I have been reading Julian Cope's 'JapRockSampler'. I highly recommend it. What's nice about it is its weaving together of psychedelic rock, avant-garde music, art and social and cultural histories. One begins to form histories in the mind, linking artists to musicians, art groups to concerts etc. It is a richly researched work. The book has a website HERE.
On another note, this morning's International Herald Tribune ran a front page article on the snubbing of Michelin Guide Tokyo by a number of Tokyo chefs and Tokyo Governor Ishihara. A chef, Mr. Toshiya Kadowaki is quoted as saying "Japanese food was created here, and only Japanese know it. How can a bunch of foreigners show up and tell us what is good or bad?". The current issue of Goethe magazine is running an alternative Michelin Guide issue and an in depth critique of the 'official' Michelin guide. Leaving aside the stunted 'Nihonjinron' attitude of chef Kadowaki and Governor Ishihara, what interested me was the vigour and authority of the counter critiques which the French guide book has caused in some quarters here. It seems to point to a sense of pride in a very living culinary culture. This is very different to the position of art, where magazines and editors never engage in critical debate about what's considered good or current. I think it is great that the publication of the Michelin guide has led to the creation of some sense of a public debate (albeit led by sadly conservative voices who espouse the age long myth of Japanese 'essence').
This past Saturday Director of the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, Fram Kitagawa gave a lecture at MAD in which he spoke about the lack of a civil society (shimin shakai) in post-war Japan which would provide art with a public arena of discourse and debate. Rather, art has remained an abstracted idea, a closed domain with little sense of being embedded in a public. Interestingly Kitagawa proposed that part of the reasons for this sitaution can be traced back to the failiures of the Iwakura Mission, sent to Europe in the late C19th to gather knowledge about Modernity. They naively interpreted art museums as great civic and political mechanisms of collecting and categorising 'culture' rather than as active elements within a discourse-buillding public sphere. Hence, art has remained cut off from life experiences, and been developed as something representative of a thing called 'culture'. Perhaps in the world of culinary culture, this sense of detachment is far less sharply defined. After all, food is something which most people can partake in easily and with little cost.
It is interesting to ponder a similar 'foreign' invasion which occurred in the art world in Japan in the 1950s - the so called 'Informel Senpuu' which swept through the Gutai group and essentially folded its activities into a broader history of Euro/ American-centric abstract painting. The more impermanent, time-based and experimental works of early Gutai was gradually subsumed into this Informel reading, leading many artists to turn to abstract painting and jettison their earlier attitudes. Although an example from over a half century ago, it raises an interesting counter example to what the Michelin Guide has stirred up. The sad part of the current Michelin debate though is that the counter Japanese position takes an extreme and essentialist position, that effectively and perversely curtails further debate by insisting that non Japanese cannot understand Japanese food. I would hope that magazine editors had more intelligence. Rather than this orthodox 'Nihonjinron' position, a more dynamic discussion on the complex issues of cultural understanding through food, how food is today immersed in global processes and whether there can indeed be 'alternative' histories and canons to what publications such as Michelin have protected, would serve to create a richer and more vibrant culinary culture.
Perhaps if there was something like a Michelin Guide for contemporary art that swept into Tokyo and published its findings in the manner of rankings, a similar outcry would ensue and public discussion generated....or then again, it may simply confirm current hierarchies and consolidate structures. Or, following Kitagawa's proposal, what the Japanese state needs to do is appoint a New Iwakura Mission to go yonder, survey different models for art and attempt to re-tune the current state of things.
Artist Makoto Aida has a superb work called 'Discover the Element of New Taste' , which I worked with him on for The Singapore Biennale 2006. It elegantly captures many of the issues I was pondering above.
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