Art of Persistence
"Examines the relations between art and politics in transwar Japan, exploring these via a microhistory of the artist, memoirist, and activist Akamatsu Toshiko (also known as Maruki Toshi, 1912-2000). Addresses major events in modern Japanese history, including colonization and empire, war, the nuclear bombings, and the transwar proletarian movement. Outlines an ethical position known as persistence, which occupies the grey area between complicity and resistance: Like resilience, persistence signals a commitment to not disappearing--a fierce act of taking up space but often from a position of privilege, among the classes and people in power. Akamatsu grew up in a settler-colonial family in rural Hokkaido before attending arts college in Tokyo and becoming one of the first women to receive formal training as an oil painter in Japan. She married the surrealist poet and painter Maruki Iri and together in 1948 they began creating and exhibiting the Nuclear Series, some of the most influential and powerful artwork depicting the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. For the next forty years, they toured the world to protest war and nuclear proliferation and were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. With excerpts and drawings from Akamatsu's journals and sketchbooks, the book offers a bridge between scholarship on imperial Japan and postwar memory cultures, arguing for the importance of each individual's historical agency. While uncovering the longue durée of Japan's visual cultures of war, it charts the development of the national(ist) "literature for little citizens" movement and Japan's postwar reorientation toward global multiculturalism"--