An artist whose screening of a video work on the subject of the Kanto massacre was suspended at a human rights exhibition in Tokyo submitted 30,000 signatures requesting an investigation into the circumstances and an apology.
According to the Japanese weekly magazine Kinyobi on the 28th, from August to November of last year, in a special exhibition held at the Tokyo Human Rights Plaza, a designated facility in Tokyo, Yuki Iiyama’s work ‘In-Mates’ (26 minutes) was exhibited. Show stopped.
The work contains a scene in which Masaru Tonomura, a professor at the University of Tokyo, says about the Kanto Massacre, “It is true that the Japanese killed Koreans.”
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s intervention began from the preparation stage for the exhibition. An employee in charge of the human rights department of the province pointed out to the ‘Human Rights Development Center’ entrusted with the exhibition, “The province does not comment on this historical awareness.” The center later concluded that screening of the work was “difficult”.
It is pointed out that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s measures to suspend screenings are ‘chorky’ in line with the governor’s keynote. Yuriko Koike (小池百合子), the governor of Tokyo, sent a memorial service to the Korean victims of the Great Kanto Earthquake until 2016, but she stopped in 2017.
Writer Iiyama Yuki (center) attends a press conference on the 1st. (Source: Author Iiyama Twitter @mmmeshi)In response, writer Iiyama held a press conference on October 28th and refuted that it was “malignant censorship.” He pointed out, “The governor’s attitude has been internalized by the staff, and it has become the right thing to act as if there was no massacre of Koreans.”
Professor Tonomura, who participated in the press conference, pointed out, “The persecution and massacre of innocent Koreans during the Great Kanto Earthquake is also recorded in the ‘100 Year History of Tokyo’ published by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.”
Next, the Ministry of Human Rights also said, “For an administrative organization whose name has human rights attached to the act of taking the lives of the socially underprivileged, saying ‘I don’t know if there was such a fact or how it was’ without clearly nailing it as a ‘problem’ is a violation of their human rights. It’s the same as not being an ‘ally’.”
At the provincial assembly plenary session held on February 21, Governor Koike merely reiterated his previous position on the Kanto Massacre. He said, “I know that various contents are written as facts (history?). What is an obvious fact (thing?) is a matter for historians to solve,” he left only an ambiguous answer.
Writer Iiyama retorted, saying, “To speak of a fact that has already been solved (by a historian) as if it didn’t exist is a statement that ignores the achievements of those who testified to the facts and the achievements of investigators and researchers.”
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.