You’ve Mistaken Me for a Butterfly

ABSTRACT

The multimedia work You’ve Mistaken Me for a Butterfly was performed by Mayu Kanamori, accompanied by Terumi Narushima on piano, at the University of Wollongong (UOW) in June 2017. The performance was associated with the Biennial Conference of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia (convened by Vera Mackie) and the Exhibition Shadow Worlds (curated by Agnieszka Golda at the TAEM Gallery at UOW), where diaspora was a major theme. The performance is part of a larger work by Mayu Kanamori which explores the histories of Japanese women who migrated to Australia. Here the work is reproduced as a poetic photo-essay. The performance and poem focus on Okin, a Japanese woman who was caught up in a court case in 1898, when two white men were accused of sexually assaulting her. The events took place near Butterfly, an outback mining town in Western Australia.

Additional information

Funding

Mayu Kanamori’s research for her poem was supported by the National Library of Australia’s Japan Study Grant [2016]. Vera Mackie’s Afterword draws on research supported by Australian Research Council Future Fellowship FT0992328.