Spatial Essay - Urban Humanities Initiative

Celebrating Prosperity
Of the diverse and evolving perspectives on the Expo, it is
perhaps unsurprising that the approach of the state is the one that
changes the least, and admitted the least flexibility in the face of
outright protest and even subtler challenges. At the same time that
Expo ’70 was part of a symbolic arc of representing the
prosperous postwar state that stretches from the 1960 World
Design Conference, to the 1964 Olympics, to the Expo itself, like
the Olympics before it the Osaka Expo was also written into an
aggressive project infrastructural development. These two sites of
state investment in the project simultaneously provided the
greatest allure for those who would complicate the official
recovery narrative, while also laying the groundwork for precisely
the kind of de-politicization and commercialization that would
overwhelm such dissenting voices. For example, leading artists
such as Okamoto and former members of the postwar
avant-garde group Jikken Kobo to see a potential for, who were
hardly the usual suspects at the time for falling in line with state
triumphalism, nonetheless saw potential in the very visibility of the
stage offered by the Expo, and the same can be said for any
number of protestors who attempted to seize the state’s own logic
of spectacle for the purpose of communicating an outsider
message. Meanwhile, the state itself as usual met such attempts
with little recognition and even less change in its policies.
The local ramifications of the Expo project had mainly to do with
development. For many Osaka officials, the Expo was a regional
rather than a national concern, despite the inherent international
orientation of any world’s fair. The infrastructural development of
the Expo encompassed not only the clearing of bamboo forest at
the Senri Hills site, but was also tied into the construction and
extension of transit lines, including the Hankyu Senri rail line and
the Meishin and Chugoku Expressways, and the development of
Senri New Town, a planned community nearby the Expo site.
Given all this building, the inevitable influx of tourism and,
hopefully, investment, one can perhaps forgive local Osaka
officials for seeing the Expo as a local project, and an opportunity
for “city marketing” (Wesemael, 569). Despite a certain degree of
regional boosterism, however, one of the main effects of all this
new infrastructure was to situate Osaka within a tighter web of
connection to other commercial centers, to say nothing of Tokyo.
The concrete local ramifications of the project were nonetheless
subservient to the Expo’s symbolic, national dimension.
As a national project, the Osaka Expo can be read as a twinned
bookend to the 1964 Olympics, and both should be seen within
the sweep of a decades-long official project of rehabilitating
“Japan” as a national “brand” endued with prestige and prosperity
both at home and abroad. Official rhetoric embraced the
stereotypical reading of high-growth Japan as “building a new
civilization on the foundation of ancient traditions,” to use the
words of then-Prime Minister Sato Eisaku, who himself was part
of a political lineage that led directly back to Prime Ministers Kishi
and Ikeda, key architects of Japan’s prosperity through such
measures as Ikeda’s Income Doubling Plan (Sato’s opening
speech, cited in Nihon Bankoku Hakurankai Kyokai, vol. 2, 27-29).
Aso, Noriko. "Sumptuous Re-past: The 1964 Tokyo Olympics Arts Festival". Positions: East
Asia Cultures Critique. Vol 10 No 1. 2002 pp 7-38.
Gardner, William O. “The 1970 Osaka Expo and/as Science Fiction” in Yoshimoto, Midori, ed.
2011. Expo '70 and Japanese art: dissonant voices. Saitama-ken, Japan: Jōsai
International Center for the Promotion of Art and Science, Jōsai University.
Nonetheless, anti-Expo sentiment at the time was widespread.
From the “Architects 1970 Action Committee” to the “Expo 1970
Destruction Joint-Struggle Group,” speculation and criticism of
the multiple strands of intentionality undergirding the Expo often
regarded the technological achievements as a means to “distract
the nation from the renewal of the U.S. Japan Security Treaty” by
“incorporating intellectual elites within theinstitution” (Koichi, p.
12). However, by geo-spatially re-tracing the temporal evolution
of ideologies and works of the various actors (the state, the
artists, the architects, and the protesters) a perpetual theme of
Early participants in the planning, such as Sato Hidetoshi, a Kyoto
University professor, signed on the dotted line where this project
was concerned, describing the Expo and their participation in its
planning as a “declaration of emancipation” from the West. (Sato
Hidetoshi cited in van Wesemael, 567). As with the Olympics, too,
Expo officials chose to strategically elide, in places, the question
of international competition that had been a fundamental concern
to previous efforts in the “genre,” as it were: just as Noriko reveals
how the 1964 Olympics’ arts festival was recast as a celebration
of depoliticized diversity, at the Expo, officials decided against presenting awards, “on the grounds that objective appraisal of the
exhibits would be extremely difficult, and that awards of this sort
might cause unfair competition among participating countries”
Kenzo Tange
Imagining the Future
Kenzo Tange was a globally renowned Japanese architect
most well-known for his involvement in the avante-garde
metabolist architecture movement. His interest in the
intersection between city planning and traditional architecture
drew him toward urban design, and the historical
development of urban form and the built environment
throughout the various phases of his career (Lin, p. xvii).
Moreover, although it is again not surprising that the official
narrative of the Expo would be rather one-note, it is important to
note that potential sources of nuance in the Expo’s early
intellectual planning were quickly written out of the picture.
Although the government outsourced the brainstorming for the
exhibition to local intellectuals in the early stages of planning – the
Japanese Association for the World Exhibition/1970 originally
drew on the efforts of voluntary associations like “Thinking the
Furthermore, the exposition ground must be a plaza contributing
to the development of this festival of human harmony.” (Tange
cited in Lin, p. 217)
Tange’s Festival Plaza epitomized his efforts to introduce an
“urban technology” into the plan of the Expo. The Symbolic Zone,
as the place where people could meet and gather, was covered
with a vast roof for people to use in all weather conditions.
Okamoto
Taro
Rediscovering Japan
While the architecture of the Expo was well
understood--described in journals and newsletters across
the globe prior to 1970, the intentionality of the Symbolic
Zone itself was still disputed. More specifically, the Tower of
the Sun attracted the most attention and wide ranging
interpretations. While Okamoto Taro’s own art stances were
bold and revolutionarily linked to Japanese culture, they were
merely
symbolized
in
the
Tower.
In 1960, Tange presented to the World Design Conference
in Tokyo in which he expressed concern about “vital changes
in cultural forms, in social structure, and in human
environment” (Lin, 173). Technological advances concerned
him, as well as the attempt to “gain superiority over scientific
techniques” and influenced the way he designed later works
(Lin, 1973). In his plan for a new Tokyo Bay, Tange
recognized the influence and prominence of automobiles and
communication technologies, which drastically shifted the
patterns of urban life and called for new principles of
design
to
accommodate
them
(Lin,
p.172).
“The Expo must be more than a display of past traditional
achievements and present the technological progress of
thepeople of the world. It must also be a festival where human
beings can meet, shake hands, and accord minds.
Lee, Andrew. The Japan Times. 10 November 2011. Sun shines on Kenji Yanobe’s children.
Lin, Z. (2010). Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist movement: urban utopias of modern Japan. Routledge.
Nihon Bankoku Hakurankai Kyokai /International Exhibitions Bureau (1972). Japan World
Exposition, Osaka, 1970: official report. Suita City, Osaka Prefecture: Commemorative
Association for the Japan World Exposition (1970).
Lockyer, Angus. The Logic of Spectacle c.1970. Art History.ISSN 0141-6790 . Vol 30 No 4.
September 2007 pp 571-589.
Okamoto Taro, “Dento to wa nanika?” (What Is Tradition?) in Watashi no gendai bijutsu (My
Contemporary Art), Tokyo: Shincho-sha, pp. 105-178, 112-113.
By using the act of reading and non-linearity of text, the
organization of the paper attempts to extend our argument by
(Aso, 17; Nihon Bankoku Hakurankai Kyokai, vol. 1, 47). Here
again the concrete facts of competition, not to mention the
diplomatic and economic architecture of Japan’s own prosperity,
were neatly swept under the carpet of celebration and innovation.
In the early 1940s, Tange participated in the Greater East
Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Memorial Plan, providing him with
experience working within an imperialist political framework
advocating for shared prosperity and unified East Asian race
that dominated much political discourse at the time (Lin, xvii).
From this experience, Tange likely became familiar with the
boundaries of the official political narrative of the state.
Through his metabolist designs, he found ways to reflect the
changes in society through innovative built forms that pushed
the limits of tradition. While his designs crossed boundaries,
by fusing traditions of the past with technologies of the future,
they did not protest the mainstream political and cultural
pedagogies of the time. The Festival Plaza at the Osaka Expo
of 1970 is a perfect example of this. According to Tange:
spatial violence and bodily protests evolve from the ideas and
early artworks of Okamoto, to the naked group performances of
the Zero Jigen, to a week-long occupy performance of Sato
Hideo. While each iteration of spatial violence and reactionary
protest build upon its predecessor, each is undeniably distanced
from their political tones. The Symbolic Zone of the Expo, and
more specifically, the Tower of the Sun, provided a platform for
multiplicity of dissonant voices invested in nationalistic images of
progress and harmony, suggesting that anti-sentimentalities and
protests were key to a pluralistic image of progress and stability.
At age 18, Okamoto moved from Japan to Paris in 1929
until 1940. Though he was highly influential to the art world,
he felt like an ‘outsider’ until the war, as he was drafted in
1940 and was enlisted in Japan--assuming a new role as a
prisoner of war. However, this imprisonment affected the way
he viewed Japanese culture and society, as well as the role of
art to revolutionize it. In 1948, he called for young artists to
make strident efforts to “destroy everything with monstrous
energy...in order to reconstruct the Japanese art world”
(Kaido, p. 21). He strongly believed that it was necessary for
a postwar Japan to shed its past to forge a new, young
culture as if it were being reborn, as was apparent in his
metaphoric art works that commented on the stifling nature
of
governmental
authority
(Winther,
p.
113).
Okamoto’s avant-gardist sentiments were also reflected at
the Expo, even though he questioned the theme of the expo,
claiming that the theme of progress and harmony “doesn’t
have much meaning.” He expressed: “I am hugely opposed
to both. Have human beings really progressed? Although the
era of the information and production society is exalted as
progress leading to an era of leisure, is this really a human
advance? Or are we rushing backward into increasing
meaninglessness and contradiction?” (Winther-Tamaki, p.
91) Nonetheless, Okamoto’s Tower of the Sun was the
prominent feature of the Expo--the centerpiece of the
Symbolic Zone that protruded through Tange’s roof. While
Tange’s metabolist intentions were widely known throughout
Japan, Okamoto’s Tower was much more ambiguous. The
Tower featured three prominent faces: the face of the present,
----, Konnichi no Geijyutu (Art Today), 1954.
----, 1953; quoted and trans. in Bert Winther, “Isamu Noguchi: Conflicts of Japanese Culture in the Early Postwar
Years.” (Ph.D. diss., NYU, 1992), p. 113.
----, c. 1948, in Kazu Kaido. Reconstructions: Avant-Garde Art in Japan 1945-1965, Oxford: MOMA, 1985, p. 14.
representationally and performatively exploring themes central to
its investigation. While the independent strands of thought at each
scale (state, architecture, etc.) remain distinct, it is the mode of
thinking encompassed by a larger co-existing framework that
perpetuated protests, anti-sentiments, and reactionary views.
While the act of reading one strand of thought should necessarily
be disruptive, the more inward the actor--the more deeply
complicated and ‘occupied’--the more forces acting upon and
constricting ideology that in effect produce grounds for protest.
While the paper interprets the scalar, temporal, and social
systems at work in the 1970s Expo with regard to the Symbolic
Zone, the ‘Map’ geo-spatially integrates urban space, event, and
physical
gestures
of
architecture
and
art.
Expo,” a group comprised mainly of Kyoto University-affiliated
professors and professionals, for the development of not only the
Expo’s overarching theme of “Progress and Harmony for Mankind,”
but also similarly utopian sub-themes like “Toward the Utilization of
a More Bountiful Nature” – such groups and individuals were only
consulted at the very earliest stages of their planning (Gardner,
28-32; Wesemael, 565). By disbanding these brainstorming groups
once they had formally presented their ideas, the Association
foreclosed the possibility for these initial proposals to evolve
further, or to admit the ambiguity native to the professional practice
of many of these early participants. As one might expect, the
bottom line of depoliticized, progressivist prosperity won the day.
Moreover, art was intended to enrich collective activity, and to
dominate the Expo. Tange’s vision of the future blended past and
present ideologies in a way that was outside of the norm, but within
the realm of the accepted. His ability to bridge this gap of thought
provoking progressive design with the official dialogue of the nation
allowed Tange to demonstrate his ideas within the boundaries of the
established narrative.
the fast of the past, and the face of the future (top), with jagged red paint lines on the exterior representing
thunder. Inside, the “Tree of Life” housed many objects suspended from a tree to represent the strength
of the life heading to the future. People at the expo would climb moving staircases surrounding the tree,
able to view and reflect upon individualistic images of progress isolated from the external activities of the
expo. However, given the open-ended suggestions of future images and Japanese progress, Okamoto’s
Tower, combined with its large, public plaza surrounding it, proved to be the absorptive figure of the
Expo--absorbing political, economic, aesthetic, and industrial divides into a machine of pluralistic vision.
Zero Jigen
Body as Expression
[Performance Protest]
Government
engaged spectacles that worked to de-politicize and pluralistically
filter contradictory views of the Expo at large.
[Art Protest]
Most prominently, the literal and figurative “trunk” of the Expo
master plan, the ‘Symbolic Zone’, featured a plaza and space
frame by the then well-known metabolist architect, Kenzo Tange,
as well as the Expo’s protruding centerpiece, the ‘Tower of the
Sun’ by artist Okamoto Taro. Okamoto’s Tower reinforced the
Expo’s theme of “Progress and Harmony,” while adding
contemplative gestures of the past, the present, and the future.
While Okamoto’s Tower could be read as a material and spatial
protest through Tange’s roof, the role of ambiguity and spati gical
open-endedness of Okamoto’s Tower, combined with its
centrality, adjacent public space, and evocative gestures that both
enticed and absorbed contradictory socio-political interpretations
and personal narratives of pasts, presents, and futures. The
multiple readings of Okamoto’s tower attracted protesters and
[Architecture]
The 1970 World Exposition in Osaka was the first Expo to be
held by an Asian country, and until recently, was the largest and
most attended Expo in history. While political and economic
narratives of prosperity can most clearly be swept into a unified
ideology of progressive Japanese society and culture, a closer
examination of the dissonant voices: the state, the architects, the
artists, and protesters involved in the Expo enables a new way of
interpreting the relationships between public events, public
space, symbolic art, and engagement with anti-sentimentalities.
[State]
UHI Fall 2013
Aaron Cayer, Jeff Rauch, Sarah Walsh, Jadie Wasilco
The Symbolic Zone: Progress [Tradition] and Harmony [Dissonance] for Mankind
Introduction: Expo 1970
Despite nationalistic initiatives that were intended to celebrate Japan’s past, present, and future promises through industry
and technology, questions surrounding the image of modernization prompted widespread debate. While the relationship
between Okamoto’s Tower and Tange’s roof prompted questions surrounding the relationship between art and architecture in
the project of modernization, there were also perfomance juxtapositions that challenged the similar premises. Prior to the Expo,
the performance group “Zero Jigen” had been known for their naked vulgarity and bodily declaration of public space. Zero
Jigen came to represent avant-garde interventions in the 1960s, and were part of an early anti-expo movement Hanpaku Undo
(anti-expo). The Expo’s committee explicitly invited many countercultural artists to participate and many agreed drawn to the
possibilities despite the event’s commercial and nationalistic underlining. Zero Jigen’s efforts began a celebration of the
advancement of technology fissured with performance-artists’ views on the evolution of culture, as was evident in their
commitment to the body as the only necessary platform for expression. The form of bodily expression can be read along the
same lines as Okamoto’s Tower metaphorically occupying the center of Tange’s roof, and by extension--the Expo at large.
Moreover, the Zero Jigen group’s use of bodies to occupy space, attract attention, and ingrain performative expression with
progress
and
prosperity
proved
influential
to
subsequent
protests
at
the
Expo.
Sato
Hideo
Crush the Expo!
Sato Hideo, became better known as the “man of the eyeball” after his high-profile week long hunger strike and occupation
of the eyeball of the face representing the future in Okamoto’s Tower of the Sun- one of the most prominent and symbolic
figures at the Osaka Expo of 1970 (Lockyer, 1970). Previously, Hideo was involved in anti-war protests at Hiroshima University, demonstrating the occupation of the eyeball was not his first time participating in such actions (Lockyer, 1970). During
the occupation, Hideo wore a red helmet engraved with the words, “Red Army,” drawing attention to the communist militant
faction present in Japan at the time. By physically staging a political protest in the eye of the future-oriented face, Hideo’s
actions were noteworthy as they were both highly visible to onlookers throughout the Festival Plaza, as well as highly
symbolic, since the eyeball was designed to literally look toward the future. The design and placement of the Tower of the Sun
gave Hideo an effective site to have his voice heard, and encourage the crowd to “Crush the Expo” (Lockyer, 1970).
Kenji Yanobe
Legacy of Spectacle
By examining “ruins of the future,” artist Kenji Yanobe invites audiences of his work to think about not only the current
narrative for the vision of our future, but the narratives of past visions of future, and what has become of them. In his "Atom
Suit Project,” Yanobe explores past sites of shared historical narratives including the Chernobyl and the Tower of the Sun at
the site of the 1970 Osaka Expo (Yanobe, Atom Suit Project). In his 2003 “Tower of the Sun Hijacking Project,” Yanobe
physically retraces the steps of protester Sato Hideo while wearing a bright yellow radiation protection suit. Yanobe both
retraces and further builds upon Hideo’s highly visible protest in the eyeball of Okamoto’s Tower of the Sun. Through his
performance art, Yanobe asks his audience to pay attention to what the future looked like in the past, and what has become
of this vision. In this exploration, Yanobe treks through the semi-deserted Expo park, up tree of life inside of the Tower of the
Sun, and finally to the eyeball of the future face where he finds “brand new life is overflowing in the ruins of aerocity” (Yanobe,
Atom Suit Project). In this action, he questions how this new life in the ruins compares to the vision of the future projected
during the Expo.
Taki Koichi, ”Banpaku hantai-ron” [Anti-Expo Discourse], Tenbo (January 1969), reprinted in
Haryu Ichiro, ed., Wareware ni totte banpaku towa nanika (1969).
Winther-Tamaki, "To Put On A Big Face: The Globalist Stance of Okamoto
Tarō's Tower of the Sun for the Japan World Exposition," pp. 81-101
Wesemael, Pieter Van. Architecture of Instruction and Delight: A Socio-historical Analysis of
World Exhibitions as a Didactic Phenomenon (1798-1851-1970). Rotterdam:
Uitgeverij 010, 2001.
Yanobe, Kenji. Atom Suit Project. Art Works. http://www.yanobe.com/
asp.html.