Overview

"On March 11, 2011 one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history devastated Japan, triggering a massive tsunami and nuclear meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex in a triple disaster known as 3.11. On five separate journeys, Japanese-born performer and dancer Eiko Otake and historian and photographer William Johnston visited multiple locations across Fukushima, creating 200 transformative color photographs that document the irradiated landscape, accentuated by Eiko's poses depicting both the sorrow and dignity of the land. The book also includes essays and commentary reflecting on art, disaster, and grief. ""By placing my body in these places, I thought of the generations of people who used to live there. Now desolate, only time and wind continue to move."" - Eiko Otake ""This book is of people who had lived in Fukushima and had to leave, and of people who had died there before the disaster. This book is of Fukushima, of a dancer, of a performance, of a gaze. A gaze of a dancer, of time, and of a photographer. And this book is of you, your gaze. When you take time to look at and look into each photograph, we hope it becomes a performance for you and with you, of Fukushima. By witnessing events and places, we actually change them and ourselves in ways that may not always be apparent but are important. Through photographing Eiko in these places in Fukushima, we are witnessing not only her and the places themselves, but the people whose lives crossed with those places."" - William Johnston"

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9780819580269

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Reviews

"""What would bring someone to travel thousands of miles to the still toxic site of a monumental disaster in order to perform in the evacuated silence for a camera? What are the ethical dimensions of such an act? What place does beauty have in the wake of massive trauma? Who has the right to speak, to dance, to situate themselves in places from which others were forcibly extracted? This book is a record of two significant, internationally-oriented artists as they struggle with such questions and resolve that, as Akira Kurosawa once said, 'To be an artist means never to look away.'""--Forrest Gander ""Otake and Johnston's stunning collaborative work will forever haunt us with a sense of belatedness. It compels us to consider the longue durée of 3.11 disaster and its connectedness to many losses, pain and the ongoing structural injustices in Fukushima and beyond.""--Lisa Yoneyama, author of Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory and award-winning Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes ""Oscillating across dance and photography, movement and stillness, poetry and prose, history and the everyday, anger and hope--a stunning testament to both the beauty and sadness of Fukushima.""--Takashi Fujitani, Dr. David Chu, Professor of Asia-Pacific Studies, University of Toronto ""In this luminous record of bearing witness to post-nuclear catastrophe, testimony and poetry move together with William Johnston's pellucid photographs of movement artist Eiko Otake as she performatively embodies the irradiated landscapes of Fukushima. A Body in Fukushima is riveting, gorgeous, not to be forgotten.""--Marilyn Ivy, author of Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, and Japan"

What would bring someone to travel thousands of miles to the still toxic site of a monumental disaster in order to perform in the evacuated silence for a camera? What are the ethical dimensions of such an act? What place does beauty have in the wake of massive trauma? Who has the right to speak, to dance, to situate themselves in places from which others were forcibly extracted? This book is a record of two significant, internationally-oriented artists as they struggle with such questions and resolve that, as Akira Kurosawa once said, 'To be an artist means never to look away.'--Forrest Gander Otake and Johnston's stunning collaborative work will forever haunt us with a sense of belatedness. It compels us to consider the longue duree of 3.11 disaster and its connectedness to many losses, pain and the ongoing structural injustices in Fukushima and beyond.--Lisa Yoneyama, author of Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory and award-winning Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes Oscillating across dance and photography, movement and stillness, poetry and prose, history and the everyday, anger and hope--a stunning testament to both the beauty and sadness of Fukushima.--Takashi Fujitani, Dr. David Chu, Professor of Asia-Pacific Studies, University of Toronto In this luminous record of bearing witness to post-nuclear catastrophe, testimony and poetry move together with William Johnston's pellucid photographs of movement artist Eiko Otake as she performatively embodies the irradiated landscapes of Fukushima. A Body in Fukushima is riveting, gorgeous, not to be forgotten.--Marilyn Ivy, author of Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, and Japan

Author Information

Born and raised in Japan and now a longtime New Yorker, EIKO OTAKE is a movement-based interdisciplinary artist. WILLIAM JOHNSTON grew up in Wyoming where he developed an interest in Japanese culture and Zen Buddhism; he is a photographer and historian at Wesleyan University.

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