The Zero

A Niihau aircraft replica taped together from photos elicits strong emotions

If ever there were an icon for the mysterious, surprisingly powerful Imperial Navy at the advent of World War II, the A6M2 "Zero" was it. Jiro Horikoshi's audacious design for the Mitsubishi company broke all the rules of aircraft construction, being light, nimble, swift and far-reaching, a razor-edged sword in design philosophy while the other nations of the world were mass-producing clunky machine guns. It was so feared that American aviators were given one simple instruction upon meeting a Zero: run.

Japan produced the Zero, and the Zero was Japan. A lot of nationalistic pride was tied up in a construct of duraluminum and steel and explosive ambition.

And yet, when Katsushige Nakahashi was a schoolboy, his impression of the Zero was that it was a pleasant plastic toy. The war was locked away in a national amnesia, visible only as model kits. Nakahashi's context was bits of plastic that assembled into a coherent whole.

Nakahashi is one of Japan's leading sculptors, but he's still working with little pieces as a design aesthetic. At the University of Hawaii-Manoa's Art Gallery, Nakahashi and friends are busy taping together the latest of his "Zero Projects," a life-size replica of the famous fighter plane. His project is part of the gallery's "Reconstructing Memories" exhibition. But wait -- it's actually 25,000 micro-images of a scale model of a Zero, blown up to actual size and taped together to form a kind of dragon pelt, as if a living creature inside the form of a Zero had escaped its skin.

The result is floppy but recognizably a Zero and creates extraordinary reactions from visitors. Nakahashi's own father revealed that he had been a Zero mechanic during the war, something he had kept secret for half a century.

But it's also a gigantic blow-up of a toy, a kind of adolescent fantasy. Plastic, as in plastic model, also means malleable, and everyone seems to have their own reactions to the piece, sometimes conflicting reactions, and that delights Nakahashi. He says the art isn't the piece itself, but the reaction to it.

"It's not just a blown-up scale model of a plastic plane, but I make it of a specific plane," said Nakahashi, translated thanks to the university's John Szostak. In this case, it's of Zero BII-120, flown by Shigenori Nishikaichi from the carrier Hiryu in the attack on Pearl Harbor. This is the aircraft that crash-landed on Niihau.

The model kit is a 1/32 scale Doyusha A6M2 Type 21 Zero, the same kind used in the attack. Nakahashi likes the particular kit because it's reasonably accurate and covered in thousands of tiny dimpled rivets, which help in reassembling what is basically a 3-D jigsaw puzzle.

"It's a beautiful object, and we captured some of that beauty in what is not a perfect reproduction. I like the serendipity of putting it together, seeing it go together," said Nakahashi, sounding like a kid with a new model kit. "It's something assembled by teams of humans, not grown by nature.

"The model is built and painted -- not too fancy, as if a kid did it, rough and amateurish -- and gridded off with an overlay map, like latitude and longitude," said Nakahashi. " It's then photographed with a special macro camera lens, each image covering about 1 millimeter by 2 millimeters. Each section is one roll of film."

Nothing special about the pictures, said Nakahashi. They're processed at the local quick-print shop, standard-size photos, the cheapest way possible, all 25,000 or so of them. No, he doesn't get a bulk rate. The pictures are all subtly different, depending on the lighting when they were taken. The overall effect is somewhat pixelated.

"It is a toy plane blown up. That's all. But then something special happens," said Nakahashi. "My generation, their only interest is of the model, the toy. We all built them as children. Not so many build them today, but it was a big part of childhood in Japan in the '50s and '60s.

"But the seniors who see it, both in Japan and America, it is a symbol of something else going on. In Japan the audiences begin talking about the war, and that is so rare. I did not know my own father witnessed an atom-bombing.

"My purpose is no longer to make an object. It is to create memories and reminiscences. It's a catalyst, a living work of art in audience interaction."

In Japan, says Nakahashi, the Zero is closely related to the kamikaze sacrifices made by navy pilots at the end of the war, a "sad and political reason" to remember the airplane. Two of the other exhibits used different types of airframes -- the Oka, a rocket-powered suicide bomb with wings, and the Shiden, a futuristic Buck Rogers design flown on the last day of the war.

"Most Japanese react to the shape and the form and the design aesthetic, not the history," said Nakahashi. "Most don't have direct experience of the war, and have no way to express it. There are no public museums about the war in Japan."

The UH Zero is one of a series -- they're all different, not multiple print runs of the same photographs -- erected in places with firsthand experience with Zeros: San Diego (where a captured Zero was tested during WWII); Darwin, Australia; and Tokyo. The first was erected in an Osaka gallery in 1998.

"When it was done, we couldn't get it out the elevator! Bad planning!" laughed Nakahashi. "Didn't want to just cut it up and throw it away. Not a simple disposal. There had to be a better way."

And so, like most of the Zeros built during the war, the works perish by fire. On Dec. 13, the day the Niihau pilot was killed, the Zero will be carried out on the University of Hawaii mall and set afire. (The tape used to piece together the photographs is made specially for the project and carried here from Tokyo, and adds a substantial expense to the project, but the smoke generated from the special tape adds only CO2 to the air, no toxic fumes.)

Even the burned outline of the plane left on the grass is part of the artwork, and from a distance the ashy silhouette is still recognizably a Zero.

"Each one is different, depending on who puts it together, but in the end it's still a Zero," said Nakahashi. "You can't kill the Zero."

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