Was Meiji Taste in Interiors “Orientalist”?

Sand, Jordan

doi:10.1215/10679847-8-3-637

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…A few pioneering studies have explored the profound connection between Japanese taste for Oriental art and artifacts and the Japanese imperialist enterprise in the early twentieth century. Jordan Sand (2000) examined the Meiji elite's Western-style rooms decorated with Japanese, Chinese, and other Asian antiquities, and claimed that this interior decorating paralleled and reiterated the Japanese nation and empire building, "orientalizing" the rest of Asia, the West, and the past of Japan itself. Kim Brandt (2007) and Yuko Kikuchi (2004) have argued that Japanese intellectuals' celebration and promotion of the folk art of Korea, China, Manchuria, Okinawa, and Southeast Asia mirrored the Japanese state's project to construct a pan-Asian empire.…”

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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

Oh¹

2019

J of Asian Stud

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From the 1920s to the early 1940s, Japanese department stores provided Japanese urban middle-class households with art and artifacts from China, Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The department stores not merely sold art and artifacts from Japan's Asian neighbors but also promoted the cultural confidence to appreciate and collect them. At the same time, aspiring middle-class customers satisfied their desire to emulate the historical elite's taste for Chinese and other Asian objects by shopping at the department stores. The aesthetic consumption of Asian art and artifacts formulated a privileged position for Japan in the imperial order and presented the new middle class with the cultural capital vital to the negotiation of its social status. This article examines the ways in which department stores marketed “tōyō shumi” (Oriental taste), which played a significant role in the formation of identity for both the imperial state and the new middle class in 1920s and 1930s Japan.

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“…On the social, economic, and cultural formation of the new middle class, see Minami (1965, 183-95); Sonoda (1999); and Sand (2013). consumption and leisure in everyday life expanded, particularly in the big cities.…”

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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

Oh¹

2019

J of Asian Stud

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“…Sand goes on to problematize this understanding of Meiji interiors, suggesting their emulation of Western aesthetics was a result of complex debates concerning national representation both inside and outside Japan. 37 Sand uses the interior as the Above Figure 1: Salon, 1933. Interior design: Henri Rapin © Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum locality to identify how such global debates affect individuals by considering their 'selection and placement of objects and the treatment of surfaces.'…”

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“…As Western dress and Western shoes were adopted, the Japanese social practice of removing one's shoes when entering the interior was displaced. This shift in self representation through fashion resulted in the displacement of tatami mats for timber floors and carpets, 45 in turn accommodating the inclusion of Western furniture with floors that could now bear its weight. 46 Simultaneously, a second mechanism of displacement developed in opposition to the emulation of Western appearances.…”

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“…Instead of mimicking Western national identity, this mechanism combined 'native tradition' with ideas of Western self-representation to present a partially invented image of Japanese identity. 47 One example included the shajiyo or Shrine and Temple style architecture created by the first generation of architects trained entirely by Japanese teachers and master carpenters. 48 Shrine and Temple style used Western technology, including orthographic projection and planning, integrated with the techniques of Japanese carpentry 49 to create self-conscious spaces of traditionalism.…”

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Representational Space in the Prince Asaka Residence

Tipene¹

2018

idea journal

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Jun’ichirô Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows (1933) describes a theory of aesthetics based on shadows. He suggests that contrary to Western ideas of highly visible space, ambiguity and darkness are distinct characteristics of Japanese interiors. Kazuo Nakajima describes this condition as the blending of social practices and interior elements in indeterminate spaces of the vernacular Japanese home, and suggests the decline of such interiors has threatened the psychological stability of Japan since Western engagement, from the Meiji restoration of 1868. Almost as affirmation of Nakajima’s fears, the same year Tanizaki’s essay was originally published in Japan, the Art Deco Residence of Prince Akaka was completed in Minato-ku, Tokyo. Now a house museum, this assemblage of interiors is credited room-by-room to either the French interior designer Henri Rapin or the Japanese Construction Bureau of the Imperial Household, confirming for Nakajima a division between Western and Japanese concepts of space. This paper questions Nakajima’s dualist reading of the Residence’s interiors by unpacking the complexities of Western engagement in the Japanese interior since the Meiji restoration until the 1930s. Additionally, this paper examines parallel concepts of interior space that directly influenced the Residences conception, from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris and the 1920s Culture Life movement in Japan. From these historic and contextual examinations, this paper demonstrates a fundamental shift from the concept of space in the Japanese interior described by Tanizaki and Nakajima. It suggests that Western engagement displaced how value was attributed in the interior, from things that were unseen to things that were seen.

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Of Emperor and Empire: Architectural Constructions of Imperial Japan

Tseng¹

2017

Companion to the History of Architecture

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This chapter focuses on the major building projects that directly served the imperial institution and the imperialist mission during the reign of Emperor Meiji of Japan (1868–1912). Recognizing the ideological centrality of the emperor in the construction of modern Japan as Imperial Japan allows for the assessment of what may otherwise appear to be a varied amalgam of architectural functions, styles, and expressions as an integrated body of works with a shared agenda. The buildings examined – imperial residences, shrines and mausolea, and parks and museums – when understood as conscious built forms expressive of Imperial Japan, vividly demonstrate the complex, and at times contradictory, sets of inspirations and aspirations that were frequently cross‐cultural and cross‐temporal.

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Was Meiji Taste in Interiors “Orientalist”?

Cited by 18 publications

References 15 publications

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

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

Representational Space in the Prince Asaka Residence

Of Emperor and Empire: Architectural Constructions of Imperial Japan

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