Cold War and Culture

Book review of:

"Sengo Nihon no Fuko no Kiroku, GHQ Kameraman Boria ga Totta Nihon no Fukei" (Records of the Reconstruction of Postwar Japan, Japanese Scenes Taken by The GHQ Cameraman Boria). Photographs by Dimitri Boria, Compiled by Yoneyuki Sugita. Okayama: Daigakukyōikushuppan. Vol. 1, pp 143; Vol. 2, pp. 141.

https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/Colorized-digitally-enhanced-photos-of-postwar-Japan-bring-their-subjects-to-life

Cold War was the way of life between the Soviet Union and the West for many years. Since the war was not actual, battles were fought in buffer countries, sports arenas and last but not least in the media. Many today might still remember the cold war rhetoric of 1980ies when Washington, which TASS described as able to “…think only in terms of confrontation and bellicose, lunatic anticommunism” (Britannica) considered the USSR to be “Guided by a policy of immoral and unbridled expansionism…" (Farnham, 2001).

Accounts of the relationships between states and terrorist organizations in the Cold War era have long been shaped by speculation, a lack of primary sources and even conspiracy theories. In the last few years, however, things have evolved rapidly. Using a wide range of case studies including the KGB's Abduction Program, Polish Military Intelligence and North Korea's 'Terrorism and Counterterrorism', this book sheds new light on the relations between state and terrorist actors, allowing for a fresh and much more insightful assessment of the contacts, dealings, agreements and collusion with terrorist organizations undertaken by state actors on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

This book presents the current state of research and provides an assessment of the nature, motives, effects, and major historical shifts of the relations between individual states and terrorist organizations. The articles collected demonstrate that these state-terrorism relationships were not only much more ambiguous than much of the older literature had suggested but are, in fact, crucial for the understanding of global political history in the Cold War era.

Na terenie okupowanych Niemiec, a następnie w RFN, funkcjonowało wiele cennych i ważnych inicjatyw środowiska polskich uchodźców. Do grona najciekawszych i najcenniejszych można zaliczyć działalność Komitetu Obrony Solidarności/Towarzystwa Solidarność w Berlinie Zachod- nim, które prowadziło działalność wydawniczą, publicystyczną oraz wspierało podziemie soli- darnościowe w PRL. Wielopłaszczyznowa aktywność tej organizacji, mimo dużego znaczenia dla środowiska uchodźców oraz opozycji w PRL, pozostaje niesłusznie zapomnianą inicjatywą.

Als dichotome Spaltung der Welt drang der Kalte Krieg auch in Gesellschaften ein, die nicht direkt in die „heißen“ Kriege des internationalen Dauerkonflikts verwickelt waren. Dort entfaltete er seine Virulenz und Persistenz dadurch, dass er permanent ausgemalt, inszeniert und materialisiert wurde. Von der sozialen Wirkmächtigkeit gesellschaftlicher Deutungsmuster und Symbolen ausgehend, fokussiert dieser Band auf das Imaginäre des Kalten Krieges: Auf Metaphern der Abgrenzung und Zugehörigkeit, Freund- und Feindfiguren, propagandistisch gestützte Emotionskulturen sowie Bedrohungs- und Schutzszenarien. Diese zirkulierten zwischen militärischen und zivilen Organisationen, staatlichen und kulturellen Institutionen und der öffentlich-politischen Sphäre hin- und her – und trugen so dazu bei, den Kalten Krieg am Laufen zu halten.
Konzeptionell gefasst in vier Dimensionen – Metaphern, Figuren, Emotionen und Simulakren – spürt der Band aus einer kulturgeschichtlichen Perspektive der Verbreitung des Imaginären im Ost-West-Konflikt nach. Er versammelt Beiträge aus der Geschichte, der Literaturwissenschaft, der Kulturwissenschaft, der Europäischen Ethnologie und der Soziologie und richtet den Blick mit Fallbeispielen zum geteilten Deutschland, zu Österreich, der Schweiz und Großbritannien primär auf Europa.

Cuban culture has long been available to English speakers via translation. This study examines the complex ways in which English renderings of Cuban texts from various domains—poetry, science fiction, political and military writing, music, film—have represented, reshaped, or amended original texts. Taking in a broad corpus, it becomes clear that the mental image an Anglophone audience has formed of Cuban culture since 1959 depends heavily on the decisions of translators. At times, a clear ideological agenda drives moves like strengthening the denunciatory tone of a song or excising passages from a political text. At other moments, translators’ indifference to the importance of certain facets of a work, such as a film’s onscreen text or the lyrics sung on a musical performance, impoverishes the English speaker’s experience of the rich weave of self-expression in the original Spanish. In addition to the dynamics at work in the choices translators make at the level of the text itself, this study attends to how paratexts like prefaces, footnotes, liner notes, and promotional copy shape the audience’s experience of the text.

This article looks into the extraordinary Cold War–era career of the Polish artist Aleksander Kobzdej in order to provide insight into the complexity of the emergence and demise of socialist realism in the People’s Republic of Poland and its repercussions for today’s discourses. The author reconstructs Kobzdej’s smooth shift from a much-awarded socialist realist artist into an internationally recognized modernist abstract painter through the analysis of his artworks, travels, and participation in major art exhibitions, and discusses them in the context of the larger changes that took place in the official state policies and cultural diplomacy as Stalinism was giving way to the cultural Thaw in the mid-1950s. This case study serves to argue that not just socialist realism but also much of the later modernist art produced in Poland should be seen as de facto communist, that is, as art that emerged as a product of the delicate but stable, and mutually beneficial, consensus between artists and the communist state.

Seventy-seven years ago today, on January 17, 1945, a Swedish diplomat sent as a special envoy to Nazi-occupied Budapest with a mission to rescue Jews from extermination, was detained by the Red Army on suspicion of espionage. The diplomat was Raoul Wallenberg, a businessman and a member of a banking and industrial family; he was never again seen alive. Over the six months the 32-year-old Wallenberg spent in Budapest before his arrest, he issued several thousand protective passports that prevented Hungarian Jews from being deported to death camps across Europe. He also sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory. Overall, Wallenberg is credited for saving thousands of Jews from starvation and imminent death. His disappearance in 1945 immediately drew international attention, and his continuous absence became a mystery. With the Cold War unfolding, the Wallenberg case reinforced tensions between two opposing political blocks separated by the Iron Curtain.
https://www.osaarchivum.org/blog/soviet-dead-end-solving-the-wallenberg-mystery-in-the-cold-war

From the history of the Polish translations of Croatian literature. The fourth chapter of the book "Croatica. Croatian literature and culture in Poland between 1944 and 1989" about the second part of the whole period. The Words in the title "The Yugoslav bomb" used Jerzy Putrament, prominent writer in PRL, to describe the political situation after the Cominform Resolution of June 28, 1948; Jerzy Putrament: Pół wieku. Zagranica. Warszawa 1965.

Kulisy bliskiej współpracy komunistycznych służb z międzynarodowymi ugrupowaniami terrorystycznymi przez wiele lat należały do najpilniej strzeżonych sekretów PRL. Radykałowie z Bliskiego Wschodu oraz skrajnie lewicowi ekstremiści z Europy Zachodniej traktowali Polskę jako sprawdzonego sojusznika i bezpieczną przystań, gdzie można było skutecznie ukrywać się przed agentami służb zachodnich i w spokoju przygotowywać kolejne zamachy. Dzięki tajnym układom z peerelowskimi służbami cywilnymi i wojskowymi, terroryści czuli się w Polsce bezpiecznie. Omijali procedury wizowe, przysyłali rannych bojowników na odpoczynek, otrzymywali stypendia, otwierali własne firmy, handlowali bronią, a na nielegalnych interesach z państwowymi przedsiębiorstwami zarabiali miliony dolarów. Abu Nidal, Monzer Al-Kassar, Abu Dawud i Abu Abbas to tylko niektórzy z czołówki najgroźniejszych światowych terrorystów ostatniej dekady zimnej wojny, którzy nie tylko korzystali z gościny peerelowskich służb, ale traktowali Polskę jako ważne ogniwo przestępczej działalności. Dzięki drobiazgowym poszukiwaniom archiwalnym Autorowi udało się zrekonstruować najważniejsze siatki terrorystyczne operujące na terenie komunistycznej Polski oraz naświetlić okoliczności ich sekretnych powiązań z funkcjonariuszami aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL.
https://ksiegarnia.pwn.pl/Zabojcze-uklady,713077485,p.html

The paper examines the “Andy Warhol” Millennium Show exhibited at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg in 2000 and at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in 2001. It first discusses why the U.S. government organized this show as part of America’s millennium celebrations abroad and why it chose Andy Warhol as America’s millennium artist. It then proceeds with explaining the political and art historical contents of the show, as well as its public reception by both the Russian media and the Russian artworld. The paper concludes that the “Andy Warhol” Millennium Show, despite its direct interrelatedness with the symbolic diplomatic ceremonial of millennium celebrations, was a groundbreaking cultural event, as it managed to familiarize the Russian public with key works of American Pop Art and with this build a “cultural” bridge between the U.S. and Russia in the post-Cold-War era.

PhD dissertation: This dissertation examines how mass magazines framed American abstraction for a broad public during the years following the Second World War.  While art historians have devoted much attention to Abstract Expressionism’s place within the New York art establishment and its international promotion, the presentation of this and other art to the American public has been largely overlooked.  Most Americans who did not frequent museums and galleries or read art journals would have experienced art primarily in mass magazines such as Life, Time, Look, Newsweek, and The Saturday Evening Post.  This dissertation investigates how such magazines defined modern art and its role in postwar American culture for millions of readers.

During the late 1940s mass magazines portrayed modern art as a culturally divisive issue in articles that ridiculed abstraction, describing it as a mediocre European derivation that required no skill and questioning whether it was art at all or actually a highbrow hoax on middle America.  As American abstraction gained support from art institutions and markets in the 1950s, magazines depicted modern art as a commonplace consumer object, a stylistic choice that demonstrated both the consumer’s personality and capitalist freedom.  By the end of the decade, mass magazines characterized Abstract Expressionism as the embodiment of American freedom and individualism, the leading international style, and an asset in the cultural Cold War.  Yet letters to the editors reveal that readers were still not convinced of the value of abstract art.  These mass magazine representations of abstract painting and readers’ responses to it constructed both a vision of postwar American culture and a middle American public for it.

This is the Contents, Preface, and Introduction to the book. Exchanges have rarely been taken seriously (in any detail) as a subject of study in diplomatic history, but that is a mistake. The influence is subtle, spread over time, and worth investigating. In the beginning this was going to be a study of the Leader Program in Western Europe, but I became so intrigued by the micro-history of the Program in these three countries that I had to give that up. This is really the embodiment of what someone else (Costigliola?) termed the 'capillaries of empire'.

This book argues that the transformation of the print media in the 1950`s and 1960`s expanded the possibilities for social, individual and national identities in Japan. From the late 1950`s, the growth in the market for weekly magazines was fueled by the huge potential for advertising revenue, the rapid development of the Japanese economy, and the necessity for the growth of a consumer society. This resulted in the merging of national identity with individual subjectivity – which this book describes as 'national subjectivity' – as the Japanese media promoted individual consumption to aid the recovery of the Japanese nation as a whole.

Paper given at the HOTCUS Winter Symposium at the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies:

The “Second Cold War” that followed the breakdown of US-Soviet detente in the latter half of the 1970s led to a renewed cultural preoccupation with a potential nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, advances in space exploration, computer and laser technology provided the backdrop for proponents of ballistic missile defence to outline radical new scenarios by which the nuclear stalemate might be transcended, scenarios which would coalesce around Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative” announced in 1983. This paper analyses the visions of space warfare that suffuse military and cultural discourse during this period. Using Reagan administration documents and representative examples of the genre, it will explore how futuristic conflict scenarios of the US and USSR battling over the heavens were expressed in both government propaganda and the increasingly popular “techno-thriller” –best-sellers that combined traditional masculine adventure literature with an obsession with technical and engineering minutiae and were often decidedly conservative in terms of politics.

This article has as subject the study of Détente during the Cold War. It will be done by the analysis of different frameworks used by scholars to examine that historical period. Thus, in this work, the development of a notion of Détente during the Cold War and the different détentes highlighted by diverse points of view will be subject of scrutiny. To do that, the article explores the main characteristics of the so-called French Détente, the Ostpolitik, and the US-USSR Détente.

Für Amerikaner und Westeuropäer war der Kalte Krieg nur am Rande ein bewaffneter Konflikt und mehr als eine reine Auseinandersetzung zwischen den zwei großen Ideologien Kommunismus und liberaler Kapitalismus. Er beeinflusste Gesellschaft, Wissenschaft und Kultur in den westlichen Staaten in ganz erheblichem Maße: Der Rüstungswettlauf war einerseits Projektionsfläche tiefgreifender Ängste vor einem atomaren Holocaust. Andererseits sollte diese Angst durch Planung und Verwissenschaftlichung in kollektive Sicherheit transformiert werden. In diesem Sinne versteht der vorliegende Band den Kalten Krieg als ‚Krieg der Imaginationen‘ (Mary Kaldor). Er führt Beiträge von Militär-, Sozial- und Ideenhistorikern in einer sozialen Ideengeschichte zusammen und bereichert unser Wissen über eines der am tiefsten einschneidenden Phänomene des 20. Jahrhunderts um wichtige, bislang aber vernachlässigte Facetten.

La storia dei rapporti tra Italia e Germania dopo la seconda guerra mondiale è una delle chiavi per capire le contraddizioni dell'Europa contemporanea. L'Italia fu tra i principali sostenitori della rinascita di uno Stato tedesco affrancato dall'influenza sovietica: i due paesi dovevano far parte dello stesso sistema di relazioni economiche e politiche. Partendo dall'analisi del punto di vista italiano sulla «questione tedesca», il volume ricostruisce, anche attraverso le reciproche percezioni, le matrici politiche ed economiche alla base delle relazioni bilaterali dalla fine della seconda guerra mondiale alla metà degli anni Cinquanta. In questo decennio presero forma quelle peculiari condizioni geopolitiche su cui si sarebbero fondati i rapporti tra Italia e Repubblica Federale durante il periodo della guerra fredda.

Este artigo argumenta, assumindo uma perspectiva geopolítica, sobre o papel dos media cinematográficos como arma ideológica, política e cultural durante o período da Guerra Fria. Uma primeira abordagem, pretende esclarecer o conceito de geopolítica através de quatro dos seus aspectos. O artigo aborda, depois, os formatos e materializações da propaganda americana, nos primeiros anos, com a ascensão dos newsreels e o seu papel como garante psicológico da resistência ao comunismo.
De seguida, são analisados os anos da segunda metade da Guerra Fria, revelando a ascensão dos géneros cinematográficos da espionagem e vigilância e o seu papel na formação da identidade nacionalista, na geração do herói americano e na inscrição social da ideologia capitalista.
A relação estratégica entre a indústria do cinema de Hollywood e as várias administrações americanas do período da Guerra Fria fica, assim, demonstrada, caracterizando-se como uma verdadeira rede comercial multinacional e com influências em vários países, especialmente na Europa, traduzindo-se na hegemonia cultural americana dos nossos dias.

This article argues, in a geopolitical perspective, on the role of cinematographic media as an ideological, political and cultural weapon during the Cold War period. The first approach tries to clarify the concept of geopolitics through four of its aspects. The article addresses, then, the formats and representations of the American propaganda in the early years, with the rise of newsreels and their role as guarantor of psychological resistance to communism.
Next, we analyse the years of the second half of the Cold War, revealing the rise of the film genres of espionage and surveillance and their role in forging nationalist identity, the rise of the American hero and the social inscription of capitalist ideology.
The strategic relationship between Hollywood film industry and the various American administrations of the Cold War period is thus demonstrated, being characterised as a true multinational commercial network influencing several countries, mainly in Europe, into nowadays American cultural hegemony.

“You [must] risk getting lost in the thickets, … that is the only way to make art.” --Robert Smithson.

Julian Charrière’s (*1987) work bridges the realms of environmental science and cultural history. Marshalling performance, sculpture and photography, his projects often stem from fieldwork in remote locations with acute geophysical identities. His latest work Second Suns investigates the post-nuclear landscapes and architecture of the Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands) and Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). Visual content comprises four major photo series, sculptural and video works, and expedition documentation, featuring compelling images of ruined concrete bunkers, sunken battleships, apocalyptic sunsets and decaying infrastructure while contributions by leading thinkers provide historic, geographic and intellectual context. Second Suns offers readers access to notorious geographical zones shrouded in fantasy and tragedy and provides the most comprehensive visual engagement with each site published to date.

From the very first days after the destruction of Hiroshima the coexistence of science and myth, rationality and mysticism, has gone hand in hand with the elaboration of a public debate over the atomic bomb (1). President Harry Truman's words over the radio when announcing the new weapon to the American people on the sixth of August 1945 describe it as «the basic power of the Universe», granted to the United States by God himself. He reiterated this a point three days later on his return from the Potsdam Conference (2). Truman presented the Bomb to the world using a religious type of rhetoric with tones of almost Messianic deliverance. Technological developments made by scientists from all over the world were embraced and united beneath the stars and stripes. The almost divine nature of the new form of energy may well have been capable of mass destruction, but if well managed it was also able to guarantee prosperity and progress for mankind (3). The capacity to create or annihilate lay in the hands of a man who, like some apprentice alchemist, had become the sole artisan of his own fortune. His was the power to shape the normal course of events, burning bridges with the past and throwing open the (1) The allusive and metaphoric power of the Bomb meant that two spheres, apparently worlds apart, such as science and religion, could be indistinguishably merged within a highly evocative plot.

In this paper, I examine the American-Hungarian press-coverage of the Soviet-American
exchange exhibitions, which had been organized in 1959. The Soviet Union opened its
exhibition in New York at the Coliseum. For the organizers, the three most important
objects were the models of the Sputnik, the Lenin atomic icebreaker and the “typicalkitchen”.
On the bases of the articles which had been published in the American periodical
press, we are able to reconstruct a rather negative opinion. The American Hungarians had
the most conspicuous opinion in their articles. In Hungary, newspaper-readers were able
to read only positive reactions. The American National Exhibition in Moscow proved to
be different. The organizers intended to introduce the everyday life of American people.
This meant that consumption goods, such as Coke, color-televisions, all kinds of fast
food and cars had been displayed. Although, the Soviet officers made anti-propagandistic
steps, altogether three million people visited this event. In the Hungarian press, more
articles can be found about this exhibition, than about the Soviet Exhibition.

In: Böhm Gábor – Fedeles Tamás (Szerk.): Specimia Operum Iuvenum 2. Szemelvények 2. Válogatás a PTE BTK XXXI. Országos Tudományos Diákköri Konferencián (2013) első helyezést elért hallgatóinak pályaműveiből. Pécs, 2013. 209-231

This book aims at emphasizing the important role of broadcasting as central actor in the creation of a transnational and European communication space during the period of the Cold War. Its methodological design aims at linking the study of the circulation and appropriation of cultural performances with awareness for the crucial role of broadcast technologies as mediators and catalysts of cultural transfers. In studying Europe as a Cold War broadcasting space by describing and analyzing different transmission and reception technologies and by questioning their specific contribution to the medial construction of a transnational communication space in constantly changing political and cultural environments we hope to enlarge our understanding of the role of civil and institutional actors in the creation of transnational communities and European networks. It addresses media historians as well as historians of international relations, especially regarding the Cold War and European integration.

Only excerpts available here. Full text is at https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/jcws_a_00819 (or through library access)
Abstract:
From the late 1950s until 1975, the war between North and South Vietnam had both domestic and international consequences. Unlike the Cold War divide between the United States and the Soviet Union, the war between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, the Communist North) and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, the non-Communist South) was an armed conflict between two polities that both identified themselves as Vietnamese. In this twenty-year-long struggle, the fates of the DRV and the RVN were tied to their success in producing new generations who would subscribe to their respective agendas. This was done through many venues, of which education was one of the most important.
          This article analyzes the educational systems at the primary and secondary school levels in the DRV and RVN after the division of the country, with a special focus on the years between 1965 and 1975. It considers their respective “divorces” from the colonial educational system and explores their goals, their problems, and the means they used to overcome these problems. Moreover, the DRV attempted to create an educational mini-empire with the DRV centered agenda—establishing a Vietnamese-based system in China, bringing into the DRV Laotian children, and exporting their ideology in the educational system established in the NLF-controlled territories of the RVN. The DRV created a rigidly politicized school system focused on the war and the construction of socialism. The RVN, creating an educational antipode of the North, endeavored to separate schools from the war, largely taking politics out of the curriculum and leaving pupils to figure out for themselves the aims of the conflict and their place in it, stranding many of them in ambiguity. If the DRV system was depriving pupils of the means to challenge the government, the RVN was supplying children with such means. Relying on archival materials and published documents, this article compares the educational systems at the primary and secondary school levels in the DRV and RVN after the division of the country, with a special focus on the period 1965–1975.

Table of Contents, Acknowledgements, and Introduction to my new book, The Last Good Neighbor: Mexico in the Global Sixties (Duke Univ Press), which examines Mexican internationalism—intersection of geopolitics, US-Mexican relations, and political cultures of the post-Bandung Left—during the period c. 1958-1966.

A Good Artist and a Bad Art Dealer, or Vice Versa. On Jan Lebenstein’s Relations with New York’s Galerie Chalette

The contacts that Jan Lebenstein had in 1959-74 with the Galerie Chalette run by Artur and Madeleine Lejwa are discussed. The reconstruction and interpretation of those turbulent relations between Jan Lebenstein and the gallery were conducted on the grounds of the documents from the Gallery’s archive that are currently at the American Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. The used sources had previously remained unknown to Polish researchers. 
Jan Lebenstein may have met Artur Lejwa in the spring and summer of 1959 during the trip of the latter to Poland. The middleman in the meeting was most likely Ryszard Stanisławski, who trough the Office of Foreign Trade organized export of Polish art to Western Europe and the United States. The artist started constant cooperation with the Galerie Chaletter only once he had migrated, namely when extremely successful following the Biennale of the Young in Paris, he settled down in France. In September 1961, the painter signed an exclusivity contract with Lejwa for trading his art in the US.  This was the time when works on the artist’s monographic exhibition in the United States had begun. The first problems in the cooperation arose already in February 1962. The artist wanted then to sell paintings bypassing the Gallery, this causing the dealer’s protest. The dispute also covered the range of the activities of the dealer representing Lebenstein in France, namely Jacquesa Lacloche. Despite these difficulties, the opening of the artist’s exhibition, planned for March 1962, was held at the Gallery as scheduled, while the painter graced it with his presence. Lebenstein’s visit to the USA, meant by Lejwa as help to the marketing activities he was involved in, proved to be a failure. Lebenstein apparently (as reported by Lejwa) showed up in some company and having drunk, he behaved inappropriately. Upon the artist’s return to Paris, the cooperation became even harder. The dealer did not inform the artist about the sales of his works, while Lebenstein did not fulfill the Contract commitment of supplying a definite number paintings. In July 1963, Lebenstein decided to breach his Contract with the Gallery. For several months Lejwa ignored the correspondence on the topic, that is why in 1965 the case ended up in court. For the next decade the court failed to rule, while Lebenstein’s career was in stalemate. The conflict was resolved by the agreement between the Parties only in 1974, already after Lejwa’s death. 
Although the figure of the ‘bad art dealer’ as well as the aversion to laws ruling in the art market were reiterated in Lebenstein’s statements, these have never before been confronted with the artist’s personal experience and the fact that the litigation with his former representative went on for over a decade. The purpose of the article, however, is not a black-and-white accounting for Lebenstein’s dislike of American art dealers. A critical analysis of the sources allow to find nuances in the dichotomy the artist was building: good artist – bad art dealer. In the course of the litigation Lejwa accused Lebenstein of cheating the French government over taxes, of not complying with the Contract as for the annual number of works he was to supply to the Gallery, and finally that any business cooperation with him was difficult due to his alcoholism. However, other Polish artists (e.g. Wojciech Fangor) cooperating with Artur Lejwa highly appreciated the dealer’s professionalism and logistics skills, Lebenstein being the only Pole in open conflict with the Galerie Chalette’s owner. The presentation of the course of the events and arguments of both parties inevitably questions  Lebenstein’s version of the story and makes one perceive it as an attempt at a quasi-romantic narrativzation of history.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, rap music became the soundtrack of Americanization. Along with breakdance, graffiti, and deejaying, rap inspired young people all over the world to create and practice their own versions of this popular culture. In my essay, I examine how hiphop pervaded the Iron Curtain. More specifically, I analyze the conditions under which hiphop culture became known and accepted in the GDR. Focusing on the interaction between representatives of the Socialist regime and young hiphop practitioners, I scrutinize their cultural transfers of hiphop and the different meanings both sides attributed to its practice. I flesh out the discrepancy between the hegemonic discourse on popular culture, which tried to recode hiphop into a desirable Socialist practice, and the youth cultural practice of hiphop, which deviated from this discourse. Paradoxically, young breakdancers, rappers, DJs, and graffiti artists hardly had to fear any consequences stemming from their practice. With my paper, I contribute to historical research on youth culture, the GDR's final years, and Americanization as one of the driving forces behind its disintegration.

This paper aims to reconsider the issues of Sugimoto Hiroshi’s Japanese art history through exploring the History of History exhibition held in the 21st Century Museum of Art, Kanazawa in 2009. Although there is no etymological evidence, the term “history” is often considered “his-story.” Every historian interprets the factual matters from his/her perspective and thus narrates his/her own version of history.  Based on this premise, I will demonstrate how Sugimoto’s version is narrated using his visual languages.
In Part I, I analyze the works presented in the History of History exhibition, curated from the works produced by Sugimoto as well as from the works collected by him, in order to reveal Sugimoto’s narration.  In so doing, it becomes clear that these works concern mainly “spirituality” since they are objects to be used for ritual performances.  Then, I will compare the Sugimoto’s Japanese art history with the so-called “orthodox” Japanese art history, which was another version constructed in the Meiji period by self-imposing the European art history model.
In Part II, I focus on the cultural and social background of USA, particularly California and New York where Sugimoto, respectively, studied the photography and engaged in art dealing in the 1970s. During this period, Sugimoto was associated with Flower Children counter-cultural movement.  “Cold War Japonism” is a term coined by myself that explains how the earlier Japonism – the 19th century European boom of Japanese art and culture – was reinvented during the Cold War in the USA. Unlike the previous Japonism, which was interested in the popular culture such as ukiyo-e, Cold War Japonism emphasized Japanese spirituality based on Zen philosophy. This concept was particularly evident in calligraphic expression in Zen expressionist landscape and Zen gardens. I will reconsider the political reason that caused this cultural phenomenon.
Hence, this paper will shed a new light on the understanding of how Sugimoto’s Japanese art history is constructed by uncovering cultural and social environment of Cold War era that affected his own narration.