Abstract: This is a conversation between Japanese artist Mio Okido and art historian Asato Ikeda, centered on Okido’s exhibition Remembered Images Imagined (Hi)stories—Japan, East Asia, and I at the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin. The dialogue examines Okido’s exploration of imperialism, nationalism, and cultural identity through works such as Ghosts, Holy Person from Hiroshima, and Viewing. Okido discusses her critical engagement with historical narratives, aesthetics as propaganda, and the systemic frameworks shaping art and memory.
Keywords: Japan, Imperialism, War, Germany, Cultural diplomacy
Mio Okido (b. 1986) is a contemporary Japanese artist who lives and works in Berlin.1 She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tokyo University of the Arts and a Master of Arts degree from Berlin University of the Arts. Her work explores conflicts between people, particularly those arising from differences in social class, ideology, nationality, and cultural and political identity. She employs a variety of media and techniques, including two-dimensional art, installation art, and action pieces. Most recently, her works were featured in Remembered Images Imagined (Hi)stories—Japan, East Asia, and I at the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin, part of the Humboldt Forum. This exhibition, which ran from September 2024 to February 2025, was the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition. It took place in one of the semi-permanent galleries of Japanese and other Asian art.
Ikeda: How long have you been living in Germany, and why Germany?
Okido: I briefly studied in Germany in 2013 while still affiliated with Tokyo University of the Arts, but I returned to Japan afterward. I moved to Berlin more permanently in 2015. My primary interest was in understanding how postwar German history differed from that of Japan. During the Cold War, Germany was divided into two spheres—Western capitalist and Eastern communist—while Japan was not. I come from Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture, which is geographically close to Russia. My grandfather, who was stationed in China as a soldier during the war and later sent to Siberia as a prisoner of war, spent some time in Russia. Despite this physical proximity, Japan has been diplomatically and culturally distant from Russia on the official level, which has always felt like a “black box” to me. I found that very intriguing, and Germany’s unique relationship with Russia was one of the reasons I chose to live there.
Ikeda: I’d like to ask about the works currently displayed at the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin, particularly those related to Japan and the Second World War. Could you first talk about how the exhibition came about?
Okido: The exhibition was curated by Kerstin Pinther (curator for modern and contemporary art in a global context) and Alexander Hofmann (curator for arts of Japan).2 In 2023, I became a fellowship holder for the project Collaborative Museum at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin and the Museum of Asian Art, both of which are located at the Humboldt Forum in Mitte. These museums house over 500,000 objects, making them one of Europe’s largest collections of non-European art and culture.
The Humboldt Forum and its authoritative presence in central Berlin have been a focal point of critical debate about decolonization. The museums launched this project to collaborate with contemporary artists who are critical of the state’s colonial legacy, reframing the collection to challenge colonial structures and existing power dynamics. The aim is to promote diversity, accessibility, and a reimagined relationship with the collection, even though the content of the collection itself cannot be changed easily.
Ikeda: There are five works displayed in the exhibition Remembered Images Imagined (Hi)stories—Japan, East Asia, and I. Let’s start with Ghosts (2024) (Figure 1). This piece consists of seven works and incorporates, via silk-screen, seven works that were displayed at the 1931 “Japanische Malerei der Gegenwart (Contemporary Japanese Painting)” in Berlin, which exclusively featured Japanese-style Nihonga paintings: Kaburagi Kiyokata’s Sound of Water, Takeuchi Seihō’s Fish and Vegetables, Yamamoto Shunkyō’s Clear Waters of Hozu River, Kawai Gyokudō’s Late Autumn in the Mountains, Hayami Gyoshū’s Snow at Night, Yokoyama Taikan’s Crested Myna on a Fig Tree, and Nishimura Suishō’s Hungry Ravens.3 Four of these original paintings are displayed in the same gallery space for arts of Japan at the museum (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Mio Okido, Ghosts (2024), Screen Prints on Silk. Copyright: Mio Okido.
Figure 2. The 2025 installation of Japanese-style paintings from the 1931 Japanese painting exhibition in Berlin. The Museum of Asian Art, Berlin. Copyright: Asato Ikeda.
Okido: Japanese paintings—including those from the modern period—are often presented as examples of the country’s “traditional” art in museum settings. However, the history of how these works came to Europe is often overlooked. While art from other non-Western regions is often contextualized within narratives of European imperialism and colonialism, Japan’s imperialist history is less acknowledged.
The paintings were displayed in Berlin in 1931 as part of Japan-German cultural diplomacy and served as national propaganda, shortly before the Manchurian Incident took place. These works were intended to portray Japan as a nation of art and beauty, even as its militaristic ambitions grew. Through my work, I aimed to bring attention to the collection history of these paintings.
My work incorporates photographs published in The Manchurian Incident Photographic Collection (Manshū jihen shashin chō) in 1932. Both the paintings and photographs served propagandistic purposes, and I tried to juxtapose militaristic and “beautiful” Japan. In my work, I removed the central elements of the original 1930s paintings and inserted photographic images of the Japanese flag and soldiers holding weapons. This contrast highlights the dual narratives of Japan during that time.
The title of the work, Ghosts, is translated as Geister in German, a word that also resonates with the German Geist (spirit), as in zeitgeist. When studying the 1930s in Germany, it’s hard to comprehend how such events unfolded, yet they were driven by the “spirit” or atmosphere of the time. Similarly, we live within today’s zeitgeist, which future generations may struggle to understand. This idea—that our actions are shaped by the systems and spirits of our time—is central to my work. These images and paintings from the 1930s existed within Japan’s imperialist framework, and my work reflects on their haunting legacy.
Ikeda: In the brochure produced in conjunction with the exhibition, you write that “In Japanese art, ‘beauty’ is sometimes associated with cultural and national identity…I am not an artist who simply creates beautiful things and loves them uncritically. I am rather a ‘schizophrenic’ artist who believes in and yet doubts the beauty of art, who appreciates and yet doubts its existence. In this exhibition, I contemplated the dangers of the ‘beauty of Japanese art’ and its modern history.”4 Among the five works displayed in the exhibition this time, Ghosts most directly addresses the issue of Japan and beauty and the production of soft power.
Okido: Japanese-style painting (Nihonga) developed as a counterpart to Western-style painting (yōga). While it aimed to reinterpret and reconstruct the traditions of premodern East Asian and Japanese art, it was also influenced by Western painting and modernism. However, during the era of militarism in the 1930s, the works that were endorsed by those in power were those that embodied nationalism.
Ikeda: And of course, these works were received through a white Orientalist lens that would reinforce and reconfirm Japan’s self-Orientalizing presentation.
Okido: In the history of modern Japanese art, Western-style oil paintings (yōga) were as important as Nihonga, but Japanese oil paintings never received attention in the West. More than modern Nihonga, what was popular in Europe was ancient Japanese art. There was a large ancient Japanese art exhibition in 1939 in Berlin, which Adolf Hitler famously visited.
Ikeda: Do you think Japan is associated with beauty still today?
Okido: Absolutely. It’s quite obvious if you look at how many foreign tourists are coming to Japan now. It’s not just that foreign tourists are interested in Japan. The Japanese side is intentionally creating an image that Japan is an attractive place. It’s part of “Japan, the beautiful country” (Utsukushii kuni Nihon) and, more recently, Cool Japan.
As an artist, I think it’s important to be aware of the systemic and political framework we work in. “Japanese” is a concept that was created in the process of modernization from the beginning of the Meiji period onward, and Japanese art was also constructed in the process of the idea of “art” being introduced from the West. As an artist, I want to always be critical about the framework of “beauty.”
Self-critical thinking is encouraged in some cultures. Being self-critical has been a very important part of German culture, especially after the Second World War and during the student protest movement in the 1960s. In Japan, independent thinking is generally not encouraged.
Ikeda: When visitors start the gallery visit by seeing Ghosts, the next work they would encounter is Holy Person from Hiroshima (2021), which is a relatively small work displayed on a big wall, but its shining quality can draw attention (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Mio Okido. Holy Person from Hiroshima (2021). Brass plate and rhinestones. Copyright: Mio Okido.
Okido: Hiroshima and Nagasaki are important parts of Japan’s war memories. The stories regarding the violence inflicted by the atomic bombing must be narrated and continue to be passed on. If the memories about the atomic bombings are narrated in the framework of humanism, that is most ideal, but they are often associated with narratives that promote national identity and reinforce the idea of the nation-state. There were Korean victims, for example, but they are underrepresented.
I come from eastern Japan, so I do not have any family or relatives who were directly affected by the atomic bombings. I think we grow up often fed by secondary information without having direct access to the primary sources.
Ikeda: I agree. I am also not from Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and when the atomic bombings are discussed in the framework of “Japan” and I am not actually part of it, I feel awkward. This doesn’t have to be about the war. When the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown happened in northeastern Japan, it was often discussed as a “Japanese” disaster, but I was not from that area, and I was not a victim.
Okido: The memorial events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki often have political tones, with Japanese flags everywhere. When I lived in Tokyo, I had a friend who was a third-generation victim. But he was not able to make that public because often his parents and grandparents came from the generation where atomic victims were often discriminated against within Japan because of their exposure to radioactive materials. That’s when I learned what it was really like to be a victim of atomic bombs. They were bombed and then discriminated against even when they survived, while being iconized as the symbol of the country’s suffering within the narrative of the nation-state by those who might not have necessarily experienced the suffering or understood the depth of the victims’ plight and hardship.
Ikeda: What is the material used here? What does the image show? It looks very shiny and beautiful on the surface, but it is hard to see what kind of image we are looking at.
Okido: I used rhinestones. The photograph shows a person lying down, and the person’s skin has been burned. I am not sure if the victim is still alive or has already died, but it was taken right after the bombing. The image comes from Getty Images, so this is something you can “purchase,” so to speak. It is a “commodity.”
I grew up in a generation where girls used rhinestones to decorate their belongings, like cellphones. I wanted to use kitschy materials like rhinestones. They are shiny and decorative, but they are only imitations of diamonds and cannot be “authentic.” I placed hundreds of rhinestones by hand, and it was labor-intensive work. As I spent more time creating this work, I also came to understand the weight of the image. But the disconnect between how the victim is represented and aestheticized here with the rhinestones alludes to how their stories become disconnected from the victims themselves and beautified by the nation-state with a sense of patriotism. The title Holy Person from Hiroshima refers to how the victims are often “worshipped” in the postwar narrative of the war.
In principle, if we are touched by the experiences of victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we should be able to renounce violence in general regardless of nationality or ethnicity, and we should not have any problem empathizing with the Asian victims of Japanese militarism. There is a movement by activists in Hiroshima to address this point, but this is not the kind of perspective shared on a national level in Japan. The nation-state comprises an imagined community that is intangible, and often the memory, culture, and history of the nation are constructed in that context, which can be dangerous.
Ikeda: Two side walls that “sandwich” Holy Person from Hiroshima display Human Relationships (2024), which consists of brass plates that have German words on them (Figure 4). As I understand it, the work is about how language can govern the way we think, and it explores German grammar involving the verb “to kill” (töten).
Figure 4. Human Relationships (2024) Wall-based textual art, engraved brass plates. Copyright: Mio Okido.
Okido: I am often asked why I used German, not English—a more accessible language—here. I chose German because that’s the language in which I learned about the cultural and artistic importance and discourse around war memories and postwar history. I used brass plates because they are often used throughout German cities as Stolpersteine (“stumbling blocks”) on streets, with inscriptions that explain histories related to Jewish victims under Nazi rule.
The verb describes a basic action. Here, I chose the verb “to kill” and displayed the table of possible conjugations often seen in German language textbooks. Depending on how we conjugate, we can change the tense—killed, kill, or will kill—and the probability of the action—will kill, may kill, must kill, etc. The verb can also be passive or active—to be killed or to kill. There are different variations depending on combinations of tense, probability, and active/passive voice. German conjugation tables can be different from their English counterparts as it has more types of subjects than English, and the auxiliary verbs used to express the future and intention are distinct. Also, there are expressions that theoretically exist but not commonly used.
This work was inspired by contemporary events, such as the Russia-Ukraine War, October 7th, and Palestine. I thought my art would not make sense unless the war and imperialism in East Asia were seen in a global context. This work was conceived as a bridge between the military conflicts in East Asia in the past and those in the world today. I think it’s meaningless to talk only about East Asia; I wanted to address global history, connecting different local histories. It’s relatively easy for Germans or Americans to criticize Japan and Japanese discourses on war memories. It’s much more difficult for them to address more relevant contemporary issues like Palestine.
Ikeda: Yes. I’ve spent time in and traveled to places like Copenhagen, Tokyo, Berlin, and New York. By far, it’s easiest to talk about Palestine in Japan. I found that interesting.
Okido: I agree. It’s ironic that we can say or do things about Japanese imperialism now in Germany but not in Japan, and we can say or do things about Palestine in Japan but not in Germany. What we can talk about heavily depends on our system of economic profit and political agenda.
Ikeda: Do you think German audiences understood what you had in mind about this work being a bridge between Japan’s imperialism in East Asia and ongoing military conflicts today, especially regarding Palestine? In the brochure, I did see the Shoah (the Holocaust) mentioned but not Palestine.
Okido: That reflects the “local” discourse in Germany. Coming to terms with the Shoah was the most important event in postwar Germany. Offering sincere apologies to Jewish victims was foundational to the construction of postwar German society on a psychological level. It would be ideal to discuss both the Shoah and Palestine, but on an official level, that is not currently possible. This might not make sense logically, but many people in Germany have an emotional and political investment in how postwar Germany critically reflected on its actions during the Second World War. Both logic and emotion are important parts of being human, so I am not in a position to criticize them.
Ikeda: Another work you present in the ongoing exhibition is Facial Façade (2024), located behind the wall that displays Holy Person from Hiroshima (Figure 5) It’s a larger-than-life-size photographic “banner” of your face, wearing a necklace-like chain that has smaller photographic images of Meiji-period Japanese men, like Fukuzawa Yukichi, Shibusawa Eiichi, Inoue Kaoru, and Ito Hirobumi.
I wonder about the relationship between yourself as a female artist and all these modern Japanese pioneers. Are you being “effaced” by them? Are they “imposing” something on you?
Figure 5. Facial Façade (2024) Print on fabric. Copyright: Mio Okido.
Okido: I see this as a kind of collage. Their faces intersect with mine. These are the Japanese men who pioneered the country’s path in the global world, and I benefit from their work. I have privilege thanks to them. These Japanese men were the first “Asian” men to imitate white men. As a Japanese woman, I’m also a privileged kind of Asian woman compared to other people from Asia. I can easily obtain a visa to stay in Europe, for example.
Ikeda: That’s interesting. I thought these men were “oppressing” you as a woman. Now the title of your work, Façade, makes sense. You exist as part of the same structure.
The gender component of the work interests me. There is clearly a contrast between the genders, but your head is shaven. You look quite rebellious, but you clearly put on makeup, especially around your eyes. I saw this work reproduced in the brochure, but the actual work, since it is so monumental, captures the raw texture of your skin and hair in a striking way.
Okido: I shaved my head for this work. It might sound paradoxical, but I think after getting rid of certain decorative attributes like long hair that are supposedly “feminine,” you actually see the real femininity in my face. Also, I thought having long hair and wearing makeup would be visually too much.
Ikeda: Because you present yourself in such a direct way in this work, I think this piece might have the most visual impact among the five.
Okido: This work indeed garnered a lot of attention from certain people, but for a different reason. When I had a group of Korean visitors see my exhibition, this piece elicited the most emotional response from them. In Japanese textbooks, these Japanese men are important historical figures who contributed to the modernization of the country. But for the Koreans, these men, especially Ito Hirobumi, are infamous figures, being colonists and oppressors. There are historical figures who are remembered rather differently depending on where you are from. Toyotomi Hideyoshi is another good example. The violence they inflicted outside Japan is often not taught in Japan.
Ikeda: Displayed close to Facial Façade is Viewing (2024), a video installation displayed on two facing walls. The installation consists of about one hundred small monitors, which look like a grid (Figure 6, 7).
Figure 6, 7. Mio Okido, Viewing (2024) Two-channel video installation. Copyright: Mio Okido.
Okido: The work is a video of myself blinking every eight seconds, filling each wall, and still photographic images from South Korea and Japan, filling each monitor. One wall is dedicated to photographs from Korea, and the other to Japan. Every time I blink, the number of images from Japan and South Korea changes. When there are more Japanese images, fewer images from South Korea are shown, and vice versa. I spent two weeks in South Korea photographing important war-related monuments and sites. My eye and blinking represent the contemporary gaze at the two sides of history.
Facial Façade and Viewing are displayed behind the arts of Korea gallery. This Korea gallery is very small compared to the galleries of Japan and China. I guess this reflects the collecting history of Korean art in the twentieth century. As Korea was a colony of Japan, their art was not ardently collected in Europe compared to other Asian countries. Important Korean artworks are sometimes found not in the West, but in Japan, the former colonial ruler.
In the video, for the Japan side, there are photographs of Japanese flags, amulets for soldiers, Shinto shrine gates, the Meiji Memorial Hall, Tokyo Station, Kamikaze armbands, among others. Some of the photographs are related to Korean laborers who were forced to work in the Sado gold mines (Kinzan) in Niigata, where I am from. There were Korean laborers throughout the country in the early twentieth century, and many in Niigata as well. But often, these stories have not been made into “history” and are underrepresented in historical narratives. The Sado mines became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024, but the dark history of Korean laborers has not been sufficiently acknowledged.
For the Korea side, there are photographs related to the comfort women system—such as images of surviving women, comfort women statues, condoms distributed by the Japanese army to their soldiers—and the independence movement. Some of the postwar South Korean monuments about their independence have patriotic and nationalistic tones, and their education can be biased, but I am not entitled to criticize it. I never experienced living in a country whose sovereignty was deprived.
Living in Germany, I interacted a lot with Koreans as we were both considered “Asians.” That’s when I learned that our narratives about the war were very different. We have a shared history, but our perspectives are distinct.
With this work, I wanted to show how we look at the same history from different sides and that our narratives are parallel and never really merge. Of course, it would be ideal if our narratives reconciled, but I am skeptical about that possibility. It’s a big step just to be able to acknowledge that there are different narratives to the same history. That acknowledgment allows us to go beyond “us” and “them.”
- For more on Okido’s work, see https://www.miookido.net
- Asato Ikeda would like to thank Dr. Alexander Hofmann for kindly introducing her to the artist. This written piece combines two interviews that took place in Tokyo, December 2024 and at the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin, January 2025.
- For more on the collection and the exhibition, see Sato Dōshin, “Berurin Nihonga tenrankai” [Japanese-style Paintings Exhibition in Berlin,” Hizō Nihon bijutsu taikan: vol. 7 Berurin Tōyō bijutsukan [Secret Japanese Art Conpedium, volume 7: Oriental Museum in Berlin], edited by Hirayama Ikuo and Kobayashi Tadashi (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1992), 275-283.
- The brochure is accessible through the museum website: https://smart.smb.museum/media/exhibition/82712/Brochure-Mio-Okido.pdf
