Mako Idemitsu

Idemitsu attended Waseda University in Tokyo from 1958 to 1962, where she studied National History in the Faculty of Letters.[4] Idemitsu found her undergraduate education anything but stimulating, often frustrated with misogynistic comments made by her professors. She participated in many extra-curricular events, such as the University's Contemporary Literature Society, and was highly politically-engaged, joining in student demonstrations against the US-Japan Security Treaty of 1960.[4]

Idemitsu attended Columbia University in New York from 1963 to 1964.[5] Idemitsu had hoped to live in New York City, and had to convince her father to support her graduate studies. She enjoyed how multi-cultural New York was, and thoroughly enjoyed the freedom she had to attend different art events by herself, without the legacy and baggage of her family's ties with the Japanese art scene.[4] She did not manage to stay in New York beyond her graduate studies, and left for Europe soon after her student visa expired.[4]

Idemitsu lived in Santa Monica, Los Angeles from 1965 to 1972.[6] Through her father's acquisition of his work, Idemitsu was introduced to Sam Francis, and she married him in 1966.[7] She found that even among the hippies and the liberated counterculture of the 1960s in California, male chauvinism was inescapable, different in nature from that of her homeland, but chauvinism nonetheless.[8] It was whilst searching for a role outside that of wife and mother, which she had fallen into, that she by impulse bought a Super 8 film camera and began her career as a film artist. In 1972 she filmed the Womanhouse started by Judy Chicago and others, in order to create an imagery based on this work.[9] Idemitsu became interested with the Women's Liberation Movement, and understood how film documentation was crucial for the awareness of their activities, spurring her interest in 16mm film cameras.[10] Idemitsu was very aware that her works would not be as legible to English-speaking audiences who did not know Japanese language and culture, even if they showed interest in the work's visual aesthetics.[4]

Mako Idemitsu returned to Japan with Francis and her sons in 1973, originally planning to stay in Japan for a year. In 1974, when Francis returned to the United States, Idemitsu chose to remain in Japan. The couple would later divorce, with Francis marrying for a fifth time in 1985. Although she had grown up feeling repressed in Tokyo, Idemitsu realised that her video practice allowed her to express her full spectrum of feelings, much more so than she felt was possible in the United States.[4] It was only upon her return to Japan that she could properly produce her At Santa Monica (1973-5) At Any Place (1975-8) series, using and reflecting on the images she shot of the United States.[4]

Idemitsu began to establish her practice without the label of being Francis' wife in Tokyo, getting involved with other pioneer video artists such as the members of Video Hiroba. In particular, Idemitsu credits Nobuhiro Kawanaka and Kyoko Michishita for helping her learn the technical process of video equipment.[4] Michael Goldberg, a Canadian who co-organised the Video Communication/Do it Yourself Kit symposium and exhibition, became Idemitsu's consistent collaborator and is credited as a Director of Photography for many of her videos. Idemitsu also worked extensively with Yoshimitsu Takahashi to develop her films.[4] Idemitsu was also immersed in the broader Japanese arts scene, collaborating with Yoneyama Mamako after watching her pantomime Housewife's Tango to produce At Any Place 4 (1978). Idemitsu was also involved with Japanese art historians, namely Kaori Chino, who encouraged her to write and publish her autobiography.[4]

In the early 1970s, Mako Idemitsu was one of the pioneers of video art. The technical limitations of the equipment at the time had an influence on the direction of her work. Idemitsu first started to work in the United States initially with 8 mm film and then moving onto 16 mm film. She became interested in capturing the mood, quality and interplay of light and shadow.[8] When she switched to working with video, the inability of the video cameras of the time to capture the quality of light, led to the increasing use of narrative in her work.[8] On her return to Japan the cumbersomeness of the equipment and an inability to easily film outdoors led to her use of indoor one camera setups.[8] Idemitsu also produced a limited number of video installations.

Idemtisu's work has often been typified as being inspired by melodramas[11][12][13] and diary narration.[6] Critics such as Scott Nygren have attempted to locate Japanese cultural origins within her work, claiming a similarity between her narrative form with Noh theatre.[14]

Recognised for her feminist beliefs,[9] Mako Idemitsu's work is a reflection not just on gender roles, but also on the nature of personal identity and self in society.[7] She also showed how the modern family in Japan was oppressing the identities of Japanese women.[15] Idemitsu has often cited Simone de Beauvoir as one of her major influences, even creating works such as Kae, Act like a Girl (1993) inspired by de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, "People are not born as women. They become women".[16][10] Idemitsu also does not shy away from depicting the disconcerting realities of Japanese womanhood, including scenes of domestic abuse, harassment and rape.[17]

Mako Idemitsu's first films were home movies of her sons and of family life. This domestic setting, with the action revolving around family interactions, remains the main theme of her films.[7]

A recurring motif in her works is disembodied forms; the television abstracting torsos, heads or even eyes. These disembodied characters, usually female, may act indifferently to her protagonists or may even actively oppresses them, and can be interpreted both at face value as the mother, daughter, or wife of the protagonist, or as a representation of their inner mind. For example, in Idemitsu's Great Mother trilogy, in as much as they are presented as the protagonist's mothers, these disembodied women also represent the super-ego[18] of the protagonist and are a personification of a lifetime of learned cultural values and societal norms, and are thus an internalized ideal from which the protagonist cannot escape.

In Idemitsu's seminal feminist video, the image of a tampon swirling in a toilet bowl slowly appears, as the artist speaks about the troubling roles, responsibilities and expectations of women in a clinical tone. Minimal in composition, What a Woman Made is a candid critique of the treatment of women in Japanese society.[16]

Commissioned by the American Center Japan, this hour-long documentary video is Idemitsu's intimate portrayal of her then husband, Sam Francis. Idemitsu interviewed 5 people about how they viewed Francis; Taeko Tomioka, Toru Takemitsu, Shuzo Takiguchi, Jiro Takamatsu, and Sazo Idemitsu.[16]

This video was conceived out of Idemitsu's own frustrations of being a housewife, particularly the endless repetition of routine house chores. Idemitsu portrays her frustration of alienation and surveillance by intervening each domestic scene with a televisual eye.[16]

In the Shadow and Animus series, Idemitsu explores Jungian psychoanalytical concepts by manifesting the Shadow and Animus as an additional layer and surface in videos of the Japanese domestic setting. They explore the personification of dreams, projections of mental imagery and the difficultly of living under repressive patriarchy.[16] This series builds upon Idemitsu's earlier work, Inner-man (1972), which was shot on film.

Idemitsu purposes photographs by her collaborator, Akira Kobayashi, to construct an eerie found-image video. Idemitsu balances blatant images of Americana to suggest the journey of a foreigner through these iconic landscapes, continually searching for a place within them to belong. It reflects upon her own diasporic experiences moving from coast to coast.

Kiyoko, the middle-aged housewife has repressed the desire to express her identity so long, and now it is coming out with a vengeance.[19] Idemitsu portrays the struggle for housewives to be filial, care for her family's need and pursue their own creative ambitions. This film received awards from Mention Special du Jury categorie “EXPERIMENTAL” La mondiale de film et videos, Quebec, Canada in 1991, and Prix Procirep Section Fiction, Festival International de Videos et Films, Centre Audivisuel Simone de Beauvoir, Paris, France in 1992.[16]

Still Life is a two-channel video installation, with moving images projected onto two gigantic calla lilies placed side by side. On one lily, erect like a phallus, symbol of the male sexual organ, hands pull the petals off a red rose. In the second, the pistil, symbolic of the female essence, is missing. We see a woman imprisoned behind an invisible, transparent wall, begging to be released. There is a woman's voice-over endlessly repeating "Have a good day" and "Welcome home", a chorus echoing the supposed monotony of housewife's existence.[10]

Real? Motherhood attacks the myth of maternity. The single-channel installation repurposes Idemitsu's 1960s home movies, projecting images through a glass cradle. The moving images show Idemitsu holding one of her children, a baby suckling, mother and child looking at each other, the baby's innocent smile...... These are interspersed with black-and-white images of the ambiguous expression on the mother's face. Light falling from above onto the glass cradle conveys an impression of sanctity—the cradle is transmuted, for the mother, into an altar. However, Idemitsu insists that this western type of cradle also looks like a coffin, reminding us that "in the midst of life we are in death".[10]

What a Woman Made: Autobiography of a Filmmaker (ホワット·ア·うーまんめいど : ある映像作家の自伝 / Howatto a ūman meido : Aru eizō sakka no jiden), Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店), 2003. Official autobiography written by Idemitsu herself.

White Elephant, Chin Music Press (translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter), 2016. Fiction based on Idemitsu's life.