Facing Public Pressure, the Aichi Triennale Censors Its Own Exhibition About Censorship

An exhibition about Japan’s
history of censoring art at the 2019 Aichi Triennale has been closed
after just three days—due to censorship. 

The organizers of the trienniale
shut down the exhibition “After ‘Freedom of Expression’?” at the
Aichi Prefecture Museum of Art in the city of Nagoya after
organizers said they received numerous threats objecting to a
controversial work in the show. The work, a life-sized figurative
sculpture by Korean artists Kim Seo-kyung and Kim
Eun-sung, Statue of
Peace (2011), depicts a
“comfort woman,” or ianfu—one of the thousands of Asian
women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during
World War II. 

The curators of the exhibition
called the move a “historic outrage” in a statement. “This will be the worst censorship incident in
Japan’s postwar period.”

Hideaki Omura, the governor of
Aichi who also heads the triennale’s organizing committee, told the
Japan Times that his team had received
threatening emails, phone calls, and faxes about the
sculpture. One person said
they would bring a gasoline can and light the museum on fire, an
image that likely evoked the tragic arson attack on the Kyoto
Animation studio in Japan last month, which resulted in the death
of 35 people.

“It is regrettable that we have
made an example that undermines freedom of expression,” the
artistic director of the Triennale, Daisuke Tsuda, told reporters
of the decision. Organizers of the triennale did not
immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The news site Mainichi
Japan reported that more
than 700 people filed
complaints on the first
day of the show. One of the more prominent objectors was Nagoya
mayor Takashi Kawamura, who, after seeing the exhibition on last
week, sent a letter to Omura demanding that the sculpture be
removed, claiming it “tramples on the feelings of Japanese
citizens.”

“It’s unrelated to a lack of
freedom of expression,” Kawamura said in his letter. “It doesn’t
have to be displayed at a venue funded with a massive amount of
taxpayers’ money.”

“The government and public
officials should be the ones protecting freedom of expression,”
Omura said in response, according to the New York
Times. “Even if the
expression is not to their taste, they should accept an expression
as expression.” 

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