I hate how we talk about Japanese women

Thoughts on Yayoi Kusama and Japanese 'racism'

October 14, 2023

I’ve written about Yayoi Kusama twice. Once for VICE, once for Hyperallergic. And each time, I’ve been disappointed at the response.

I’ve lost count of how many messages I’ve gotten from people— primarily white Americans — who saw descriptions of racism in Kusama’s work and shrugged their shoulders:

‘well, Japanese culture is racist, so it’s not surprising’.

No.

To suggest that Kusama, the most expensive female artist in the world, was unable to make her own artistic decisions because of what it says on her passport is infantilizing. It is also demeaning of an entire artistic tradition. (It also lets American influence off the hook. I’ll talk about that some other time).

This is why I took special pains to point out that contemporaries of hers — other Japanese women — did not fall into the trap Kusama did.

From my June article:

For example, Ariyoshi Sawako’s novel Not Because of Color (非色; 1964, untranslated) made a wholehearted effort at connecting Japanese and Black people, with a much more sympathetic and realistic depiction of Black life in New York. Yoshida Ruiko, a Japanese photojournalist who was living in New York around the same time as Kusama, later published Hot Days in Harlem (ハーレムの暑い日々; 1972, untranslated) which shows, through images and words, Black Harlem in all its complications. We see Harlem’s joys and sorrows, and notably, we see Black women. Kusama generally does not speak of or depict Black women, and instead focuses on Black men, their lips and genitals, slyly bragging about the orgies she says she saw in Harlem.

Kusama’s parroting of white America’s stereotypes is not an essential sign of Japanese-ness, it is a sign of a lack of creativity. At least in this one specific area.

Anyway, there is a difference, and it’s important. So, please — if you see someone using Kusama’s written work to make blanket statements about Japanese racism, ask them to stop, for their sake.

They’re closing themselves off to a world of really cool stuff.

I can’t really say why Americans got to read Kusama’s novel, and not Hot Days in Harlem or Not Because of Color. But I wish we had:

Kusama gave us shiny cosmic rooms of glass, but those two women gave us actual mirrors. Mirrors that showed us our demons. They indicted America in a way that would have made white readers, and buyers, uncomfortable.

(If anyone knows of a project translating these works — or even Ariyoshi’s ぷえるとりこ日記 Puerto Rico Diary, which is phenomenal — let me know. I’d be down to contribute.)

So, there’s been some news recently.

After being pressured by a group of artists in San Francisco ahead of her showing at SFMOMA, the museum has provided a statement by Kusama (or her press team):

“I deeply regret using hurtful and offensive language in my book,” […] “My message has always been one of love, hope, compassion, and respect for all people. My lifelong intention has been to lift up humanity through my art. I apologize for the pain I have caused.” [via SF Chronicle]

Let’s be clear that Kusama, or her press group, was essentially forced to make this apology. Let’s also assume, though, that it is sincere.

I am not really sure who this apology is for.

I don’t think Kusama’s book was ‘hurtful and offensive’; at the very least, I was not personally hurt, nor offended. As I said months ago,

I don’t think it’s productive to be offended by these works or to refuse to buy or look at them.

My primary issue with the work was that I found it boring. Depictions of black people as brutes, as exotic sexual deviants, as dangerous, as edgy set-decoration that shocks white viewers. I’d seen these tropes before, and I’d seen them done better.

This wasn’t just one book. Kusama, by her own account, did this in her performance art and her plays. Exotic black beings — mostly black men — were almost as much a theme in her early work as the polka dots.

Sure, I'd love to hear an explanation as to why the line about 'black people shooting each other out front' and driving down the real estate value of her old New York neighborhood was censored from her autobiography in the English and Spanish editions, obfuscated in the German… but kept about the same in Chinese.

That explanation probably wouldn’t come from her, though (I don’t think she made that decision herself). It’d have to come from someone in the cottage industry of people who make money off of her image. I’m not sure it’ll ever be clear who made that decision, or why.

One thing has always been clear, to me, in reading Kusama’s own descriptions of her early work, and seeing how it was later censored for ‘Western’ audiences: that I was never supposed to see it.

Or at least, I wasn’t supposed to see all of her work, in its entirety.

This is all a very long way to say that a lot of Kusama’s work is not for me, in the literal sense: black people are not really imagined to be in the audience.

We were only meant to be part of the scenery. We were props.

There are plenty of other artists who do this sort of thing, even today. Probably even black artists. That’s fine.

It’s just not my scene.

But as I said in 2017, some of her installation work is cool. Honestly, the part I’m most annoyed at is the fact that it costs $10/minute to look at some mirrors. I wish this stuff was more accessible.

But that’s another topic.

Anyway,

I know this isn’t the stuff I usually write about. Thanks for your patience as I figure out this space.

Next week, anime, rap music, and screw tapes.

Talk soon.