Palestine in Japan, Now and Then

Taking the recent art activist actions by Japanese artists in solidarity with Palestine as a starting point, this article revisits four key moments in the history of Japanese-Palestinian cultural exchange: the 1971 propaganda newsreel created by radical leftist filmmakers Adachi Masao (b 1939) and Wakamatsu Kōji (1936–2012); the Japan Asian African Latin-American Artist Association (JAALA), co-founded by the prominent art critic Haryū Ichirō (1925–2010) in 1977, and its active exchange with Palestinian artists; the 1999 exhibition entitled ‘Seven Angels from Tokyo’, in which Japanese artists toured East Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Gaza; and the friendship between Gazan painters and Kamijō Yōko (b 1937) ever since her participation in the 1999 exhibition. Although postwar Japanese art has been predominantly discussed vis-à-vis the Euro-American art scenes, this article reveals that there has been another kind of internationalisation by Japanese artists who committed to the Palestinian struggle and constituted various global networks.