Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 12, Number 1, 2011 ISSN 1464–9373 Print/ISSN 1469–8447 Online/11/010077–18 © 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2011.532949 Constructing the authentic modern: Japanese migrant artists in New York City Olga Kanzaki SOOUDI Taylor and Francis RIAC_A_532949.sgm 10.1080/14649373.2011.532949 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1464-9373 (print)/1469-8447 (online) Original Article 2011 Taylor & Francis 12 1 000000March 2011 OlgaSooudi osooudi@gmail.com ABSTRACT This article explores the concept of authenticity, and its articulation with longstanding Japanese discourses of modernity, among contemporary Japanese lifestyle migrants in New York City. Considering the cases of artists in particular, it examines how migrants narrate the ideals and goals of life in New York City, thereby elaborating on concepts of the self, authenticity, meaning, and national cultural identity. KEYWORDS: authenticity, Japan, artistic production, migration I did not immediately realize that Matsumura Keita was a painter when I first met him in early 2006. His matted black hair, plastered to his scalp from wearing a motorcycle helmet, and dark, suntanned complexion, suggested an altogether more mundane occupation than painting. This impression was compounded by the windbreaker with matching pants he always seemed to wear, and that rustled noisily when he entered the room. Indeed, like most painters, he found it impossible to survive on his paintings alone, even at the age of 40, after living in New York City for nine years. 1 He thus spent three days a week working at a seafood shop in Brooklyn, cleaning, scaling, and weighing fish, devoting the rest of his time to art. My fourth or fifth encounter with him was at a gallery opening in Chelsea. The Metro- pole Gallery was run by a Japanese artist in her early forties, Kana, a friend of Keita’s and also a painter. While the gallery sought to draw an international group of patrons, it nearly exclusively showed the art of Japanese artists. On this particular evening, Keita had been asked to make a speech about being a Japanese artist in NYC to the assembled crowd, composed in part by 14 young illustrators who had flown in from Japan to take part in this exhibition. The semi-formality of the occasion notwithstanding, Keita arrived once again with his hair matted by sweat to his forehead, in his favorite windbreaker set. Standing in a circle of about 60 (nearly all Japanese) people with a plastic wine glass in hand, he began, I came to New York because there is raw art ( nama na aato) everywhere here. On all the walls of the museums, and even in the streets, there is raw art. In Japan I was just looking at pictures in books. Here you have the real thing. Keita referred to ‘raw art’ also as genga, or ‘original paintings’, as opposed to prints or other forms of reproduced art. In contrast to the more general category of pictures or paintings, genga are ultimately one of a kind. As originals, unlike mechanically produced prints, they have texture, unevenness, asymmetries, and vibrancy. Due to their creation by particular people at particular moments in time, their totality cannot be reproduced. While one may cultivate impressions and familiarity by looking at reproductions (as in how Keita learned about the world’s great artworks through books), they lack something that an original has. Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 01:59 28 September 2014