Each small glass bottle is labeled with the name of a Japanese woman, which is the temporary name given to women who were considered “comfort women” by the former Japanese army during the Pacific War at comfort stations.
Our culture is a symbol of suffering for someone else. To put it differently, it has given me a chance to think about other people’s experiences in their shoes, not just as someone else’s.
Giving someone a particular name often means imposing on him/her some particular ethno-centric point of view or an ideal image of woman, as we see it in the episode above. I think such a view still remains in our society today.
For this work I appropriate the name of perfume “MITSOUKO”, because I mean to express in it the possibility that our ideal self-images or identities can often be easily influenced and formed by other people’s views on us.
French translation: Sonoko Hisatsuka
photo: Futoshi Miyagi
photo: Ryohei Tomita
photo courtesy: Assembridge NAGOYA Executive Committee