"In a country where nationalist groups now question whether Japan was a military aggressor or a victim of Western imperialism during the war, the valence of paintings such as Hanjiro Sakamoto's 1935 Three Human Bomb Heroes-which glorified wartime self-sacrifice through the myth of suicidal soldiers during the 1932 Shanghai Incident-remains particularly fraught, seen by some audiences as shameful propaganda and others as symbols of military might."
"Hikaru Fujii's new installation "Why Look at Paintings?" (2025) juxtaposed two historical War Record works, by Kenichi Nakamura and Goro Tsuruta, that purport to document the opening of Japan's southern campaign in 1941, within a deliberately reflective display apparatus that mirrors the viewers back at them. Fujii's work demands self-reflection on a present-day debate over Japan's wartime activities occurring in a moment of historical denialism and political chauvinism."
"the war paintings and our current hellish peace still exist within us like two deformed twins that curse and despise each other's appearance while nevertheless forming a dependent relationship."
An exhibition titled Opening Documents, Weaving Memories at the National Museum of Modern Art closed recently after revealing rarely shown War Record Paintings created between the mid-1930s and 1945 by commissioned artists to glorify Imperial Army and Navy campaigns. Public responses range from viewing those works as shameful propaganda to regarding them as symbols of military strength, reflecting a contemporary political reckoning and rising historical denialism. AWT FOCUS at Art Week Tokyo extended confrontation to postwar and contemporary art, notably Hikaru Fujii's Why Look at Paintings? which juxtaposed historical War Record works within a reflective apparatus that prompts viewer self-reflection about wartime responsibility and political chauvinism.
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