Nobuyuki Ōura

Nobuyuki Ōura (大浦信行, Ōura Nobuyuki, born 1949, Toyama) is a Japanese artist and filmmaker who has been referred to in English as Ohura Nobuyuki. He has been described as an artist who "constantly pushes the limits of expression," as his artworks and films delve into taboos within Japanese society. Ōura is best known for his controversial series of lithographs entitled Holding Perspective (1982–85), which include photographs of Emperor Hirohito, and have at been at the center of multiple high-profile censorship incidences in Japan since the mid-1980s.

Early life and career Ōura was born in Toyama City (Toyama Prefecture) in 1949. He studied economics at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo's Shibuya district, where in the late 1960s he began making paintings. He moved to the United States in 1975, where he lived in New York City until 1985. He started out by helping Arakawa repaint his studios, and then began to work for him full-time, restoring his old paintings and helping him with new works. Oura was Arakawa's sole assistant from 1977 to 1984. In interviews, he has stated that working for Arakawa during those years influenced his approach to expression and art making.

These prints included images of the Shōwa Emperor (Hirohito) during various stages of his life, and included photographs taken on the emperor's pre- and post-war visits to the US and Europe. The images were cropped and superimposed with a mixture of Asian and Western imagery, including rural scenes, traditional Japanese scrolls, Buddhist mandalas, Biblical images, tattooed and nude bodies, skeletons, brains, cross sections of the human body, and symbols of the Pacific War, such as a mushroom cloud. In his collages, Ōura consciously treated the images and icons in each composition as equivalents, with no value hierarchy among them. This sentiment was implied in the title of the series; Ōura has stated that he wanted to “reverse the perspective we have learned from the West” and “hold that perspective on his own shoulders and walk forward.” Kajiya asserted that Ōura's use of Emperor Hirohito's photograph in these self-portraits was a way to explore the awkwardness the artist experienced during his ten-year stay in New York as a non-Western person becoming more and more assimilated into Western culture. The museum purchased four of the pieces and arranged for Ōura to donate the remaining six to the museum, and the exhibition concluded without any incident. Some on the organizing team had been involved previously in Ōura's Toyama Prefectural Museum court case in the 1990s.

According to the Triennale's chief curator Iida Shihoko, although the international attention of the Aichi Triennale censorship scandal has singled out the sculpture Statue of Peace by South Korean artists Kim Seo Kyung and Kim Eun Sung, 50% of the aggressive backlash that led to the exhibit's closure was indeed centered on Ōura's Holding Perspective II. Iida stated that most of the people who were against the exhibition had not actually seen it, and instead fixated on a few scenes of the artist from the film that had gone viral on social media, in which he uses a hand torch to burn his own prints from Holding Perspective (1982–85) that depict the emperor.

Holding Perspective (1995) Japanese title: 遠近を抱えて (Enkin o Kakaete). Ōura's first film. An 87-minute avant-garde video work that delved into Ōura's issues of censorship with his print series of the same name, considering how the taboo of emperorism has been consciously and subconsciously twisted in modern Japanese society.

Hariu Ichirō in the heart of Japan, a man who held the whole of Japan. (2001) Japanese title: 日本心中 針生一郎・日本を丸ごと抱え込んでしまった男。(Nihon Shinjū, Hariu Ichirō: Nihon o Marugoto Kakaekonde shimatta Otoko.). A 90-min fantastical film exploring the correlation between self and otherness and ancient layers of Japan's history, by following the footsteps of art and literary critic Hariu Ichirō as he walks around Gwangju, South Korea, and speaking in his home in Japan.

9.11-8.15 Nippon Suicide Pact (2005) Japanese title: 9.11-8.15 日本心中 (9.11-8.15 Nihon Shinjū). A 145-minute long avant-garde film that reconsiders modern Japan in relation to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., introducing many historically important figures in East Asian modern history and liberation movements. The main characters include Hariu Ichirō, an art critic who was ardently critical of postwar Japanese culture, and Shigenobu Mei, the daughter of Japanese Red Army member Shigenobu Fusako and a Palestinian activist, and prominent Butoh performer Ohno Kazuo.

Emperor Game (2011) Japanese title: 天皇ごっこ 見沢知廉・たった一人の革命 (Tennō-gokko, Misawa Chiren: Tatta Hitori no Kakumei). A 115-minute long social documentary that traces the life of Misawa Chiren, an activist and writer who was involved in leftwing politics and the Sanrizuka struggle against the construction of the Narita Airport before becoming involved in the new rightwing movement. The film explores the story behind Misawa writing Emperor Game (天皇ごっこ, Tennō Gokkō) while sentenced to 12 years in prison for being involved in a murder case and his suicide in 2005. Woman Holding Perspective was selected as the opening film at the 40th Brussels Independent Film Festival. The film was made available for online purchase in April 2020 with half the proceeds going towards rescuing small theatres in crisis due to COVID-19. Ōura traveled to South Korea to support Hong, where he 'censored' all 14 panels of the exhibited Holding Perspective with comments in English, Japanese, and Korean that rejected censorship, and aided in carrying out protests on site, including burning large portions of his exhibited artworks and cancelling the screening of his new film Yasukuni, Earth Spirit, Emperor (2014) to demonstrate the impact of censorship.