Today I spent several hours at Roppongi Hills including a visit to the observation deck, a tour of the Mori Art Museum (highlighting works of art from Berlin and Tokyo from the 1880s through the present), and a stroll amongst the high-end shops. Yes, you too can own a pair of extremely expensive, ordinary looking pajamas.
The Mori Art Museum's curators found some remarkable pieces, and, despite my initial concerns, they handled the war years reasonably well. The exhibit featured paintings, photography, architecture, magazines, books, video, sculpture, furniture, and even mechanical "life forms." There were some pieces I still vividly remember. For example, a large painting ("B-29s") depicted American bombers high overhead, faintly visible, with a huge blue sky all around. There was some hint of disturbance, but mainly the overwhelming feeling of the piece was resignation. Another piece, a sculpture, contained materials from Auschwitz, including hair, what appeared to be dried human skin, and a searchlight. The searchlight, at the bottom of the piece, was pointed at the viewer, suggesting the Holocaust is an ongoing inspection of all humanity.
The one piece that I remember most vividly was Iwami Furusawa's "Demonic Music" (1948), a frightening blood red image of a nuclear explosion. Organ pipes rise from the top of the mushroom cloud, and horrific devils spew from their tops.
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