Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-wjqwx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-23T08:37:20.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rubbish, Animism and Post-Fukushima Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Sia X. Yang
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Artist Tetsu Takeda left Japan for America in 1986 and returned to Japan in 2011. Shortly after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Takeda started identifying himself as a “professional artist” and only doing “high art” by rethinking life and our role as human beings interfering with nature. Takeda is an eccentric collector of ocean rubbish flushed ashore by waves. In his tiny home studio, he creates various big-eyed rubbish creatures in diverse forms, shapes, dimensions, and colors in his unorthodox way reminiscent of Victor Frankenstein in this lab. For him, doing new artistic endeavors is a ritual of giving life—to “vitalize” rubbish—and inhabiting a reformulated society of nature, whether privately (in his home) or publicly (in galleries).

Keywords

Tetsu TakedaAvant-GardeRubbishAnimismPost-Fukushima
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 11 , November 2024 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2024

References

Clark, John. 2014. “The Worlding of the Asian Modern”, in Michelle Antoinette and Caroline Turner eds. Art and Exhibitions: Connectivities and World-making. Canberra: Australian National University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Harriet. 2010. “Turn your trash into… Rubbish, art and politics. Richard Wentworth's geographical imagination,” Social & Cultural Geography (Vol. 11, No.8).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hillenbrand, Margaret. 2023. On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China. Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhuan, Huang 黄专, ed. 2008. 张培力艺术工作手册 [Artistic Working Manual of Zhang Peili], Guangzhou: Lingnan Meishu Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Kelly, Stephen. 2022. “Princess Mononoke: The masterpiece that flummoxed the US.” BBC (July 14) https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220713-princess-mononoke-the-masterpiece-that-flum-moxed-the-us.Google Scholar
Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Pateman, Barry, ed. 2005. Chomsky on Anarchism. Edinburgh, Oakland and West Virginia: AK Press.Google Scholar
Stallabrass, Julian. 2015. Rear Window: Revolution of the Mind: Surrealist Provocations (Richard Wentworth), https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2rr9i3.Google Scholar
Tanizaki, Junichiro. 1977. In Praise of Shadow. trans. Harper, Thomas J. and Seidensticker, Edward G.. Leete's Island Books.Google Scholar
Whiteley, Gillian. 2010. Junk: Art and the Politics of Trash. London: Bloomsbury.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Wong Winnie Won. 2014. Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoneyama, Shoko, ed. 2019. Animism in Contemporary Japan: Voices for the Anthropocene from Post-Fukushima Japan. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar