Expressing the Inexpressible. Japanese Artists about the March 2011 Tragedy

The number of “Shinchō” a monthly Japanese literary magazine, issued in March 2012, published short diaries written by 52 Japanese artists to commemorate the tragedy caused by the Great Kantō Earthquake and the Tsunami, which happened the year before. Artists representing various genres of art such as literature, music, photography or visual arts were requested to describe these 52 weeks of their life and the process of artistic creativity after the disaster. In the society, where speaking about one’s inner thoughts and emotions is not culturally approved, artistic work seems to be one of the most important, if not the sole, vehicles bringing up the vox populi to a broader attention. It can be said that it is thorough art that the social phenomena are reflected in the public discourse. It is art that collects individual experiences of the disaster in a diary of collective memory. In this sense art becomes also a political tool, as Jacques Ranciere would say, which has the power to express the inexpressible, to render visible what from various reasons could not be revealed.

              In my presentation I will analyze the content of the diaries to see what aspects of the events, which took place in the aftermath of the Earthquake and Tsunami disaster, were described by the artists and what was the purpose of casting light on these particular problems. Another issue I would like to raise is the question about whether the image of the tragedy as recreated from the artistic diaries is compatible with the one presented in the official discourse.