Taijiro Tamura (1911-1983) -- The Aftermath of War, Body Heat of the Black Market, 1945-1960s

Taijiro Tamura (1911-1983) -- The Aftermath of War, Body Heat of the Black Market, 1945-1960s
Tamura, who had served in the military, saw in the bodies of women standing in the black markets of Ueno and Shinjuku the afterglow of violence that did not end with the defeat of the war. The images of pampans in "The Gates of the Body" are not pleasures, but rather the last capital for survival and proof of the wounds inflicted on the individual body by the national mobilization. Through the oscillation between the control and acquiescence of the occupation, through the illustrations of nights sunk in cheap drinks and gambling, he depicts the process by which the language of the battlefield is extended to the city. His eroticism does not submit to moral judgment, but looks at the reality where victim and perpetrator, independence and exploitation cohabit on the same level. He unearths the dampness that does not disappear even under the paving light of rapid growth, and as a record that questions human dignity at the intersection of sex and violence, he shows the starting po
int of ethics in postwar Japan.