‘죽은 이를 다루는 방식’에 대해서

On the Treatment of the Dead - Zushigame Urn and the Memory of Okinawa

The film I made in 2005, (Chamberlain’s Zushigame) is an anthropological documentary. In the style of road movie, I interviewed people asking about the relationship of the Dead and us, traversing various fields of study ranging from ethnology to contemporary arts. The film starts by showing the Zushigame urns preserved in Pill Rivers Museum in UK. The exotic collection of this museum is based on the arbitrary system of values and meanings of the West, which became the foundation identifying the Japanese Empire. The Zushigame in question is stored in a glass case of which the title is 〈On the Treatment of the Dead〉. It was donated by Basil Hall Chamberlain who had stayed in Naha and studied the culture and language of Ryukyu. His collection in Pitt Rivers Museum helps us understand the Japanese national identity of early modern era. The size, decorations, and even the existence of Zushigame urns have much to do with the cultural changes of Japanese society. As these urns are stored in the institution being put in a glass box, personal records and memories surrounding this cultural phenomenon are categorized and put in the frame of ‘Empire.’ Zushigame cannot be fully understood just in ethnological or national point of view. Therefore, cultural and historical records should be shared crossing the frontier, the physical and conceptual boundary of nationalism. Beyond the nationalism, the production of archive asks all of us who live in East Asia a question 〈On the Treatment of the Dead〉.