Lecture by Asato Ikeda\, PhD Candidate\, A HVA
Japanese Art @ UBC
This talk examines visual representatio ns of the Kamikaze Special Attack Forces in Japan during the Fifteen-Year W ar (1931-1945). The corporeal practices surrounding the Kamikaze\, a group of male soldiers who "body-rammed" into enemy targets\, exemplify what Kla us Theweleit has defined as one of the characteristics of fascism\, that is \, the male subject's identification of his body as a weapon. Although the unity between body and machine was alluded to textually in the mass media\ , it was rarely visualized in War Campaign Record Paintings\, or propaganda paintings that were officially commissioned by the state. In this talk\, I suggest that visual representations of dying attackers most often drew on traditional Japanese aesthetics\, such as symbols of eagles and fallen che rry blossoms. In so doing\, this talk ultimately considers a different vis ual manifestation of fascism in Japan.
Co-Sponsored by the Departmen t of Asian Studies and the Department of Art History\, Visual Art & Theory
LOCATION:Asian Center\, UBC GEO:49.266835;-123.258576 URL;VALUE=URI:https://ahva.ubc.ca/events/event/representing-the-fascist-bod y-human-weapons-and-japanese-traditional-aesthetics/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://ahva.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/37/2021/05/1056.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20111106T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR