We’d never learned any of this as Japanese. The way you brought Marcel Mauss into the historical and political context of the Praemium Imperiale clarified things we hadn’t really thought about before. And yeah, the post-1945 order is clearly shaking now. It makes us wonder what artists who care about freedom and peace can still hold on to.
The origins of the Praemium Imperiale were also something missing in my education. I only learned of Japan’s magnanimous gesture through researching the prize. Maybe the task of artists today is to remind us of the “gift” of peaceful co-existence, and how it came out of such horrible human devastation. It seems that the great power-brokers of the world have forgotten.
We’d never learned any of this as Japanese. The way you brought Marcel Mauss into the historical and political context of the Praemium Imperiale clarified things we hadn’t really thought about before. And yeah, the post-1945 order is clearly shaking now. It makes us wonder what artists who care about freedom and peace can still hold on to.
The origins of the Praemium Imperiale were also something missing in my education. I only learned of Japan’s magnanimous gesture through researching the prize. Maybe the task of artists today is to remind us of the “gift” of peaceful co-existence, and how it came out of such horrible human devastation. It seems that the great power-brokers of the world have forgotten.
What a wonderful initiative from Japan. Thanks for writing about this.