New Publications
Images of Japan 1885-1912: Scenes, Tales and Flowers
Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Former British ambassador to Japan
The Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, 2011
In Images of Japan 1885-1912: Scenes, Tales and Flowers, Sir Hugh Cortazzi provides a compelling introduction to the multiple forms of visual material published in Japan for mostly European and American consumption. His carefully researched books is a much-needed addition to this rich and yet surprisingly under explored field. This book is the fruit of many years of researching, collecting and analysing material published in Western languages on Meiji Japan. He set himself an arduous task as the material covers a range of genres from fairy tales to botanical prints. Yet all of the published material he includes have a few unifying factors, namely strong visual composition, utilization of innovative pictorial and publishing techniques and the use of European languages. The sheer range of subject matter reveals the intense and yet diverse interest in Japan during the late 19th to early 20th century. Sir Hugh has carefully introduced each section based on these disparate genres and placed the works into a historical context that also focuses when possible on the author and publisher. The extensive range of images that he has chosen to illustrate is stunning and makes this book a true delight to read and to view.
Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure
Hoshino Yukinobu
An exclusive series of manga episodes inspired by the iconic objects of the British Museum, now available in English for the first time.
First created by Hoshino Yukinobu in 1990, Professor Munakata Tadakusu is one of Japan's most famous manga characters, with millions of readers eagerly following his adventures in the fortnightly magazine, Big Comic. A historical ethnographer, Professor Munakata has dedicated his life to unravelling the mysteries of Japan's past, with previous adventures seeing him uncover ancient burial grounds and lead dangerous archaeological excavations.
Following his first visit to the British Museum in 2009, Hoshino Yukinobu was inspired by the unique setting that the museum could offer for a Professor Munakata mystery, and quickly began work on Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure.
In the gripping narrative, the Professor, esteemed for his expert knowledge, is invited to deliver a lecture at the British Museum on mythology and folklore. But when the Stonehenge megaliths suddenly disappear during his visit, the Professor must immerse himself in the history and deep-seated rivalries of Europe to foil a sinister scheme that endangers the museum and many of its most important collections.
Japanese readers followed the exclusive ten episode series, first published in Big Comic, for five months before the thrilling mystery was bought to a close with a dramatic final scene that sees the Rosetta Stone in grave danger.
All ten episodes will now be published as a book by the British Museum Press, making the story widely available to English readers for the very first time.
Illustrated throughout with meticulously detailed and beautifully drawn artwork, and featuring bonus supplementary material including an essay on the history of manga and an interview with the artist, this is a unique compilation which should appeal to collectors and general readers alike.
Publishing October 2011
264 pages, line drawings throughout
ISBN 978 0 7141 2465 0, PB £14.99
Hoshino Yukinobu (b.1954) is one of Japan's leading manga artists. Creator of the extremely popular series Professor Munakata?s Case Records (serialised in Big Comic, Shogakukan, since 2004), Hoshino has also created a science-fiction series, 2001 Nights, serialised in Japan (Monthly Super Action, from 1984) and American (by Viz).
For review copies, author enquiries or images please contact Sarah Morgan, Marketing and Publicity Executive, The British Museum Press on 020 7079 0946 or smorgan@britishmuseum.co.uk
Photography and Japan
Karen Fraser
Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Santa Clara University
Reaktion Books (Exposures), 2011
What defines Japanese photography? Is there a distinctive Japanese photographic aesthetic? In Photography and Japan, Karen M. Fraser argues that the diversity of styles, subjects and functions of Japanese photography precludes easy categorization along nationalized lines. Rather, the development of photography within Japan is best understood by examining its close relationship with the country's dramatic history.
This book traces 150 years of photography, a period during which Japan has experienced some of the most significant events in modern history: a remarkable transformation from an isolated, feudal country into an industrialized, modern world power during the late nineteenth century, an equally striking rise and fall as an imperial power during the first half of the twentieth century, and a miraculous economic recovery in the decades following the utter devastation of World War Two. The history of photography has paralleled these events, becoming inextricably linked with notions of modernity and cultural change from the time it first arrived in the mid-nineteenth century.
The author considers this intertwined history by tracing the intersection of photography and social history, focusing on the role of the camera in documenting key cultural and political events and in exploring social responses to cultural change. Thematic chapters that focus on photography?s role in negotiating cultural identity, war photography and the documentation of urban life introduce many photographs that will be unfamiliar to Western viewers, and provide a broadened cultural context for more well-known images.
With a Single Glance: Buddhist Icon and Early Mikkyo Vision
Cynthea J Bogel
Associate Professor, Japanese Art History and Visual Culture
Division of Art History, School of Art, University of Washington
University of Washington Press, 2010
With a Single Glance considers the visual culture of the Japanese esoteric Buddhist tradition, Mikkyo, at the time of its introduction to Japan early in the ninth century. Huge painted mandalas of assembled colorful divinities, hand-held gilt-bronze vajra, and statues on temple altars were more than ritual aids. Cynthea Bogel demonstrates that the visual and visionary impact of Mikkyo material culture was transformatory, not only to the adherent, but at a broad cultural level. Her finely crafted study illuminates the sea change marked by Mikkyo visuality in Japanese art history and suggests continuities with eighth-century Nara Buddhist forms of representation and praxis. Bogel examines the visual components of Mikkyo through a huge range of sources on art and imagery, philosophy and critical theory, religious studies, cognitive science, cultural analysis, and ritual theory. She presents a framework for understanding the sectarian construction of Japanese Esoteric Buddhist art and doctrine and, for the first time, explores the cultural sources and representational practices that define Mikkyo visual culture.
The Empty Museum: Western Cultures and the Artistic Field in Modern Japan
Masaaki Morishita
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Japan
National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo, Japan
This book examines the processes through which public art museums, as modern Western institutions, were introduced to Japan in the late nineteenth century and how they subsequently developed distinctive national characteristics. The author focuses on one of the most distinctive forms of Japanese museums: the 'empty museums' - museums without collections, permanent displays, and curators. Morishita shows how they developed, in relation to social and cultural conditions at certain periods in modern Japanese history, by engaging with a wide range of interdisciplinary theories, in particular, Pierre Bourdieu's field theory and the conceptual framework of transculturation. Japan is used as a case study to show in general terms how the elements of modern Western culture associated with public art museums were introduced and transformed in the local conditions of non-Western regions. With its unique empirical cases and theoretical focus, the book makes a significant contribution to existing literature in the field of museum studies, both in the English-speaking world and in Japan, and will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, art history, cultural studies and Japanese studies.
International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku
Ken Tadashi Oshima
Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Washington
University of Washington Press, 2010
After World War I, architects around the world aspired to transcend national boundaries that had been devastated by conflicts. The result was a flurry of artistic creativity. In Japan, young architects strove to create an 'international architecture,' or kokusai kenchiku, an expression of increasing international travel and communication, growth of the mass media, and technological innovation. Ken Tadashi Oshima traces the many interconnections among Japanese, European, and American architects and their work during the interwar years by examining the careers and designs of three leading modernists in Japan: Yamada Mamoru (1894-1966), Horiguchi Sutemi (1895-1984), and Antonin Raymond (1888-1976). Each espoused a new architecture that encompassed modern forms and new materials, and all attempted to synthesize the novel with the old in distinctive ways. Combining wood and concrete, paper screens and sliding/swinging glass doors, tatami rooms and Western-style chairs, they achieved an innovative merging of international modernism and traditional Japanese practices. Their buildings accommodated the demands of modern living while remaining appropriate to Japan's climate, culture, and economy.
In Pursuit of Universalism: Yorozu Tetsugoro and Japanese Modern Art
Alicia Volk
Assistant Professor, Japanese Art, University of Maryland
University of California Press, 2010
In Pursuit of Universalism is the first comprehensive, English-language study of early twentieth-century Japanese modern art. In this groundbreaking work, which is also the inaugural recipient of the Phillips Book Prize (awarded by the Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art), Alicia Volk constructs a critical theory of artistic modernism in Japan between 1900 and 1930 by analyzing the work of Yorozu Tetsugoro, whose paintings she casts as a polemic response to Japan's late-nineteenth-century encounter with European art. Volk places Yorozu at the forefront of a movement that sought to define Japanese art's role in the world by interrogating and ultimately refusing the opposition between East and West. Instead, she vividly demonstrates how Yorozu reframed modern art's dualistic underpinnings and transposed them into an inclusive and synthetic relation between the local and the universal. By looking closely at questions of cultural exchange within modern art, In Pursuit of Universalism offers a new and vital account of both Japanese and Euroamerican modernism. Volk's pioneering study builds bridges between the fields of modern and Asian art and takes its place at the forefront of the emerging global history of modern art.