Ko Matsunaga

Art Coordinator

After Japan’s defeat in World War II and the dissolution of the industrial combines and land reforms carried out by the Occupation forces, public cultural policy came to be seen as the responsibility of the government. People came to feel that they should be able to participate in cultural activities free of charge. And, as the Occupation forces had hoped, Japan became a model of pure consumer culture, in which money was to be used solely for the pursuit of personal satisfaction.
Meanwhile, now that cultural policy had become a government enterprise, cultural centers and museums were being built right and left. They were seen as public works projects, no different from highways and bridges, and there was competition to be the largest in scale. Small buildings had no value for the construction industry, and could not win approval in the Diet. But with declining tax revenues, immense cultural projects also became difficult to administer, and at present the process of cutting the budget by transforming them into quasi-independent corporations is proceeding at a rapid pace.
It seems to me that through this process, culture is finally returning to the hands of the citizens. Culture is not something created by national or local governments—it goes without saying that it is cultivated by the hands of individual citizens, of their own free will. Youkobo is playing an essential, pioneering role in making this happen.
（2006）