Witnessing and Remembering Trauma in Northeast Asia in the Visual Age

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue is a collaborative attempt by scholars of visual arts, cultural history and literature to contribute to the uncovering of symbolic and materialistic meanings and effects of visual art and media that address urgent issues in the lives of many people in Northeast Asia. Its first goal is to establish the context in which art makers are positioned and to discuss how their memory and post-memory of disasters shape the content of their works. Second, it explores the potential and limits of visual works to witness and remember physical and psychological trauma caused by the disasters. The third goal is to shed light on the ethical concerns surrounding the visual representation of disasters and victims. Its final goal is to explore how these artworks are grounded in the shared history of Northeast Asia during ‘the visual age’.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical injustice
• disasters
• trauma
• witnessing
• remembering
• visual culture
• the visual age
• socially engaged art
• Northeast Asia

The Living Past in the Present and the Future

First presented at a two-day intensive workshop held in 2019 at York University with the theme of ‘The Living Past: Disaster, Trauma and Visual Art in Northeast Asia’, this Special Issue explores historical, social and environmental catastrophes and traumas in Japan, Korea and Vietnam during ‘the visual age’. These traumas derive from the Asia–Pacific War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Fukushima disaster and other historical disasters. While countries in the region are witnessing ever-growing interactions in recent years, there has been little attempt to analyse visual works on these manmade and natural disasters and their traumatic consequences. By critically engaging with the artistic and communicative aspects of traditional and modern visual media (such as painting, cartooning, photography, film and sculpture), the collection seeks to provide a transnational perspective on, and broader understanding of, the complexity and the processes of witnessing and remembering the traumas that have been caused by historical injustices.

By ‘historical injustices’, we are referring to those that stem from interstate crimes committed during times of Japanese colonisation, military expansionism, war and various forms of severe domestic political repression; the state’s negligence of its citizens’ health and safety hazards caused by militarised violence and state-led economic development; and the forced and voluntary displacement of people from their homes due to the state’s failure to secure human rights and citizenship for its people. While numerous forms of historical injustice remain unresolved and have spawned political controversy, public debate and scholarly inquiry, violent manifestations of injustice have persisted in the contexts of social and environmental disasters as well as ethnic nationalism and imperialism. The Ukraine–Russia conflict that began in early 2022, for instance, has had horrifying consequences such as massive civilian casualties, child victims, refugees, and the possible spread of radioactive material as Russian troops have attacked facilities adjacent to nuclear reactors.

The essays in this Special Issue engage with the individual and collective efforts by artists and citizens to witness, identify and remember historical and ongoing violence and injustice through visual means. By recognising the emergence of socially engaged movements as a significant development in the field of visual culture, the essays seek to answer the following questions: How do artists and other cultural producers participate in coming to terms with past and present wrongs by using visual media? How do they reframe social and historical problems and challenge the notions of witnessing and remembering? How do visual media render traumas that are often unpresentable and inexpressible? What are the possibilities and/or limits of visual art and media in address-ing the sources and consequences of traumatic events? And how do people imagine the future as a way of maintaining ‘hope’ after catastrophes?

In the last decade, scholarly discussions of the past and present have been carried out in Northeast Asia with a focus on historical incidents, memory, responsibility, apology and reconciliation. Historians (e.g., Kim, 2018; Shin et al., 2015; Soh, 2020; Yang, 2020; Zwigenberg, 2014) and anthropologists (e.g., Kwon, 2010; 2013) have been most prominent in these discussions, which have gradually expanded to other fields and been examined from comparative, interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives. This has enhanced our understanding that historical and environmental disasters and their subsequent impacts on people’s lives are closely tied to global culture and politics. The growth of civil society in Northeast Asia has also contributed to the expansion of these discussions to the general public, which has often resulted in the establishment of collaborative networks among citizens. The increase in cultural interactions within the region has also intensified the intimacy between them, which is especially evident in the interregional consumption and coproduction of the visually oriented forms of popular culture such as Japanese manga and anime and Korean TV dramas and pop music.

However, the historical, economic and cultural connections within Northeast Asia are far deeper and more complicated than the mainstream media’s selective and often celebratory representation of the interregional consumption of popular culture and economic relations shows. On the one hand, the region’s shared experience of the violent tide of colonialism and the Cold War with their colossal destruction of human life and the environment has left indelible traumas on many. These traumas include the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the neglect of people who were wounded and have been displaced, such as Japanese war veterans and Koreans living in Japan. On the other hand, the developmental state model as well as the rapid spread of neoliberalism in the region has not only sharpened the economic gap between the poor and the rich but also engendered the destruction of living environments, as seen in the case of the Fukushima disaster. In sum, the precariousness of the socioeconomic conditions being experienced by people in the region is closely related to the modern shared history of these countries. Political responsibility for specific disasters is often shared by more than one nation, as the civilian victims of the Korean War and the Vietnam War demonstrate: the US, South Korea and North Korea are mainly responsible for the colossal loss of human life that has yet to be fully explained. In this sense, the past lives in the present and the future. It evokes and will continue to evoke the traumas that reshape the identity and subjectivity of people.

Witnessing and Remembering Trauma in the Visual Age

Yoav Di-Capua defines trauma as ‘a chronic inability to access and process catastrophic events, that is, systematic and haunting blockage of memory formation and reclamation of past experiences’ (2015, 1). The inability to access and reclaim the traumatic past is a psychological symptom that is often conditioned by the socio-political circumstances that follow an event. As many cases of female victims of rape and sexual slavery demonstrate, victims are pressured to be silent about their traumatic experience because female sexuality is controlled by the discursive power that makes them feel ashamed of the experience, or pressures them to be quiet for political control and economic gain (Lee, 2018; Yang, 2008). The ‘blockage’, in other words, is rooted in society’s shared history that must be confronted first in the present to deal with trauma properly.

In the last few decades, trauma studies, which used to centre on the horrifying experiences of Holocaust survivors and the mental health of the US veterans of the Vietnam War, has expanded to consider the victims of historical, social and environmental disasters in various parts of the world. And scholars of trauma have taken interdisciplinary, interpersonal and intercultural approaches to trauma by incorporating psychiatric work with critical theory (Caruth, 1995; 1996) and investigating the effects of testimony with the goal of reducing trauma (Felman & Laub, 1992). These scholars have tried to maintain a productive and effective distance between the victim and his/her observer (LaCapra, 1996), problematise the representation of trauma in the hegemonic mass media (Butler, 2004), and examine trans-Asian experiences of psychological trauma (Micale & Pols, 2021). Representation of trauma in visual fields has also gained momentum with the emergence and development of theories about media as well as the availability of new media that inform us of the urgency of catastrophes almost instantly and with intensity and effect (McCosker, 2013).

We are living in ‘the visual age’ in which countless images are produced by traditional and new media every second. Some images disappear from viewers’ memories almost instantly while some leave lasting impressions. Even when visual images of human suffering are represented, not all of them have the equal power of appealing to the public because they produce different effects depending on the positionality of the imagemakers. We know all too well how, for instance, the state-controlled media depict social and environmental disasters differently from the way civic organisations do. As Judith Butler notes, the pain of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack receives a great deal of coverage in the US mass media while America’s acts of violence in other countries are represented as morally justified, which reduces human suffering to the mere problem of national defence (2004, 6). In other words, trauma is not just a clinical term for a psychological symptom but also a politically charged state of mind of people whose individual experiences cannot be separated from their political conditions.

In witnessing human disasters and their subsequent traumas, it is crucial to identify the channel of representation to see these events outside their ideologically framed images, which often become exclusive in the name of inclusiveness. Roland Bleiker points out that ‘overtly committed art forms often do no more than promote a particular position’ (2009, 8), thus diminishing the potential of art that could reshape problematic political practices and embrace multiple positions. A democratic position of art-making does not always produce democratic effects, of course. But without it, we may run the risk of limiting the possibility of art to mere propaganda or utility.

It is a mistake to think that events being witnessed must come through objective, rational and scientific lenses such as documentary evidence, photographs and scientific reports. Often, however, the process of witnessing involves human emotions at different levels. The problem of emotion is a tricky one. On the one hand, eliciting emotional responses can be politically calculated, such as the overemphasis in official histories on the sacrifice of national heroes and heroines, whose bodily and mental sufferings are to be shared with the entire national community. On the other hand, without evoking an emotional response, aesthetic representations of individual trauma do not produce the effects that artworks and their producers envisioned, which is to reclaim the past to better secure human rights and dignity. What is at stake here, however, is the feeling of relatedness that can be shared universally, which invokes a sense of justice for the marginalised. The feeling of relatedness is fundamentally a political one: making one’s emotional recollection of traumatic experience of historical and social injustice public becomes ‘legitimate’ only in the context of challenging such injustice (Herman, 2015, 9). Publicly engaged art is thus political not only because it thrusts its subject matter, whether individual or collective, into the public domain, but also because it shares a sense of justice with the audience through aesthetic means (Rancière, 2004).

In debates about visual representations of traumatic events, the concept of witnessing is expanded. Beyond its traditionally defined meaning as seeing something at the time when it happened, witnessing is a practice of communication in which the viewer becomes a witness to the witness (Guerin & Halla, 2007; Lindroos & Moller, 2017). In particular, most people bear witness to historical injustices through mediated representations. Visual representations allow those who did not directly experience traumatic events to participate in the act of witnessing. This form of mediated witnessing is the basis of the collective cultural memory of historical and social traumas.

The notion of witnessing leads to discussion of memory, which has become a site of many intersecting issues. The attention to memory is associated with the fragility, erosion and demise of memory in contemporary social life. We are, however, witnessing an unprecedented mobilisation of memory and public engagement: memory is taking on more complex forms. Given the absence and the prominence of memory in public life, we seek to understand ‘memory’s activities in the present’ by examining historically specific workings of remembering and forgetting in which each is articulated in the other (Radstone & Schwarz, 2010, 1–4). Like mediated witnessing, memory is transmitted to other generations after traumatic events. Post-memory, as Marianne Hirsch (2012) notes, is secondary and retrospective, but it is so vividly and deeply ‘remembered’ by means of representations that it constitutes a distinctive memory on the part of later generations. In the process of transmission, visual media have the capacity to make the effects of historical events continue into the present, and can also affiliate people into transgenerational and transnational remembering or forgetting.

Visual Representation of Disaster in Northeast Asia

With its close attention to the legacy of colonialism and imperialism in postcolonial and postwar Northeast Asia, this issue is a collaborative attempt by scholars of visual arts, cultural history and literature to explore the symbolic and materialistic meanings and effects of visual art and media in addressing urgent issues in the lives of many people in the region. Its first goal is to explore the context in which art-makers are positioned, and to discuss how their memory and post-memory of disasters shape their works. Second, it seeks to identify the potential and limits of visual art to witness and remember physical and psychological trauma caused by disaster. The third goal is to explore ethical concerns surrounding the visual representation of disasters and victims. And lastly, it seeks to understand how these artworks are grounded in the shared history of Northeast Asia.

Specific contributions examine: the visual witnessing of traumatic events in the case of civilian massacres committed by the state during the Korean War, as portrayed in paintings of the grievous deaths of unknown victims (Kal, 2022); the transnational politics of apology associated with Koreans’ involvement in the Vietnam War, as embodied in the work of South Korean artists (Kwon, 2022); the conflicting and contradictory Japanese memories of the war and defeat, as seen in cartoons of disabled veterans (Osenton, 2022); the (im)possibilities of imagining the future, as seen in visual and literary texts following the Fukushima disaster in Japan (Otsuki, 2022); and the silenced trauma of Korean residents in Japan and in North Korea due to the ideological division and their multiple displacements, as depicted in films about these Koreans (Rhee, 2022).

Hong Kal examines paintings of the Korean War by artists who are post-generational (i.e., those born during or after the war). In doing so she focuses on three artists – Suh Yongsun, Kang Yo-bae and Jeon Seung-il – who visualise mass killings of unknown civilians at the hands of the state before and during the Korean War. These artists have produced paintings of traumatic events from their personal, familial, communal and collective memories. Their images of wrongful deaths testify to past atrocities. The visual testimonies not only reveal known wrongdoings but bring them into the present and open up a space for viewers to participate in acts of witnessing. The process of visually mediated witnessing is crucial for justice to be realised, especially when victims could not survive and tell their stories. The paintings engage in ethical witnessing, which involves asking what was done to victims and why it happened. In the portrayals of wrongful deaths expressed in critical, imaginative and affective modes, the paintings further suggest that the meaning of truth needs to be expanded so that it is seen as one aspect of truthfulness. This can overcome a constraint faced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Korea (2005–2010), the official investigatory body that left many questions and tasks unaddressed.

Vicki Seong-yeon Kwon addresses the urgency of deconstructing the official history of war in South Korea. She explains how the collective memory of the Vietnam War as a ‘heroic war’ in the national fight against communism and war veterans’ contribution to the South Korean economy has been challenged since 1999, when war crimes committed by Korean soldiers were problematised by journalists, activists and artists. The Korean troops’ atrocities, including civilian massacres, sexual violence and the burning of households, were revealed through photographic evidence and interviews with survivors. Kwon considers this shifting moment of historical memory of the Vietnam War by examining video works and a statue that were created as acts of apology. In her detailed analysis of the process of art-making as well as the audience’s responses, however, Kwon critiques how they run the risk of undermining the position of the victims – and, more specifically, rape victims. Kwon argues that even if the intentions of apologies for past wrongs are innocuous, they cannot be fully recognised as apologies when they fail to meet the victims’ demands and consider their social circumstances.

Whereas Kal and Kwon discuss the reconstruction of memory of war, Sara Osenton examines how war veterans represented themselves to reconstruct their identity in postwar Japan. Osenton examines comic strips and visual images that appeared in the monthly magazine Disabled Veterans Monthly Gazette (Nisshō Gekkan) to see how veterans tried to negotiate the acceptance and disavowal of their wounded bodies in postwar Japan. Established by wounded Japanese war veterans themselves, the magazine aimed to create a collective force for maimed veterans in readjusting to society. However, as Osenton’s analysis of the comic strips and photographic images of the veterans demonstrates, society’s marginalisation of the veterans devalued them: their disabled bodies challenged the state’s promotion of Japan’s economic and social recovery that was strongly associated with healthy and productive bodies. The comic strips in particular show that the evidence of the war inscribed in the veterans’ maimed bodies became a contested site of ‘recovery’ and that veterans’ semi-autobiographical narrative of their lives in these images raised the question of human dignity in commemorating the war.

The trauma of war, especially the memory of the atomic bombing of Japan, cannot be separated from the current-day experience of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Although initiated by a tsunami, the Fukushima disaster has continued to affect many people due to the government’s questionable handling of disaster relief and its policy on nuclear technology. Tomoe Otsuki explores how Japan’s future has been depicted or represented in post-3/11 art and literature via the deployment of the figure of the child. Her analysis focuses on the statue called The Sun Child created by Yanobe Kenji in 2012, and the novel The Emissary written by Tawada Yoko in 2014. Both Yanobe and Tawada respond to the Fukushima nuclear disaster by using the figure of the child as a means of imagining and representing a future of Japan in the aftermath of environmental crisis. By paying close attention to starkly different kinds of futurity represented in the two texts, Otsuki argues that The Sun Child reiterates the developmentalist ideology of futurity, whereas The Emissary provides an alternative futurity and new ways of living in the era of Anthropocene.

Jooyeon Rhee considers the potential of film to witness historical disasters in her examination of the silenced history of Korean residents in Japan who were repatriated to their ‘homeland’ (i.e., North Korea). The stories of the approximately 94,000 Korean returnees to North Korea between 1959 and 1984 are largely unknown due to the tightly controlled information about their lives in North Korea and the complex geopolitical relationships between South Korea, North Korea and Japan. The repatriates’ and their families’ experiences of painful separation and multiple displacements are a historical disaster born out of Japanese colonialism and the Cold War. While it is still extremely challenging to self-represent their experience of displacement and separation, Yang Yonghi’s autobiographical films Dear Pyongyang (2006), Sona, the Other Myself (2009) and Our Homeland (2012) visualise the silenced suffering of these people. In a poignant handling of space, objects and sound that articulates North Koreans’ affective reaction to ‘homeland’, Yang thus makes two important contributions to our understanding of this historical disaster: her films highlight the ambiguity of ‘homeland’ for the repatriates, while also functioning as a cinematic testimony to the silenced suffering of the repatriates and their families.

The five essays presented in this Special Issue provide refreshing insights into the complexity of witnessing and remembering trauma caused by historical and environmental disasters through their critical engagement with traditional and modern visual media. The concise and succinct provision of the context of each subject and critical readings of visual works and media in this collection will be welcomed by students and scholars working in the fields of Asian history, visual art and culture, and memory studies. It will also appeal to scholars of media studies whose primary interests lie in historical memory, state violence, trauma, reconciliation and socially engaged art.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2018-OLU-2250001).