Oriental Taste in Imperial Japan: The Exhibition and Sale of Asian Art and Artifacts by Japanese Department Stores from the 1920s through the Early 1940s

Oh, Younjung

doi:10.1017/s0021911818002498

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Japanese themes and Nihonga styles were placed over traditional ink paintings. Despite Japan's dream of building a pan-Asian empire, the idea of what was "Oriental" expanded from the dominant Chinese aesthetics (karamono [唐物]) to include more regional folk arts from Korea, Southeast Asia, and Okinawa (Oh, 2019). Influenced by this notion, the Japanese colonization positively facilitated Taiwanese local and folk arts.…”

Section: Everyday Life As a Genre For Art Creationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arts & Culture: Content, Context, and Pedagogy

2022

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In her village Zhang Yi Gui was known for embroidering traditional baby shoes. Embroidered flowers for girls and embroidered tigers for boys. Based on my experience in the United States (US) I did not expect to find such a large teaching collection of folk art associated with an art and design school. Over the course of my work in China I discovered other art and design schools, such as the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, with similar teaching collections.Listening to Zhang Yi Gui's story I could not help but be cognizant that over the course of Zhang Yi Gui's life she witnessed multiple cultural, social, and political changes in China. Born not long after the abdication of the last Qing emperor, she saw the rise of the Communist party, the Japanese occupation of China from 1931 to 1945, a civil war, famine, the Cultural Revolution, and the global recognition of China's growing economic and cultural influence.From 2007 through 2019 I co-directed, with Kristin Congdon, a project associated with the documentation and interpretation of China's cultural heritage. This project, titled ChinaVine, had as its mission to educate English-speaking/reading children, youth, and adults about China's cultural heritage. This project, first initiated in partnership with Shandong University of Art and Design's Folk Art Research Institute, was based on a collaborative methodology, including extensive fieldwork, in which scholars in Art Education and Folklore from China and the US cocreated content for the project's website. It was within the context of this project that I met Zhang Yi Gui. The project would expand significantly over the next twelve years to include additional Chinese and US scholars engaged in collaborative field work in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou; in rural Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, and Yunnan provinces; and the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province. The scholars associated with the project were careful to include examples from among China's fifty-six ethnic groups. While initially focused on the traditional arts such as embroidered shoes, papercuts, dough toys, puppets, kites, jewelry, clothing, paintings, and New Year woodblock prints, the project expanded to include contemporary art informed by tradition. In this regard extensive field work was conducted in the former farmers' village of Songzhuang, located east of Beijing, that was rapidly transforming into a contemporary artists village.

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Section: Everyday Life As a Genre For Art Creationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arts & Culture: Content, Context, and Pedagogy

2022

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“…77 Matsuya and other prestigious department stores generally have galleries on the top floor. It was a perfect way to disseminate art and crafts (Oh 2019).…”

Section: John Chappellmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metamorphosis in Polarities: The Impact of Kawai Kanjirō on New Zealand Potter James Greig

Jacolin

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James Greig (1936–1986), a New Zealand potter active between 1958 and 1986, was greatly inspired by Kawai Kanjirō (1890–1966), who was one of the founding members of the Mingei (Japanese folk crafts movement). To date, Greig’s achievement has received insufficient scholarly attention. This thesis aims to explore Greig’s philosophy and artwork through mixed empirical methods, qualitative oral histories, and analysis of archival materials, letters, images and films. After documenting the contexts of the historical interactions between Japanese and New Zealand potters, Greig’s career in pottery is framed through an analysis stretching from his early life, encounters with Japan and on to personal and institutional support for his later learning, writing and exhibitions.The development of New Zealand studio pottery when Greig began his career in the early 1960s was shaped by the visits of advocates of Mingei movement from Britain and Japan. This thesis examines the integration of Japanese-style pottery into the ceramic art practice of New Zealand from the 1940s to the 1960s. It also explores significant figures within the New Zealand and Japanese art scenes who facilitated an active pottery movement in New Zealand. These initiators inspired Greig’s motivation for creating Japanese-style pottery and his discovery of Kawai’s work.Japan’s rapid economic growth in the 1970s led to the formation of a new relationship with New Zealand and created a favourable environment for potters, whose artworks were displayed at Expo ’70 in Osaka. This study reveals Greig’s critical role as a cultural ambassador between Japan and New Zealand that he played at the time of the opening of the new cultural relationship between the two nations. Examining Greig’s career between 1969 to 1986 creates another lens through which his underlying intentions and idiosyncratic approach (his “gesture”) become clear and should be better appreciated. The heart of this thesis is the transcription and analysis of Greig’s handwritten manuscript (four unpublished notebooks) for a planned book on Kawai in 1983. It details Greig’s spiritual vision for handcrafted pottery as enabling “access to the universal spirit” and creating a new “universal language of forms” to express “the formative forces” of the “archetypes and real sources of art”. The discussion also shows the influence of Rudolph Steiner (1861–1925), the founder of anthroposophy, on Greig. Steiner’s ideas on the polarities of life and consciousness, body/soul/spirit and his interpretation of The Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) by German Romantic author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) further inspired Greig and his subsequent development of pottery as a transformative practice. This thesis also offers a technical analysis of Greig’s artwork with a focus on his exhibitions in New Zealand. Greig’s key concepts of “life growth, intersecting planes, polarities, ‘solid and void’, emblem and transformations”, are explored through his manuscript, catalogue, his artworks and their impact on Japan and New Zealand (Greig 1982h).Greig’s life and work demonstrate that he worked in an environment which was moving rapidly, both economically and culturally. His achievement as an artist potter and his philosophy and artworks themselves transcended his times.

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The paradox of authenticity: The Korean Product Showroom of Mitsukoshi department store in colonial Seoul

2023

Mod. Asian Stud.

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Mitsukoshi, a famed Japanese department store, opened a Korean Product Showroom in its Keijō (Seoul) branch in 1930. The Korean Product Showroom was the only space decorated in ‘Korean style’ within the Keijō Mitsukoshi building, which was designed in Neo-Renaissance style, much like its flagship store in Tokyo. This showroom offered Korean artefacts as luxury souvenirs aimed at Japanese tourists. The most popular items sold in the showroom were Koryŏ-style celadon ware and lacquerware inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which Mitsukoshi ordered from local workshops in Korea. Interestingly, the workshops were run by Japanese entrepreneurs and sometimes even employed Japanese artisans. This article examines the inauthentic authenticity of ‘Korean style’ and ‘Korean products’ that the Japanese produced and consumed in colonial Korea. It does not imply that only Koreans are entitled to represent Korean culture. There have been many studies asserting that Korean culture was destroyed and distorted from its ‘original’ forms by Japan’s cultural genocide during the colonial period. This article neither is interested in repeating such criticism nor focuses on recuperating genuine Koreanness. Rather, it explores why the Japanese desired ‘pure Korea’ and how that desire shaped ‘Korean style’ and ‘Korean products’ through Keijō Mitsukoshi’s Korean Product Showroom and its products.

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Oriental Taste in Imperial Japan: The Exhibition and Sale of Asian Art and Artifacts by Japanese Department Stores from the 1920s through the Early 1940s

Cited by 3 publications

References 12 publications

Arts & Culture: Content, Context, and Pedagogy

Arts & Culture: Content, Context, and Pedagogy

Metamorphosis in Polarities: The Impact of Kawai Kanjirō on New Zealand Potter James Greig

The paradox of authenticity: The Korean Product Showroom of Mitsukoshi department store in colonial Seoul

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