Consuming Bodies explores the themes of sex and consumerism in contemporary Japanese art and how they connect with the wider historical, social and political conditions in Japanese culture. Essays by writers, historians, curators and artists, plus diary extracts of a sex worker, engage with a range of artistic practices, including performance, digital media, painting, sculpture and installation. Together the contributors examine the contradictions and ambivalences embedded in the Japanese experience of modernity, and the effects of commodification on the individual and the nation state.
Sex and consumerism in art are inextricably linked to issues of power, gender, class and race, and move beyond the gallery into private and public realms, where the complex relationships surrounding sexuality and commerce are directly encountered in both the fast-changing marketplace and in the dominant ideologies within Japanese society.
With over 150 intriguing illustrations, Consuming Bodies provides a wide-ranging perspective on an under-researched area of contemporary Japanese art practice and the critical issues it uncovers.
Sex and consumerism in art are inextricably linked to issues of power, gender, class and race, and move beyond the gallery into private and public realms, where the complex relationships surrounding sexuality and commerce are directly encountered in both the fast-changing marketplace and in the dominant ideologies within Japanese society.
With over 150 intriguing illustrations, Consuming Bodies provides a wide-ranging perspective on an under-researched area of contemporary Japanese art practice and the critical issues it uncovers.
Distribution by the University of Chicago Press only to customers in the USA and Canada. Customers elsewhere should visit the UK website of Reaktion Books.
256 pages | 7.5 x 9.75 | © 2003
Art: Middle Eastern, African, and Asian Art
Asian Studies: East Asia
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction: Critical Reflections - Fran Llyod
1. Sex and Consumerism in Edo Japan - Timon Screech
2. Sex and Consumerism: the Japanese State of the Arts - Nicholas Bornoff
3. Strategic Interventions in Contemporary Japanese Art - Fran Lloyd
4. ’Made in Occupied Japan’ - Performance - BuBu and Yoshiko Shimada
5. Post-identity Kawaii: Commerce, Gender and Contemporary Japanese Art - Yuko Hasegawa
6. The Place of Marginal Positionality: Legacies of Japanese Anti-Modernity - Midori Matsui
7. Tokyo’s Urban and Sexual Transformations: Performance Art and Digital Cultures - Stephen Barber
Afterword: Japanese Pop Culture and the Eradication of History - Yoshiko Shimada
BuBu’s Diary
References
Glossary of Japanese Terms
Bibliography
Photographic Acknowledgements
Index
Introduction: Critical Reflections - Fran Llyod
1. Sex and Consumerism in Edo Japan - Timon Screech
2. Sex and Consumerism: the Japanese State of the Arts - Nicholas Bornoff
3. Strategic Interventions in Contemporary Japanese Art - Fran Lloyd
4. ’Made in Occupied Japan’ - Performance - BuBu and Yoshiko Shimada
5. Post-identity Kawaii: Commerce, Gender and Contemporary Japanese Art - Yuko Hasegawa
6. The Place of Marginal Positionality: Legacies of Japanese Anti-Modernity - Midori Matsui
7. Tokyo’s Urban and Sexual Transformations: Performance Art and Digital Cultures - Stephen Barber
Afterword: Japanese Pop Culture and the Eradication of History - Yoshiko Shimada
BuBu’s Diary
References
Glossary of Japanese Terms
Bibliography
Photographic Acknowledgements
Index