We congratulate our Professor for Japanese Arts and Cultural Heritage, Toshio Watanabe, on his retirement and his subsequent appointment as Professor Emeritus. Toshio now becomes a Senior Advisor to the Sainsbury Institute and will continue with his various research projects. Toshio joined the Sainsbury Institute following a long and distinguished career at the Chelsea College of Arts, which is part of the University of the Arts London, where he established the influential Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN). He is renowned in particular for his work on Japonisme and transnational Japanese gardens. He joined us for the visit by the delegation from Norwich to Japan late last year. On 23 November, Toshio gave a keynote lecture for the 40th anniversary conference of the Association for the Study of Modern Japanese Art History on ‘What is Modern Japanese Art?’ proposing a new way forward for the study of modern Japanese art. The text of this keynote will be published this summer.
Toshio is also embarking on a new research project on postwar Japanese handicraft focusing on knitwear, a highly under-researched topic. He says between the end of the war and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, tens of millions of Japanese women were making clothing for their families probably on a nearly daily basis for over twenty years. This is therefore clearly a very important topic which needs further investigation as part of the new broader definition of the study of modern Japanese art history.
We were delighted to be able to publish Toshio’s collected writings as our first Sainsbury Institute Online Occasional Paper. We have assembled a few images to mark his retirement, and look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role long into the future.
Images
In March 2016, Professor Watanabe spoke at the Third Ishibashi Foundation Lecture Series, titled ‘Japanese Gardens: To whom do they belong?‘. Hosted at Kyoto University of Art and Design, Toshio gave the talk ‘How the West Interacted with Japanese Gardens’.
In October 2016, Professor Watanabe chaired the international symposium ‘Tokyo Futures, 1868-2020: City of Symbiosis?‘ held at Meiji Jingu Sanshuden.
Toshio has been an important part of the Sainsbury Institute’s Third Thursday Lecture series, attending many of the lectures and giving several talks at the Institute.
Toshio has also been very supportive of students and early career researchers during his time at the Sainsbury Institute, taking part in numerous workshops and hosting regular meetings to discuss a range of topics relating to Japanese studies and research methods.
Toshio has also organised and taken part in many conferences at the Sainsbury Institute.
Professor Watanabe has continued to be a key member of the Sainsbury Institute team, including this year when he addressed the reception of former fellows and staff at the Association for Asian Studies conference in Seattle, and provided the icchōjime (一丁締め) for our anniversary reception in Tokyo in November.
