Japan Syndrome was part of a three year project led by contemporary Japanese artist Tadasu Takamine responding to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant following the Tohoku earthquake in March 2011.

Mika Eglinton and I were commissioned by the then curator of Art Tower Mito, Mizuki Takahashi, to translate the Mito version subtitles for this three channel video work as part of a major retrospective on Takamine’s work.

Takamine is a former member of the famed Japanese performance collective Dumb Type. Japan Syndrome looks at aspects of life in post-Fukushima Japan using a black box space stripped to the minimum in which scenes from daily life are re-enacted.

The scenes are based on recordings of real conversations that Takamine had with shop employees in Kyoto, Yamaguchi and Mito between 2011 to 2013.