hankyoreh

A comfort woman statue at an exhibition at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in 2019 (Cho Ki-weon/The Hankyoreh)

An Osaka gallery was threatened with a toxic gas terrorist attack amid frictions over the exhibition “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’,” where the display of a statue symbolizing victims of wartime sexual enslavement by the Japanese military has led members of the local right-wing to use intimidation tactics in an attempt to force the event’s cancellation.

According to a Kyodo News report Thursday, a package containing liquid and a document including the word “sarin” was delivered Wednesday to the Osaka Prefectural Labor Center (L-Osaka), where the Kansai exhibition of “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’” is taking place from Friday to Sunday.

A highly toxic nerve agent, sarin is a focus of particular fear in Japan due to its associations with a 1995 terrorist attack in which sarin gas was spread in the Tokyo subway by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult.

As a precaution, L-Osaka evacuated its roughly dozen staff members for 20 minutes and reported the incident to local police. Police concluded that the liquid in the package was “not a hazardous substance” and were investigating the incident on the assumption that it was “most likely water,” Kyodo said.

On Tuesday, the center received another letter in which the writer threatened to “stop [the exhibition] by force” if it went ahead.

The exhibition does appear poised to go on as scheduled from Friday to Sunday after the Osaka High Court ruled Tuesday that L-Osaka’s cancellation of its decision to lend out the exhibition venue was “problematic.”

The Osaka District Court previously concluded on July 9 that the venue rental had to be acknowledged. In response to an injunction request by the exhibition organizers asking for the suspension of the cancellation decision, the court said, “It cannot be argued that there is a concrete risk of a serious event occurring. Some measure of protesting must be accepted.”

The “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’” exhibition was scheduled to be held at L-Osaka from Friday to Sunday. But the venue moved to cancel the exhibition in response to telephone and vehicle-based protests by right-wingers, arguing that these posed an “impediment to viewer safety.”

By Kim So-youn, staff reporter

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