Audio transcription

In 1951, Japan signed the US-Japan Mutual Security treaty (ANPO in Japanese), giving the US the right to maintain armed forces on their soil. A growing resistance to the U.S. military presence culminated in the protests of 1960 – in which millions of citizens took to the streets. ANPO: Art X War allows the art of Japanese artists to guide viewers through the opposition to the effects of the government response and the onerous U.S. military presence that has disrupted Japanese life for decades.

Raised in rural Japan by American missionaries, filmmaker Linda Hoaglund has spent her life wrestling with the complexity of US-Japanese relations. Working as a subtitler for Japanese films, she discovered that 1960 marked a deeply traumatic period reflected in film. That year, Oshima’s three films each portrayed a country steeped in tumult. Even the films of the entertaining Naruse take a dark turn after 1960, and the title of Kurosawa’s 1960 film, The Bad Sleep Well, speaks for itself. In photographs and paintings from the same period, she witnessed the hopes and dreams of millions of Japanese ignited and subsequently trampled into national despair after the democratic uprising was crushed.

Resisting complete annihilation, the movement left an indelible mark on the creative output of artists who participated, many rising to international prominence. Ongoing byproducts of ANPO – like environmental degradation and pollution – continue to spark the artistic dialogue and add to the arsenal of creative resistance.

Vividly resurrecting a forgotten period of Japan’s history and chronicling the insidious effects of the U.S. military presence, Hoaglund has excavated a vast cultural legacy buried in museum vaults and brings to light the continuing struggle and its unresolved questions.