Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp 211– 239, 2001

Simulacra and subversion in theeveryday: Akasegawa Genpei’s
1000-yen copy, critical art, and the
State
WILLIAM A. MAROTTIThe artist is the secret criminal in our midst. He is the agent of progress against
authority.
Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

In January of 1964 the young avant-garde artist, Akasegawa Genpei, wasquestione d by police concerning some 3000 single-sided , near-actual-size,
monochromatic prints he had made of the 1000-yen note. This was the initialpoint of contact between Akasegawa and the policing function of the JapaneseState; it began a long process which led to his trial and conviction for the crimeof money imitation (but not counterfeiting per se). The trial, and the subsequent
unsuccessful attempts to overturn the conviction on appeal, provided one of themore prominent and dramatic interactions in the 1960s between the State and an
active, culturally insurgent, loosely knit group of young artists, dancers, theater
troupes,  lm-makers, photographers, and musicians.
While the speci c politics of this group were diverse, they shared a common
commitment to a politically charged investigatio n of everyday life and culture.
Artistic contestation in the domain of culture marked an exercise of ‘politics byother means’ at a time in which conventional political possibilitie s had been
foreclosed—one that has long gone underexamined. The critical turn by these
artists to objects and structures of everyday life, moreover, shifted debate fromthe abstract forms of bureaucratic politics at the very moment that the State wasmoving to assert control over this everyday world. Ideologically , Prime Minister
Ikeda Hayato’s focus upon a depoliticized consensus on growth (the ‘National
Income Doubling’ plan) formed the basis for the unstated ugly bargain behind
the Japanese ‘economic miracle’—the curtailment of democracy in exchange forthe promise of consumption and continued economic expansion.
At the moment that the State began championing an everyday de ned byforms of consumption as the complement to an administered, closed political
realm, an evolving avant-garde artistic production turned to this everyday as aspace to rethink a political project. Poised on the brink of a slide into a
proliferating mass culture, artists worked throughout the long decade of the
1960s 1 to contest an increasingly hermetic everyday life, critiquing its shape and
ISSN 1368-879 0 print/ISSN 1466-1888 online/01/020211– 29 Ó 2001 The Institute of Postcolonial Studies
DOI: 10.1080/1368879012007751 5

WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

assumptions, and at the same time working, through their own practice, toemphasize not consumption, but rather active engagement, making, and producing.
Further explication of the broad contours of this cultural contestation is thework of a longer project, necessarily outside the scope of this essay.2 As a casestudy, Akasegawa’s project and prosecution demonstrates the boundaries andpossibilitie s of artistic critique itself: the historical examination of the genesis of
his project reveals provocative (but not atypical) critical, political impulses
within a complex artistic discourse. Since the 1000-yen works also go immediately to the heart of State hegemony through their attack upon the authority ofState-printed money, Akasegawa’s subsequent prosecution reveals much of the
shape and practice of the 1960s Japanese State, its degree of sensitivit y to
infringement upon its prerogatives, and the means by which it legitimated its
extra-constitutiona l policing of the foundations of its hegemony.
The artist indicted
Akasegawa Genpei was indicted for violating, and conspiracy to violate, the1895 Law Controlling the Imitation of Currency and Securities [tsūka oyobi
shōken mozō torishimari hō].3 While the facts of the case precluded indictment
under the usual criminal code provisions regarding counterfeiting (which required explicit intent to use the bills as money), the prosecutors’ recourse to alaw enacted a bare six years after the promulgation of the 1889 Meiji Constitution was merely the  rst deployment of Imperial era forms of State authority
in this postwar case (Figure 1).
While the imitation, or mozō, of currency and securities carries lighter
penalties than the Criminal Code’s provisions for counterfeiting , gizō, the vague
language of the former, prohibitin g ‘the manufacture or sale of things with an
exterior that might be confused for [actual] currency or securities’, potentiallycriminalizes all resemblance short of counterfeiting . No consideration of freedom of expression was provided for: like the later Criminal Code of 1907, thelaw was written under an Imperial Constitutio n which allowed the State, acting
in the name of the Emperor, to freely abridge rights as it saw  t;4 neither the
Criminal Code nor the separate laws (such as the mozō statute) were modi ed
to any signi cant extent after the war, despite the changed form of constitutiona lrights purportedly guaranteed under the new Constitution .5 These and otherprovisions continued to allow the instantiatio n of a form of authority founded
upon the  gure and prerogatives of the Imperial State’s Emperor; in the case ofmozō, this was the basis of the State’s right to monopolize the printing of moneyand de ne its reality, its genuineness. The mozō law’s ambiguities provided
prosecutors with a weapon to defend not against forgery, but rather against anyquestionin g of this reality. Akasegawa produced simulacra, which, while initiallylooking like currency, are on second glance obviously not; their power todisrupt the everyday, uncritical perception of the genuine article and provokere ection upon its status amounts therefore to a kind of blasphemy, or
better, lese majesty, an affront to the emperor’s prerogatives as exercised by theState as his instrument. Hovering behind the 1964 prosecution using the 1895
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SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

Figure 1. ‘Government of Japan 1000 yen note, and Akasegawa Genpei, Printed 1000-yennote works, versions I-IV, 1963’.
All photographs in this article are reproduced from the Nagoya City Art Museum catalog,
Akasegawa Genpei no bouken– nounai rizouto kaihatsu taisakusen, (Nagoya, Nagoyashi
bijutsukan, 1995), with the kind permission of Akasegawa Genpei.

law is the phantom of the prewar state, the Meiji Constitutio n a Doppelgängerof the postwar one, an old order whose expansive authority was fused with the
postwar Constitution .
Akasegawa’s project followed a series of notorious counterfeiting incidents:
the B-series 1000-yen note, which Akasegawa duplicated, had been the particular subject of a  ood of counterfeit notes between 1961 and 1963, most notably
from the chi-37 incident, a major scandal, in which extremely high-qualit ycounterfeit notes were repeatedly discovered throughout the country. The notes
were of a quality such that only mint of cials and others with particular
information as to their defects were able to spot them—revealing that counterfeiters possessed the ability to virtually mint their own money. Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s Third Investigativ e Section of anti-counterfeitin g specialists weredeeply involved in the massive, but unsuccessful attempt to identify the perpetrators; it was inspectors from this squad who  rst approached Akasegawa at his
home on 8 January 1964. Their presence was a bit peculiar: while they213

WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

purportedly recognized that Akasegawa’s notes could not be the work of thechi-37 forger, they claimed to have investigated ‘on the off chance’ that someconnection might nevertheless exist.6 Undoubtedly they were particularly sensitive to the issues involved for State authority. Clearly, as early as their  rst
interrogation of Akasegawa on 9 January Akasegawa’s offense was being
considered in the category of mozō.7
The discretionary choices to investigate and prosecute Akasegawa entail anelement of practice in which a certain sort of State authority is activated, and inwhich a certain sort of State is instantiated . Each new stage, following uponprevious investigation s into the nature and circumstances of Akasegawa’s act,re ects the State’s increasingly detailed appraisal of Akasegawa and the kind of‘artistic activity’ that he represented—especially with the trial and appellate
court decisions. Ultimately, the State is what it does. In other words, the natureof the postwar State resides in the myriad practices which instantiate it; it cannot
be ‘de ned’ by the language of the 1946 revision of the Constitution , but rather
is only mediately related to it through practice—particularly in regard toconstitutiona l guarantees and protections, and the exercise of State authority.
The decision to prosecute Akasegawa, and the subsequent court decisions
which rati ed it as appropriate State action (through convicting Akasegawa andupholding his conviction), demonstrate how the postwar State asserts its extraconstitutiona l right to de ne the Real by arrogating to itself the vastly expansive
authority typi ed by the prewar, Imperial State—limiting criticism, and alternately ignoring or de ning public opinion and consensus for its own convenience, then legitimating these procedures through the legal process. Yet at thesame time that this prosecution highlight s the anti-democratic, hybrid nature of
the postwar State, it also raises the question of what threat Akasegawa’s works
actually posed. While the decision to embrace prewar State authority wasperhaps the more signi cant one at a certain level of abstraction (as theinstantiated form of the State in the 1960s, the  nal decade of Fordist expansion), at another level, Akasegawa’s work manifests a powerful critique, one towhich the State could have no direct rebuttal. Such exercise of authority must
be seen simultaneously as an assertion of the State’s right to defend its Realthrough extra-constitutiona l means (or extra-Postwar-constitutiona l means)—its
right to extra-legal force—and as a decision to forcibly suppress activities suchas Akasegawa’s, which were seen as challenging in some manner the univocal
nature of that Real. Since the State itself is in no small measure dependent upon
the maintenance of its Real, Akasegawa’s work at some level posed a direct
threat to the State itself.
Akasegawa’s art targeted the State at the central point of its hegemonic
support—currency, the intersection between capitalism and State authority—at atime in which the government had begun to legitimate itself through an ideology
depicting it as the bene cent guarantor of continued growth and consumption,compensating for its abridgement of postwar democratic aspirations. Returning
politics and questions of practice and authority to the apparent neutrality of thisenforced consensus proved to be an act to which the State was greatly sensitive.
For their part, police and prosecutors expended resources going after
Akasegawa; the courts took the matter very seriously, from the Tokyo District
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SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

Court trial held in courtroom 701 (venue for the most serious of criminal cases),
up to the Second Petty Bench8 of the Supreme Court. The language with which
the courts discussed the crime, as well as their silence on the vast majority ofissues raised by Akasegawa and his lawyers, also points to the act’s radical
political potential. Additionally, State action against Akasegawa simultaneousl ystigmatized and threatened a whole range of young artists whose work was
progressing in a direction potentially troubling to State hegemony.
Obscenity, Public Welfare, and the Constitutional StateThe language by which the courts rendered their verdicts was particularly apt forthese purposes. The District Court and higher courts all found that the work inquestion was both artistic expression and criminal activity; this decision-makin g
pattern followed Supreme Court precedent in several obscenity cases involving
literary translations , including the 1957 Lady Chatterley’s Lover case 9 and again
in the 1969 case10 concerning Shibusawa Tatsuhiko’s abridged translation ofHistoire de Juliette ou les prospérités du vice (hereafter referred to as Chatterley
and de Sade, respectively).11 In these decisions, which seriously limited freedoms articulated in Article 21 of the Constitution ,12 the court held that a work
could be found to be both art and obscenity, that is, criminal.13 The decisions
provided no balancing test between obscenity and literary or artistic value; theyaf rmed the State’s right to criminalize expression in the name of ‘publicwelfare’, and explicitly denied the presence of any constitutiona l barrier to this(Figure 2).14
These precedents originated, in fact, out of a prewar Court of Cassation
ruling 15 that de ned obscenity under the Meiji Constitution’s guarantee of
freedom of expression, Article 29, which held that ‘Japanese subjects shall,
within the limits of law, enjoy the liberty of speech, writing, publication , public
meetings and associations’ [emphasis added]. This article followed the Meiji
Constitution’s common pattern of providing constitutiona l protections only
under the caveat that the State could limit them by law as it saw  t; the Courtof Cassation’s decision accordingly did not recognize any right to free expression that might limit the State’s authority to criminalize and punish that
expression: it merely concerned itself with the speci city of the de nition of
obscenity. 16 The Court of Cassation was the highest court under the Meiji
Constitution ; its power, unlike that of the postwar Supreme Court, did not extend
to judicial review. There is some debate over the degree of judicial independence
at the time; what is clear, however, is that the courts were not entitled to
encroach upon imperial privilege. John M. Maki points out that as the Meiji
Constitutio n was presented as the gift of the emperor, ‘ … it would have been
illogical and in contravention of the concept of imperial sovereignty for the
courts—clearly only the mouthpiece of the sovereign—to have been empowered
to rule on the meaning of the Constitutio n’ (see Maki, Court and Constitutio n,
pp. xvii– xviii). By following this line of reasoning, in which the mere  nding ofobscenity obviated the need to consider the material as protected expression, thepostwar courts adopted a prewar precedent based on a rather different constitutional standard, con ating Article 21 of the postwar Constitutio n with Article
215

WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

Figure 2. Akasegawa Genpei, Printed 1000-yen works, 1963, shown here labeled as seized
evidence for trial.

29 of the Imperial Constitutio n of 1889. By further extending this line ofreasoning outside of obscenity issues to cases such as Akasegawa’s, the State
laid claim to its prewar authority to criminalize any sort of expression it wished,unlimited by constitutiona l ‘protections’.17
Ultimately, the postwar courts chose to ignore the explicit language of Article
21,  nding instead that it and all of the other provisions concerning rights werelimited by Articles 12 and 13.18 These two articles,19 present in the original GHQ
draft of the Constitution , comprised an exhortation to good self-government
under popular sovereignty, but provided the Supreme Court with the legal
justi cation to rule as early as 1948 that all of the constitutiona l rights might belimited ‘in the interest of the public welfare, ‘kōkyou no fukushi’.20
The ‘public welfare’ arguments criminalizing ‘obscene’ expression in Chatterley and de Sade were both phrased in the language of social hygiene, based upona State-de ned notion of sexual order and propriety. In rejecting the constitutional argument of the defendants in Chatterley, the Court held that ‘maintaining good sexual order [seiteki chitsuj o o mamori] and a minimum standard ofsexual propriety is integral to public welfare’.21 Similarly in De Sade, the Court
held that ‘when writings of artistic and intellectua l merit are obscene, then to
make them the object of penalties in order to uphold order and healthy customs
in sexual life is of bene t to the life of the whole nation’.22 Although both refer
to an arbitrary, self-generated standard, the language of health provides anapparent scientism, thus authorizing an allegedly disinterested, apolitical State216

SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

Figure 3. Scene from Akasegawa’s Tokyo District Court trial: the exhibit table, displaying
works by Akasegawa and friends

intervention. The State is able to authorize prewar-style interference withexpression by grounding it in an appeal to the welfare of the social body thatnecessitates a State ‘clinical role’ under the cloak of a ‘medica’ objectivity .
Making distinctions
Beyond the fact that the court had adopted a prewar schema for considering
questions of free expression lies another important aspect of the holdings in
Akasegawa’s cases. The freedom of speech and of expression issue was, bynecessity, the thrust of Akasegawa’s lawyer’s jōkoku appeal 23 to the Supreme
Court; the  nding by the courts that the work was art that constituted mozō
accorded with the decisions noted above. The part of the decision  nding
Akasegawa’s work to be art, however, was no less problematic that that
 nding it to be criminal. The forcible ascription of Akasegawa’s activities into
the delineated sphere, ‘Art’, drastically reduces the radical potential of his
actions; in explicating them, I hope to avoid reproducing this double distinctio n(Figure 3).
William H. Sewell, supplementin g Gramsci, notes that the process of hegemony crucially involves the ascription and  xing of distinction s and boundaries
over the cultural  eld:
Even in powerful and would-be totalitarian states, centrally placed actors are neverable to establish anything approaching cultural uniformity. In fact, they rarely
attempt to do so. The typical cultural strategy of dominant actors and institutions is217

WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

Figure 4. Scene from Akasegawa’s Tokyo District Court trial: Takamatsu Jirō demonstrates
his “Rope.”
not so much to establish uniformity as it is to organize difference. They are
constantly engaged in efforts not only to normalize or homogenize but also tohierarchize, encapsulate, exclude, criminalize, hegemonize, or marginalize practices
and populations that diverge from the sanctioned ideal. By such means, authoritative actors attempt, with varying degrees of success, to impose a certain coherence
onto the  eld of cultural practice.24

This ‘certain coherence’ is what I have been describing as the State’s ‘Real’, thegeneral scheme of conceptual orderings and differences, interpretations andpractices that grounds the reproduction of the status quo and the State. Thus, theState through the legal system, attempted not only to punish Akasegawa and to
deter others from similar acts, but crucially, to reinscribe his activities within thebounded, unproblematic spheres of ‘criminality’ and ‘Art’. In effect, it tries tokeep practices which constitute a different sort of ‘belief’ or point towards a
different sort of social arrangement from perturbing the distinctions withinknowledge that mirror, support, and conceal current social systems. By contrast,
it is precisely the way that the activities of Akasegawa and the various
contemporary artists, dancers, dramatists, musicians, and the like tended toefface these distinction s that is the ground of their radical cultural productivit yand ultimately, of their politicality (Figure 4).
In a sense, the trial process itself forced a partial cooperation by Akasegawa,
his lawyers and witnesses in this reinscription of his activities as ‘Art’. When he
was indicted, Akasegawa was advised by his lawyer that he could either plead
guilty and accept a token penalty (acceding to the State’s rede nitions of hiswork), or  ght the case in court.25 Akasegawa chose the latter, but in so doing,
218

SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

Figure 5. Scene from Akasegawa’s Tokyo District Court trial: the defense displays a long
blueprint work by Hi-red Center, showing the naked backsides of members Akasegawa,
Nakanishi Natsuyuki, and Izumi Tatsu.

virtually conceded half of the State’s assertions almost immediately. By virtueof the legal strictures, the only defense possible was that the work was Art,
constitutionall y protected speech and expression lacking criminal intent. Thus
each time the defense attempted to invoke the familiar arguments about freedomof speech and creativity, it further reinforced the ‘Artness’ of Akasegawa’s
work, and hence participated in the hegemonic concepts and practices against
which the work was directed (Figure 5).
Shakai Tsuunen
The reasoning employed by the courts in  nding Akasegawa guilty rested
upon the State’s own de nitions both of art and criminality. Moreover, thelanguage undergirding this reasoning in both the precedent-setting cases on
obscenity and the court’s holdings in Akasegawa’s case was grounded in
the same concept: shakai tsūnen. Literally meaning ‘commonly held social
ideas’, the phrase’s  exibility enabled the court to use it in a multitude ofways: primarily, as ‘common sense’, and as ‘community standards’ (Figures 6
and 7).
In their brief to the Supreme Court, Akasegawa’s counsels argue that themozou statute was vague and unclear, lacking any standards for determining themeaning of the phrase magirawashik i gaikan wo yūsuru mono, ‘a thing having
an exterior confusable with [money]’, and that it was therefore in violation of
Articles 21 and 31 of the Constitution .26 In countering this, the majority opinion
in Akasegawa’s case declares that the wording ‘can be rationally interpreted as
everyday speech’ [nichijō yōgo to shite kore o gōriteki ni kaishaku suru koto ga
kanō], and ‘since one can judge on the basis of common sense [shakai tsūnen
219

WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

Figure 6. Akasegawa Genpei, One-thousand-ye n note trial: catalog of seized works, 1967.
The poster reproduces images of Akasegawa’s various 1000-yen works, including wrapped
works; the attached labels are the Court’s evidence tags.

ni shitagai] whether or not something has an exterior confusable with currency,
the defense’s premise fails …’ 27 In other words, their response to the assertionof vagueness in the law was that the wording was rationally understandable
speech (not nonsensical), and further, that common sense, shakai tsūnen, gave itsuf cient speci city. The possibilit y of the phrase’s being rationally interpreted
by someone—in fact, the court, as the de ner of shakai tsūnen —is tautologically used to reject the allegation of vagueness. Understandabilit y is con atedwith legal standards of speci city.28
In appointing itself the de facto interpreter of shakai tsūnen, which is thencited to determine criminality, the court again followed its long series of rulingsin obscenity cases. In these cases, the court held itself to be not only the proper
arbiter of the content of shakai tsūnen, but also its proper evaluator and shaper.
In Chatterley, the court held: “… the standard for the court rendering its above
judgment is the good sense [ryōshiki] and community standards [shakai tsūnen]functioning in general society. These community standards are just as the courtof  rst instance found them to be: ‘it is neither the collection of individual220

SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

Figure 7. Akasegawa Genpei, One-thousand-ye n note trial: catalog of seized works, 1967.
The poster reproduces images of Akasegawa’s various 1000-yen works, including prints
and bolted panels; the attached labels are the Court’s evidence tags.

consciousnesses , nor their mean value; it is the group consciousnes s [shūdanninshiki] which transcends them, and cannot be denied by the fact of individual swith understanding s at odds with it. The determination of what these community
standards are is under the present system entrusted to the court.’ 29 Having
arrogated to itself the authority to specify the content of community standards,30
shakai tsuunen, the court in turn de nes them ipso facto on a level unreachable
by any dissenter. In fact, dissent neither outside nor inside the court canchallenge the imputed univocality of these standards:
The fact that it is not always the case that there is unanimity of opinion amongindividuals in society, or between judges at each level of the courts, or among thejudges constituting the same adjudicating body, is the same as in any other instanceof legal interpretation. This is not merely the case when determining whether or not
something is obscene literature, and cannot be used to deny the court’s authority todetermine community standards. It is thus unavoidable that the court’s judgment
whether or not this work is obscene literature will not be in agreement with somepart of the citizenry. The fact that in this instance the members of the court must

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WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

follow their own good sense [ryōshiki] in determining [kettei suru] the community
standards differs not at all from all other instances of legal interpretation.31‘Good sense’, necessarily unde ned, is what guides the court in determining
community standards. In fact, this tautological de nition is held by the court tobe an objective discernment of the already extant and obvious. This in turn
becomes the court’s answer to the defense’s constitutiona l objection, under
Article 21, to censorship and prosecution without prior speci city of standards
for determining obscenity: ‘However, the basis for the determination inregards to the acceptability or unacceptability of the translation in this case isextant as the community standards and good sense functioning in generalsociety, and so one cannot say that it was unclear prior to the fact’.32 The
purportedly ‘extant’ community standards intuited by the court counter the
defense’s direct constitutiona l challenge to the obscenity law, Article 175 of
the Criminal Code, as part of a prewar system of censorship not in accord withthe postwar Constitution’s guarantees of free expression: the ‘existence’ of thecommunity standards provides the positive content to the law required by theConstitution.
Despite having precluded opposition to its de nition of shakai tsūnen, thecourt in Chatterley also proclaims its right to intervene actively in reshaping
social reality:
Even if we granted for the sake of argument that the ethical senses of a suf ciently
numerous mass of the citizenry had become so inured that they fail to recognize
a truely obscene thing [makoto ni waisetsu na mono] as obscene, the court
must defend against moral degeneration by following the good sense provided by
the norms of community standards, the ideals of healthy people [kenzen na ningen
no kan’nen de aru shakai tsūnen no kihan ni shitagai]. Ultimately, neither law nor
the courts need always af rm social reality [shakaiteki genjitsu]; rather, they are
to oversee evils and decadence with a critical attitude and must play a clinicalrole.33

In its de Sade decision of 1969, the court implicitly endorsed its commitment tothis role when it declared that ‘… while it may be preferable to learn of the
response of the average person reading the piece in  nding what the community
standards are, this in the end has no more meaning than that of a reference’.34
The court will freely de ne ‘good sense’ and ‘the ideals of healthy people’ as
it sees  t. Shakai tsūnen, as ‘community standards’, thus ultimately is the court’s
standard; it is its notion of social reality as it ought to be, an articulation andsimultaneous legal authorization of the State’s Real.
By using shakai tsūnen to refer to some abstract, yet putatively speci c,content, the courts bridged the gap between, on the one hand, prewar laws andthe exercise of Imperial-style state authority and, on the other, a postwar
Constitutio n encompassing legal positivism which would in theory set limits onthat authority. The content of shakai tsūnen was, in practice, whatever the court
cared to impute to it; this arbitrariness was concealed by the suppositio n that it
was actual, existing thought, properly perceived by the court. Failing this, thecourt could fall back to further abstractions—‘good sense’ and the ‘ideals of
healthy people’—to ‘correct’ social reality, through the power of the State’s
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SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

judicial apparatus. In either case the court substitute d recourse to popular thought[shakai tsuunen], and/or ‘good’ and ‘healthy’ portions of it, for its prewar
mandate under the Meiji Constitutio n to act in the name of the emperor. The
social body is substitute d for the emperor’s delegated body as the grounds forState action.
Safe art
What does change in the State’s stance on art and crime during the postwar
years, however, is the extent to which the State becomes receptive to the ideaof a harmless sort of art. Unlike the Chatterley decision, the Supreme Court’s
1969 de Sade ruling held that ‘the artistry and intellectual content of a work
may diminish and moderate the sexual stimulus caused by its portrayal of sex
to a degree less than that which is the object of punishment in the Criminal
Code, so as to negate the work’s obscenity; but as long as obscenity is not thus
negated, even a work with artistic and intellectua l value cannot escape treatment
as obscene writing’.35 In other words, artistry might make a work unstimulating ,and therefore not obscene, but if obscene, it is criminal. The majority court
in de Sade began for the  rst time to contemplate some sort of assessmentof the nature of the artistry involved in a work which might make its
content ineffectual, and thus not criminal. In so doing, the court moved towards
a long line of concurring and dissenting opinions in the obscenity cases whichargued in favor of some sort of balancing between obscenity and ‘social value’
as art.
Justice Irokawa Kōtarō’s dissent in the de Sade case recommends weighing
the possible negative effects of an artistic or literary work against its ‘social
value’, its positive side, in calculating the public welfare concern, rather thanviewing any degree of obscenity as necessarily criminalizing the work—anapproach explicitly rejected by the majority.36 ‘Obscenity in form’ in certain
passages might be sublimated by the work as a whole: ‘Where the work isearnest and truthful in its subject manner, where the portrayals of sex in its
narrative are  t and appropriate, inextricably related to the subject matter, andwhere its value as art is high, it may not be unreasonable to see also thephenomenon of a sublimation of obscenity [waisetsusei shōka no genshō] if thework is viewed as a whole’.37 Justice Irokawa was possibly motivated by thecontent of Juliette, arguably the most violent and shocking of all of de Sade’s
works. That is, stimulation might be redirected towards appropriate social goals
and values, including ‘amusement … an essential requirement in a mass society’,or promoting the ‘nation’s culture’, in the case of ‘high art’ of self-evident
value.38 Either would promote ‘cultural development’.39 The Justice thus holds
open the possibility of recognizing something as art and therefore not criminal
if it has social worth.
In his concurring opinion in Akasegawa’s case, Justice Irokawa demonstrates
that his proposed doctrine was conceived of as extending well beyond obscenity
cases. In language that clari es his notion of proper art, he writes, ‘[I]f theartistic activities of expression were of a high order [kōji de atte], and if thesocial value of the work thus created far and away surpassed its negative value,
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WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

in such an exceptional case (and it is clear that this case does not rise to thislevel) the conclusion would need to distinguis h this [from the one renderedhere.] This is because in the end, in considering the propriety of restrictions
being added to the freedom of expression, social worth must  rst be comparatively assessed’.40 What at  rst reads like a lukewarm endorsement of liberal
position s on freedom of expression here must be understood within this context
also as a recognition of the ultimately unproblematic and socially salubrious
nature of those works which most wholeheartedly embrace the category of‘art’. Both ‘social value’ and ‘[art] of a high order’ assume a hierarchical,
ideal concept of ‘art’ as a distinct and bounded sphere of activity withineveryday life, but one to be de ned by the State. In Akasegawa’s case, despite
the recognition of Akasegawa’s work as being squarely within trends incontemporary art by multiple witnesses, and even by the district court opinion
in the case, Justice Irokawa is able in a brief parenthetical to dismiss it
as lacking counterbalancing social worth or for not being of an artistically‘high order’ on the basis of his own notions, as a Justice, of the proper role ofart.
Justice Irokawa’s arguments (and those of other dissenters in related cases)
propose a more  exible approach, whereby the State would recognize an interestin ‘cultural development’ via art that it found to be of social worth (safe art,
functioning either as a distraction, or as ‘high art’ that proclaims its inutility andits separation from all other social spheres as its very de nition and role),
anticipating a depoliticized art, as well as a climate of less overt protest andopposition. 41 Lack of dangerousness would be the implicit criterion for such art;
art which best embraces the State’s de nitions of art would ipso facto be the art
least troubling to the State.
IntentThe question of dangerousness is posed in both Akasegawa’s case and in theobscenity cases. In the latter, the issue is damage to public morals: the State’srole is seen as maintaining ‘minimum morality … the morality of vitalsigni cance for the maintenance of the social order’,42 and responds to a threat
to the social order that it perceives in the materials. In Akasegawa’s case,according to the courts, mozō threatens ‘society’s faith and credit in currency’[tsuuka ni taisuru shakai no shin’yō], ‘society’s con dence and trust [shin’rai]
in the genuineness of currency and the like [tsūka nado no shinsei], and the
security/safety [anzen] of transactions produced through it on the basis [of thattrust.]’ The district court’s explanation for this concern (which is considerably
more detailed than that of the brief Petty Bench ruling) is unable to account forthe speci c threat posed by Akasegawa’s obviously imperfect copies(monochrome, single-sided , with some printed on inferior paper), other than bycon ating the means by which harm results from mozō with that of gizōhai,
counterfeiting . The linguistic acrobatics engaged in by the court in attempting tosuture the difference between mozō and gizō as mere degrees of dangerousness
result from its need to suppress the criticism Akasegawa’s works embodied: thequestionin g of the status of genuine currency itself.43 While both revealed
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SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

counterfeits and simulacra might harm ‘faith and credit’ in currency, only thelatter does so solely through a direct challenge to State authority, since its
visible fraudulence questions the reality of all money, including its own. The
courts similarly avoided addressing this distinction by their rulings’ con ationof Akasegawa’s project with using ‘actual’ bank notes as material,44 simultaneously silencing his arguments about the artistic investigatio n of money
exhaustively set forth in pleadings and court testimony.45 The District Court
comes closest to acknowledging the defendant’s arguments in their astonishing nding that the 1000-yen note ‘possesses the most universal nature of all[things] within everyday life [nichijōseikatsu no naka de motto mo fuhenteki na
seishitu o motsu sen’en no nippon ginkōken]’. This remarkable comment issigni cantly left out of the Supreme Court’s paraphrase of this part of theirholding.
The  nal reductive suppression by the courts of the criticism embodied by
Akasegawa’s work comes in its understanding of ‘intent’ [ito] as ‘criminal
intent’ [han’i]. Again following obscenity rulings, the court addresses theissue of the defendant’s intent merely as a question of whether or not they
were aware that their acts occurred, reducing these intentions to simple
criminality, and nothing else: ito and han’i become congruent. While notnecessarily unusual as a legal practice, in this context this reduction functions
to aid the State’s rede nition of the activities in question as crime, andcrime alone. The impossibilit y of engaging directly with the defendant’s
criticism while still preserving legality is again conveniently removed as aproblem.
‘Supai keiyaku’/‘Aimai na umi I’ —on simulation and simulacra, or spies
and ex-spies
Akasegawa’s works from the late 1950s into the 1960s, and particularly his‘model 1000-yen note’ projects, together reveal an evolving concern witheveryday life and its ‘systems’ of order, with social reproduction, and with the
body. Following the development of his work returns us to issues raised by Stateactions in prosecuting Akasegawa, but in a form that promotes, rather thanforecloses, inquiry. To begin to address the complicated question of why
Akasegawa created his ‘model’ 1000-yen notes, we must  rst look to his
remarkable short story, Aimai na umi.
In June of 1963, Akasegawa published a short story in issue eight of the art
magazine Keishō, titled ‘Supai keiyaku’, or ‘The Spy Contract’.46 When republished, the piece was renamed for the title of the poem contained within it—‘Aimai
na umi’, or ‘The Ambiguous Ocean’.47 This was Akasegawa’s  rst serious effort
at writing: purportedly, he initially intended to write a critique, but instead foundhe had composed a rather odd short story.48 According to Akasegawa’s later,somewhat inchoate recollections, he had been thinking a great deal about the actof expression, and his thoughts had led him to a hatred of ‘originality-base dexistence’ [orijinaritei ni yoru sonzai], of ‘system’ and organization, and of his
sense of his own identity as a single particle within that system.49 When he tried
to set these ideas down as critique, he ended up with a spy story.
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WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

Though published in June, Akasegawa’s writing of ‘Aimai na umi’ seems
likely to have corresponded to the preparation of the  rst of his 1000-yen prints,
the other side of which was printed with an invitation to his February 1963
one-man show of a similar name, ‘Aimai na umi ni tsuite’ [On the Ambiguous
Ocean]. The exhibition was of a number of collage works that Akasegawa hadcreated between 1961 and 1963, eerie, montage-like combinations of bizarre
landscapes, disarticulate d body parts, egg shapes (suggestive of embryos, development, cells), clock faces, and other items, either directly superimposed, or
related through lines and/or painted patterns.50 Taken as a whole, the works
reveal Akasegawa’s developing interest in issues related to the body, to a‘system’ that encompasses the body and its own order, and a search for anadequate critical medium both to express these concerns and to work towards
their revolutionizing . This critical impulse is visible in all three of Akasegawa’s
projects associated with this exhibition : the collages (especially the ones done in1963), the 1000-yen notes, and the short story; it can also be seen subsequentl yin the projects associated with the founding in May of 1963 of the art group,
Hi-red Center, whose principals were Akasegawa, Nakanishi Natsuyuki, andTakamatsu Jirou.
The ‘story’, ‘Aimai na umi’, concerns a spy who has just received a curious
new gun, the taijin’yō pisutoru, or ‘anti-person pistol’. This weapon turns
out to be the exact opposite of what a spy might wish for—it makes a hugenoise like a howitzer, but lacks penetrating power: ‘The power to penetrate
frying pans, destroy combination locks to safes, smash  re engine pumps—inother words power beyond that necessary for killing a person—was completely
excluded. Perhaps this pistol came into being so as to be very precisely
limited to anti-person  repower, just enough for the bullet to penetrate a shirt
and dive inside the  esh.’ 51 All quotations from ‘Aimai na umi’/‘Supai keiyaku’are from my own unpublishe d translation of Akasegawa’s story. The spyre ects upon the utter inappropriatenes s of the thing—its use would instantly
disclose his carefully concealed identity as a spy. Yet he remains strangely
fascinated with the gun, and on a certain day when he is unlikely to needto resort to gunplay, straps it on and goes out. As he meets in a restaurantwith a person whom he later plans to assassinate, he experiences a long fantasy
about suddenly shooting the man and everyone else with the gun, customers
running about in panic as it is loudly  red at point-blank range. The fantasy’s
conclusion is the imagined arrival of the police, who  nally shoot the spy.
He re ects that playing out such a scenario would fail to achieve his true
wish: ‘[t]he reason he became a spy was really based on a desire for a grandrevenge [yūdainaru fukushū]’, the ‘eradication of the entire population ofhumankind’.
When he imagines trying to shoot all of humankind with the taijin’yō pistol,and experiences a sensation of his  esh expanding away to formlessness as his
consciousnes s recedes to nothingness:… when he holds that anti-person pistol before him, his  esh begins to expand
outward. The  esh  lls with oxygen, swells, and folds back upon itself just like
popcorn.

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SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

Or rather, his consciousness within this, his individual  esh, turns towards theinterior, heads towards the  nal, existence-less center, and sinks into thein nitesimal. As this occurs, his  esh expands in precise inverse proportion, and as
it swells to enfold the room, it is expelled out to cover the hallways, paint over the
trains, and expand outward towards in nity.
Perfect in nity is formless; as long as the limitless is unable to attain existencein this world, this individual  esh, the closest of all things to him, in heading
towards the in nite progresses towards nothingness [mu]. While growing until allof its details [saibu] become visible, it continues towards its own extinguishment.

After these re ections, the spy again takes the taijin’yō pistol and heads out
to the seashore. There follows a long poetic meditation/fantasy about bodiesand  esh, ‘The Ambiguous Ocean’, the title later used for the entire short story
itself:

The Ambiguous Ocean
As  esh is enclosed by buildings
And buildings are enclosed by  esh
The sea is enclosed by the land
And the land is enclosed by the sea.
To the extent that the earth is a sphere.
Apply water to the human body and as it is diluted
It shudders violently,
And as the body’s cells [saibō] separate, the cells become independent amoeba
As they swim about
Together with the water that  lled the gaps between them
They become seawater and  ow away.
That is why the ocean is viscous.
It is
Dead  esh’s
Lifeless horizon
The ocean is  esh without system
The tapestry of  esh from which laws have evaporated.
Why did God condense the sea and make a system,
Give food to the system and make a human?
Why?
Not knowing the answer,
Flesh prefers the ocean to humans.
The ocean with the measureless body temperature
Of the  esh that lives even as it dies.
An unmistakable injection of Ringer’s solution.52
Since God did not do anything more for me
I started myself.
In the depths of night
So as not to be suspected by anyone
With a scalpel, one by one

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WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

Under the swimming beach’s shower
Careful not to do them any harm
I cut off the cells of my body.
My consciousness evaporated bit by bit
And the ocean expressionlessly welcomes in
The little seawater that runs off.
Even with me added to the ocean
The ocean neither rises nor falls.
And I am in there, but
There is no ‘me’ to speak of.
I wonder if you understand.
I am in there, but
There is no ‘me’ to speak of.
But I was just a bit mistaken.
The error of
A too proper
Illiterate virgin.
With too careful preparation
I chose night
And so my becoming seawater and joining with the ocean
Was suspected by no one.
Humans are well disciplined from the time of birth,
Are busy growing up, so
Only while swimming in the sea, is there an ocean.
I mistook the other’s  esh.
Flesh prefers the ocean to humans.
This is a kindness towards humans.
And yet, although it comes from my kind sympathies
I must  rst
Begin from  esh not of my own  esh.
One  ne noon,
I conceal on my person a portable shower, microscope, and scalpel
And while strolling the beach swimming area,
Take care of them one by one.
Perhaps when showered with the saltwater spray
All of humanity’s  esh
Will shudder violently
From a great anti-person earthquake.
Only at this point is care required so as not to be suspected.
Afterwards, God still does not do anything,
So I make an imitation system [boku wa taikei o mozō suru.]
Only at this point, deep in the night, by the shore
Do I drag out a deep-sea diving suitAnd force in with a gurgle
Six thousand drums of seawater.
The cells jostle together and cling
Packed tightly together with Ringer’s solution between,

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SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

Once it becomes like a human
Warmed by the light of the moon
I remove the diving suit.
Ah, this glorious rebirth!
This is me.
It is but
The least I can do out of kindness
For the  esh other than my own.
As the ocean is enclosed by the earth
And the earth is enclosed by buildings
Flesh is enclosed by buildings
And the buildings are enclosed by  esh.
To the extent that the surface of the earth curves
To the extent that space has curvature.

The poem stages another exploration of bodily boundaries and limits. The
mutual, paradoxical enclosure of  esh and buildings , echo the narrator’s priorsensation of  esh swelling out of his room ‘to cover the hallways, paint over the
trains, and expand outward towards in nity’. Both the beginning and the endingof the poem highlight the mutual involvement of  esh and objects on land, theinseparability of body and system,  esh and structure. By contrast, the sea is azone of chaos, of  esh without system, an anarchic concatenation of cells
swimming about independent of any ordered structuring within bodies (hence theanalogy between seawater and Ringer’s solution). It stands for unstructured
potential prior to and beyond the systems upon the land. The poem thus leads
from interrelated systems on land to a contrast between land and sea.
Having established the contrast between land and sea as that between thegiven, the determinate, and the temporal versus the potential, the anarchic, andthe atemporal, Akasegawa  gures an impossible operation, a restructuring of
his/the spy’s own body through bodiless agency. First, the narrator describes
cutting away his cells one by one under a beach shower, continuing somehow
until his body is completely disassembled and the cells  ow back into the sea.
Yet after the line, ‘there is no “me” to speak of’, he contradictoril y chides his
actions for being without effect. This  rst dissolution fantasy suggests acontemplation of suicide, a fading away in the night ‘suspected by no one’ andof no consequence: merely an exchange of land for sea.53 What is required isagency in the midst of dissolution —the ocean only exists as potential to theextent that there is realization of body and structure on the land. Thus theparadoxical line, ‘only when swimming in the sea, is there an ocean’ can beunderstood as an ontological statement to the effect that the atemporal ocean
only enters into time through interaction with temporal bodies (Figure 8).
With this re ection, the poem returns to re-narrate a bodily disassembly, but
this time, with a space for some sort of ghostly, non-corporeal agency: after
deconstructin g himself, the narrator surrealistically rebuilds his body, his attackon system imagining all bodies under the salt shower, ‘shudder[ing] violently
from a great anti-person earthquake’. By packing cells and seawater together ina deep-sea diving suit, the narrator reconstitutes himself as a body that has been
229

WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

Figure 8. Akasegawa Genpei, The Ambiguous Ocean, 2, 1963. One of Akasegawa’s manycollage works presented in his February solo exhibition, displaying interests in bodily
disassembly and possibility echoed in his later short story.

freed of the present ‘system’ through reassembly according to a different logic.
This human simulacrum would be disruptive to that system, as it would lack
those networks of order which ensure the reproduction of the status quo.
The concluding verse paragraph optimistically reverses the order of the items
alluded to in the introduction . The introductio n leads from land to sea, or fromstatus quo to chaotic potential; the concluding paragraph proceeds from sea toland, from potential to actualization, in terms of Akasegawa’s iconography.
Following the poem, Akasegawa’s hitherto loosely narrative, allusive writingchanges to direct statements about the role of spies, bodies, and money, which
serve to clarify the target of his fantastic critique:Spies reject the entire system of private property [shiyūzaisaniseido] which includes
the body 54 as well as the consciousness which accompanies the body.
There are among the spies activities related to the rejection of the system of230

SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

private ownership: the destruction of the currency system. They possess suitably
elaborate counterfeit bill manufacturing techniques to throw it into commotion[sono kakuran no tame no niseisatsu seizō de wa sōtō seikō na gijutsu o motte iru].
But manufacturing counterfeit humans? Well, although God’s last exertion, woman,seems to be something that can be made from two or three ribs and some other sortof shit mixed together, making a human seems to be not quite so simple a task.
Recently in Italy it seems that they’ve succeeded in making an embryo in a test
tube, and have grown it for a month, but since the raw material was real humansperm and ova, it still seems a ways away from the production of a real counterfeit
human. At this point there is no other option but to counterfeit counterfeit humans
out of the humans currently in circulation today.

The spies’ (Akasegawa’s) target is thus identi ed as capitalism. The sketchiness of Akasegawa’s term for it, focusing as it does upon ‘private property’,contrasts with his understandin g that both bodies and consciousnes s are implicated within this system. Akasegawa’s choice of terminology, however, may
have derived from the particular history of leftist oppositio n and critique within
Japan, rather than from a reductive, traditional understandin g of Marxism.55
Regardless of its origin, the limitations signaled by a focus on private property
are overcome immediately by a sophisticate d notion of the mutuality of thought
and practice and its connection to systemic reproduction. It is at this level of
everyday interaction that Akasegawa was to develop his art and critique mostthoroughly.
Within Aimai na umi we see evidence that in his critical thought and practice
Akasegawa had turned, like so many other of his artist contemporaries, to the
problem of the body. The text enacts two of the major dimensions of this turnto be found at the time; in the person of the spy, we have the body as a site ofaction and in ltration, and in the targets and constructs, the body is examined forthe operations of hegemonic systematicity and authority within its very makeup.
The former  gures a kind of fantastic enablement of possibilitie s for radical
action against what is revealed in the latter.
Thus the ‘humankind’ that is the target of the spies is the humanity thatstructures and is structured by a hegemonically ordered everyday life.
Akasegawa’s desire to radically restructure this reality is  gured in the story
 rst as a fantastic wish for total destruction, then as an equally fantastic
wish for total self-reconstruction of all people. This targeted reality is understood as extending to the very constitutio n of humans, from the cells up, as
Akasegawa attempts to grasp the interconnected levels of ‘system’. The spy’s
dedication to the destruction of humankind, therefore, is a commitment to thissystem’s overthrow, and to the transformation of human practice and consciousness.
The strange attraction of the taijin’ yō pistol itself (personi ed in the workas ‘waiting’ for the spy) seems to embody paradoxically both the ineffectualnessof opposition , and a sense of its utter necessity: the bind faced by 1960s
activists. The gun’s attractiveness seems particularly linked to its absurd qualities: not only its unsuitabilit y as a spy weapon, but also its capacity to reveal
upon its use the spy’s identity as a spy. This unmasking operation seems to beat issue here.
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WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

Akasegawa’s 1000-yen notes relate to counterfeiting as simulacra to simulations, as copies that declare their own falsehood to copies that attempt to passas the ‘original object’. The former challenge the status of the original, while thelatter seek to participate in the networks and status associated with that original.
This relationship seems personi ed to a degree in the difference between spy andex-spy related in ‘Aimai na umi’; speci cally, it seems to embody Akasegawa’s
conundrum as an artist interested in making works questionin g the status ofmoney. The loud bang of the gun and the unmasking of the spy as spy strongly
parallel the direct challenge to State authority involved in Akasegawa’s printingof money simulacra. According to his testimony to the police in the kyōjutsu
chōsho, Akasegawa had concerns over the legality of the act from the beginning,
and was nervous throughout the project.56 Thus the depictions of the limited
range and power of the taijin’ yō pistol, and the spy’s fate in his fantasy shootout
at the restaurant, are analogous to the possible results of his own limited
production and display/circulation (as artworks) of currency simulacra; infact the latter in part neatly presages the actual results of his act. The gun’s
strange attractiveness, and the temptation to reveal oneself as ‘spy’ parallel
Akasegawa’s odd attraction to making these works, regardless of the consequences. The compulsion to make the works speaks to the inseparabilit y of
Akasegawa’s critical and artistic sensibilities . Here we see this played out withina different art form—a short story—and yet here, too, art and criticism areinterwoven.
The piece’s conclusion with the spy discovering a new sort of pistol seems
to show this desire rallying, having identi ed a new and more auspicious
avenue for possible action. The spy has constructed a new taijin’ yō pistol, tobe smuggled throughout the country in mass quantities: ‘It’s like a small“bazooka”; upon leaving the muzzle the bullet itself acquires rocket propulsion ;the pistol is just for ejecting the bullet outward. After that, the bullet enters
the body by its own rocket propulsion , and there, its rust-corroded iron gets
mixed into the blood. For basically, he really didn’t like murder.’ The ‘story’concludes with a remark that these ‘guns’ are already circulating. Viewed
broadly, this second weapon  gures a solution to the actual problem of‘ repower’ faced by activists, both literally (their lack of adequate force tocombat the State) and  guratively (their impotence in the face of State actions).
Its scenario comes very close to metaphorically describing a project for whichthe ‘model’ 1000-yen works really might be a model: the rejection of money,
either by its overt private printing, or through some sort of general popularrefusal of its status. Though admittedly sketchy, it does accord provocatively
with Akasegawa’s expressed interest in the potential of masses, brought home tohim not only through artworks (such as Ai Ō’s Pastoral), but also by the populardemonstration s and protests culminating in Anpo in 1960. 57 For Akasegawa,their fascination seems to have resided not in their ultimate failure, but in thepotential that they seemed to embody spectacularly. Akasegawa seems to haveviewed these ‘political’ actions as an artistic object, whose potential might berealized politically through art—a neat reversal of the usual conceptual understandings of art and politics, one that spoke volumes as to the status of both inearly 1960s Japan.
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Akasegawa Genpei, ex-spy
Akasegawa’s initial explorations into the potentials of his 1000-yen prints reveal
a continued broadening of critical concerns and understandings , one that registers through the medium of the artistic works themselves. The slowness withwhich he incorporated 1000-yen simulacra into his primary work may re ect his
continuing uneasiness over the project. According to Akasegawa, his  rst
1000-yen work was his large-scale, tatami mat-sized drawing of the note.58 Thistwo hundred times magni cation of the 1000-yen note was an exacting color‘imitation’ done painstakingl y by hand over a number of months. Akasegawa
entered it un nished in the 15th Yomiuri Indépendant in March of 1963, under
the title The Morphology of Revenge: Take a Close Look at the Opponent Before
You Kill Him [fukushū no keitaigaku (korosu mae ni aite o yoku miru)]. He
displayed it again on May 7– 12 as part of Hi-red Center’s  rst group exhibition,
the Fifth Mixer Plan [Daigoji mikisā keikaku], in what would become the work’s nal form.59
Akasegawa continued to work on this ‘Enlarged 1000-Yen Note’ 60 throughout the period of printing his 1000-yen simulacra works, from the  rst set
in January almost to the date of the  nal set of prints in May. Ultimately, as aform of conceptual art, the work raises the question of the artist’s intention:
why take the time to create such an exacting duplicate of the 1000-yen bill?
Akasegawa was concerned to stay just within the boundaries of legality during
his 1000-yen project from its very beginning : rendering this imitation by handat two hundred times actual-size allowed him latitude to execute a reproduction
accurately, in full color.61 The work blurred the distinction between painting,technical drawing, and mechanical reproduction by the exacting precision ofwhat was ostensibly a painting; by the colloquial title of the work as an‘enlargement’ (in the sense of a photographic enlargement); and by its very
incompleteness, from the gaps in the picture to the pencil-drawn scale gridclearly visible at its margins and within, which marked it both as a hand-painted
work (gouache) and yet as a duplication in-progress as well, portending further
work to follow.
In a sense, the work represented the limits of a painterly reproduction of the
1000-yen, its mass-printed object, while pushing the legal limits of reproducibility. As part of Akasegawa’s artistic production in early 1963, the ‘Enlarged
1000-Yen Note’ served as a foil to Akasegawa’s printed notes, opening up someof the complexities raised by interrogating the form and status of money—an‘original’, or ‘real thing’ which is nonetheless a reproduction 62—to the extent
that it could be interrogated by its strange opposite , a painted, and therefore‘original’, copy.
Akasegawa’s  rst set of 300 actual-sized prints of the 1000-yen note weremade as invitation s for his February 1963 ‘Aimai na umi ni tsuite’ exhibition.
This fact might suggest that Akasegawa had not yet fully embraced the prints aspart of his artistic output: they seem to be only peripherally related to this moreconventional solo exhibition of collage works, as much a part of the trappingsof the exhibition as part of the exhibit itself. On the other hand, though, these
300 printed ‘invitations’ and Akasegawa’s remarkable method of distributin g
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WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

them to his list of some 150 invitees—via registered mail in envelopes used forsending cash—arguably reveal Akasegawa moving towards a sort of performance art that would not neatly  t within standard artistic conventions , marking
a development that would lead him to co-found the remarkable artistic group,
Hi-red Center, in June of the same year.
The invitation s were the  rst set of 1000-yen prints that Akasegawa created;
they were the subject of count one of the State’s indictment, ‘an actual-size
obverse of the 1000-yen bill on the face of cream-colored high grade paper ingreen ink’, featuring on the reverse ‘information as to a painting exhibition bydefendant Akasegawa’.63 In fact, although the works were notable for theirprecision, the high-grade, cream-colored paper and, for the 150 or so mailed
ones, their method of delivery, the ‘information’ on their reverse was at least
equally provocative. Across the top, labeled ‘1’. was the title of the exhibition,
preceded by a curious statement: ‘1. human body , 8 trillion individual cells
combined 5 seawater , about 6000 drums . . On the Ambiguous Ocean …’ 64
The details of the  rst line echo Akasegawa’s depiction in the then as-yet
unpublishe d ‘Aimai na umi’ story of the fantastic creation of a new human. Boththe title and the statement about the cellular constitutio n of the human bodyclosely associate exhibit, invitation , and story.65 Particularly in the collages fromearly 1963, ocean, body, and bodily constitutio n are all closely associated:fragmentary body parts and incomplete body shapes, images of the oceanside,and striated or wavelike washes of blue and green oceanic colors appear inseveral of the works. Conversely, all of these visual images are textuallyinterrelated within the short story66 (Figure 9).
On the right, much like a portrait on a bill, is an image of a dark-coloredmask or bronze face, largely obscured by a white ellipse at dead center, bearing
the label, ‘2. The Destruction of the System of Private Property’.67 To theleft of this image, in smaller print, is the following paragraph: ‘ , The
destruction of the system of private property, that includes the body as wellas the consciousness accompanying that body. . The sophisticatio n of themethods and techniques of [the Akasegawa Genpei Co., Ltd.], which isconcerned with the destruction of the currency system, are common knowledge.
But counterfeit humans are extremely dif cult to make, still technically
impossible , so for the time being we will be counterfeiting them out of thehumans currently in print.’ 68 The text closely follows the series of directstatements near the end of Akasegawa’s Aimai na umi. Again, bodies andconsciousness are implicated in the system whose destruction is to be plotted,
but here the plotting is not by spies, but explicitly by a ‘corporation’ bearing theartist’s name, the ‘Akasegawa Genpei Co., Ltd’, whose large-type moniker
occupies the bottom center of the invitation, complete with an ‘of ce’ address.
Such an avowed goal (and purported ‘organization’) may very well havein uenced police, prosecutors, and the courts to take a hard line against thisyoung artist and his otherwise ambiguous project. It represents a declaration
against the system as loud as that of the spy in Akasegawa’s story  ring off thetaijin’ yō pistol.
The detail labeled ‘3’. features a pair of symmetrical oval shapes on the left
side of the invitation . The leftmost of these is an image of a sculpted human ear;
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SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY

Figure 9. Akasegawa Genpei, On the Ambiguous Ocean exhibition invitation, 1963:
Akasegawa’s  rst 1000-yen print, with exhibition invitation printed upon the reverse, shown
here with the plate for the invitation portion.

to its right, a black ellipse cut by an internal white oval, such that the whole
resembles a large image of a zero. Within the zero is the caption, ‘3. Da’enseizou’, an ambiguous term. The ‘da’ appears in katakana, for emphasis, with ‘en’in the kanji for circle, or for counting money. It thus permits two readings: da’enas ‘ellipse’, echoing the two shapes of the detail, as well as the shapes of detail#2, and da’en as ‘useless/insigni cant yen’. The second reading accords best withthe full caption, which would thus read ‘3. The Manufacture of Useless/Insigni cant Yen’, the meaning of which readily explained by the reverse of theinvitation itself. The reading, ‘ellipse’, however, suggests a second level ofmeaning, which con ates the production of useless yen somehow with the oval
bodily images. Within the collages of the exhibition advertised by this ‘uselessyen’, egg-like shapes abound; some take the place of heads on human  gures,69
suggesting bodies in the process of formation (much like the cells of detail #1 andof the short story) or of human minds, incubating. In either case they suggest
enigmatic possibility and potential. The mask from detail #2 similarly assumes arather egg-like form. The oval ear in the invitation further recalls the images ofvarious body fragments within the works.70
The last detail on the invitation is the only item departing from themonochrome green ink scheme of both sides of the note: Akasegawa’s
 ngerprint, in ink, placed just to the left of the paragraph discussing thecounterfeiting of humans and the destruction of the system of private property.
It too assumes a roughly oval shape and adds a third association of ovals withbodies and body parts. Yet as a  ngerprint, it adds two dimensions—that of235

WILLIAM A. MAROTTI

identity, and an association with crime. The criminological implications of a ngerprint resonate with the conspiracy-lik e tone of the text of the invitation,
and with the near-crime implications of the money simulacrum printed on its
obverse. 71 The sort of suggestive play with signs of criminality multiply present
in the invitation typi es not only Akasegawa’s project, but also a range ofartistic activities at the time, such as those of the League of Criminals group[Hanzaisha Dōmei]. An aggressively anti-authoritaria n stance often characterized artists at the time, attracting police interest.72
In this case, much like the textual details of the invitation , it likely acted as
one more support to foster and sustain police interest and inquiry, identifying
Akasegawa as a promising target for the exercise of State authority against its
challengers—or, as I have argued, for the practice of the State.
Acknowledgements
Research for this project in Japan was funded through a grant from the JapanFoundation and an award from the Japan Cultural Arts Foundation. I am greatly
indebted to many individual s for advice, help, and access for this project. For thepart represented in this essay, I would particularly like to thank Professors Harry
D. Harootunian, William Sibley, Tetsuo Najita, Hiroyoshi Noto and Moishe
Postone; the members of Chicago’s Social Theory Workshop; Christopher T.
Nelson; Akasegawa Genpei; Umemori Naoyuki; my father, Arthur F. Marotti,
and wife, Judy F. Marotti.

Notes
1

In terms of the cultural battleground I am describing, roughly 1958– 1972.
I explore a variety of these artistic experiments through case studies in my doctoral dissertation, ‘Politics
and Culture in Postwar Japan: Akasegawa Genpei and the Artistic Avant-garde,195 8– 1970’ (University of
Chicago); and examine Akasegawa’s artistic developmen t in greater detail.
3
The conspiracy count fell under Article 60 of the Criminal Code, and involved the indictments of two printers,
whom Akasegawa had never met face to face: their shops had ful lled Akasegawa’s printing requests.
4‘The fundamental principle of the 1889 Constitution was the idea of imperial sovereignty, as stated in
Article 4: “The Emperor is the head of the Empire, combining in himself the rights of sovereignty.” Inaccordanc e with this provision, the Constitution dealt with the executive, legislative, and judicial branchesof governmen t as if they were three aspects of the unitary imperial sovereign power.’ John M. Maki, Court
and Constitution in Japan: Selected Supreme Court Decisions, 1948 – 60, Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1964, pp. xvi– xvii.
5
Indeed, one of the few major changes in the criminal law system made after the end of the war was
speci cally the removal of the lese majesty provisions from the Criminal Code, a revision strongly opposedby Prime Minister Yoshida. See John Owen Haley, The Spirit of Japanese Law, Athens, GA: University ofGeorgia Press, 1998, 71, 221; Koseki Shōichi, in The Birth of Japan’s Postwar Constitution, Ray A. Moore(ed. and trans.), Boulder: Westview Press, 1997, pp. 228– 232. The other major changes to the Criminal Codewere the revision of wartime laws, ‘those provisions predicated upon the right of the State to  ght theenemy, of the provision relating to crimes concerning foreign aggression …’, and the abolishment of thearticle criminalizing adultery by a wife (but not by a husband) . Outline of Criminal Justice in Japan,
Supreme Court of Japan, 1971, p. 7.
6
See the statement at trial by Akasegawa’s lawyer, Sugimoto Masazumi, for further details, particularly
regarding the initial identi cation of Akasegawa, as well as the provocative delays and resumptions of theprocess by a new prosecutor, Tobita Kiyohiro. Sugimoto Masazumi, ‘Bōtō chinjutsu’, Bijutsu Techo,
November, 1966, p. 156.
2

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SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY
7

The handwritten kyōjutsu chōsho, or ‘statements’, shorthand written notes taken by of cials to record thesuspect’s responses to questioning—really more like ‘confessions’—taken by the inspectors, as well as thoselater by the prosecutors, are all in accord on this point. See statements taken by Furuishi Kyoshi, 9 January
1964, 31 January 1964, 8 February 1964; Okamura Yasutaka, 25 January 1965, 2 February 1965, Tobita
Kiyohiro, 27 October 1965.
8 ‘
Petty Bench’ refers to a partial panel of judges, versus the full Grand Bench of the Supreme Court.
9
11 Keishū 3, 997 (Sup. Ct. G.B., March 13, 1957); citations hereinafter to Chatterley are to page numbers in
the publication, ‘Judgment upon Case of Translation and Publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Article
175 of the Penal Code’, Series of Prominent Judgments of the Supreme Court upon Questions of Constitutionality, 2, Tokyo, General Secretariat, Supreme Court of Japan, 1958, pp. 1– 38, unless otherwise noted.
1023 Keishū 10 1239; citations to de Sade hereinafter are to the page numbers in its translation in Hiroshi Itohand Lawrence Ward Beer, The Constitutional Case Law of Japan: Selected Supreme Court Decisions,1961 – 1970, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1978, pp. 183– 217, unless otherwise noted.
11
The latter decision was made after the lower court verdicts but before the Supreme Court Petty Bench’s
decision, where it was cited.
The case names I have supplied do not strictly follow Japanese legal referential practice, but are rather
an adaptation to an American style of legal citation. I would note that the de Sade court adds to its Keishū
volume and page citation of Chatterley the parenthetical reference, ‘the so-called Chatterley incident
decision’ [‘iwayuru chiyatarē jikken no hanketsu’]. 23 Keishū, 10, 1239 at 1242.
12‘Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other forms of expression are
guaranteed . (2) No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication
be violated.’
13
Chatterley held that ‘… art and obscenity are concept s which belong to two separate, distinct dimensions;and it cannot be said that they cannot exist side by side. … [E]ven the  nest piece of artistic product canbe evaluated as being obscene from the ethical and legal point of view. Such a conclusion is not impossible
because art, law and morality can exist in entirely different dimensions. We cannot give our support to theprinciple of “art-for-art’s-sake” which places emphasis only upon the artistic quality of production anddenies criticism from the moral and legal points of view. No matter how supreme the quality of art, it does
not necessarily wipe out the stigma of obscenity. Art, even art, does not have the special privilege ofpresenting obscene matters to the public.’ See Chatterley, 3, pp. 7– 9; de Sade, pp. 184– 186.
14
See Lawrence Ward Beer, Freedom of Expression in Japan, New York: Kodansha International, 1984,
pp. 349 – 350.
15
Second Criminal Division, 10 June 1918, Case No. 1918 (re) 1465 speci ed a de nition of obscenity later
adopted by the postwar Supreme Court, First Petty Bench, 5 Hanreishū 6, p. 1026. The Court of Cassationde ned obscenity as ‘… a writing, picture, or anything else which tends to stimulate and excite sexual desireor satisfy the same; and consequently , to be an obscene matter, it must be such that it causes man toengender feelings of shame and loathsomeness’ (see Chatterley, p. 3).
16
See, for example, Articles 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, and 32.
17
Such a move had been anticipated long ago, in a sense, during the negotiations between MacArthur’s General
Headquarters (GHQ) and the representative s of the Japanese governmen t over their respective drafts of theConstitution in 4– 5 March of 1946. Satō Tatsuo, the chief of the Cabinet Legislative Bureau’s  rst section andthe drafter of Chapter Three (‘Rights and Duties of the People’), was challenged over his rewriting ofthen-Article 20 on the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly. His version added language akin to that of the
Meiji Constitution, qualifying the absolute guarantees in the GHQ draft, providing the right to speech, writing,publication, assembly and association only ‘within limits not prejudicial to peace and order’; the refusal ofcensorship in the GHQ draft, ‘no censorship shall be maintained’, was rewritten by Satō as the nearly
meaningless ‘no censorship shall be maintained except as speci cally provided for by law’. Koseki, Birth, 112,
pp. 114– 115. These and similar modi cations prompted the GHQ representatives to reject Satō’s Chapter Three
draft completely. Satō attempted to justify his quali cations, stating that ‘we think it is necessary to recognize
an exception in law for obscene pictures and so forth’; his argument was rejected by SCAP of cials speci callyout of the concern that ‘[t]here is a danger that it would be abused’. Satō Tatsuo, ‘Nihon kenpō seiritsushi—‘MacArthur sōan’ kara ‘Nihonkoku kenpou’ made’, Jurist 86, 15 July 1955, pp. 46– 7, quoted in Koseki, Birth,
120 [emphasis added].
18
In this, they ignored the distinction between articles such as 22 and 29 which spoke directly of regulation
as a possibility, versus those such as Article 21 which pointedly lacked such language. See, for example,
the Supreme Court’s opinion in Chatterley, quoted below.
19
Article 12 provides, ‘The freedoms and rights guaranteed to the people by this Constitution shall bemaintained by the constant endeavor of the people, who shall refrain from any abuse of these freedoms andrights and shall always be responsibl e for utilizing them for the public welfare’. Article 13 states, ‘All of
the people shall be respected as individuals. Their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness shall,to the extent that it does not interfere with the public welfare, be the supreme consideration in legislationand in other governmental affairs’. See Maki, Court and Constitution, p. 213.

237

WILLIAM A. MAROTTI
20

Murakami v Japan, 1947 (re) No. 19, Supreme Court Grand Bench decision of 18 March 1948, p. 2 Sai-han
Keishū 191 [hereafter Murakami]. This case is cited in Chatterley; see Ito Masami, ‘The Rule of Law:
Constitutional Development ’, assisted by Nathaniel L. Nathanson, in Law in Japan: The Legal Order in a
Changing Society, Arthur Taylor von Mehren (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, p. 227.
This holding was extended speci cally to speech issues and protest with the Grand Bench decision of May 18,
1949 in Takahashi v Japan [hereafter ‘Takahashi’ ] in which a farmer was prosecuted for arguing fornon-complianc e with government rice quota demands. Subsequen t rulings strengthened this line of reasoning,
and were all cited as precedent in Chatterley (see Ito, Rule of Law, pp. 221– 222, 227 and 229– 230).
21
See the Chatterley court decision reprinted in Hidaka Rokurō, Sengoshiryō: Masukomi, Tokyo: Nihon
Hyōronsha, 1970, p. 169, translation mine, emphasis added.
22
de Sade, 186, emphasis added.
23
Jōkoku appeals allege that a lower court verdict violates or misinterprets a constitutional provision, or
contravene s established Supreme Court precedent. See Maki, Court and Constitution, pp. xxvi – xxvii;
Outline, 43.
24
William H. Sewell, ‘The Concept(s) of Culture’, in Beyond the Cultural Turn, Victoria Bonnell & Lynn
Hunt (eds.), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999, p. 56.
25
Interview by author, October 18, 1997, Tamagawaen, Tokyo, Japan.
26
Article 31 provides that ‘[n]o person shall be deprived of life or liberty, nor shall any other criminal penalty
be imposed, except according to procedure established by law’.
27
All quotations from the Petty Bench’s holdings in Akasegawa’s case are from my draft translation of theopinion of 24 April 1970, as reprinted in Tokyou saibansho saikeishū, Keiji 176, p. 221.
28
As Chin Kim notes, ‘… few statutes have been overruled [by the courts] for vaguenes s despite indeterminate
meaning. Indeterminatenes s is taken for granted and thus gives almost limitless scope for widening or
narrowing the meaning of statutes’. See Chin Kim, ‘Constitution and Obscenity: Japan and the U.S.A.’, Am
J Comp Law, 2, Spring, 1975, pp. 255– 283.
29
See Hidaka, Masukomi,168; translation mine [emphasis added].
30
The court’s ruling in some ways resembles an inversion of postwar anti-system rhetoric, declaring that ‘thepresent system’ grants them such authority.
31
Hidaka, Masukomi, 168; translation mine.
32
Hidaka, Masukomi, 169; translation mine.
33‘Byōheidaraku ni taishite hikakuteki taidō o motte nozomi, rinshōteki yakuwari o enji’nakereba naranu node aru.’ Hidaka, Masukomi, 168; translation mine [emphasis added].
34
23 Keishū 10 1239, at 1248; translation mine.
35
de Sade, p. 184.
36
See Chatterley, pp. 184 – 185.
37
Chatterley, p. 212, emphasis added. In discussing the actual translation in the case, however, the Justice’s
language reverts to the notion of obscenity nulli ed by artistry: ‘Although there are sexually stimulating
elements in places, it may not be too much to say that their effects are completely deadened and erased if
one looks at the work as a whole. … In the  nal analysis, the translation in the present case does not titillate
sexual sensation and does not stimulate and arouse sexual desire.’ Chatterley, p. 217.
38
Chatterley, p. 213.
39
Chatterley, p. 213.
40
‘Shakaiteki kachi no hikaku kōryō ga mazu nasarenakereb a naranai kara de aru.’
41
When in 1980 the Court adopts similar language, it signals not a boon to free speech, but rather an indicationthat the State no longer felt any threat coming from this direction. See Beer, Freedom of Expression, p. 353,
for commentary on the holdings.
42‘Saishō gendo no dōtoku’, and ‘shakai chitsujō no iji ni kanshi jūyō na igi o motsu dōtoku’. Hidaka,
Masukomi, p. 167.
43
This con ation is supported by the repeated assertion by the courts of the possible ‘danger’ of the one-sided,
monochrome notes ‘somehow’ being used ‘as the means of a fraud’—in other words, as counterfeits.
44
The trial court even enacts this reduction directly into its name for Akasegawa’s project, referring to it as
the ‘1000-yen note’.
45
For example, Akasegawa’s  nal submission to the trial court cleverly used a high art vocabulary (forced on
the defense by the need to address free speech issues) to frame the State’s defense of ‘con dence and trust’
as extralegal thought policing.
46
Akasegawa, ‘Supai keiyaku’, Keishō, 8, pp. 22– 26. Within the context of the piece, keiyaku or contract may
be understood at several levels of reference—to contracts (on people), to business agreements, to the rules
or agreements related to ‘spying’, and  nally to the ‘social contract’ or some such level of social consensus
and agreement.
47
Akasegawa, ‘Aimai na umi’, Obuje o motta musansha, pp. 205 – 219.
48
Akasegawa Genpei & Kikuhata Mokuma, ‘Taidan: aimai na umi no ue’, Kikan, 14, 3 January 1987, p. 21;
Akasegawa, ‘Akasegawa Genpei Jihitsu Nenpyō’, Kikan, 14, p. 81: ‘I intended a discourse on our direct
action expressions, but by the time the writing  nished, it had become a short story.’

238

SIMULACRA AND SUBVERSION IN THE EVERYDAY
49

Akasegawa, Taidan, pp. 21 – 22.
See Akasegawa Genpei no bōken– nōnai rizōto kaihatsu taisakusen, Nagoya: Nagoyashi bijutsukan, 1995,
pp. 55 – 59, for surviving examples of these collages.
51
Nikutai. I am largely translating this as  esh in this story, although ‘body’ is also possible. I favor the former
here due to the emphasis on dissolution, and in contrast with the also possible ‘shintai’, which Akasegawa
does not use.
52
A saline solution including salts of potassium and calcium invented by Sydney Ringer (1834– 1910), chie yused to preserve cells and tissue apart from bodies for laboratory purposes. Akasegawa apparently consulted
with a physician over some of the technical details of this story, further evidence of the extent to which he
was excited by these notions at the time. Interview by author, 18 October 1997, Tamagawaen, Tokyo, Japan.
53
There may be a somewhat autobiographica l componen t here, too; Akasegawa speaks elsewhere of anear-drownin g experience in 1959 during  ooding in a typhoon, when he was stranded with water rising toright below his nose. Akasegawa Genpei no bōken, p. 6. We might also see these suicidal  gurings as
expressive of the critical despair typifying the post-Anpo opposition.
54
Nikutai; here rendered as ‘body’ instead of ‘ esh’.
55
The infamous Peace Preservation Law [Chian iji hou] of 1925, which became the government’s chief legal
weapon against leftist opposition (and ultimately against all political opposition, or ‘thought criminals’,shisōhanzaisha) in its  rst article prohibited organizing any association disavowing ‘the system of private
property’ [shiyūzaisanseido] right along with its more famous criminalization of attempting to alter the
kokutai (the National Body or Essence). The remaining seven articles criminalized discussing, instigating,and/or aiding others in either endeavor, even outside of Japan’s legal jurisdiction. (The law was repealedby the occupation on 15 October 1945.) Thus the descriptive inadequac y of the term might have been wellcompensate d for by its attachment to the rich prewar history of opposition, critique, and State oppression.
56
The Kyōjutsu chōsho present several variants on the exact details. See for example Tobita, 27 October 1965,
Furuishi, January 31, 1964.
57
Interview by author, 18 October 1997, Tamagawaen, Tokyo, Japan.
58
Akasegawa Genpei & Matsuda Tetsuo, ‘Kisai Akasegaw a Genpei nōnai rizōto tanbō’, GQ (Japan Edition),
24 February, 1995, p. 33.
59
Akasegawa, Tokyo mikisā keikaku: haireddo·sentā chōkusetsu no kiroku, Tokyo: Chikuma shōbō, 1994, 86,122. By the time of the latter exhibition, Akasegawa had added Prince Shoutoku’s face and the left half of his
robes, as well as some other details, to the work. See Akasegawa Genpei no bouken, pp. 62, 69, and 71 forphotos of the work as displayed at the above exhibitions, and p. 61 for a color photo of the  nal version.
Akasegawa thus apparently abandone d the work at a point of near completion (as suggested in Sugimoto’s
description, Sugimoto, ‘Bōtō chinjutsu’, p. 165)—or rather, the work was likely in a ‘completed’ form precisely
at this point, where its very incompletenes s highlights its status as a process, as a duplication-in-progress .
60
Sen’ensatsu kakudaizu, the colloquial name by which the work is commonly referred to by Akasegawa andothers.
61
The ‘Enlarged 1000-Yen Note’ was never the subject of any part of the mozō prosecution.
62
A reproduction, ultimately, without an original—the printing process of money is authorized by anauthenticated machine process, not by any ‘true bill’.
63‘Kosojō’, as reprinted in Kikan,10 January 31, 1966, p. 2, translation mine.
64“1. Jintai , saibō sōsū yaku 800000000000 0 (tyou) ko 5 kaisui , doramuka n yaku 6000 hai . . Aimai na
umi ni tsuite ….”
65
All translations from the text of the invitation are my own. A legible reproduction of the invitation face ofthe bill may be found in Akasegawa, ‘Taidan’, Kikan 14, 3 January 1987, p. 81, or in color but unreadably
small in Akasegawa Genpei no bōken, p. 60.
66
See especially the collages A-9 through A-14, and A-17, in Akasegawa Genpei no bouken, pp. 58 – 59.
67‘2. Shiyūzaisan seido hakai.’
68
Translation mine. ‘System of private property’ is again shiyūzaisan seido, which might alternately berendered as ‘the system of private ownership of property/wealth’. See Note 54.
69
Among the reprinted samples in Akasegawa Genpei no bōken, see Figures A-1, A-4 and A-5 (1961), A-12,
A-10, and A-15 (1963), pp. 55 – 59. The other obvious possible reference is to the egg-shape d works of
Akasegawa’s friend, Nakanishi Natsuyuki .
70
The ear was at the time being focused upon by artist associates of Akasegawa, including Kazakura Sho andthe late Miki Tomio, whose ear series became a near obsession. Ovals, conversely, recalled the egg-shape dobjets of Akasegawa’s friend and associate, Nakanishi Natsuyuki.
71
When Akasegawa was  rst interrogated by the police on 9 January 1964, he was shown one of theseinvitations and apparently asked whether or not the  ngerprint on the back was his own. His kyōjutsu chōsho
identi es it as the print of his right thumb, and adds the wry comment that ‘this unexpecte d act [of being
confronted with this “ ngerprint identi cation” by actual police under these circumstances] is also perhaps
a kind of artistic act’. Furuishi, 9 January 1964, translation mine.
72
As with Akasegawa, it was the political content of their activities, rather than their stances per se, that mightthen continue to hold that interest.
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