Mako Idemitsu

Video began as a medium that inspired discovery. This art documentary traces the expressive roots of “media art” in Japan — works of video, performances, and installations created using video technology that allowed for free and creative visual expression.

This film shows the images of a dancing woman who is wearing Kimono overlapping another image which a naked man is dancing. This is one of the original psychological concepts of C.G. Jung. For women, Animus is an image of a man by projection of her mental energy.

Idemitsu's camera follows a gay man, Eckard.

A film made using a work of Cindy Sherman, expresses Idemitsu's free and easy sense of humor.

The film shows vivid close-ups of a liver with the background music of “My Baby” by Janice Joplin.

In Idemitsu's experiment using a video camera and monitor, the reflexive exercise looking into a mirror is swapped with the monitor, suggesting a reflection on the history of women's relationship with makeup.

Hideo, a young man living away from his parents, is kept under constant surveillance by his doting mother via an omnipresent television monitor. Mama can only communicate with her beloved, absent son through the video screen.

When Yoji announces to his mother that he wants her to meet a new girlfriend, the mother's jealousy destroys the relationship. Yoji's mother fastens onto her son, unable to leave his mother or experience love for any other woman.

Idemitsu handed four women who frequented the feminist gathering space Hōkiboshi a video camera to record whatever they wished as Idemitsu also recorded their actions. The whole group then watched all five videos on five monitors, which Idemitsu then also recorded.

Kiyoko's Situation articulates the deeply embedded cultural roles of Japanese women through the parallel stories of two female artists, Kiyoko and Tani. In Idemitsu's narrative-within-a-narrative, "Kiyoko's situation" is played out on a television monitor within Tani's drama. Tani is paralyzed in her attempts to paint by her feeling that, as a single woman, she has failed in society's eyes. Kiyoko, a young mother viciously criticized by her husband and family for her fierce determination to paint, eventually compromises her art for "maternal duty." As Kiyoko complies with the family, Tani, isolated and despairing, is driven to suicide. Idemitsu's chillingly omniscient television monitor, which acts as the psychological "other," metaphorically and literally condemns Tani to death. In the final cruel irony, she hangs herself, using the television monitor as a jumping-off point.

The relationship between the mother and daughter is psychologically very tight. The isolated husband is irritated and becomes violent whenever he drinks but the two women cannot understand the reason of his violence. The mother lets the daughter marry for appearance's sake although in reality she hangs onto the daughter forever.

Taking place during the women’s liberation movement, Idemitsu filmed the Womanhouse which became her first 16mm film work. Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro jointly organized the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) in 1971. The Cal Arts Feminist Art Program group performed for the audience at Womanhouse in 1972. They transformed an old run-down mansion in Los Angeles into Womanhouse. In the kitchen a progression of sculptured breasts gradually turned into fried eggs; one bathroom contained a mass of Tampax, and if you opened the linen closet you found a trapped mannequin.

In this work, the subconscious problems of a daughter who rejects going school is illustrated based on the concept of the Great Mother, a psychological concept by C.G. Jung. The subconscious of the daughter is shown on the screen of the monitor in the scenes. When the daughter becomes violent, how does a personified great mother function?

In Idemitsu's seminal women's liberationist video, the image of a tampon swirling in a toilet bowl slowly appears, as the artist speaks about the troubling roles, responsibilities and expectations of women in a clinical tone. Minimal in composition, What a Woman Made is a candid critique of the treatment of women in Japanese society.

A woman performs domestic chores, watched by a television displaying the image of her own eye. The home is recast as a space of surveillance, control and repetitive labor.

A woman’s image as a mind-scape, after she had plastic surgery.

This work portrays 'Animus,' a Jungian concept representing the masculine side of the female psyche. It embodies the 'Animus image' felt upon viewing 'Messenger from Hell,' a performance by the late Sayako Kishimoto.

Today, Japan is envied by the world for her economic prosperity, which however, has resulted in producing this sort of average family. Its contains a wife who has to serve her husband, a preoccupied businessman, and who showers all her attention on her child who is also left behind at home with the mother. The child, especially a son, becomes a replacement for her husband. Mother and son share an intimate life like lovers at home without the husband. It seems that this is such a common occurrence that Japanese society ignores this video work. Those that are envious of the Japanese economic success will become less so if they see this work and realize what this real phenomena in Japanese society is like.

Idemitsu reflects on her family and the war waged by Japan at the beginning of last century in Asia

Depicts one weekend of a gay couple. The title "Touryanse" refers to a Japanese nursery rhyme.

A mindscape in Santa Monica, where Idemitsu lived for 8 years.

One of a series of Idemitsu’s works which deal with housewives buried in everyday life. Idemitsu overlapped a 16 mm work that had Yoneyama Mamako pantomiming in her “Tango of a Hosewife” for the Commemoration of the International Women’s year, 1975. Behind Mamako pantomiming as a housewife, there are clouds, sunsets and bonfires.

One man's life is expressed in a form of a mime with a factories' chimneys are placed as its backdrop.

Commissioned by the American Center Japan, Idemitsu made a video introducing her husband Sam Francis. She interviewed 5 people about their views of Sam Francis. Those who interviewed were Taeko Tomioka, Toru Takemitsu, Shuzo Takiguchi, Jiro Takamatsu, and Sazo Idemitsu.

As a shadow appears when a human body is lit up, there is a certain dark part like a shadow in the mind of a man. This is an aspect of a man’s personality which he usually is hesitant to admit. C.G.Jung, Swiss psychologist, called this dark aspect a shadow because it appears in personified forms when one dreams. In my work Shadows, there is another monitor in the images of the main monitor. The inside monitor shows the mind of the outside characters, that is, the inside monitor’s characters are shadows, psychological projections of the outside characters. Since the issue of shadows is so complicated and hard to understand, I selected examples that are specific and understandable, as well as familiar to women in their daily life. These are also the feeling I have toward my routine life.