The Exhibit Lauded Freedom of Expression. It Was Silenced.

The exhibition that was closed at the Aichi Triennale in Nagoya, Japan, included a statue symbolizing women forced into sexual slavery during World War II.CreditCreditThe Yomiuri Shimbun, via Associated Press Images

TOKYO — It was an exhibit meant to celebrate freedom of expression. Instead, freedom of expression was shut down.

A long, bitter battle between Japan and South Korea over historical memory and atonement spilled over into the art world over the weekend when organizers of an international fair in Japan closed an exhibition that featured a statue symbolizing one of the Korean women forced into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

The exhibit, “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’” was intended to showcase artwork that had been excluded from museums in Japan or elsewhere.

“I see the current situation as something that proves freedom of expression is being undermined,” Daisuke Tsuda, the artistic director of the Aichi Triennale, the host of the exhibition, said in a statement.

Mr. Tsuda said that he regretted the decision, which officials said was made after threats of terrorism.

Statues of so-called comfort women have long been an irritant to Japanese nationalists who dispute that the women were forced into servitude. When the exhibit opened last week, several right-leaning lawmakers from the party of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe protested the inclusion of the statue, the work of two South Korean artists.

Officially, the governor of Aichi Prefecture, Hideaki Omura, cited a decision to “put a priority on safety” in closing the exhibit at the Aichi Triennale, which is held in Nagoya, Japan’s fourth-largest city, and is one of the more internationally visible Japanese art fairs.

Less than three weeks ago, an attacker set fire to an animation studio in Kyoto and killed 35 people. Mr. Omura said faxes sent to the festival organizers warned of similar attacks.

But there was little question that politics was also involved.

After visiting the exhibit last week, Takashi Kawamura, the mayor of Nagoya, said he wanted it closed because it “tramples on the feelings of Japanese citizens.”

In a news conference on Monday, Mr. Kawamura, who has also previously disputed that the Japanese Army committed mass killings in Nanjing, China, during the war, said that freedom of expression “is not freedom where people can do whatever they want to.” With public funds supporting the festival, “freedom of expression has a certain limit,” he said.

However, Mr. Omura, the Aichi governor, lamented the exhibition’s closure because of terrorism threats.

“The government and public officials should be the ones protecting freedom of expression,” he said. “Even if the expression is not to their taste, they should accept an expression as expression.”

Protesters in Nagoya on Sunday rallied against the cancellation of the exhibit.CreditThe Asahi Shimbun, via Getty Images

Stylistically, the statue in the Aichi exhibit resembled statues erected by activists in front of Japanese embassies and consulates in South Korea and around the world. A curator’s note accompanying the work, titled “Statue of Peace,” described it as embodying a “spirit to stand against injustice that has been inherited over generations.”

Mr. Abe’s government has been particularly sensitive to the comfort women statues. In 2017, his administration recalled its ambassador to South Korea for three months to protest a statue, depicting a barefoot young woman in traditional Korean dress sitting in a chair, that was placed in front of the Japanese Consulate in Busan, South Korea.

Last year, the mayor of Osaka, Hirofumi Yoshimura, ended his city’s longstanding sister city relationship with San Francisco to protest a monument there representing comfort women from Korea, China and the Philippines.

“It does seem on these history issues that they are an exception to freedom of speech,” said Lauren Richardson, a lecturer at Australian National University whose research focuses on Korean victims of Japanese colonial policies. “It’s almost just like a separate category because the passions are just so strong.”

Critics accused the organizers of the Aichi exhibit of using the terrorist threats to justify bowing to political pressure.

“The Japanese government repeatedly insists in other instances that it will not bow to threats of violence or terrorism,” Tessa Morris Suzuki, professor emerita at Australian National University who has written about ethnic Korean communities in Japan, wrote in an email. “It is impossible to imagine them (for example) canceling a major sporting event because of a threat of this nature. How can some threat from an extremist so readily result in this capitulation from the authorities?”

One of the artists, Kim Eun-sang, said the shutdown indicated that Japanese society was “regressing.”

“We know Japan as a country that respects arts and culture,” Mr. Kim said in a telephone interview. “We always knew it as an advanced and a civil country in that regard, but as the Abe administration came in, democracy is being compromised and even specific exhibitions are considered something that the government can shut down at its will.”

Critics suggested that the closing set a dangerous precedent. “For one exhibition to be canceled because of this threatening action can be a very bad example for the future,” said Seiko Minaki, an associate professor at Takasaki City University who has written about war and memory.

On social media, Michiyoshi Hatakeyama, a freelance writer, deplored what he viewed as a clearly political decision, particularly amid an escalating diplomatic and trade feud.

“There’s absolutely no need for art to clear up the mess politics made,” Mr. Hatakeyama wrote on Twitter. More than 16,000 people signed an online petition protesting the decision to halt the exhibit.

Kim Seo-kyung, the statue’s other artist, said it was a shame that the exhibit was closed so soon, given that those who had visited in the three days it was open seemed to absorb its message.

“I think most people, especially women, found the pain of war in the statue,” Ms. Kim said. “Many said while crying, ‘We shouldn’t have war.’ They stared at the statue for a long time showing expressions of empathetic sadness.”

Ms. Kim recalled one mother who came with her young daughter and asked the girl why she thought there was a bird on the seated figure’s shoulder. “The daughter said, ‘It’s because she is lonely,’” Ms. Kim said.

Reporting was contributed by Eimi Yamamitsu, Makiko Inoue and Hisako Ueno from Tokyo, and Su-hyun Lee from Seoul, South Korea.