Category Archives: Exhibtion

Japaner im Revier. Aufbruch ins Fremde

Japanisches Kulturinstitut Köln (Japan Foundation)

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Collage Serie Japaner im Revier 2024, je 42 x 29,7 cm
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Foto: Nathan Ishar

Naho Kawabes Japaner im Revier: Aufbruch ins Fremde (Japanese People in the Ruhrgebiet: Border Crossers)”—Synchronizing Lives
Text von Yuka Tokuyama


“Japaner im Revier” is a project that Naho Kawabe, an artist who uses coal as material for her work, started in 2021; I joined the project as a research partner. In 2022, we investigated relevant written sources and carried out fieldwork in the Ruhr region. At the same time, we followed the traces of Japanese coal miners who lived in Germany and conducted various interviews. In April 2023, we published a report of our findings under the title Japaner im Revier.

Under the title “Japaner im Revier: Aufbruch ins Fremde (Japanese People in the Ruhrgebiet: Border Crossers),” an exhibition of Naho Kawabe’s work and related historical materials will be held at the Japan Cultural Institute (the Japan Foundation) in Cologne. The exhibition runs from September 6 until September 26, 2024, and a symposium will be held during this time.

Mehr
Work as a Personal Asset, and the Search for Heavy Tools

Work is […] a personal, steadfast, nontransferable quality, fit to be moved beyond borders and properties.— Julia Kristeva, 1988 [ 1 ]

During the 1950s and 1960s, many Japanese coal laborers worked in groups in Germany’s Ruhr region, on the outskirts of Düsseldorf in the Western part of the country. The inspiration for the present project is Naho Kawabe’s idea that these people—who came to Germany at a time when international travel was not easy, and who carried out extremely physical labor—might in fact have embodied Julia Kristeva’s idea that work is “the only property that can be exported duty free.” [ 2 ] The notion of carrying out physical labor in a foreign land where one does not understand the language, and that this physical labor itself is the only personal asset one can rely on, overlaps with Kawabe’s way of life as an artist who creates something from nothing. As Kawabe began her research, she found the following phrase among the documents related to Japanese coal miners: “At that time, the tools used in the coal mines differed between Germany and Japan, and the tools made to fit the physique of the Germans were heavy and difficult to use.” This connects to Kawabe’s own experience in Germany, casually picking up tools at a hardware store and being astonished by their weight. Kawabe empathized with these workers given their smaller physique compared to Westerners, together with the pride that is associated with the difficult to imagine harshness of their underground labor. She wanted to hear stories from people who actually worked in the mines, and if that wasn’t possible, to at least speak with their families. In this way, Kawabe’s enthusiasm has been the driving force behind this project.
As a researcher tasked with investigating conditions from about 60 years ago, I thought it would make sense to look into a wide range of published materials (books, newspapers, magazines), organize that information, and then carry out interviews on that basis. Usually, research involves surveying the field of existing research, and then finding one’s own individual perspective within it. Thorough preliminary research was required here, because simply asking questions to people out of plain curiosity might lead to answers that do no more than repeat the findings of existing research, to say nothing of the ethical considerations that come into play when conducting in-person interviews.
Two books on Japanese coal miners in Germany were published in the 2000s, and it was also possible to find various essays and newspaper reports. [ 3 ] Even so, Kawabe was intent on hearing testimonies in the flesh, because her interest exceeds recorded historical fact; she is also keenly interested in sensation. On this point, Kawabe has said: “I wanted to hear about the personal experience of being inside a mine, with all five senses. Only someone whose body has felt this can speak of it.” [ 4 ] In other words, she wanted to know a sensory and relational experience that cannot be reduced to something objective. Perhaps this direct approach is more effective than the more strictly historical method from which it departs.

Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives

All told, then, there was a gap between Kawabe’s method and my own inclination for research that would fit standard protocols. On this point, the graphic designer Shunsuke Onaka raised the notion of “diachronic” and “synchronic” perspectives. [ 5 ] A diachronic perspective is one that arranges and presents various facts in chronological order. By contrast, the synchronic perspective involves taking a snapshot-like view of language at a specific moment in time, without considering chronology. In the field of linguistics, this synchronic perspective refers to examining the structure and various uses of language that are specific to a particular time period. Meanwhile, the diachronic perspective involves comparing language from one era with the same language in another era to explore how it developed. To sum things up somewhat drastically, we might say that the synchronic perspective deals with linguistic variations at a point in time, while the diachronic perspective deals with linguistic changes across history.
My own attitude towards history is diachronic, which is why I felt it was important to look back across the printed record, and all manner of written descriptions, before starting to conduct interviews. Or perhaps I could say that I was looking for a perspective that might emerge from these historical documents. By doing so, I thought that the overall direction of the research would be clarified, and that the accuracy of the narration would be enhanced. On the other hand, Kawabe was after something like variation: to dive into the past, and to try to find experiences, memories and sensations that were highly specific to the lives of certain people, without regard for how to organize them from the present moment. Clearly, such things do not fit into a mode of historical narration that has a single orientation or goal.

To Synchronize with the Past

Today, it is very common for contemporary artists to produce their work through research methods that address social concerns, or the historical background of specific regions. [ 6 ] While some of this work elevates information and invites the audience to a different level of experience, other artists present their research materials as infographics, creating works that serve as enlightening statements.
In Kawabe’s case, she declared that she wanted to dive into research before thinking about the work to be produced. She emphasized first seeing places and things in the flesh, and gathering oral testimony. We traveled to the Ruhr region, where we visited museums and the remains of coal mines; interviewed former coal miners and their families; spoke with former coal workers who administer local archives; and found many newspaper articles, notes and unpublished articles in these facilities. In Kawabe’s research report, she wove together her own words with newspaper headlines and other words from texts that emerged in the course of research. It was as if she was diving into the past, and breathing together with it. Former coal miners told us things that completely went against our own preconceived ideas; one said, with pride, “I can only remember fun times.” Noting this, Kawabe said:

Perhaps there are only a few people who have found positive experiences in the labor of coal mining. Many people have passed away before they could share their own experiences, and it is also difficult to learn about those who came to work in German mines voluntarily. Far more remains unsaid than what has been spoken—and even then, some of what has been spoken has not seen the light of day. [ 7 ]

Factual accounts cannot capture the fluctuations of experience. Here, what is required is something like the power to imagine that which did not exist. Unlike academic research grounded in documents, this suggests a realm of possibilities that could have been. [ 8 ] Turning our ears to oral history, we experienced a multiplicity of historical times, or what might be called a series of “variations” that could not be ordered into a single line of thought. Experiencing the past, multiple voices come to sound like a polyphony. If something of Kawabe herself appears in the words that are woven together here, perhaps it would be in the attitude of synchronizing with past times, experiences, and sensations, listening to unheard voices, and striving to give them form.
Kawabe’s work Japaner im Revier (2023), produced after this research was finished, combines photographs, snapshots taken in the present day, geographic documents, newspaper articles, and drawings as a multi-layered collage. Perhaps it could be called a multi-layered representation of her experience synchronizing with the past and present of Japanese people of the Ruhr coalfields. Various times flow through the Ruhr region, and various lives are there too. Kawabe collects experiences one by one, synchronizes them, and in this way shows many variations of life.

Plurality as Invitation

Cobbling together a number of different methods, this project has taken an eclectic approach to the representation of historical and social research through language and visual representation. The significance of this pluralistic method might be that it opens up new possibilities of participation.
In the course of our research, we also spoke with family members of former coal miners. What arose in these conversations was that some of the women who married coal miners had studied nursing or medical care in Japan, and went to Germany on their own during the 1960s—after which point they met their spouse. We also heard the testimony of many other Japanese people who came to Germany for a variety of reasons, and who took pride in dedicating themselves to their work, paid or unpaid. Through such encounters, we learned that many people made their living in the shadow of the colossus that is the coal mining industry. It might be said, then, that countless numbers of people crossed the ocean with nothing more than the “personal asset” of work. In that sense, our research has hardly concluded with the exhibition of Kawabe’s work and the present publication. On the contrary, we intend to continue exploring various personal histories, and making them more accessible to the public. [ 9 ]

“Japaner im Revier: Aufbruch ins Fremde” encompasses lives that are not recorded in the grand narrative of history—those of us who live both in the past and the present. This project, which began with an exploration into the traces of Japanese coal miners, aims to become a space that includes the variations present among us “border crossers,” going beyond time and space, and navigating various boundaries such as gender role, profession, and social worth. Perhaps through this pluralistic approach, which invites complexity in as a constitutive part of its method, art could somehow contribute to depicting how the world is.

(Curator/researcher in contemporary art)

1. Julia Kristeva, Étrangers à nous-mêmes. Paris: Fayard, 1988, pp. 30-31. Translation from French by the author.

2. ibid., p. 32. Translation from French by the author.

3. In Japanese, see Hiromasa Mori, Doitsu de hataraita nihonjin tankō rōdōsha: rekishi to genjitsu. Kyoto: Horitsu Bunka Sha, 2005. In German, see Atsushi Kataoka, Regine Mathias, Pia-Tomoko Meid, and Werner Pacha, eds., Japanische Bergleute im Ruhrgebiet “Glückauf” auf Japanisch. Essen: Klartext-Verlag, 2012.

4. Naho Kawabe, Japaner im Revier, Booklet B. Hamburg: Self-Published, 2023, p. 13.

5. Shunsuke Onaka (Calamari Inc.) was the graphic designer for Kawabe’s booklet Japaner im Revier. These concepts come from the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure; see Ian Buchanan, A Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

6. On this topic, see Claire Bishop, “Information Overload,” Artforum #61-08, April 2023. Bishop’s article deals mostly with the development of digital technologies in art from the 1990s onwards, and the question of how artists present this research, often through excessive displays of information. The research that Kawabe and I carried out for this project, through interviews and fieldwork, might be thought of as being somewhat closer to sociological history. Although the present project is carried out under the name of an artist, the booklet that was published does not contain fiction.

7. Kawabe, Japaner im Revier, Booklet B, p. 55.

8. Artistic research often emphasizes the qualitative over the quantitative. As a result, it may contribute more to something like “expanding the realm of possibilities” than to “accumulating facts.”

9. On September 7, 2024, a public symposium will be held at the Japan Cultural Institute (the Japan Foundation) in Cologne. Panelists will include Regine Mathias (Vice President, Centre Européen d’Études Japonaises d’Alsace (CEEJA)), a specialist of German-Japanese labor history and an editor of the 2012 volume Japanische Bergleute im Ruhrgebiet “Glückauf” auf Japanisch, and Kae Ishii (Professor, Faculty of Global and Regional Studies at Doshisha University, Kyoto), a labor historian specializing in gender.

In 2022 and 2024, this project was funded by grants from the Toshiaki Ogasawara Memorial Foundation. In 2024, it was also supported by the women’s empowerment organization Zonta Club of Tokyo I, Zonta International. We express our deep gratitude for their support.

(English translation: Daniel Abbe)

Exhibition: 7th – 26th September 2024
Lecture and Panel Discussion: 8th September 2024
Lecture: Prof. Regine Mathias-Pauer, Vice President of the Centre Européen d’Études Japonaises d’Alsace (CEEJA)
Panel Discussion: Prof. Regine Mathias-Pauer, Prof. Kae Ishii (Dōshisha University Kyoto), Naho Kawabe, Yuka Tokuyama (Researcher and Curator)
Organizers: Japanisches Kulturinstitut Köln, Naho Kawabe, Yuka Tokuyama
Co-organizers (Lecture and Panel Discussion): Deutsch-Japanese Society e.V. Köln, Deutsch-Japanese Society am Niederrhein e.V.
Supported by: Zonta, Toshiaki Ogasawara Memorial Foundation

Urban Phenomenology ―Just what is it that makes our future so uncertain, so appealing?

23. Februar – 3. March 2024
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Residence Program

The results of the artist-in-residence programme were presented in two installations at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and the ACF Gallery.

ACF Gallery: In Search of Utopia (-et in Arcadia ego)
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum: Study for a Drawing Room (for the Phantom of FAAM)

Photo: Ittoku Kawasaki

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Aufenthalts​wahrscheinlichkeiten

3 Exhibitions (The Blend Apartments & Artist in Residence / FLAG studio, Osaka, 8. Salon e.V., Hamburg), Catalogue, Video

Design: Shunsuke Onaka (Calamari Inc.)

A art projekt by Naho Kawabe with the artists whose native language is not German
as part of the 30-year partner cities between Hamburg and Osaka Cooperation: Goethe-Institut Osaka Kyoto

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TEXT by Naho Kawabe from catalog Aufenthaltswahrscheinlichkeiten

In 2019 the 30-year partnership between Hamburg and Osaka will be celebrated. As a Japanese artist living in Hamburg since 2001, I had already actively participated in the two previous anniversaries in 2009 and 2014 already. With those experiences, I drew up an exhibition project at the beginning of 2019, which shows works by artists from Hamburg in Osaka. What is specific to them is that they are the artists who grew up with a different mother tongue and didn’t born in Germany – just like myself.

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In the contemporary art scene, artists are expected to manifest the aesthetic and social context of their works. In view of my own situation, I am basically interested in the strategy that artists use to make themselves understood in a foreign language. Does linguistic reformulation change their works and their personalities? In a world that is growing together due to globalization, society is becoming increasingly attentive to cultural differences. Artists who live a far away from their own culture for a long time lose their affiliation to their culture and develop – figuratively speaking – a nested cultural identity. Does this condition effect on the behavior of artists and their artistic formulations? Based on these questions, I have chosen the title of the project “Aufenthaltswahrscheinlichkeiten (Probabilities of Residence)” and have integrated a surprising fact that there are very few foreign artists living in my home country, Japan, into the exhibition project at the same time. Based on my own experiences in Hamburg, I first developed a list of 25 questions that I wanted to ask artists from other countries living in the Hanseatic city and record as an interview. To be able to record their voices acoustically protected, I built a small mobile and quickly assembled box and used it to visit the artists in their studios. When I was in the studio of Joe Sam-Essandoh, he noticed my plastic carrier bag with which I transported the recording box and started to laugh: “Do you know what this kind of carrier bag is called? These bags can often be found in stacks, in different sizes but always with a typical check pattern, in the many small household or souvenir shops in Hamburg, which are mostly operated by Mediterranean traders. I got the bag from Claus Böhmler, a former professor at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg as well as Fluxus artist, who developed a special interest in unusual everyday objects and collected them. He probably knew the significance of the bag – but for me it was only ideally suited for transporting large items at first. Before I met Joe, I didn’t know that it had a special name: The bag is called “Ghana must go”, since 1983, when the Nigerian president Shehu Shagari expelled over two million undocumented emigrants from his country. More than half of the emigrants originally came from Ghana and now returned home through Benin and Togo. They carried their belongings in the soft and stable carrier bags, which have been called “Ghana must go” worldwide since then and have even made it to a bestseller. When I travelled from studio to studio by Hamburg’s public transport in the summer of 2019 with this patterned bag for the project, it must have been a curious sight for passengers, especially for those who knew the story of “Ghana must go”: a slim Asian woman with a large bag on the way.

In this case, the bag is a plain object of daily use, at the same time, it projected different stories simultaneously. As a user of the bag, I realized that it has a wide-ranging significance for others as a transport tool. This allowed me to see my own situation as a Japanese woman in Hamburg from a new perspective. These everyday processes of exchange between people of different cultural backgrounds are deepening, changing and opening up my interest in the fates of initially strangers, who live in the same place I live in too – various worlds, perspectives and positions mix and overlap, almost like constantly forming new constellations. In quantum theory, it is assumed that the smallest particles constructing the world together, can be observed and determined, but they cannot be fixed because they are fleeting. In physics, the term “Aufenthaltswahrscheinlichkeiten” describes here and there, presence and absence at the same moment, stability and instability. Anyone with a temporary residence permit becomes restless before going to the “Aliens’ Office” to apply for a further residence permit. This raises the question: “What is the probability of getting an extension of residence permit?” If the physical world is based on probabilities, then only probabilities can be made about my fate. To put it in a nutshell: Can I stay, or do I have to pack my bags?

The artists participating in the project are from different countries and have developed very varied artistic positions. The works shown in Osaka were selected together with the artists. In the exhibition, I show a video, which is accompanied by a sound collage in German language from the interviews recorded in Hamburg. Simultaneously, the comments of the interviewees in the video can be read in Japanese script. These conversations in German between the artists and me are the talks by two person who was influenced by a different language culture background. The ambiguity that resulted from it turned into a fruitful exchange as stepping on each other. Should the exhibition concept – combining artworks, video, spoken and written language – contribute to understanding between the cultures and the twin cities, I would be delighted.

In Other Words

Konya 2025, Fukuoka (JP)

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Photo: Shintaro Yamanaka (Qsyum!)

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Text by Sachiko Shoji for Naho Kawabe’s solo-show In Other Words

On board the Apollo 11 which succeeded in landing on the moon on July 20th 1969 were state-of-the-art computers. A problem that had to be answered at the time was how the data and programs, which were enormous in size, could be stored in such as a small space. What was employed for this task was ‘core rope memory’, a technology in which information is stored by threads of wire and by magnetizing tiny, donut-shaped pieces of material called cores. This core rope memory was woven by hand with sewing needles by female factory workers.t.

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… They carefully wove wires around small electro-magnetic ferrite cores one-by-one, which also made it possible for the core rope memory to securely record program data. The person who programmed the Apollo mission computers was young female scientist working in a male-dominated field, Margret Hamilton, also known as the ‘Rope Mother’.
Since Apollo 17, which launched in 1972, humans have not since set foot on the moon, even though objects that were discarded by past astronauts still lay there. There is, however, something that remains on the moon that was not left by NASA, something ‘smuggled’. This is the ‘Moon Museum’ (1962), a 1.3cm x 1.9cm ceramic base on which are carved the drawings of six artists (Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, David Novros, Forrest Myers, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Chamberlain). Forrest Myers, who had an ambition to place a work of art on the moon, put the word out to his fellow artists to realize this minuscule project. Slipping through NASA’s net, it was attached to the leg of the Lunar Module and was deposited on the surface of the moon. This truly is a joyous story, but its validity is uncertain, and at this point in time it cannot be verified.

Let’s now turn our attention to this large installation, made up completely of new works by Naho Kawabe, that welcomes us to this exhibition’s gallery space. Rope, which is 1/300,000,000 the length of the distance between the earth and the moon, is suspended above as if to cut out the space, taking the form of a surface. The many black objects that dangle from the rope are based on the ‘Moon Museum’ drawings and have been hand-knitted by the artist. Via this kind of hand craft one is arrested by the sense of becoming mechanized as part of a production process, and this in turn can be seen as a repetition of the activities of the female factory workers who wove Apollo 11’s core rope memory.
Naho Kawabe lives and works both in Japan and Germany, and ‘boarders’ and ‘movement/ migration’ are two things that are inseparable to her life and expression. In fact, the Moon Landing which took place around 50 years ago and remains in the annuls of human history can also be regarded as the great movement between the earth and the moon, and similar concerns related to the work of women as seen in the Apollo mission are still running through modern society. Various historical facts and fictions have been weaved into Kawabe’s work, having fixed forms, transforming and disintegrating, and even being created anew. This exhibition’s title was given by Kawabe, with a reason existing behind it. However we can read the title as a clue when one comes face-to-face with her work. In other words…

Photo: Shintaro Yamanaka (Qsyum!)

curated by Sachiko Shoji (Fukuoka Art Museum)

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Port Gallery T, Osaka (JP)

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