Tomoko Tōsaka
Tomoko Tōsaka | |
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| Born | 1 September 1931 Zaul, Xevden |
| Known for | First Chair of the Arts Council |
Tomoko Tōsaka (Miranian: 智子 遠坂; born 1 September 1931) is a Gylian journalist, commentator, and civil servant. She was the first Chair of the Arts Council when it was established. Her tenure marked an early golden age for the Arts Council, as it forged a close cooperation with Eoni Nalion's Ministry of Culture and played a significant supporting role in the emergence of Groovy Gylias.
Early life
Tomoko was born on 1 September 1931 in Zaul. The Tōsaka family were a modestly well-off Miranian Gylian family that later became a political family with a legacy of public service.
Tomoko grew up with her cousins Rin and cousin Sakura, forging a lifelong bond. She was first educated at home and later in volunteer classes in the Free Territories.
She began working as a journalist, and kept in close contact with her cousins who became itinerant teachers. She was interested in the arts, and her reporting came to focus on the Free Territories' cultural scene. At other points, she found additional work as an assistant for Deborah Freeman and researcher for the General Council.
She thus built a reputation as a promising public servant, and was courted by the Democratic Communist Party. Unlike her cousins, Tomoko was not interested in a political career. Instead, she accepted Darnan Cyras' offer of a post-war role in cultural policy.
Chair of the Arts Council
Following the establishment of the Arts Council, Tomoko was named as its first Chair. She would serve in the role for two decades, and it would be the role in which she had her greatest impact.
Tomoko made the Arts Council the leading administrative agency responsible for promoting and supporting Gylias' cultural and artistic activities. Looking to Alscia's UOC as an example, she supplemented the Arts Council's public funding by fundraising and cultivating donors among rich Gylians.
She promoted cultural philanthropy with gusto, reminding her donors it would improve their public esteem, and benefited from the fact that during the Golden Revolution many Gylians who became rich did so out of artistic careers. She also supported the profession of hétaïres, seeing them as Gylian geisha, and gave them a responsibility for distributing arts grants.
While her approach was traditionalist to an extent, Tomoko enthusiastically embraced the contemporary popular culture that flourished during the Golden Revolution. She worked closely with other administrative agencies and the Ministry of Culture, and excelled at administration and coordination. A system of vetting projects was created which turned proposal meetings into brainstorming sessions, and helped steer some creators into more original directions.
She used the Arts Council's funding and promotion mechanisms to shape popular culture, with her main concern being raising the average quality of Gylian works. In a 1968 speech, she boasted, "Without the Arts Council, there would be no Gylian Invasion."
Owing to her concern with artistic quality, she welcomed the work of Saorlaith Ní Curnín, writing enthusiastically that the Good Practices Code "used correctly will become one of the greatest things to happen to Gylian culture", and Jenny Ford's Prudence Foundation.
One of her main contributions was the notion of "applied avant-garde", which informed her work. She promoted it as a philosophy of reconciling experimentation and accessibility, positing a beneficial relationship between the avant-garde as experimentalists and innovators within an art form, and the "mainstream" which subsequently applies these breakthroughs to produce greater work.
The ideal became widespread in Gylian cultural life, and found notable manifestations in nouvelle vague-influenced cinema, progressive and experimental forms of music, Gauchic art, and similar currents.
An advocate of universal public access to the arts, she welcomed the eradication of high–low culture distinctions brought by the Golden Revolution, and helped steer funding to support libraries, museums, galleries, festivals, and numerous other events and organisations.
Columnist Denise Sarrault jokingly dubbed her "une merveilleuse aspirateure nationale" ("a marvelous national vacuum cleaner") for her talents at "extracting" money and support from the wealthy and redirecting it towards culture and the arts.
Tomoko benefited from a close friendship and working relationship with culture minister Eoni Nalion. The two shared the same goals, and frequently appeared together in public. While the Arts Council as an administrative agency was under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture, Tomoko avidly defended its independence, and believed it was important for there to be an "arm's length" distance between arts policy and the government of the day. That said, she had a good relationship with the Darnan Cyras government, and the "arm's length" principle mostly manifested itself in good-natured teasing.
Public image
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Tomoko was an energetic and high-profile Chair of the Arts Council. She was said to know all of Gylias' museum or gallery directors by name, and had a reputation as a woman who could move billions of þalers with one phone call. She enjoyed a close relationship with the Shelley family, one of Gylias' richest and most influential families, who became major donors to the Arts Council — Susan Shelley in particular.
In addition to the duties of the office, she wrote treatises on culture and the arts, and appeared on the air frequently, using television and radio to promote Gylian culture. She enjoyed meeting with the public and visiting cultural centres and events. She was held in high esteem by the public; once when she arrived at a theatre to see a play, the audience noticed her presence and gave her a round of applause before the show began.
Tomoko had an urbane and sophisticated personality, with an image to match. In public, she always wore an outfit similar to her cousins' "Tōsaka suit", consisting of a red dress suit with a white shirt and blue bow. She carried a jewel-encrusted walking stick with her, lending her an air of "upper-class eccentricity". She was seen as a symbol of socialised luxury, and publically expressed support for aristerokratia, Levystile, francité, demopolitanism, and hétaïres.
In her public appearances with Eoni, the two had a dynamic similar to the Tōsaka sisters: Eoni was enthusiastic and energetic, but also bashful to an extent and prone to blushing in public, while Tomoko was more regal and dignified in both appearance and wardrobe, using her public speaking prowess to help refine Eoni's ideas and initiatives. She was also notably close to President Reda Kazan, the Tessai, Sima Daián, Ser Şanorin, Isabel Longstowe, and Carmen Dell'Orefice.
She supported the mission of the Revolutionary Communications Office and on a few occasions helped them as an instructor.
Later life
Tomoko's later career suffered due to a hostile relationship with the Aén Ďanez government, and she stepped down as Chair of the Arts Council in 1979.
Afterwards, she worked as a cultural commentator, broadcaster, and presenter of the arts. She also provided advice to her successors as Chair of the Arts Council, consolidating her reputation as an elder stateswoman of cultural policy.
She gradually reduced her level of activity from the 1990s onward, moving towards a quiet retirement. She was interviewed for the 1999 documentary series Nation Building, and was appointed by Anina Bergmann for a term in the Gylian Senate, serving from 1 March to 1 June 2006.
Legacy
Tomoko is considered an iconic figure of the Golden Revolution, particularly for her association and support for Groovy Gylias. She had a great impact on cultural policy, establishing support for the arts as a priority for Gylian governments both federal and local. In making the Arts Council a powerful and prestigious administrative agency, she contributed to the prestige of public service and popular culture, fueling the Golden Revolution-era phenomenon of the "best and brightest" being attracted mainly into those fields.
Her ideal of "applied avant-garde" became popular and influential on Gylian pop culture, its emphasis on reuniting experimentalism and accessibility contributing to the colourful and risk-taking orientation that it took.
Tomoko's example was followed by Alexão Simões and Sasti Şaréy as Directors of the Gyldiv Management Board, particularly Alexão who admired Tomoko's commitment to using the Arts Council to raise the level of popular culture, and her fundraising would serve as a precedent for the Social Partnership Program.
Private life
She is widowed, and has two children from her marriage.
She is a practitioner of Kisekidō.