Yoneda Tomoko

From behind a large reflecting window on the Chōwaden Reception Hall balcony, Emperor Akihito, the empress, and close family members face us. The elderly emperor speaks, while the other household representatives listen. We see two guards in front of the building, emphasizing the barrier between the imperial family and the public. This photograph by Yoneda Tomoko (b. 1965) shows Akihito greeting the public on New Year’s day. It was the artist’s first time attending this annual event, and she went with the express purpose of taking this photograph.

Born in Japan and photographically trained in Chicago and London, Yoneda now divides her time between London and Helsinki. However, when she took this photograph in 2012, Yoneda was living in Tokyo, participating in an artist residency program. Examining Japan’s national identity and contemporary issues from different angles, Yoneda looked at symbolic things, visited places associated with Japanese history—such as Hiroshima and the Imperial Palace—and explored the invisible links between places today and past events. The resulting chromogenic prints were compiled in a series titled Cumulus (2011–12).

Yoneda’s photograph is unusual as it features the emperor. Worshipped as a Shintō semi-god until the end of World War Two, images of the emperor in modern and contemporary Japanese art have been rare and often accompanied by controversy. Yoneda captures the emperor from afar, with the reflecting window glass and the guards further emphasizing the distance between the imperial family and the public. Her perspective mirrors the view of the attending public, and it raises questions about the rather isolated imperial household, as well as the emperor’s symbolic, religious, and political role in Japan today. The artist has highlighted the importance of this particular New Year’s event, signifying not only “the dawn of the New Year” but also the very first greeting from the emperor to the Japanese nation after the 2011 Great

Yoneda Tomoko, New Year Greeting, Imperial Palace, Tokyo, 2012. Chromogenic print, 65x83cm, ed.10.

© Yoneda Tomoko. Courtesy of the artist.

Tōhoku Earthquake and nuclear accident.¹ What is the emperor’s message to Japan after these devastating events?

Spanning three decades, the Heisei era (1989–2019) witnessed great economic, political, and social change. In contrast to the last decades of the Shōwa era with its strong economic growth and enormous urban development, I associate Heisei with many difficulties, ranging from the burst of the economic bubble in early 1992, to the sarin gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyō cult and the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, to the 2011 Great Tōhoku Earthquake and nuclear catastrophe. Yoneda’s complex photograph of the emperor speaking to the nation presents the Heisei era as a challenging time in which Japan faced old and new questions about its history, national identity, and place in the world.

Lena Fritsch (Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)