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This brief rejoinder reflects on a number of points made by Meng Qu (2020) in his account of the relationship between art and community on Teshima and, in particular, on his critique of my work on a similar topic (Suwa, 2020). In my article I was mainly concerned to address the art installations around the island of Teshima. I discussed how the landmarks “are permanently embedded in their surroundings” (2020: 248) to generate assemblages and concluded that the artworks form various assemblages among non-artworks, land features and other significant landscape points. This finding resonates with my other publications (Suwa 2007, 2012a, 2012b, 2017, 2018). Qu makes no reference to the idea of “assemblage”, which is the crucial notion in my paper. By contrast, he approaches local activities on Teshima in terms of community study. His approach is grounded with concepts such as identity, organisation, property and social networking as a priori entities and because of this his style of social analysis and epistemological framework is very different to my approach. Throughout his text Qu repeats the word “community” as if Teshima is primarily a social entity and thereby lacks a perspective of space. In my work on the topic I specifically oppose the essentialism of ideas of (local) community in discussing “the space of shima” (Suwa, 2007). He is critical of my paper for committing to what he calls “traditional thinking” (2020: 254) but such “traditional thinking” really belongs to his approach. That is, Qu sees the (local) community (or the actants relating to Teshima) as a singular society, cohort or property. Such an approach has long been interrogated in scholarly discourse and particularly in cultural anthropology, which forms the foundation of my article.

A rejoinder to Meng Qu’s ‘Teshima — From Island Art to the Art Island: Art on/for a previously declining Japanese Inland Sea Island’