ANPO: Art X War is a 2010 documentary film directed by Linda Hoaglund.
The film traces the public outrage that followed in the wake of the passing of Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan (better known in Japan as anpo joyaku, or simply ANPO) through Japanese parliament by the Nobusuke Kishi-led government on May 20, 1960. The main point of contention amongst hundreds of thousands of Japanese about ANPO was that it would allow U.S. military bases to remain on Japanese soil. The ratification of the ANPO Treaty led to a storm of public protests by members of Japanese labor unions, student organizations and also many everyday Japanese. The treaty was renewed in 1970 and just over 60 bases, offices, barracks and branches of the U.S. military still occupy Japan.
ANPO: Art X War is not simply a historical or political documentary. Instead it views the ANPO Treaty and the uproar surrounding it through the eyes of Japanese artists who lived through the tumultuous years following its passing and chronicled the public protests—painters Hiroshi Nakamura, Hiroshi Katsuragawa, Kikuji Yamashita, Tadanori Yokoo, Tatsuo Ikeda, Chozaburō Inoue and Shigeo Ishii, photographers Hiroshi Hamaya, Miyako Ishiuchi, Shōmei Tōmatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, Osamu Nagahama and Mao Ishikawa, as well as film-makers such as Nagisa Oshima, Kinji Fukasaku, Yasuzo Masumura and Yukio Tomizawa, the director of the 1960 documentary Rage at ANPO, the only film to capture the protests. Hoaglund interviews many of these men and women about their memories of the ANPO protests and their direct experiences with the U.S. Military in Japan. She also speaks with a new generation of artists including Makoto Aida, Sachiko Kazama and Chikako Yamashiro about how the ANPO Treaty and the continuing U.S. presence in Japan has affected their artistic and personal vision. 175 works by all these artists are shown in the film.
The artwork presented in the film has been the subject of an eight-page article in the January 1, 2011 issue of Art in America, and an exhibition of 52 of Miyako Ishiuchi's Hiroshima series of photographs were held at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in October 2011.
Kōbō Abe, pen name of Kimifusa Abe, was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer, and inventor. He is best known for his 1962 novel The Woman in the Dunes that was made into an award-winning film by Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1964. Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his modernist sensibilities and his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society.
The General Council of Trade Unions of Japan, often abbreviated to Sōhyō (総評), was a left-leaning union confederation. Founded in 1950, it was the largest labor federation in Japan for several decades.
Douglas MacArthur II was a U.S. diplomat. During his diplomatic career, he served as United States ambassador to Japan, Belgium, Austria, and Iran, as well as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. He was the nephew of the famous U.S. general Douglas MacArthur.
International relations between Japan and the United States began in the late 18th and early 19th century with the diplomatic but force-backed missions of U.S. ship captains James Glynn and Matthew C. Perry to the Tokugawa shogunate. Following the Meiji Restoration, the countries maintained relatively cordial relations. Potential disputes were resolved. Japan acknowledged American control of Hawaii and the Philippines, and the United States reciprocated regarding Korea. Disagreements about Japanese immigration to the U.S. were resolved in 1907. The two were allies against Germany in World War I.
The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, more commonly known as the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in English and as the Anpo jōyaku (安保条約) or just Anpo (安保) in Japanese, is a treaty that permits the presence of U.S. military bases on Japanese soil, and commits the two nations to defend each other if one or the other is attacked "in the territories under the administration of Japan." Over time, it has had the effect of establishing a military alliance between the United States and Japan.
Hiroshi Nakamura is a Japanese artist who has worked in 'reportage' and surrealist styles. Nakamura attended Nihon University and was involved in many artist groups and social movements such as the Zen’ei Bijutsu-kai and the Seinen Bijustuka Rengō. He is often associated with Reportage Painting, the movement that sought to report on the social issues that arose out of the postwar context by engaging first-hand with the local peoples and their struggles. His Suganaga No. 4 of 1955 exemplifies the concern and style of Reportage that is considered a major As postwar reconstruction of Japan progressed, Nakamura's interest in Reportage evolved into an interrogation of the artist's role in "viewing" the fundamentals of the political and social realms. Into the 1960s, in collaboration with Kōichi Tateishi, Nakamura devised the concept of Kankō geijutsu and, as an extension, he individually developed a painting style centering around trains and female students in uniform situated in an eerie surrealistic dream-like world. Among other influences, he was inspired by Sergei Einstein's montage theory and Akira Kurosawa's films which contributed to his signature distortion of perspective that he developed through his career.
Shōmei Tōmatsu was a Japanese photographer. He is known primarily for his images that depict the impact of World War II on Japan and the subsequent occupation of U.S. forces. As one of the leading postwar photographers, Tōmatsu is attributed with influencing the younger generations of photographers including those associated with the magazine Provoke.
The Security Treaty between the United States and Japan was a treaty signed on 8 September 1951 in San Francisco, California by representatives of the United States and Japan, in conjunction with the Treaty of San Francisco that ended World War II in Asia. The treaty was imposed on Japan by the United States as a condition for ending the Occupation of Japan and restoring Japan's sovereignty as a nation. It had the effect of establishing a long-lasting military alliance between the United States and Japan.
Miyako Ishiuchi, is a Japanese photographer.
Japanese official war artists were commissioned to create artwork in the context of a specific war. The artists were creating sensō sakusen kirokuga for the government of Japan.
Mono-ha (もの派) is the name given to an art movement led by Japanese and Korean artists of 20th-century. The Mono-ha artists explored the encounter between natural and industrial materials, such as stone, steel plates, glass, light bulbs, cotton, sponge, paper, wood, wire, rope, leather, oil, and water, arranging them in mostly unaltered, ephemeral states. The works focus as much on the interdependency of these various elements and the surrounding space as on the materials themselves.
Neo-Dada Organizers, often shortened to Neo-Dada (ネオ・ダダ), was a short-lived but influential Japanese Neo-Dadaist art collective formed by Masunobu Yoshimura in 1960. Composed of a small group of young, up-and-coming artists who met periodically at Yoshimura's "White House" atelier in Shinjuku, the Neo-Dada Organizers engaged in all manner of visual and performance artworks, but specialized in producing disturbing, impulsive spectacles, often involving physical destruction of objects, that the art critic Ichirō Hariu deemed "savagely meaningless," and that inspired another art critic, Yoshiaki Tōno, to coin the term "anti-art" (han-geijutsu). Examples included filling galleries with piles of garbage, smashing furniture to the beat of jazz music, and prancing the streets of Tokyo in various states of dress and undress. Using the human body as their medium of art, their violent performances reflected both their dissatisfaction with the restrictive environment of the Japanese art world at the time, as well as contemporary social developments, most notably the massive 1960 Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.
The Sunagawa Struggle was a protest movement in Japan, starting in 1955 and continuing until 1957, against the expansion of the U.S. Air Force's Tachikawa Air Base into the nearby village of Sunagawa. Taking place at the peak of a growing anti-base movement, "Bloody Sunagawa" is remembered as the most intense and violent of many protests against U.S. military bases in Japan.
Events of the year 1960 in Japan. It corresponds to Shōwa 35 (昭和35年) in the Japanese calendar.
Ikutarō Shimizu was a Japanese sociologist, cultural critic, and prominent public intellectual. He taught sociology for many years Gakushūin University.
The Anpo protests, also known as the Anpo struggle in Japanese, were a series of massive protests throughout Japan from 1959 to 1960, and again in 1970, against the United States–Japan Security Treaty, which is the treaty that allows the United States to maintain military bases on Japanese soil. The name of the protests comes from the Japanese term for "Security Treaty," which is Anzen Hoshō Jōyaku (安全保障条約), or just Anpo (安保) for short.
Hiroshi Katsuragawa was a Japanese artist closely associated with the postwar avant-garde art movement in Japan. His artworks were featured prominently in the 2010 documentary film ANPO: Art X War by American documentary filmmaker Linda Hoaglund.
The U.S.-Japan Alliance is a military alliance between Japan and the United States of America, as codified in the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan, which was first signed in 1951, took effect in 1952, and was amended in 1960. The alliance has further been codified in a series of "administrative" agreements, "status of forces" agreements, and secret pacts that have not been subject to legislative review in either country.
Yutaka Bitō was a Japanese artist closely associated with the postwar avant-garde art movement in Japan. In the 1950s, he was a leading exponent of the "reportage" style of Japanese socialist realist art, and later became known for his Surrealist paintings.
Kikuji Yamashita was a Japanese Surrealist painter associated with the postwar avant-garde art movement in Japan. His artworks were featured prominently in the 2010 documentary film ANPO: Art X War by American documentary filmmaker Linda Hoaglund.
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Artist Hiroshi Nakamura
