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  • A One-Day Icon of 1964:Mount Fuji at the Tama River
  • Hideki Kikkawa (bio) and Reiko Tomii (bio)

In 1964, when the Olympic Games were first held in Asia, host city Tokyo was bombarded throughout the year by a plethora of cultural activities. Apart from official programs, such as the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo's Masterpieces of Modern Japanese Art: Art Exhibition During Tokyo Olympics, numerous "unofficial" but in retrospect memorable offerings were held by practitioners of Japan's thriving art vanguard. Indeed, 1964 was a banner year for the Anti-Art (Han-geijutsu) tendency, despite the much-discussed termination of the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition. By now well-known, for instance, Hi Red Center's so-called Cleaning Event was held on October 16, 1964, the seventh day of the Games. Its formal mouthful title, Campaign to Promote Cleanliness and Order in the Metropolitan Area, signals the group's intent to mock satire and level a social critique against the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's urban beautification program in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics.

Equally ironic and hilarious yet less known were the works by Sightseeing Art Research Institute (Kankō Geijutsu Kenkyūjo), a short-lived collective formed in 1964 by Nakamura Hiroshi (b. 1932) and Tateishi Kōichi (later known as Tiger Tateishi, 1941–98).1 Active as a pair for two years (see Table for their activities), the two painters daringly decided to investigate the possibilities of painting in the heyday of the Anti-Art movement, wherein the modernist notion of Art with a capital "A" was questioned and the conventional notion of painting and sculpture was rejected. Under the name of Sightseeing Art Research Institute, they staged a series of projects, among which the most whimsical, Walking Exhibition, showcased a painting from that year in front of the Japan National Railways' Tokyo Station, with the newly introduced shinkansen bullet trains in the background (figs. 27.1 and 27.2). In their attempt to bring painting directly to the masses, they each carried a large 100- canvas (162 cm wide)2 during the morning rush hour and walked along the flow of the salarymen hurrying to their offices. [End Page 179]

Sightseeing Art Research Institute: Activities, 1964–66
1964 March Sightseeing Art at the Tama River
The collective declared the birth of Sightseeing Art and undertook their first project, presenting an outdoor exhibition on a dry riverbed of the Tama River in Tokyo.
April Walking Exhibition
The two painters walked around Tokyo Station of Japan National Railways, each of them carrying a 100-gō painting (fig. 27.1).
May Destruction for Creation: What Is Sightseeing Art?
The two were invited to present a special exhibition at the 14th Izumi Festival, held at Meiji University's Izumi campus in Tokyo (fig. 27.6).
August 2nd Sightseeing Art Exhibition
The two's first joint gallery exhibition was held at Naiqua Gallery in Tokyo.
October Aru wakamono tachi (Some Young People)
The two appeared in the documentary program Nonfiction Theater (Nippon TV). Directed by Nagano Chiaki, the episode followed several Anti-Art practitioners, including Yoko Ono. Sightseeing Art Research Institute ate pancakes shaped after the Olympic Rings at Komazawa Olympic Park. (Full transcript translated into English in RJCS 27 (2005): 99–105.)
1965 May Tokyo Art Pillar
The two participated in an exhibition organized by Avant-Garde Art Society and held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Nakamura was instrumental in organizing the exhibition as a society member.
1966 April Four Sightseeings in Art
The collective's final project was an exhibition held at the Seibu Department Store in Tokyo. Nakamura and Tateishi were joined by the artist Shinohara Ushio and the designer Yokoo Tadanori.

By far the most ambitious was Nakamura and Tateishi's first joint project, Sightseeing Art at the Tama River, a one-day outdoor exhibition produced on March 30, 1964 on a dry riverbed of the Tama River, which originates in central Japan and flows through Tokyo (figs. 27.3 and 27.4). This experimental exhibition featured several elements from works by the two artists. Central to the whole project was Tateishi's Mount Fuji, drawing on his iconography of wartime Japan, around which...

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