Award-winning Japanese war testimony work struggles to find home in Japan
Contemporary artist Meiro Koizumi’s video installation about a former Japanese soldier’s testimony of wartime killings and sexual assault will be shown in London after Japanese museums declined or abandoned plans to exhibit it. The artist says the work will remain incomplete until it is seen in Japan.
An award-winning video installation confronting Japanese wartime violence in China will be exhibited in London after its creator struggled to find a Japanese museum willing to show it. Meiro Koizumi’s “The Angels of Testimony” centres on testimony from Hajime Kondo, a former Imperial Japanese Army soldier who served in China during the Sino-Japanese war. Kondo describes killings and the sexual assault of a woman captured by Japanese troops.
In the installation, Kondo appears on a central screen and breaks down while being asked about an episode from his wartime experience. Young people on two other screens recite parts of his testimony on Tokyo streets. The work received the Artes Mundi Prize in 2021 and has been exhibited in Britain, the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands.
In Japan, Koizumi said museums had asked him to replace it with another work or had abandoned exhibition plans. He believes museums may be more cautious after protests and threats forced the temporary closure of an Aichi Triennale exhibition that included a statue symbolising “comfort women”. The London exhibition, organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, will run from October 1 to November 20.
Nana Ota, overseeing it, said the organisers would not cancel it because of protests.
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