Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

54 Reiko Tomii
extent worked as collaborative units to execute extraexhibition projects. In
this sense, collectivism after modernism in Japan is closely identiWed with
collaboration. As a result, the quintessentially modern concept of individualism
and originality became an issue to interrogate. All these issues—latent
in Cleaning Event—would be further explored by collaborative and interventional
collectives after HRC in a full-Xedged “collectivism after modernism,”
which pointed the way toward today’s collectivism. This is an area
of study extremely fertile yet hitherto little examined outside Japan.
HI RED CENTER’S CLEANING EVENT
Hi Red Center, active in Tokyo in 1963–64, was arguably the Wrst “collaborative
unit” to inWltrate the public sphere as its site of operation in postwar
Japan. The equal partnership, especially on the conceptual level, among the
three principal members (Takamatsu Jiro, Akasegawa Genpei, and Nakanishi
Natsuyuki) was the essence of its collective identity. 25
Among their projects, Cleaning Event, which was the very last,
most saliently demonstrates HRC’s collaborative collectivism charged with
social critique (see Figure 2.1). Varyingly known as Campaign to Promote
Cleanliness and Order in the Metropolitan Area (as billed in their Xyer) or Be
Clean! (as spelled out in English in their billboard prop), this performance
work took place on the bustling district of Ginza in Tokyo on Saturday,
October 16, 1964. The three core members and their associates were dressed
in the uniform of a healthcare worker’s white coat and, incongruously, a pair
of shades and a red armband with the group’s trademark “!” in white. They
scrubbed sidewalks, and occasionally trafWc lanes, in a highly meticulous
manner using a toothbrush, a Xoorcloth, and other utterly ineffectual and
out-of-place cleaning tools. 26
Set on the seventh day of the Tokyo Olympic Games, which showcased
Japan as a respectable member of the international world and a booming
economic miracle two decades after the defeat in World War II, HRC’s
cleaning mocked the concerted effort of the city’s hasty modernization and
beautiWcation for the occasion. (One example was a newly built network of
metropolitan highways.) Their ofWcial-looking disguises—their white lab
coats and the billboard prop—were a perfect cover for this clandestine act
in broad daylight. In fact, hardly any passers-by questioned their ridiculous
cleaning. One policeman even thanked them for their diligent work, perhaps
mistaking it for a ubiquitous Games-related beautiWcation effort.
Paramount in Cleaning Event in particular and HRC’s works in
general was the notion of “direct action,” informed by radical politics of the
anarchist martyr Kotoku Shusui in the early twentieth century. 27 The activist