II, Ōura Nobuyuki; Yosuke Akiba, Publishers 21st Century, Inc.; Okabe Print Studio; Print House OM

Exhibition Label: "Japan Re-imagined/Post-war Art," Mar-2008, Kris Ercums This portfolio of 13 prints came under vehement attack in the early 1990s for so-called “unflattering” portrayals of the Emperor Showa (Hirohito) (1901-1989) juxtaposed with tattooed female nudes and images of atomic mushroom clouds. The portfolio was included in a group exhibition of local artists at the Toyama Prefectural Museum in 1993. After protests from ultra-conservative supporters of the imperial family, the museum removed the work from its collection and burned 470 catalogues which featured the portfolio. Ōura fought back with a lawsuit, however discrimination of him and his supporters continued in Japan. In an interview from the mid-1990s, Ōura describes his motivations for creating these fragmented images. After living outside of Japan for several years, I wanted to create a portrait of myself as a Japanese. You cannot just paint your face and call it a self-portrait; you have to seek the self in your soul. To do so, I placed [the emperor’s] portrait in my prints. I tried to create a sense of the emptiness of the self by using his image—his existence is by nature a form of emptiness in that he is a symbol that nobody really knows the meaning of. Looking back, I realize I could do this because I was living in New York, away from Japan. The distance allowed me to see him in perspective. I had no intention of criticizing the emperor. I never imagined that the prints would lead to such controversy, not in my wildest dreams. ~ Interview in Newsweek ( Japan), June 10, 1996