June 2004

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Artwork of Empathy: An Interview with Yoshiro Sanbonmatsu

Through July 31, the Community Church of Boston is hosting a retrospective of the artwork of Yoshiro Sanbonmatsu at its Gallery for Social and Political Art (565 Boylston, Sat. and Sun., 1:00-5:00 pm). Yoshiro grew up in the Imperial Valley of California. His family, Japanese-American farmers, were imprisoned in an internment camp in Arizona during the Second World War. After the war, Yoshiro taught for many years in the English department at Plymouth Carver Regional High School in Massachusetts. His son, John Sanbonmatsu, whose book, The Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy and the Making of a New Political Subject, has just been released by Monthly Review Press, interviews him here about the relationship between politics, art, and power.

Sanbonmatsu: Do you have a philosophy of political art?

Sanbonmatsu: Don't bring in anything extraneous to what you're trying to say. Otherwise it's like over-acting: you're bringing in things that aren't really at the heart of the matter. Don't let the art get in the way.

JS: It sounds like you're against aesthetics as such.

YS: I have no objection to aesthetics. I appreciate a good drama, a good movie, a good book. I know something as a former English teacher about how artists and writers work their craft. I like to be manipulated by them, I appreciate their ability to work on an emotional level. But often that type of thing, over-emphasis on technique, gets in the way. Political art is about justice, not beauty.

JS: What about your own technique? Do you have a particular approach or style?

YS: I try to be to the point. In my painting on Indonesian human rights abuses in East Timor, for example, I include the numbers of those killed because numbers are important - just as at the Vietnam Memorial, words are important. In my painting and installation, "The Rape of Nanking," on Japanese atrocities in China during the war, I incorporate a book on the subject, so that the viewer will bear witness to actual photographs of the atrocities. Like the Mexican muralists, I'm trying to give voice to all these sufferings.

JS: Your paintings and sculptures cover a wide range of themes. You've done paintings on the Tiananmen Square massacre, racism and sexism, US interventions in Central America, the Gulf War, the Catholic Church's pro-natalist policies, and so on. How do you arrive at your subjects?

YS: Obviously the issues themselves abound. My work begins with feelings, with a perceived sense of injustice. So much needs to be said but is hidden, covered up. I try to confront the public by exposing the atrocities. Historically, the voices of the oppressed, those who suffer, are still there; they cry out, they demand to be listened to. I try to facilitate what the victims would have said, or are trying to say.

JS: In many of your paintings on war and warfare, you focus on the hypocrisy and inhumanity of our political leaders.

YS: Take the current war. Do Bush and Cheney really care about the deaths they are causing? I doubt it. They don't want the bodies shown on TV. They try to mute grief. Mothers are to remain silent, never complaining: they have to remain proud of their dead sons and daughters, and so on. And unfortunately, most Americans don't give a damn about their own veterans, let alone about the suffering of those killed by our bombs.

JS: In this regard, it seems to me that a lot of your artwork appeals to the viewer's sense of compassion or empathy.

YS: There's a big difference between compassion and empathy. Compassion is akin to charity. It's wrapped up in this whole obsession in Western culture with thinking and talking about character and virtue, about how you're going to stack up on judgment day. Acting virtuously means that you get your little gold star of recognition later on. So compassion is about self-accolade, it's self-centered.

LETTERS Dansinger, Monroe, ME I think most Peacework believe in fairness and equity. I do. Peacework published Jonathan Betz-Zall's letter in the May 2004, issue criticizing Nat Hentoff's article on the American Library Association's position on Cuban dissenters. What was not fair, I feel, was publishing Hentoff's response to Betz-Zall's letter. Hentoff had already made a powerful case in his March article that Cuba was oppressing some of its dissenters, including librarians. Responding again gave him two chances to speak on the issue, to only once for Betz-Zall. This is not fairness or equity. Unless there is a clear error of fact, I would urge that Peacework give space for authors to respond to critical letters to the editor.

Empathy, on the other hand, isn't about self-reflection, whether I feel good because I did this or that. Compassion is like charity - it masks social problems but doesn't get at the underlying problem. It may be better than nothing, but it's hypocritical. When we empathize, however, we grasp the situation of "the other." In my art I hope to elicit empathy in the viewer for the existential situation of the "other." I'm not interested in generating "pity" or sympathy per se. Empathy connects at the most fundamental human level. It's the basis for democracy and equality.

JS: You just turned 80 this year. Do you think things are getting better or worse, politically? Is society becoming more just?

YS: People in power still maintain that power. They still control the media and government. On the other hand, people are gaining more access to things than ever before. The power struggle is shifting to an entirely different plane. I'm hopeful, because at the grassroots ordinary people are making a difference. They are pressing the argument for freedom in every sphere, putting the screws on the corporations, and so on. But of course change takes a long time.

Previous Article    Next Article