Paper short abstract:

My transcultural project investigates historically- and culturally- specific ideas of 'the real' in representational practices in the process of picturing, mapping and transmitting knowledge in early modern Europe and Edo Japan, as well as their interactions in the eighteenth century.

Paper long abstract:

My transcultural and cross-disciplinary project investigates the transfer of knowledge through the movement of visual objects from early modern Europe to Edo Japan (1603-1868). Using approaches drawn from the anthropology of art and science--in particular the work of Bruno Latour--I examine the ways in which a new type of knowledge called rangaku (蘭学: Dutch/Western studies) was produced, circulated and consumed in eighteenth-century Japan. In discussing a close relationship between image- and knowledge-making, the thesis investigates shifting functions, values and meanings of the idea of 'the real' in representational practices in connection with increasing interest in, and demand for, empirical knowledge of nature and the body in European and Japanese contexts. My thesis focuses on the important role of non-human actors, such as images contained in the volumes of descriptive and observational sciences produced in Western Europe which were the primary vector of knowledge transfer in eighteenth-century Japan.

While previous scholars have emphasized the profound impact of the images found in imported scientific books on the Japanese mind, little attention has been directed towards questions pertaining to the ways in which pictorial representations were conceived as 'realistic' or 'precise' in a particular local context. The primary aim of the thesis is thus to illuminate relatively under-explored issues, such as historically- and culturally-specific ideas of 'the real' or 'precision' in image- and knowledge-making practices, through a close analysis of different ways in which the images functioned as an epistemic tool in particular sociocultural and intellectual settings. By exploring the question of what was 'the real' or 'precision' of Western art and science that Japanese intellectuals encountered through case studies in the fields of natural history, medicine and the visual arts in eighteenth-century Japan, I reexamine the aspect of Western realism which is often taken for granted in previous scholarship in the field. The thesis sheds light on the empirical aspects of eighteenth-century Japanese visual culture and the material aspects of knowledge production and consumption practices in the process of their encounter with European art and knowledge.