- Convenors:
-
Zahra Moharramipour
(International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken))
Zhaoxue Li (Nanjing University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Yu Yang
(Kyushu University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Visual Arts
Short Abstract
This panel explores how the category of “Oriental art history” in Japan was constructed, expanded, and reconfigured in the early 20th century by examining the reception of arts of Persia, Southeast Asia, Dunhuang, and Colonial Manchuria through the activities of scholars, dealers, and collectors.
Long Abstract
Art history as an academic discipline in Japan was established after the arrival of the modern concept of “art” during the Meiji period. From the early twentieth century onward, the field was divided into Western (Seiyō bijutsushi) and Oriental (Tōyō bijutsushi); however, relatively little attention has been paid to how these categories were historically constructed, expanded, and reconfigured. Building on recent scholarship that explores how art historiography was shaped by the activities of scholars, collectors, and dealers, this panel seeks to examine the formation of Oriental art history in early twentieth-century Japan by considering the position of a wide range of Asian art within this category. In particular, it asks: how were the arts of different regions of Asia received in Japan, and how did Japanese art historians conceptualize them as “Oriental”?
To address this, the panel brings together four papers by a group of international scholars to foster a transregional dialogue in the field, especially by taking into account the arts of the regions treated as peripheral to Oriental art history. The first paper explores the perceptions of Persian art, considering how it became an object of collection and study in the late 1920s. It demonstrates how Persian art, often perceived as a bridge between East and West, was integrated into the Japanese conceptualization of Oriental art. The second paper examines the reception of Southeast Asian art in the 1920s and the 1930s, illustrating how Southeast Asian art was framed as “peripheral” Oriental art despite being part of Asia. The third paper explores the construction of historical narratives of art and architecture in colonial Manchuria, highlighting how it was strategically framed as distinct from the rest of China and placed within the broader discourse of Oriental art. The fourth paper focuses on how Dunhuang was positioned within Japanese Oriental art history in the 1930s to the 1950s, especially examining the region as a point of reference through which postwar Japan reconsidered its place within Asia. Collectively, these four case studies illuminate the complex process of the formation of Oriental art history in Japan.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper will examine how Southeast Asian art was introduced, collected, and displayed in modern Japan. Focusing on the 1920s–30s, it shows how Southeast Asian art was framed as “peripheral” Oriental art. It highlights the roles of collecting and exhibition in shaping this reception.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how Southeast Asian art was understood, introduced, collected, and displayed in modern Japan, focusing on the period from the 1920s to the 1930s. During this period, Japanese art history increasingly systematized narratives of Chinese art and ancient Indian Buddhist art as the principal sources of Japanese Buddhist art, constructing a linear historical framework in which Japan was positioned as their culmination. Within this framework, Southeast Asian art—despite being part of Asia—was treated as peripheral in modern Japanese art-historical discourse.
Rather than being incorporated through established academic classification, Southeast Asian art was brought to Japan primarily through concrete practices such as travel writing, collecting, and exhibition. This paper highlights two figures who played key roles in this process: Yamanaka Sadajirō, president of Yamanaka & Co., Ltd., and Miki Sakae. Yamanaka encountered Southeast Asian art through transnational networks of the art market and Western scholarship, where he engaged with French scholarship on Indochina and museum displays of Southeast Asian antiquities. In contrast, Miki encountered Southeast Asian art through direct experience in the region. Dispatched to Thailand as a craftsman attached to the Thai royal court, he engaged with local Buddhist art and sought to introduce Thai art to Japan through exhibitions of his collection.
Exhibitions functioned as an important medium for shaping these understandings. While Miki presented Thai art in a relatively independent manner, exhibitions organized by Yamanaka typically displayed Southeast Asian objects alongside Chinese, Indian, and Japanese works under the broad category of “Oriental art.” In both cases, Southeast Asian art was introduced as a distinctive lineage within Asian Buddhist art, emphasizing stylistic and aesthetic characteristics rather than detailed historical or regional specificity.
Finally, this paper suggests that such modes of seeing Southeast Asian art formed part of a broader, layered Japanese perspective toward the region. From the interwar period into the 1940s, interest in Southeast Asia encompassed scholarly curiosity, commercial practices, cultural representation, and political engagement. By situating the reception of Southeast Asian art, this paper argues that modern Japan’s view of Southeast Asia was characterized by multiple, overlapping perspectives and persistent processes of differentiation and marginalization.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how Japanese “Oriental art history” (Tōyō bijutsushi) narratives from the 1930s to the 1950s reappraised Dunhuang art, tracing shifts in interpretation, artistic valuation, and its diplomatic significance in early postwar Sino–Japanese relations.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how Japanese narratives of “Oriental art history” (Tōyō bijutsushi) from the 1930s to the 1950s reconfigured their understanding of Dunhuang art—both in interpretive methods and in value judgments—and how Dunhuang art came to play a diplomatic role in early postwar Sino-Japanese relations.
From the 1900s onward, Japanese discourse on “Oriental art history” was deeply shaped by Okakura Kakuzō’s (1863–1913) The Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (London: J. Murray, 1903). In Okakura’s framework, India serves as the classical source of Asian art; Buddhist art travels from India through China and ultimately reaches Japan. Hōryūji in Nara thus appears as the culmination and great repository of Asian art, and Japan itself is imagined as a kind of comprehensive “museum” of Asia’s artistic heritage.
Against this backdrop, the paper asks how the 1900 discovery of the Dunhuang cave library, together with the subsequent development of Dunhuang studies at Kyoto University, reshaped the basic structure of “Oriental art history” in Japan. By surveying major writings from the first half of the twentieth century, it first outlines how Dunhuang was incorporated into—or resisted by—existing narratives of Tōyō bijutsushi, and what narrative strategies were employed to position Dunhuang within a broader Asian art-historical continuum.
In the early postwar period, Japanese scholars were compelled to rethink and reorganize their approaches to “Oriental art history.” In this context, Dunhuang emerged as a crucial point of reference through which postwar Japan rethought its place within Asia. The paper then focuses on the 1958 “Exhibition of Chinese Dunhuang Art” held in Japan by the Dunhuang Cultural Relics Research Institute. Imbued with clear diplomatic significance, this exhibition provides a lens through which to examine how Japan, in the course of its postwar reconstruction, revised both its understanding and its modes of writing the “Oriental art history.”
Paper short abstract
This paper examines the reception of Persian art in Japan, illustrating how Japanese art historians categorized it as “Oriental art” and positioned it as an object of collection and study in the late 1920s, focusing on a major 1928 exhibition and the scholarly networks that shaped this perception.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how Persian art came to be recognized as part of “Oriental art” in Japan and how it became an object of collection and study in the late 1920s. In early 20th-century Japan, the notion of “Oriental art” (Tōyō bijutsu) generally encompassed Japan, China, and India, while Persia was viewed as belonging to Western art history. At the same time, “Persian art” had not yet been established as an independent category within art-historical discourse.
This perception began to fundamentally shift in 1928 with the Keimeikai 10th Anniversary Exhibition of “Oriental Art,” which prominently featured Persian art. This was the earliest large-scale loan exhibition in Japan to incorporate Persia into the domain of Oriental art. By analyzing the curatorial structure and categorization of “Persian art,” this study highlights how the event challenged existing geographical and conceptual boundaries within Oriental art history. The paper further examines lectures delivered during the exhibition by art and architectural historians such as Itō Chūta and Yashiro Yukio. These lectures show perspectives on the historical and cultural position of Persia and illustrate how scholarly discourse contributed to redefining the boundaries of the “Orient” in Japan.
Then, the paper turns to the travels and publications of Wada Shin, a student of Yashiro who traveled to Persia in 1929 to study its arts. Through an analysis of his writings and visual documentation, this paper demonstrates how Persian art subsequently became a subject of academic study in Japan. By situating these developments within the broader context of global intellectual exchange in the interwar period, this study sheds light on how Japanese perceptions of Persian art evolved in alignment with the broader discourse emerging in the West and within Iran itself.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines the Japanese construction of historical narratives of art and architecture in colonial Manchuria (present-day Northeast China) during the first half of the twentieth century through archaeological findings, historical writings, museum collections, and exhibition practices.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the construction of historical narratives of art and architecture in colonial Manchuria (present-day Northeast China) during the first half of the twentieth century through archaeological findings, historical writings, museum collections, and exhibition practices.
Alongside Japan’s imperial expansion into Manchuria, Japanese architects, art historians, and archaeologists began to conduct fieldwork in the region, publish their findings, and engage in debates about its historical origins. By analyzing their writings, this paper demonstrates how these scholars—strongly influenced by political agendas—sought to establish a new narrative of the region’s past that framed Manchuria as historically distinct and independent from the rest of China.
This process of historical construction was crystallized in the establishments and operations of the Kwantung Museum (関東都督府博物館) in Port Arthur in 1918 and the National Central Museum of Manchukuo (満洲国国立中央博物館) in Shinkyō in 1940.
Through a comparative analysis of the collections, exhibitions, and research activities of these two institutions, the paper traces the development and transformation of Japanese historical narratives about colonial Manchuria, in particular before and after the foundation of Manchukuo in 1932. Furthermore, the similarities and differences between the two museums—in their collecting priorities and themed exhibitions—reflect the cultural ideologies circulated within the Japanese empire at the time, and reveal the complex power dynamics between Japanese and Chinese residents in colonial Manchuria.