Markers to redraw history: exhibition at the Japanese Peruvian CC reflects on memory and the Nikkei community

“Why are they so closed?” The question appeared from time to time, always on the lips of others. And despite the fact that it sounded prejudiced towards the Nikkei community, German Chinen Murata -painter, 55 years old, 1.59 cm tall- did not mind. In fact, he was somewhat right: would it be true that Japanese descendants in Peru make an effort to isolate themselves or is it a myth of exoticizing a large minority?

Chinen outlines an answer in “Transitions”, an exhibition that runs until July 9 at the Japanese Peruvian Cultural Center. The exhibition is, according to the curator Jimena Suárez, an approximation to the collective memory, that which is very easily erased. Hence, the artist proposes pieces made with a down on acrylic slates, those from school. In one of them appear the feet and suitcase of his grandfather, a Japanese migrant who came to Peru to find a better life. There is also an altar, also of his grandfather. Both works already show the passage of time: there are traces of fingers and parts that have been erased. It’s not clear how much that bothers the artist; perhaps they are the perks of the trade: finally, he opted for that support that he cultivated from so many years teaching drawing.

Photos to remember

The Peru that German Chinen’s grandparents knew was not a paradise. In the 1930s, the country tried to stop Japanese migration because, among other arguments, it would take jobs from the nationals, the old reliable. Already by 1940 and with a world polarized because of World War II, Peruvians changed suspicion for fear. The balls gave an account of a possible invasion, and so, on May 13, the looting began that continued until the next day. Typical of the lack of control, the mobs stoned the Japanese and burned houses, businesses and even schools. Hundreds lost everything. The country would commit more injustices, a few years later, deporting about 1,800 to concentration camps in the US.

All of the above is present in “Transitions”, which eludes linear narration. As well as memory, Chinen proposes a fragmented story, full of episodes that touched him in some way. Another of the works, also made with a marker on a large acrylic board, shows a very close-up of a gaze, that of his mother. The inspiration: photographs of Japanese women working in the fields, completely covered, almost uniformed, to protect themselves from the sun, and a complex filial relationship that is now given new meaning.

Suárez explains: “He proposes an intersection between his history and that of the collective, of migration. And by placing that look, he includes his own origin ”.

Because that is precisely what the exhibition is about: showing how the limits of the past are combined with the imagination of the passage of time, and how from this one can begin to reflect on the past, present and future. And in that universe, Chinen included certain references to his childhood, Japanese children’s drawings that appeared on television. It was not an effort to learn more about that culture. In any case, says the artist, it was a coincidence that the channels decided to buy canned series and thus influence several generations. In “Transitions”, he takes superheroes to intervene in photographs that show a past that, due to oblivion, stopped being painful a while ago. One of the works shows how Masaichi Tanaka’s soda factory was devastated by mobs in 1940, only Ultra 7 appears behind it. The title: “Where were you Ultra 7?” (drawing in ink on paper).

But it is not the only thing. Also take a picture of Trade that shows the then Japanese princes -Akihito and his wife Michiko- strolling in Lima on a convertible car during their visit on May 11, 1967. Instead of President Fernando Belaúnde Terry, also on the car, Chinen places Sombrita, the justice fighter from popular anime. And it is curious: it was Belaúnde himself who, the following day, and as compensation for irregular confiscations from the Japanese during World War II, ceded 10,000 m2 to the community, land that is now occupied by the Peruvian-Japanese CC, which has been for Chinen for years. it was an impenetrable fortress rather than a focus that radiated their culture. But few remember that story anymore.