Visual Culture Blog

Shortly after the devastating earthquake and ensuing Tsunami hit the north-eastern coast of Japan, the Japanese Prime Minister Kaoto Kan addressed the assembled press in Tokyo with a brief statement expressing his sympathies to those affected by the disaster. In his short statement, Kan alludes to a deeply harbored anxiety in Japanese culture as he says the following:

“Some of the nuclear power plants in the region have automatically shut down, but there is no leakage of radioactive materials to the environment.”

This message might come to haunt Kan as conflicting news is already emerging from a nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Perhaps to avoid a panic, Kan seeks to quell the anxiety of a nuclear disaster that operates very powerfully in the only country on Earth to have suffered the explosion of an atomic bomb. Ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fears caused by this nuclear trauma are an important part of Japanese visual culture.

Akira Kurosawa, Dreams, 1990

Fictional representations of a nuclear apocalypse – now eerily reminiscent of the actual news footage emerging from the disaster zone – are a constant theme in Japanese cinema and anime. The eminent director Akira Kurosawa for instance, in his portrayal of a bizarre collection of dreamscapes, depicts Mount Fuji (an ideological symbol for the nation) surrounded by explosions and steeped in the colour red. The protagonist in Dreams (1990) wonders if there was an earthquake. No, far worse he is told, Japan was struck by a nuclear disaster.

Tokyo after ‘Third Impact’ in Neon Genesis Evangelion, 1995

Kurosawa’s post-apocalyptic vision is similarly evoked in the classic anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion by the director Hideaki Anno. The young boy protagonist ventures through a deserted Tokyo struck by a massive disaster referred to in the series as ‘Third Impact’. If the Kanto earthquake from 1923 represents the first impact, and the Allied firebombs in 1944/45 represent the second impact, the ‘Third Impact’ in Neon Genesis Evangelion refers to an event that is yet to come. First screened in 1995, Neon Genesis Evangelion stirred a deeply felt anxiety amongst Japan’s youth that the world would come to an end in the year 2000. This was partially related to the global fears of the Y2K computer virus and the popularity of Nostradamus’s predictions amongst followers of new religions.

Neon Genesis Evengelion, Episode 1, 1995

However, rather then seeking a reductive explanation for a complex set of causalities, I believe that post-apocalyptic visions in Japanese visual culture are the state’s equivalent to a psychoanalytical condition: post-traumatic stress syndrome. The disasters and ‘Third impacts’ in fictional Japanese visual culture can never be entirely disassociated with the actual experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most famous example for the relationship between nuclear fears and Japanese visual culture remains to be the iconic Godzilla movie. First screened in 1954, in the film Godzilla was created following a nuclear detonations and acts as a powerful metaphor for nuclear weapons. Godzilla must be considered in the aftermath of Hiroshima, but also, the continued testing of nuclear weapons on the Bikini atoll from 1946 to 1958 by the Americans. In other words, Godzilla is the fictional manifestation of global arms race that was yet to peak at the height of the cold war.

Godzilla, 1954

There is no question, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan are a natural disaster. Yet the possibility of a nuclear meltdown or atomic ground zero is created by man. It is this dichotomy between man and nature that the Prime Minister of Japan maybe inadvertently evoked in his speech to the press. Man cannot control nature, but neither should an ever growing risk of a nuclear disaster control man. If the many references of a nuclear apocalypse in Japanese visual culture are anything to go by, the deeply embedded anxieties of a people should have been taken more seriously.

If you are interested in Japanese photography, please download my essay:
Marco Bohr (2011). ‘Are-Bure-Boke: Distortions in Late 1960s Japanese Cinema and Photography’. Dandelion Journal. Vol. 2, No. 2.

Nobody Knows, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2004

How to represent trauma? This appears to be the overriding question in the movie Nobody Knows, or Daremo Shiranai, by the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. Nobody Knows depicts the lives of four children who were left abandoned by their mother. The oldest child is the 12-year old boy Akira who is given the task of looking after his younger siblings. Used to the frequent absence of their mother, the beginning of the movie shows the children coping well with daily tasks of running the household.

However, as the absence of the mother turns into weeks and months, the movie also depicts that the life of the abandoned children is in a state of transition. The movie effectively represents the passing of time by focusing on small and detailed observations. In one scene, the eldest daughter holds up her hand to look at the nail polish her mom applied before she left. The same hand can be seen later when all but a tiny segment of the nail polish is visible. In other words, the vanishing of nail polish signifies the mother’s abondement of her children, but also, it signifies the child giving up hope that she will return. The nail polish reappears later in the film, when the mother returns one last time to pack her belongings. Instead of applying the bright red polish to her nails, the daughter paints her hand to make it look as if she is injured. Here, the polish signifies blood and the pain of alienation.

Filmed over the course of one year, the 2 hour 20 minute movie depicts the children not only growing older with regard to narrative of the movie, but also, growing older in a bodily sense. Thus, Nobody Knows not only focuses on the psychological, but also the physical transformation of the child. This transformation is most apparent in Akira, played by Yuya Yagira, who, in the process of the movie, turns from a boy into a young man. For depicting this transformation so realistically, Yagira won the best actor award at the Cannes film festival in 2004. In the movie, his hair is getting longer, he adopts a defiant teenager attitude, but also, he is getting physically bigger and his voice is breaking up. The representation of time in Nobody Knows has the eery effect that the movie appears to be like a documentary film, depicting the lives of real children in their struggle to survive.

The filmmakers have adapted various cinematographic techniques to represent life from the subjective position of the child. The height of the camera rarely exceeds more than one meter, which, in the history of Japanese cinema and visual culture refers to Yasujiro Ozu’s signature tatami perspective. In Nobody Knows, the low height of the camera is used to stress the subjective vision of a child. Similarly, by using a long lens with a wide open aperture, the narrow depth of field emphasis an almost dreamlike perception of everyday minutiae.

In above example, the cinematography of Nobody Knows appears to borrow from the work of the Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi. Not only did Kawauchi work on the set of Nobody Knows as stills photographer, but her photographic methodology of focusing on detailed observations from a child’s perspective appears to be the visual strategy applied in the film itself. In psychoanalytical terms, this photographically fragmented view of the world also refers to a psychologically fragmented memory of childhood. In other words, the photographic technique of tight framing and soft focus underlines the very process of remembering childhood.

Untitled, from the series of “Cui Cui”, 2005

As the director Hirokazu Kore-eda points out at the beginning of the movie, the plot is loosely based on a real life event that took place in 1988. The ‘affair of the four abandoned children of Sugamo’, was, in reality, far more horrific than it is depicted in the movie. While in 1988, the youngest child was brutally beaten and eventually killed by two friends of the oldest son, in the movie the youngest child tragically dies in an accident. A fifth child, never referred to in the movie, died shortly after birth and was wrapped in blankets and stored in the flat by the mother. While the cinematographic techniques of soft-focus and close-ups evoke a romanticized version of childhood, the actual trauma inflicted and experienced by the children of Sugamo is completely sidelined in the movie.

In psychoanalysis, trauma is not necessarily referring to a horrific event, but rather, it describes the subject’s failure to place an experience in the symbolic realm. In his Seminar I, Jacques Lacan describes trauma as following:

“Trauma, insofar as it has a repressing action, intervenes after the fact (apres coup, nachtraglich). At this specific moment, something of the subject becomes detached from the symbolic world that he is engaged in integrating. From then on, it will no longer be something belonging to the subject. The subject will no longer speak of it, will no longer integrate it. Nevertheless, it will remain there, somewhere, spoken, if one can put it this way, by something the subject does not control.”

Trauma is therefore characterized by not being able to articulate, nor being able to represent the experience retroactively. The complete disavowal of any physical or psychological violence in Nobody Knows is therefore a conscious act of recognizing that trauma is unrepresentable. Hirokazu Kore-eda thus comments on a deeply felt human fear: the dread of loss of the mother is commonly thought of as the very first trauma experienced by the subject. This unrepresentability of trauma is even recognized in the very title of the movie: because trauma cannot be situated into the symbolic realm, ‘nobody knows’ about the actual experience of the child.

Nobody Knows is available as DVD. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.

If you are interested in Japanese photography, please download my essay:
Marco Bohr (2011). ‘Are-Bure-Boke: Distortions in Late 1960s Japanese Cinema and Photography’. Dandelion Journal. Vol. 2, No. 2.

Chris Hondros, Samar Hassan crying

In my last blog post, I wrote about a photograph by photojournalist Chris Hondros which shows an Iraqi girl crouching on the ground and crying. Minutes before the image was taken, Samar Hassan’s parents were shot dead by American troops in a tragic accident as they failed to stop at a checkpoint. Another photograph from Hondros’ series shows the traumatic effects this event had on the children who were also in the car. Samar is crying while her youngest brother appears totally dazed by what has happened. In this blog post I want to unravel the story further, and show that Hondros’ iconic photograph of Samar Hassan’s immeasurable grief has an unsuspecting afterlife which is directly related to the complex relationship between photojournalism, ethics and empathy.

Chris Hondros

The Hassan Family, Iraq, ca. 2004

On that day, six children were huddling in the back seat as the family, seen in above family photograph, was on their way home. Whereas all the children survived, the parents were killed instantly. In this radio interview from 2007, Chris Hondros recalls the tragic sequence of events unfolding. In the accompanying slideshow to the interview, the sheer horror is clearly detectable on the children’s faces as they emerge from the car. What is not mentioned in the interview is that, apart from photographing Samar Hassan crouching on the floor as she cries in grief, Chris Hondros photographed Samar’s brother Rakan who was injured in the shooting. It wasn’t clear at the time, but a bullet hit Rakan’s spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. In one photograph, Rakan can be seen lying on the ground in front of the car as he is unable to move. Another image shows him pressed against a wall clearly in a state of shock. Hondros’ last photograph of Rakan shows him being rushed to the hospital.

Chris Hondros

Chris Hondros

Chris Hondros

This is where Chris Hondros’ series of photograph ends, and a new story begins. As Samar Hassan’s cry was echoing around the world each time the horrific photograph of her was published, a team led by US Senator Edward M. Kennedy sought to help her paralyzed brother. The motivation for this is clear. The parents were killed at the hands of American troops, but Rakan’s life could still be saved. In September 2005, Rakan was flown to the US via Germany to begin medical treatment at the Mass. General Hospital in Boston. Rakan’s arrival at the hospital instantly became a story of hope, redemption and ethics in an otherwise messy war in distant Iraq. The Boston Globe picked up on the story and ran a long series of photographs called Rakan’s Life.

Michele McDonald, Rakan in Boston

Michele McDonald, Rakan in Boston

The brief for Michele McDonald, the Boston Globe staff photographer assigned with photographing Rakan’s five months stay in Boston, appears to have been to produce the visual antithesis to Chris Hondros horrific war photography from Iraq. If Hondros’ photographs might raise concerns over ethics in photojournalism, such as photographing vulnerable subjects in a moment of tragedy, McDonald’s photographs apparently seek to portray a more positive story. Rakan, so it appears in the series of photographs, is now in safe and capable hands. At first Rakan seems overwhelmed and timid in his new environment, but as his health is improving, he can be seen smiling, and also, importantly, making others smile. After all, this is not only the story about Rakan, but also, it is the story about American mass media desperately seeking for a positive take on the war in Iraq.

Michele McDonald, Rakan in Boston

Michele McDonald, Rakan in Boston

For it’s tragic irony, one photograph in particular stands out. Rakan sits in his hospital bed wearing a Spiderman suit which he received from the hospital staff for Halloween (apparently Rakan always liked Spiderman). Not only does this image represent a clash between cultures, the image also represents the contrast between Spiderman’s imagined superpowers and Rakan’s actual disabilities. Under the disguise of Spiderman’s suit, Rakan turns, for a brief moment, into an all American boy. The hospital staff have clearly taken to Rakan. By the time his visit comes to an end, he is wearing a Boston Red Sox jacket and hat. To the readers of the Boston Globe, this association with Boston’s baseball team clearly signifies that Rakan is now one of them.

Michele McDonald, Rakan in military hospital in Germany

Michele McDonald, Rakan arriving in Iraq

Michele McDonald, Rakan welcomed by US troops

Michele McDonald, Rakan waving goodbye

Rakan then returned to Iraq via Germany. The fact that he could walk with crutches was celebrated as a huge success story. Here too, the Boston Globe was there to photograph the events. The last photograph in the series shows Rakan waving from a car driven by his brother-in-law. It’s his family that now care for Rakan and his siblings, including Samar who was the subject of Chris Hondros iconic image. While it was Hondros’ photograph of Samar that raised public awareness about one of the many injustices of war, it was also Hondros’ photograph that instigated the photographic series on Rakan’s rehabilitation in America. Ideologically the two set of images are on opposite sides of the spectrum: one showed the horrors of war, and the other sought to depict that there are also ethical decisions to be made in a war. I don’t mean the ethical decision of the photographer, but rather, as I have pointed out in my last blog post, the ethical decision by the viewer of the photograph.

Hondros’ photograph effectuated a cycle of photographic representation that sought to signify, not only the hopes of an Iraqi boy, but the hope of redemption in an act of goodwill. Sadly, this is not how the story ended. On June 16th 2008, Rakan was killed by a bomb placed by insurgents next to his new home. It is believed that Rakan and his family might have been targeted for accepting medical treatment in America.

For more on this topic, please read Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others and Susie Linfield’s The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.