage trains are shown gliding through the Japanesecountryside. Anyone familiar with the Shonan coast willrecognise Enoshima and feel nostalgia at shots takenfrom inside sea-view restaurants. Equally beautiful are

Ito Shun at IDFB 2016: Cosmic Birds
2 to 20 May 2016
Birmingham Municipal Bank
Review by Dominika Mackiewicz

Spinning World, stainless steel and LED (2009). Photo: Ito Shun.

When several years ago two friends, Japanesekinetic sculptor Ito Shun and Birmingham based
choreographer Miyata Kei, met in the UK’s second
city, they came up with an idea for an interdisciplinary
project, combining art installation and dance
performance. Inspired by the rich industrial heritageof the Black Country, Ito and Miyata travelled acrossthe area and absorbed the atmosphere of abandoned
warehouses and workshops, filled with the sounds ofmetal, machines and human presence. This experience
resulted in Ito’s exhibition Cosmic Birds, part of theInternational Dance Festival 2016 in Birmingham. Bothex-dancers, Ito and Miyata (the curator of the show)
made movement a unifying theme, expressing not
only a very personal understanding of motion, but its
meditative and scientific aspects.
Cosmic Birds comprised twenty mechanicalassemblages dancing in the ghostly offices and spacesof the old Municipal Bank located in the very heart ofBirmingham. The site of the show contributed to thepervading sense of otherness; the Bank remains closed
to the public, rarely opening its heavy, cast-iron doors,
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

the shots of yukata-clad Suzu enjoying the summer
fireworks with friends and then contentedly playing
with sparklers at home with her sisters.
It is an enchanting, uplifting and moving film
which ends with an updated appreciation of theirfather by the three Koda women. The Kodas’ acting is
sublime and Suzu is particularly luminous.§and this architectural treasure, boasting the grandeur of
its atrium and a maze of more dilapidated rooms, wasonce more brought back to life through Ito’s artistic
intervention. His use of movement served to guideattendees through the building, the machines casting
an intricate array of shadows and light, creating an
immersive atmosphere and a strong sense of having
stepped into a memory. (Indeed, throughout the bank,
one is confronted by signs and symbols that hark backto a different age. One inscription reads ‘Thrift radiateshappiness’.)
While some sculptures were small and innocent intheir merry-go-round structure and angelic appearance,others were clearly inspired by the Futurist movement,
dynamic metal skeletons exposed. Wires, gears andcogs, all made from scratch, performed hypnotisingdances as they span, climbed and fell. The way they
cut through the air, much like archaic astronomical
models, recalled the titular ‘cosmic birds’, combining
mechanical, scientific and aesthetic sensibilities.

Orbit One, stainless steel, Halogen light andglass (2006). Photo: Ito Shun.
7

Central to Ito’s artistic experiments is gravity andhis sense of its profound beauty. In this exhibition heconsidered what gravity looks like and how it sounds.
This effort came across most clearly in his trio of kinetic
sculptures Cosmic Birds, which lend their name to theexhibition. Situated side by side, these three identicalsculptures expose the engineering mechanisms thatpass the movement continuously from one part onto
another. Inside each of the steel frames, a satellite-like‘cosmic bird’ is moving up and down as if on a trapeze.
The hypnotizing effect of this piece is additionallyheightened by the heartbeat-like sounds emanatingfrom the speakers. Created by spinning air and theamplified movements of the three cosmic birds, this is
Ito’s rendering of the sound of motion.
Cells, a giant mobile suspended from the ceilingof the Banks’s main hall is the piece inspired andmade in Birmingham. Consisting of two hundredsteel rings that rotate slowly thanks to gravitational
pull, the installation echoed the shape of the old
Bank’s clock and emphasised the impermanence oflife, a very potent symbol in Japanese aesthetics. The
contemplative character of the sculpture, as well as its

simplicity and universality was used by Kei Miyata for Ina Landscape, a dance performance based on the beautyof ‘mindful’ movement. Created with an ensemble oflocal people practising dance, yoga and martial arts, thechoreography presented a dreamlike landscape, where
humans met in an austere place and influenced eachother in often invisible, yet profound ways.
Dressed in black, the dancers performed repetitive
movements among the hanging Cells and exercised
their own and the audience’s attention. Each brought
their own emotional and physical quality to the dance,but only together were they able to create a symbiotic
collective. In this way, they formed a muted, rhythmicalsurrounding for Miyata’s expressive performance.
Miyata, inspired by the writings of Miyazawa Kenji(also a key influence in Ito’s work), created a spectacle
more abstract than narrative, where words are replacedby movements reminding us of shodō, the Japanese
art of calligraphy: controlled but spontaneous, focusedand impulsive. As a result, In a Landscape conveyed an
impression of living art that is strongly related to natureand life; art that comes from the individual’s inside andis motivated by simply being part of the world.§

In a Landscape and Cells. Photo: Robert Day.

Interested in writing for the Japan Society Review?

Please write to william.upton@japansociety.org.uk with examples of your work and information about
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