Michael Emmerich (left), Masaki Fujihata (right). December 2021. Los Angeles, CA. Video by Gabriel Noguez.
Eight decades have passed since the United States government forced Americans of Japanese descent all along the West Coast to give up their homes, their livelihoods, and almost everything they owned, then loaded them onto busses and trains and transported them to concentration camps. Eighty years is longer than the average life expectancy was for babies born in the 1940s, so it is hardly a surprise that today the numbers of Japanese Americans who personally experienced the incarceration and can recollect the years they spent in the camps are rapidly dwindling. A generational shift is underway that will soon leave those of us who would engage with this brutal history, whatever our backgrounds, with no alternative but to turn to other sources, beyond the ranks of the survivors.
This is the context within which renowned Japanese media artist Masaki Fujihata conceived and created BeHere /1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration. Though he and the project benefitted enormously from the generous participation of members of Los Angeles’s Japanese American community, including some who had themselves been incarcerated as children, those of us who worked with Fujihata on it know how careful he has been at every point to maintain his perspective as an outsider seeking to understand. Beginning in the autumn of 2019, he spent two years doing research, reading memoirs and scholarly works, pouring over thousands of photographs in archives across the United States. He immersed himself in the task of developing a new approach to this history that was based—not in the trauma of the incarceration itself, in an ineluctable proximity to the event and a willingness to speak—but in his own distance from it, and in a commitment to listen, look, think, and feel.
The result is a powerful public art project—an exhibition that is itself an artwork—that offers those who experience it a chance to see the Japanese American incarceration in a radically new way. Indeed, Fujihata presents us with an opportunity to reflect on the very act of looking itself, especially the now ubiquitous act of looking with, through, and at cameras. BeHere / 1942 is centered on the Japanese American incarceration, but it also deals with the always fraught history—and the present and emerging future—of media themselves as a way of experiencing, of knowing, of propagandizing, of entering into relationships with others. The same is true, as well, of this volume, which was conceived not as a record of the exhibit, but as a part of it. Its contents are thus intentionally varied, ranging from historical materials to essays in the modes of history and art criticism, and including as well a powerful work of fiction that binds the different threads.
Director:
Masaki Fujihata
Executive Producer:
Michael Emmerich
Creative Producer:
David Leonard
Contributing Advisor:
Erkki Huhtamo
Exhibition
Art direction:
Clement Hanami (JANM); Takumi Akin, Wesley Chou, Jon Gacnik (Folder Studio)
Digital printouts:
Althea Edwards, Frank Magallanes (Studio 5150)
Lighting:
Janis Peace (Peace Lighting)
HD movie (room 3):
Yasutaka Fukuda (Fukupoly), Yusuke Shigeta (Studio Obake)
AR system (room 4):
Takeshi Kawashima (Kawashima-Lab); Shinpei Kawachi, Hiroki Fukuzawa, Hiroaki Takasawa (Studio Shikumi); Takatomi Takahashi (Gifu Drawing); Yasutaka Fukuda (Fukupoly)
Manzanar webcam:
Kyle McDonald, Keira Chang
Nishi Hongwanji AR Installation
Application Design and Development:
Hajime Kotani, Miyako Toge, Takayuki Ochiai, Kenzo Kojima (Crescent, Inc.); Takeshi Kawashima (Kawashima-Lab); Yasutaka Fukuda (Fukupoly); Takumi Akin, Wesley Chou, Jon Gacnik (Folder Studio); Eric Siercks, Yixin Zhu (Yanai Initiative)
Volumetric Capture Video Shoots:
Crescent, INC., Tokyo
Actors:
Tomoko Ando, Eriko Aso, Masaki Fujihata, Yasuki Fujita, Shuichi Fukazawa, Madoka Fukazawa, Hideka Fukazawa, Yasutaka Fukuda, Jeremy Harley, Yasuaki Kakehi, Kotaro Kakehi, Yunosuke Kamidate, Mao Kawaguchi, Takao Kawaguchi, Takeshi Kawashima, Shiho Kawashima, Tamami Kawashima, Gaetan Kubo, Azuki Mitsui, Shinichiro Muraoka, Yasuhito Nagahara, Masaki Naito, Mariko Nishimura, Noriko Ohyama, Todd Silverstein, Takayuki Takita, Yoh Takita, Keisuke Tanaka, Asako Tomura, Kazuo Wakamiya, Miho Wakamiya, Kohane Wakamiya, Itoka Wakamiya, Charlie Wilmott, Daisuke Yoshimoto
Production:
Shinichiro Muraoka, Honoka Onaga (Continental Circus Pictures); Takao Kawaguchi
Costumes:
Masae Miyamoto, Miyuki Sato, Hinako Matsumori, Motoki Anai (Wardrobe, Inc.); Keisuke Sakai, Eri Shioya, Mariko Kato (MARVEE)
Props:
Sanae Akimoto, Yuri Ogasawara, Satomi Kawae, Aki Kato, Yoshimasa Imoto (Olive Art)
Documentation:
Shiho Fukada, Gen Shimizu
Volumetric Capture:
Hajime Kotani, Miyako Toge, Takayuki Ochiai, Tadayuki Suzuki, Tatsuhiko Kobayashi, Keigo Obuchi, Fumiaki Kudo, Ren Sakamoto (Crescent, Inc.)
4D Fun, INC., Los Angeles
Actors:
June Berk, Jane Tomi Boltz, Michael Emmerich, David Fujioka, Kenzo Hamamoto, Gena Hamamoto, Lucas Hansen, Nancy Hayata, Erkki Huhtamo, Kazuhiko Imai, Lynn Kuratomi, Dan Kwong, David Leonard, Kanako Mabuchi, Kathy Masaoka, Mark Masaoka, Mayumi Masaoka, Akiko Matsumoto, Colleen Miyano, Robert Moriguchi, Mike Murase, Steve Nagano, Patty Nagano, Tatsuya Nasu, Chika Nomura, Jibby Sae-tang, William Shapiro, Kay Shoda, Marshall Smalley, Michi Tanioka, Karen Tei Yamashita, Doug Van Kirk
Production Assistance:
Kazuhiko Imai, Kanako Mabuchi
Costumes:
Mayumi Masaoka, Ash, Akiko Matsumoto, Chika Nomura
Documentation:
Gabriel Noguez
Volumetric Capture:
Brian Master, Jenni Ogden, Chris Pack, Paul Vowell (4D Fun)
Catalog
Co-editors:
Michael Emmerich, Erkki Huhtamo
Design:
Takumi Akin, Wesley Chou, Jon Gacnik (Folder Studio); Jack Burnside
Website
Design and Development:
Takumi Akin, Wesley Chou, Jon Gacnik (Folder Studio)
Administrative and Technical Support
The Yanai Initiative:
Hirokazu Toeda, Yumi Joko, Sanae Yamazaki, Yixin Zhu
UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures:
Shan Shan Chi-Au, Kevin Hsu, Takamasa Imai, Jimmy Tang, Phuong Truong, Timothy Yu, Fatin Zubi
Waseda University Cultural Affairs Division:
Shogo Kaneko, Eric Siercks
Japanese American National Museum:
Doug Van Kirk, Akira Boch, Joseph Duong, Edward Escarsega, Kristen Hayashi, Grant Kiyohara, Masako Miki, Travis Takenouchi, Coleen Uchida-Tamny
Special Thanks
Tomoko Bialock, Sarah Bseirani, Rebecca Corbett, Carla Ellard, Terri Garst, Christine Holtslander, Ewan Johnson, Noa Kaplan, Angela Kujak, Alan Miyatake, Brian Niiya, Meg Partridge, Lizeth Ramirez, Yuri Shcherbina, Karen Umemoto, William Wade
Additional Funding
2019–2020 UCLA Arts Initiative Grant, Asahi Shinbun Bunka Zaidan, Japan Foundation