01 Jul 2010

TrAIN Research Centre presents Forgotten Japonisme Conference in London

This conference with international renowned speakers from Japan, USA and UK will consider, among other questions, the received view of the West as the sole purveyor of modernity in art, Japanese inspiration within the development of modernism in the West, and the relationship between the taste for Chinese and Japanese art during this period. The boundaries of the notions of the West and also of Japonisme will be tested.

We are pleased to announce the keynote speaker for the Forgotten Japonisme conference will be Professor Shigemi Inaga of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, Japan who is an expert on comparative literature and culture and on history of cultural exchange, including Japonisme. He is the author of a number of award-winning scholarly books.

Other speakers include:
Professor Stan Abe of Duke University, North Carolina, USA who specialises in Chinese art, theory and criticism. His research focuses particularly on Chinese Buddhist art, and the role of China and Japan in Early Rockefeller Collecting.
Author of Longfellow's Tattoos: Tourism, Collecting, and Japan, Dr Christine Guth leads the Asian Specialism on the V&A/RCA MA History of Design Course.
Dr Angus Lockyer, Lecturer in the History of Japan and Chair of the Japan Research Centre at SOAS, University of London.
Dr Sarah Teasley, historian of Japanese design and tutor in the Departments of History of Design and Critical & Historical Studies at the RCA.

Led by TrAIN Director Professor Toshio Watanabe, Forgotten Japonisme is a major three year research project funded by the AHRC. Between October 2007 and October 2010, this project will explore a previously neglected period in the study of Western attitudes towards Japanese art: from the 1920s to the 1950s. By examining a broad range of visual culture – including architecture, craft, design, garden design, painting, print-making and sculpture – and also focusing on individual case studies, those involved in the project seek to achieve a new understanding of transnational interactions between Japan, Britain and the USA.

Within existing studies of the taste for Japanese art in the West, two distinct periods have come to prominence. These are the period from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century, when Japanese art made a strong impact on Western culture, and the period from the 1960s to the present, particularly after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics – when a new image of Japanese visual culture emerged with the Tokaido bullet train, Kenzo Tange's daring buildings and Yusaku Kamekura's clean and bold posters. What happened in between these periods however has never been systematically investigated, and there is a tacit understanding that a taste for Japanese art was impossible during the Second World War. This project aims to provide evidence that this was not the case, and will investigate both negative and positive attitudes towards Japanese art from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Case studies will include the work of Wells Coates, William Staite Murray, Isamu Noguchi, Russel Wright, Frederick Starr and Mark Tobey; the early 20th century woodcut revival in Britain, and Japanese gardens in Ireland, the UK and the USA. Wider strands of investigation will include a consideration of any continuity between classic 19th century Japonisme and the image of hi-tech modern Japan, and an examination of how the taste for Japanese art affected the development of modernism.

Members of the Forgotten Japonisme project:
Professor Toshio Watanabe, Principle Investigator
Dr Yuko Kikuchi, Co-investigator
Rebecca Salter, Co-investigator
Dr Julian Stair, Co-investigator
Professor Yasuko Suga, Tsuda University, Tokyo, External team member
Dr Sachiko Oguma, Guest Researcher, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, External team member
Dr Anna Basham, AHRC Research Fellow
Helena Capkova, AHRC PhD Research Student
Piotr Splawski, AHRC PhD Research Student