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WORK TITLE: White Elephant
WORK NOTES: trans by Juliet Winters Carpenter
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1940
WEBSITE: http://makoidemitsu.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Japanese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mako_Idemitsu * http://makoidemitsu.com/?lang=en * https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/mako-idemitsu * https://d1lfxha3ugu3d4.cloudfront.net/fab/cvs/290.pdf
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1940; married; husband’s name Sam Francis (abstract painter); children: sons Osamu and Shingo.
EDUCATION:Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, 1962; Columbia University, 1964.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Experimental video art and film artist.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Born in Tokyo, Japan, into the wealthy family of petroleum executive and art collector Sazo Idemitsu, Mako Idemitsu is an artist, filmmaker, and novelist. She was raised in a typical Japanese male-dominant, patriarchal family. In 1962 she moved to the United States, married abstract expressionist painter Sam Francis, and had two children. Then her father disowned her. In conflict with her identity as a wife and mother, she began filmmaking with an eight-millimeter camera. She made experimental feminist films that explored women’s issues and Japanese cultural influences.
One of Idemitsu’s first films was the imagery of the Womanhouse, started by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, that she filmed in 1972. In 1973 she moved back to Japan. She developed a unique film technique that she called the Mako style, in which a person’s inner world is projected on a small monitor installed in a larger screen. Her work reflects Asian and American views toward gender roles and on the nature of personal identity and self in society. Idemitsu’s work is featured in major museums worldwide and is included in New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. She has participated in nearly a hundred video art festivals and art installations around the world, including Spain, Taiwan, Germany, United States, Finland, and Switzerland.
In 2016 Idemitsu published her debut novel, the autobiographical White Elephant, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. The story follows Japanese sisters, headstrong Hiroko and young Sakiko, who move to the United States in the 1960s. Their father, the self-made wealthy businessman Morimasa Morimoto, demands excellence and adherence to the family legacy. Introverted and needy Sakiko heads to San Francisco, California, meets white painter Paul, becomes pregnant, and wants an abortion, but Paul says no. She hastily marries him yet is bored with her marriage. At least she finally feels needed taking care of the baby. Fearing her family’s disgrace, she is afraid to tell them that she married a white man. Another sister who stayed in Japan finds out about the situation and tells Sakiko that their mother has been driven to drink.
Meanwhile Hiroko, always yearning for her father’s approval, goes to New York hoping for a career as a famous artist. As Sakiko’s marriage becomes strained, and Paul has an affair with Hiroko, Hiroko’s failure in business is a stain on her family’s honor. Writing in Kirkus Reviews Online, a contributor noted that Paul’s character is amorphous: “Neither Sakiko nor the reader can tell if he is a womanizer with sensitive pretensions or someone more complex. Although [the book] ends on a half-heartedly optimistic note, the novel leaves a bitter aftertaste of unresolved anger.”
Idemitsu describes the sisters’ lives as the generation that survived World War II, how they make sense of the world, and the drastically different cultural expectations of women in America and Japan. While the subject matter is compelling and the characters’ experiences are rich, “Unfortunately, the writing itself is stilted, and it’s difficult to tell what’s awkward because of the translation and what’s simply awkward,” according to a writer in Publishers Weekly.
World Literature Today reviewer Suzanne Kamata declared: “The novel has virtually no plot, and the point of view changes frequently. Occasionally, the otherwise straightforward narrative becomes overly self-conscious, as in flashbacks relating memories of conversations overheard from within the womb.” Nevertheless, according to Kamata, the collage-effect is a refreshing and frank portrait of privileged Japanese women. On the Full Stop Web site, Sarah Neilson commented: “Sympathy for the characters drives the prose more often and more effectively than its lyricism. Though at its strongest points, it feels like reading an experimental film: unpredictable images filling up the space in front of you, washing over you in the dark and peeling back the lens.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 8, 2016, review of White Elephant, p. 41.
World Literature Today, March/April 2017, Suzanne Kamata, review of White Elephant.
ONLINE
Full Stop, http://www.full-stop.net/ (December 22, 2016), Sarah Neilson, review of White Elephant.
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (July 20, 2016), review of White Elephant.
Mako Idemitsu Home Page, http://makoidemitsu.com (May 17, 2017), author profile.*
Mako Idemitsu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Mako Idemitsu
Born 1940
Tokyo, Japan
Occupation Visual Image Creator
Years active 1974 – present
Website Official site
Mako Idemitsu (出光 真子 Idemitsu Mako?, born 1940, Tokyo, Japan) is an experimental video art and film artist.[1]
Contents
1 Life and family
2 Work
2.1 Influence of technology
2.2 Themes
3 References
4 External links
Life and family
Mako Idemitsu was born in Ohta-ku, Japan and is the daughter of Japanese businessman and art collector Sazō Idemitsu, founder of Idemitsu Kosan. Through her father's collecting Mako was introduced to Sam Francis and later moved into his California home in the early 1960s[2] before becoming his fourth wife in 1966. Mako was subsequently disinherited and disowned by her father.[3] Idemitsu has two sons from her marriage with Francis, Osamu and Shingo. It was as a young mother that she became a film and later video artist.
She was to find that even among the hippies and the liberated counterculture of the 1960s in California, she was to experience male chauvinism, different in nature from that of her homeland, but chauvinism nonetheless.[4] It was whilst searching for a role outside that of wife and mother, which she had fallen into, that she by impulse bought a Super 8 film camera and began her career as a film artist.
Mako Idemitsu returned to Japan with Francis and her sons in 1973, originally planning to stay in Japan for a year. In 1974 when Francis returned to the United States, Mako Idemitsu chose to remain in Japan and the couple would later divorce, with Francis marrying for a fifth time in 1985.
On the subject of her father, Mako Idemitsu said that he had a Confucian attitude towards women, and embraced a patriarchal view of the role of men and women that led to the belittling of his wife and daughters. She also said that he acted to deny them their individuality and independence.
Work
Influence of technology
In the early 1970s, Mako Idemitsu was one of the pioneers of video art. The technical limitations of the equipment at the time had an influence on the direction of her work. Idemitsu first started to work in the United States initially with 8 mm film and then moving onto 16 mm film. She became interested in capturing the mood, quality and interplay of light and shadow.[4] When she switched to working with video, the inability of the video cameras of the time to capture the quality of light, led to the increasing use of narrative in her work.[4] On her return to Japan the cumbersomeness of the equipment and an inability to easily film outdoors led to her use of indoor one camera setups.[4]
Themes
In Asian cultures, women were traditionally defined by their relations, so much so that many were never referred to by their own names but as their father's daughters, their husband's wives, or as their son's mothers. Defined as feminist, Mako Idemitsu's work is a reflection not just on gender roles, but also on the nature of personal identity and self in society.
Mako Idemitsu's first films were home movies of her sons and of family life. This domestic setting, with the action revolving around family interactions, remains the main theme of her films.[2]
In her work a recurring motif is that of a television set featuring a disembodied torso, head or even just an eye. These disembodied characters, usually female, may act indifferently to her protagonists or may even actively oppresses them, and can be interpreted both at face value as the mother, daughter, or wife of the protagonist, or as a representation of their inner mind. For example, in Idemitsu's Great Mother trilogy, in as much as they are presented as the protagonist's mothers, these disembodied women also represent the super-ego[5] of the protagonist and are a personification of a lifetime of learned cultural values and societal norms, and are thus an internalized ideal from which the protagonist cannot escape.
Mako Idemitsu
Chronology
1940 Born in Tokyo, Japan
1958-62 Waseda University, Tokyo
1963-64 Columbia University, New York
1965-1973 Lived in California
-Presently living in Tokyo, Japan
Solo Exhibitions
2013 “Mako Idemitsu talk and video”, Cinema Paradise KAMATA, Tokyo
2009 “Mako Idemitsu talk and video “, Megro City Center, Tokyo
“PLUS QUE PARFAIT”, Yokohama Creative City Center, Kanagawa, Japan
2007 “Arts and Gender”, Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan
2003 “What a Woman Made”, Phaidros Cafe, Tokyo
2002 Image & Gender The world of Mako Idemitsu, Waseda University, Tokyo
”Mako Idemitsu Exhibition”, Toki Art Space & Image Forum, Tokyo
2001 “FILM&VIDEO ANTHOLOGY 2001 vol.1 Mako Idemitsu” Eizo Hall, Kyoto Zokei University
“I Create-I Create Myself” , Fukuoka City Public Laibrary, Fukuoka
“Female figure through video, an obsession for a female director” Chiba Civic Women’s Center, Chiba
2000 “I Create-I Create Myself”, Kobe Art Village Center, Kobe & The Third Gallery Aya, Osaka
1998 Tokyo Women’s Plaza, Tokyo
1997 Uplink Factory, Tokyo
1993 The City Museum of Takamatsu, Takamatsu, Japan (film & video)
EKIMAE Theater, Tokyo (film & video)
1992 Tokyo-to Women Information Center, Tokyo
1990 Image Forum, Tokyo
1988 “From Geisha to Samurai” The Academy of Art, Honolulu, USA
1986 Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition (LACE), Los Angeles, USA
“VIDEO VIEW POINTS” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Hallwalls, Buffalo, USA
Filmmakers, Pittsburgh, USA
1984 Image Forum, Tokyo
1983 Los Angeles Institue of Contemporary Art (LAICA), Los Angeles, USA
1982 Video Gallery SCAN, Tokyo
1980 Gallery Love Collection, Nagoya, Japan
1979 Shirakaba Gallery, Tokyo
1978 Image Forum, Tokyo
1977 Shirakaba Gallery, Tokyo
1975 Tenjosajiki, Tokyo
1974 Nirenoki Gallery, Tokyo
Tenjosajiki, Tokyo
Up
Group Exhibitions
2014 MOMAT Collection, The Nation Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan
2013 Women Artists “Step out; seven women artists” Takaoka Prefectural Museum, Takaoka, Japan
“Love 展” Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
” Women In-Between : Asian Women Artists 1984-2012 ” Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan & Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Mie, Japan
2012 ” Women In-Between : Asian Women Artists 1984-2012 ” Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan & Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan
” Scent of Mothers Love ” Theater at Ewha Womans University Museum, Seoul, Korea
” 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival” Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
” Nostalgia : East Asia Contemporary Art Exhibition” Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai CHINA
” Ourselves” Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
2011 ” Exchange and Evolution : Worldwide Video Long Beach 1974-1999″ The Long Beach Museum of Art (LBMA) CA USA
” The Second Nakanoshima Film Theater : Japanese Video Art -1980 ” The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan
2010 ” Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen” The Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA
” THE WORK OF ELEVEN WOMEN ARTISTS FEATURED IN MODERN WOMEN: SINGLE CHANNEL” The Museum of Modern Art, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, NY, USA
2009 ” CINÉMA DU RÉEL 2009 ” 31e FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DE FILMS DOCUMENTAIRES, The Centre Pompidou, Paris Frence
” Here Is Every. Four Decades of Contemporary Art” The Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA
“Vital Signals : Japanese and American Video Art from the 1960s and 70s.” Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan & Houston Center for Photography, TX, USA & Los Angeles County Museum of Art – LACMA, CA, USA & Japan Society, New York, NY, USA
2008 ” VIDEOFORMES” 23rd New Media & video Art Festival Clermont-Ferrand 2008, Clermont-Ferrand, Frence
” WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution”, Vancouver Art Gallery, in Vancouver, B.C., Canada
2007 ” WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution”, MOCA The Museum of Contemporary Art
The Geffen Contemporary , Los Angeles , California, USA & The National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washinton D.C., USA & P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, in Long island City, NY, USA & Vancouver Art Gallery, in Vancouver, B.C., Canada
2005 “mot annual 2005 – life actually”, Museum Contemporary Tokyo of Art
2004 “Modern Means”, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
“Borderline Cases – Women on the Borderlines”, Gallery A.R.T. Tokyo
“Japanese Experimental Film & Video”, University of California, Irvine, USA
2002 Imagination &Create III: The Family, Kasugai City Library, Culture and Art Center, Kasugai
“Japan Experimental Film ’50s -’70”, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
The Early Works of Video Art in Japan, ISEA 2002, Nagoya
The 1st Women Make Sister Waves Film & Video Festival in Osaka, Toyonaka Step Hall, Osaka
2001 “Film & Video Anthology 2001 vol.1” Kyotozokei Art College Hall, Kyoto
Osaka Film Festival 2001 J-Ladies, Osaka
The 14th Tokyo International Woman’s Film Festival, Tokyo Women’s Plaza, Tokyo
B-semi Weekend Session 2001, B-semi Schooling System
「Chiba City Woman Center Festival, Chiba
2000 Matsudai Film Festival 2000, Niigata
WAN ACT 2, Yokohama Women’s Forum, Yokohama
Project MAO+, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
Good-bye Yotsuya! The Late of 1970s, Image Forum, Tokyo
1997 “Japan Today” MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Republic of Austria
“The 1st Women’s Film Festival in Seoul” Seoul, Korea (film)
“Video Art: The First 25 Years, Images and Technology Gallery Exhibition” Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo (video) & Articule Gallery in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (video) & Fragile Electrons, Ottawa, Canada (video)
1996 “Japan Today”, Kunstmes Hus, Oslo, Norway
“The KIJKHUIS World-wide Video Festival”, Holland (video)
“Image Forum Festival”, Tokyo, Yokohama, Ohsaka, Japan (video)
“Japan Today”, Waino Aaltonen Museum of Arts, Turk, Finland
“17th Video Art Festival de Locarno”, Locarno, Switzerland (video)
“The First Feminist Film Festival”, Taipei, Taiwan
Japan Today, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden
1995 “Japan Today”, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Strandvel, Denmark (video)
Video Art 1970, Saitama-kenritsu Museum of Modern Art, Urawa, Japan (video)
1994 Japanese Art After 1945, The Yokohama Museum, Yokohama, Japan (video)
Film and Video Forum Kanagawa Women’s Center, Kanagawa
Oberhusen Short Film Festival, Otaierie Shloss, Oberhusen, Germany (video)
“Women and Art Work” Tokyo
“Gaze of Looking at Ordinarily Life” Yokohama City Museum, Yokohama, Kanagawa
The Women’s International Film Festival, Taipei, Taiwan (video)
“Japanese Experimental Video 1955-1994” Kirin Plaza, Osaka
The 40th Annual Robert Flaherty Seminar, Aurora, New York, USA
1993 “The Image of Family”, The Center of Aichi-ken Cultural Information, Nagoya, Japan (video)
“NIKAF” Pacifico Yokohama, Yokohama
“Politicas de Genero” Generalitat Valenciana, Valenciana, Spain (video)
“Winds of the Media from Asia” Fukui, Japan (video)
“The First Generation, Women and Video 1970-75 ” Independent Curators New York, USA & Shared Techlines Art Space, New Zealand (video)
Identity and Home, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (video)
Women and Media Goethe Institut, Tokyo
1992 The Image Women Create, Yokohama Women’s Forum, Yokohama, Japan (video)
“Personal Film by Women” Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Hokkaido
“Japan: Outside/ Insaide/ In Between” Artist Space, New York, USA
Video, The New World – The Possibility of the Media, O Museum, Tokyo (video)
Adam & Eve, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Japan (video)
Centre Audivisuel Simone de Beauvoir International Festival Video and Films, Paris, France (video)
1991 “Selection from the Circulative Video Library” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
“Reframing the Family” Artist Space, New York USA
“Selection from the Circulative Video Library”, La Mondiale de Films et Videos, Quebec, Canada (video)
“Consumer Tools: Personal Visions”, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (video)
“4′ Semaine International de Video”, Saint-Gervais, Geneva, Switzerland (video)
1990-1993 Private Visions (Japanese Video Art in the 1980’s)
1990 “MYTH”, Museum of Modern Art, New York (video)
“Asian American International Video Festival” New York, USA
The Montreal International Festival of Films and Videos by Women, Montreal, Canada (video)
“Tendances Multiples”, The Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (video)
“Europe Media Art Festival”, Osnabruck, Germany (video)
“Video & Talk” Yokohama Women’s Forum, Yokohama
‘The “Mothers” Show’, Ikon Gallery, Birmington, England (video)
“International Videoart Festival in Malaysia” Malaysia
“The First Moving Image Biennial” National Art Museum, Madrid, Spain
“The 8th Fotoptica International Video Festival”, Museu da Image Do Som, Sao Paulo, Brazil (video)
1989 Media Art Museum, Tokyo
Image Forum Festival, Tokyo (video)
The 4th Modern Art Today, Toyama, Japan (video)
The 3rd Fukui International Video Biennale, Fukui
The KIJKHUIS World-Wide Video Festival, Holland (video)
1988 Fukui International Video 88 Festival, Fukui
Asian American International Video Festival, New York, USA (video)
The 2nd Biennial International Video Art, Colombia
3 Videonale, Bonn, Germany (video)
1987 10th Festival des Filles des Vues, Quebec, Canada (video)
Image Forum Festival, Tokyo
TAMA VIVANT ’87, Seed Hall, Tokyo (video)
The KIJKHUIS World-Wide Video Festival Holland
Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany (video)
The 1997 Art Video Festival, Los Angeles, USA (video)
The Artist for Television, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA (video)
Infermental 7, Buffalo, USA (video)
1986 New Video: JAPAN, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (video)
The Australian Video Festival, Sydney, Australia (video)
The KIJKHUIS World-Wide Video Festival, Holland (video)
Video Cocktail 3, HARA Museum, Tokyo (video)
San Francisco International Video Festival, San Francisco, USA (video)
The 15th International Festival of New Cinema and Video, Montreal, Canada (video)
1985 25 Years of Experimental Film in Japan, The Museum of Modern Art Saitama, Saitama
First International Video Biannual, Vienna, Austria (video)
Continuum ’85, Melbourne, Australia (video)
8th International Film & TV Festival, Salsa, Italy (video)
Japan Avant-garde of the Future, Geneva, Italy (video)
Japanese Experimental Film, USA (film)
2nd Asian Art Show, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan (video)
FUKUI International Video Festival ’85, Fukui, Japan (video)
1984 The Exhibition of the Recent Acquisition, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (video)
Ottawa International Festival of Video Art, SAW Gallery, Ottawa, Canada (video)
Montreal International Video Festival, Montreal, Canada (video)
The 1984 International Video Festival, American Film Institute, Los Angeles, USA (video)
VIDEO, A Retrospective, Long Beach Museum of Art 1974-84, Long Beach, USA (video)
1983 The KIJKHUIS World-Wide Video Festival, Holland
Japanese Video Festival, Milan, Italy (video)
Art and Technology, Toyama, Japan (video)
Video CD83, Yugoslavia
Asian American International Video Festival, New York, USA (video)
1982 The Sydney Biennial, Sydney, Australia (video)
The KIJKHUIS World-Wide Video Festival, Holland (video)
November Steps, Shimin Gallery, Yokohana, Japan (video)
The 2nd Experimental Video Festival, Studio 200, Tokyo
Festival 82, Video Inn, Vancouver, Canada (video)
1981 Female Eizo Artists Special Program, Image Forum, Tokyo
The 1st Experimental Films Festival, Studio 200, Tokyo (film)
1980 America Japan Video Art Exhibition, Studio200, Tokyo
The 3rd Tokyo Video Festival, Victor Video Center, Tokyo
The 5th New Work Exhibition, Studio200, Tokyo
The Tokyo Video Festival, Studio 43, Paris, France (video)
1979 The 4th New Work Exhibition, Asahi Seimei Hall, Tokyo
Video from Tokyo, Fukui and Kyoto, The Museum fo Modern Arts, New York, USA (video)
Japan Avant Garde Film Exhibition, The Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (film)
1978 Pan-Conceptual, Tamura Gallery, Tokyo
International Video Festival, Sogetsu-kaikan, Tokyo (video)
Japan Video Art Festival, Center of Art and Communication, Buenos Aires, Argentina (video)
1977 Video in Tokyo, Maki Gallery, Tokyo (video)
8th International Video Festival, Continental Gallery, Lima, Peru (video)
1975 The 3rd New Work Exhibition, Yasuda-seimei Hall, Tokyo (film)
1974 New York Tokyo Video Express, Tenjosajiki, Tokyo (video)
Video Art Exhibition, Pensilvania & Chicago , USA
The 2nd New Work Exhibition, Yasuda-seimei Hall, Tokyo (film)
Up
Installations
2013 “Past Ahead” “Women In-Between : Asian Women Artists 1984-2012 “, Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan & Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Mie, Japan
2012 “Past Ahead” “Women In-Between : Asian Women Artists 1984-2012 “, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan & Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan
2005 “Past Ahead” “mot annual 2005 – life actually”, Museum Contemporary Tokyo of Art
2004 “STILL LIFE” & “Real? Motherhood” : Woman Issue at Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, Haifa, Israel
2002 “Mako Idemitsu Exhibition” Toki Art Space & Image Forum, Tokyo
2000 “STILL LIFE” Kobe Art Village Center, Kobe
“REAL? MOTHERHOOD” The Third Gallery Aya , Osaka
1995 “STILL LIFE” : Idemitsu Mako & Nakatsuji Etsuko Exhibition at Sagacho Exhibit Space, Tokyo
1993 “STILL LIFE” : Sogetsu Exhibition at MET hall, TOBU Ikebukuro store, Tokyo
1987 “…long ago…” : TAMA VIVANT 87 at SEED Hall, Tokyo
1983 “Chiekosan” : The 2nd Contemporary Art Festival ‘Art and Technology’ at The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama
1979 “Norichan” Shirakaba Gallery, Tokyo
1977 “Women” Shirakaba Gallery, Tokyo
1976 “Grand Mother, Mother, Dauther” Seibu Department, Tokyo
Permanent Collection
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
The Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Ottawa National Gallery, Ottawa, Canada
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, USA
Genova University, Genova, Italy
Mori Art Museum, Japan
Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Japan
Miyagi Kenritsu Museum, Miyagi, Japan
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan
Fukuyama Museum, Fukuoka, Japan
Nagoya-shi Museum, Nagoya, Japan
Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan
Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
Kobe Design University, Kobe, Japan
Toyama Kenritsu Museum, Toyama, Japan
Tokushimaken Bunkanomori,Tokushima, Japan
Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan
Suny Stonybrook, New York, USA
The Nation Museum of Modern Art, Japan
Ewha Womans University Museum, Seoul, Korea
Awards
Special Prize The 3rd Tokyo Video Festival, Tokyo(1980)
Mention Special du Jury categorie “EXPERIMENTAL” La mondiale de film et videos, Quebec, Canada(1991)
Prix Procirep Section Fiction Festival International de Videos et Films, Centre Audivisuel Simone de Beauvoir, Paris, France(1992)
CV> https://d1lfxha3ugu3d4.cloudfront.net/fab/cvs/290.pdf
Mako Idemitsu
Ohta-ku,
Japan
Born in Tokyo in 1940, Idemitsu grew up in a very old fashioned, male-dominant, typical patriarchal family. This later became the basis of her works, whose main theme is the issues of family oppression against women. She married Sam Francis, an abstract expressionist painter. While they lived in California, she became a mother of two children. Idemitsu began to take the film from the conflict of identity as mother. In 1972 she filmed the Womanhouse started by Judy Chicago and others, in order to create an imagery based on this work. The next year she returned to Japan. After the 1980‘s, Idemitsu‘s videos were well received overseas. Her videos depict explicit feminist issues. She developed a unique technique of her own called the Mako style, where a person‘s inner world is projected on a small monitor installed in a larger screen. Her latest work in the year 2004 is an installation Past Ahead.
Feminist Artist Statement
I imagine that in continuing their creative activities, women have to deal with a variety of problems in their respective fields. What I have experienced is that it is difficult to earn money from a completed work when one is working in the field of film as an art form. Producing a film costs money, and recovering the costs of a project is also difficult. Some people categorically declare, “If it doesn‘t sell, it’s a hobby,” and if something is just a “hobby,” they demand that you give priority to your role as a housewife and a mother. If a person’s name becomes known to the public, then their role can be tolerated in society, but film that is created as art is a low-level pursuit. Then, because it is impossible to know how long the job will take, you have to entrust the care of your children to a person you can completely trust. Not only it is difficult to find someone who isn’t related to you, but it also requires quite a lot of money. Because of this, you have to make an effort every day to make other people realize how serious you are about making your work. In addition, along with maintaining the understanding and cooperation of the man or father who is living with you, it is necessary to remain cautious. It is my feeling that in general it is easier for men to get the understanding and cooperation of women than the other way around. If you are continuing to make work that doesn’t earn money while doing a job that does, the situation becomes even harder. This is because even if you don’t have children, the chores that society has customarily saddled women with are truly as numerous as the stars. When it comes time to make your completed work public, there are other hurdles that await women in a male-dominated society. While waging the battle against society, many women must also fight against the memory, or the enemy, within themselves, of the discipline and teaching they received as children to constantly “act like a girl.” I believe that to continue creating art under these circumstances, it is necessary to work daily to “force yourself into a state of mind in which you must create.”
Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, in an elite and wealthy family, author Mako Idemitsu went to the United States in 1962 where she met and married abstract expressionist painter Sam Francis. While raising two children in California she became disillusioned with the roles of wife and mother and picked up an 8mm camera. As part of a feminist consciousness-raising group she began to make experimental films that explored women’s issues and Japanese cultural influences. Her artistic work is critically acclaimed and featured in museums across the world.
White Elephant
263.32 (Aug. 8, 2016): p41.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
White Elephant
Mako Idemitsu, trans, from the Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Chin Music, $15 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-63405-958-9
In one of Idemitsu's novel's most memorable moments, Hiroko, a Japanese artist living in New York City, wrestles with self-doubt after her father revokes financial support, citing her lack of success. Unable to shake off the accusations of failure, Hiroko is soon "consumed with self-reproach over having let down the father she adored." This struggle, both personal and creative, might have been compelling, particularly because Hiroko is of the generation of Japanese children who survived WWII and then had to make sense of the world in its aftermath. Hiroko also spends years sleeping with her youngest sister's husband, Paul, sabotaging Hiroko's relationship with the only family she had in the U.S. Unfortunately, the writing itself is stilted, and it's difficult to tell what's awkward because of the translation and what's simply awkward. For instance, at one point Sakiko, Hiroko's younger sister, is frustrated when Hiroko calls her, unable to understand the source of Hiroko's bitterness: "What ailed Hiroko anyway?" Another time, when Hiroko has taken a sleeping pill after waiting up for Paul to visit, she wakes up to find that though he's in her bed, he's no longer interested: "The Hiroko of her head felt contempt for the Hiroko thus rejected." The prose follows a strict "tell, don't show" formula, which might have even been an interesting experiment were the writing itself not so diffuse. Though the experiences are rich, the novel remains unwieldy. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"White Elephant." Publishers Weekly, 8 Aug. 2016, p. 41. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460900346&it=r&asid=5602f11997271198c6805d33ec515de7. Accessed 26 Mar. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460900346
World Literature Today. Mar/Apr2017, p79-80. 2p. 1
Suzanne Kamata,
Section:
In Every Issue
Mako Idemitsu. White Elephant. Trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter. Seattle. Chin Music Press. 2016. 220 pages. 37
Set in the 1960s, White Elephant follows the lives of sisters Hiroko and Sakiko, two of the four daughters of Japanese business magnate Morimasa Morimoto and his distant, unhappy wife, Sadako. From an early age, the sisters are taught that their duty in life is to "devote themselves to [their father] however they could, each in her own way."
The two middle sisters, Eiko and Fusako, marry men of their father's choosing. However, both firstborn Hiroko and Sakiko, the youngest, leave postwar Japan to live in the United States. Hiroko goes to New York, where she is expected to achieve success as an artist, with her father's blessing and financial support. Sakiko, who wants to be free of her conservative family, convinces her father that she wants to see the country that is home to the banks backing his business. Once in San Francisco, however, she begins hanging out with a group of artists. She winds up pregnant and reluctantly marries Paul, the baby's father. Because she's afraid to approach her imposing father directly, she asks a female Japanese friend to tell him of her marriage to a white artist. The friend must first make an appointment to convey the news. Later, she receives a letter from Fusako telling her that she has disgraced the family and driven their mother to drink. Fusako writes, "My own personal feeling is that you should apologize by taking your life."
Meanwhile, in America, Sakiko confronts racism, sexism, and her own ambivalence regarding motherhood, while the lonely but haughty Hiroko falls into inappropriate relationships with white American men and struggles as an artist. Unable to fulfill her father's ambitions for her, she sees herself as a white elephant: "something burdensome, a costly encumbrance."
The novel has virtually no plot, and the point of view changes frequently. Occasionally, the otherwise straightforward narrative becomes overly self-conscious, as in flashbacks relating memories of conversations overheard from within the womb. Overall, however, the collage-effect results in a refreshingly frank portrait of these materially privileged Japanese women. Although the lives of the fictional sisters seem, at times, unbearably bleak, it's consoling to know that the real-life Mako Idemitsu, daughter of Japanese petroleum executive Sazo Idemitsu, went on to become a successful author and video artist.
WHITE ELEPHANT
by Mako Idemitsu, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Idemitsu has written an autobiographical first novel about a young Japanese woman who comes to America to study and stays to marry, raise a child, and find her identity as a woman caught between two cultures.
The four daughters of extremely wealthy Japanese businessman Morimasa Morimoto grow up believing it is “their duty to devote themselves to him” although he and his wife, Sadako, pay them little attention. The eldest, smartest daughter, Hiroko, moves to New York promising to become a successful artist. The second and third daughters, sweet, pretty Eiko and the usually hostile Fusako, marry to please their father. While Idemitsu moves frequently into flashbacks to flesh out the stories of the individual Morimoto women and show the ways in which each is emotionally damaged, the novel primarily focuses on the evolution of introverted youngest daughter Sakiko. While attending college at UCLA in 1964, she meets Paul, an artist and teacher. When she becomes pregnant, she reluctantly has the baby to keep Paul in her life although she fears her family’s reaction. She marries Paul in a passive trance before the baby’s birth. Her sisters in Japan voice their disapproval, her mother doesn’t respond at all, but her father sends cash. Having a baby, Sakiko feels needed for the first time. She tries to navigate the seemingly hostile white American world while remembering various painful moments from her Japanese childhood, including her mother’s neglect, Fusako’s cruelty, and the instance of physical assault every coming-of-age story seems to require lately. Gradually she grows more independent (although family money means she's never at financial risk). Meanwhile, Paul’s character remains amorphous. He pursues an affair with Sakiko’s sister Hiroko, perhaps the novel’s most fragile character, whose desire to please her father overwhelms whatever artistic talent she may have. Yet he genuinely seems to care for Sakiko and wants her to grow stronger, even admonishing her to learn to say “no.” Neither Sakiko nor the reader can tell if he is a womanizer with sensitive pretensions or someone more complex.
Although it ends on a half-heartedly optimistic note, the novel leaves a bitter aftertaste of unresolved anger.
Pub Date: Oct. 11th, 2016
Page count: 224pp
Publisher: Chin Music Press
Review Posted Online: July 20th, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1st, 2016
Sarah Neilson
INT. READER’S HEAD — AFTERNOON
Someone, it could have been you but in this case it’s me, opens up a book. She, in this case, I, starts to read Mako Idemitsu’s White Elephant.
Reader’s Head is an active place, not a stationary one, and this place is searching for several things: more information about the filmmaker-turned author Mako Idemitsu, a Japanese feminist from an aristocratic family, the poetic and emotionally cutting language that is, as far as I can tell, characteristic of Japanese literature, and, as relief, as education, an experience inside a few different character’s heads: perhaps that of the author’s alter-ego Sakiko, or her abrasive sister Hiroku, or the complicated if understated young mind of Sakiko’s son, Hiro.
BOOK waits patiently as words soak inside Reader’s head.
EXT. LIVING ROOM — CONTINUOUS
READER’S HEAD
Wait.
BOOK
What?
READER’S HEAD
This wasn’t — I — I mean — I — I was supposed to be learning something about a culture I don’t know and a place I don’t know and a time period I don’t know.
BOOK
The 70’s weren’t that long ago. You know from your parents.
READER’S HEAD
But my parents aren’t Japanese. I’m not Japanese. This aristocratic family and their incredible demands and this particular sister’s particular kind of rush to independence should be foreign.
BOOK
Is it not?
READER’S HEAD
It’s Japanese, obviously, but, this character is too close. Too much home. Too much — ugh, if I say she’s too much like me I’ll sound like I don’t know how to read books.
BOOK
Maybe you don’t. Just something to consider.
READER’S HEAD
No but seriously. I’ve never heard this story told.
BOOK
Who are you talking about? The main character, Sakiko? But her family took their aristocracy seriously, Japanese seriously, with demands to keep up at all costs.
READER’S HEAD
I know. That shit’s intense. (A crassly American way to put it, but perhaps appropriate for a setting in San Francisco.)
BOOK
You didn’t come from that kind of serious.
READER’S HEAD
No. Not even a little bit.
BOOK
And you have no problem saying no, unlike Sakiko, who’s introduced in the first chapter with the title “The girl who couldn’t say no.”
READER’S HEAD
Right.
BOOK
And you don’t have a kid, and if you did it would be your choice, not a choice you were forced into because right before you went to the abortion clinic you saw your hippie-husband’s smile and heard him say, ‘you’re gonna have my baby, right?’ and with his imploring voice ringing in your ears you couldn’t say no.
READER’S HEAD
Right.
BOOK
And you don’t feel like you’re two different people, one who’s effusively affectionate and open and confident and one who’s always shaking and nervous and — oh, wait.
READER’S HEAD
. . . Right.
BOOK
You do kinda feel like that, huh?
READER’S HEAD
Kind of, yes.
BOOK
Still. It shouldn’t have been a hard book to get through or a wrenching book to think about. You couldn’t relate to any of the other characters.
READER’S HEAD
UM!!
BOOK
I mean. There’s that sister, Hiroku. She’s a painter, and she moves to New York from Tokyo because her father has given her artistic career his blessing, so she sets herself up with these glamorous trappings — you’re not in glamorous trappings — and basically forgets that her unfailing material comfort is solely the result of the privilege she comes from.
READER’S HEAD
Yeah…
BOOK
She mocks her sister’s squalid bohemian apartment ruthlessly, and doesn’t say anything when Sakiko just reminds her, lightly, I think, “father’s paying your way.” There’s nothing like you here.
READER’S HEAD
Not there . . .
BOOK
But then of course she gets to that point where she stops painting, and she’s feeling guilty because her family is always asking her, supportively, “how is the painting?” and her father is waiting for her to exhibit in a solo show, which she can’t even begin to do because the New York establishment art scene is about as racist as Sakiko’s California suburban neighbors. And she ends up having an obsessive affair with her sister’s husband, and eventually meets someone else, but his friends basically steal her money by simply asking for it. She writes them checks for any amount they name, having no real idea what money is. Her life has been devoted to education and diligent painting and family and maintaining the respectability of her family name: things like “writing checks” were the jurisdiction of her father’s financial manager. Eventually she squanders her fortune on misguided generosity and drugs, crushed with the feeling of having failed her father. She’s invited to exhibit her art in a group show, but he’s not impressed: a successful artist has a solo show. She was supposed to be a successful artist. She was given considerable support in order to become a successful artist. And now she feels like, and oh my god do not tell me this character is like you.
READER’S HEAD
I didn’t say like me, but it’s a relatable situation: family, particularly a not-so-bohemian family, supporting someone’s art. But when she can’t think of herself as an artist anymore she loses all grasp on the possibility of being anything, even alive. She drowns herself, with her lover, feeling just that weighed down by having failed her father, failed his support, failed her family, failed herself and her own expectations. She was supposed to be great. She was supposed to be known. How is it that these notions of fame fucking kill us all, cross-culturally?
BOOK
I don’t know. But maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m here, to get you thinking about that.
READER’S HEAD
Brutal.
BOOK
You should read me in the original.
READER’S HEAD
I really wish I could. The images are evocative and the sensory details are vivid, especially for the brief portions of the book that we’re actually in Japan, but I feel like I must be missing something conceptually, especially in the meditative passages. There is something particularly striking about growing up, as Hiroku did, as a high achiever, in a culture that considers, “She’s so smart, it’s a shame she’s not a boy!” to be the greatest possible compliment. Not only that, but Hiroku agreed. “Very well, let’s say that she’s a boy,” her father concurred. Meanwhile, her life in America is one of heartbreaking feminine submission, with the pulse of her existence rising and falling with the attentions of her sister’s husband, an affair that’s all the more ruthless given Sakiko’s obliviousness to it. She talks, at points, like she actually wants her sister to know that he’s been cheating with her, giving her subtle hints that go unnoticed. All of this emotional nuance and unpredictability is likely staggering in the original, and sometimes falls flat in English; sympathy for the characters drives the prose more often and more effectively than its lyricism. Though at its strongest points, it feels like reading an experimental film: unpredictable images filling up the space in front of you, washing over you in the dark and peeling back the lens, or the page, over the feelings you haven’t confronted. Suddenly, here they are.