Environmental issues, and human responses to environmental damage and challenge, have lately been at the center of a number of studies of Japanese arts, media, and culture.1 Bert Winther-Tamaki offers a timely consideration of the role of the environment in Japanese art practices since 1955 using the key concept of tsuchi, or “earth.” What may at first seem a slightly eccentric approach to bringing together a variety of works ranging across installation and performance art through ceramics, sculpture, architecture, and even anime, evolves into a nuanced and fascinating study of a single motif or material that artists have approached in radically different ways and with diverse results.
It is quite hard to discuss the topic of earth or ground without falling into accidental wordplay, and indeed, the book is written with a humor that is also reflected in the many rich excerpts and illustrations of artists' words and...
