Art festivals in Japan: Fueling revitalization, tourism, and self-censorship

Abstract

This paper critically considers large-scale contemporary art festivals that have become a significant force of art tourism in Japan. While many of these projects got their start in socially conscious endeavors with a focus on machizukuri, or local community building, the increase of government-sponsored revitalization initiatives and heightened pressure from the tourism industry has shifted the output of these festivals over the years. As such, this paper aims to situate such festivals within their shifting genealogy, observe some of the ways that today’s artists and their artwork may be subject to precarious positions of instrumentalization and censorship, and raise points of critique for audiences to keep in mind around the topic of rural revitalization–i.e. what are some of the challenges that artists, curators, and organizers face today? While reflecting on factors at stake for art and cultural production in a hyper-touristic context, this paper also highlights the work of Shitamichi Motoyuki, an artist disrupting this paradigm in ways reminiscent of earlier forms of machizukuri art practices.