Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel, dating back to 1890, is something special. Even its smallest twin rooms cost as much each night as a fur coat, and the inclusive breakfast price exceeds the average Japanese monthly take-home pay. The famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright led the hotel’s first major reconstruction before the war, and another historic revamp is currently underway. Its history is tied to Japan’s opening to Western powers, and today it remains where Japan’s local elite rendezvous with wealthy foreigners.
These ruling men were treated to an art exhibition this month staged in a private gallery called Medel Gallery Shu operating on the ground floor of the hotel’s main wing. The exhibition, titled ‘Okomori-kai (slumber party)’, showcased the work of 30 artists, and included animated representations of underage girls, some naked. One of its sculptures showed a girl sitting with her underwear around her knees, crotch in full view, together with, inexplicably, uncovered undeveloped breasts, and another of its paintings centred the exposed genitalia of a girl depicted as an even younger age.
Parts of the exhibition are now withdrawn, and apologies were issued by the hotel and gallery. Lest this modest response appear insignificant, no precedent exists in Japan for public attention drawn to an example of men’s open enjoyment of child pornography. The modest response represents in fact a major win for the women who lobbied against the exhibition.[1]
The last incident of its kind in Japan occurred in 2013 when the People Against Prostitution and Sexual Violence group (PAPS) attempted to draw public attention to a similarly heinous exhibition held at the Mori Art Museum. Group members met with Museum staff to explain to them the human rights effects of high-end artworks showing naked girls in dog collars with severed limbs, and attempted to raise public awareness of the exhibition’s harm through seminars and writing. Their efforts came to naught, and the exhibition’s artist went on to teach in Tokyo art schools, regularly appear in programs on Japan’s national broadcaster, and maintain a popular social media presence.
Through social media, this artist, Aida Makoto, commented on the Imperial Hotel incident a decade-and-a-half later. Likely baffled by the greater effectiveness of the reaction this time to an instance of openly consumed child pornography among Japan’s male elite, he attempted to explain away the work of the artists involved as inevitably drawing inspiration from the world as it currently exists, which comprises ‘positive’, ‘negative’, and ‘neutral’ elements. Different from his experience, this time around the Japanese public deemed the sexualisation of girls a negative element of our world ineligible for artistic inspiration. Fifteen years ago, in contrast, it was unwilling to rule it out as artistic fodder, let alone deem it inspired by negative elements.
Japan yet maintains no sex offender register, it allows an ‘idol’ industry to operate that facilitates direct contact between adult men and teenage girls, and does not restrict the manga industry’s publication of reams of incest pornography. Girls are still at relatively serious risk if they grow up in Tokyo (more so than in other places). But Japanese women have been making small gains in the right direction. They recently won limited restrictions against both sex-buyers and host clubs, and have managed to get strengthened provisions against stalking and sexual harassment. While the safeguarding of girls is not yet front-of-mind in feminist activity, growing intolerance of male sexuality in general perhaps heralds future prospects.
For the feminist campaigners who faced a wall of silence back in 2013, the outcome achieved in the Imperial Hotel case must feel like a very delayed but sweet victory. For the men of the elite art and other worlds, it must feel like a bolt out of the blue. Japanese society has proceeded over the last decade on a two-track course divided between women and men. As marriage rates fall, young women increasingly make their own ways in life, even with fewer resources and protections. Men carry on in their comparatively stable jobs with their sexual entitlements, but in the background women are beginning to withdraw support for their overt manifestations. The Imperial Hotel incident will register as an unexpected shot across the bow, at least for elite men, who will likely now begin defending more strenuously their sexual privileges. But Japanese women are likely prepared for this escalation, and will meet its challenge.
[1] And perhaps outdo similar efforts by women in Australia, such as those described by the author back in 2014. See Caroline Norma, ‘Blessing Bill Henson’s Dark Desires: What is the Anglican Church Thinking?,’ ABC Religion & Ethics, 2 December 2014, https://share.google/PDqZVklbZZqMHkruN.
