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Japan Facing West
The multifaceted historical relationship between China and Japan is a well-known aspect of Japanese culture. However, the interactions between Japan and the West in pre-modern and early-modern times are less evident and still less explored. For many years, any discussion on Japanese art of the Edo period (1600–1868) has emphasized the significance of the edicts of national seclusion. It has been a popular conviction that, due to the isolationist foreign policies, Japan closed herself from the outside world and the cultural exchange with the Asian continent and the West was very limited. After the prohibition of Christianity in 1614 and expelling missionaries from Japan, the government monopolized these contacts, restricted to Chinese and Dutch trading posts in Nagasaki port. But in fact exchange with the outside world was continued and gave rise to a large number of cultural and aesthetic phenomena. Besides private trade channels controlled by a few feudal lords (e.g. Satsuma domain), for more than two centuries the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and Chinese traders facilitated steady exports of Japanese cultural products to Europe (mainly ceramics, lacquerware, textiles) and also imports of foreign goods to Japan. Certain objects, such as Arita porcelain, were produced specially for European markets, and the impact of Western sciences and art concepts is visible in pre-modern Japan. The influence of Western culture intensified after 1720, when Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684–1751) eased restrictions on imports of Western books except those related to Christianity. The interest in Western knowledge (mainly medicine, astronomy and technology) formed the basis for the development of a new discipline called rangaku (lit. “Dutch studies”). This led to the production of a large body of texts and images referring to Western science, which also influenced the paradigms of Japanese traditional art. Imported customs (such as tobacco smoking) and objects (e.g. telescopes) became fashionable. The novelty of Western linear perspective fascinated Japanese artists, who employed it in their images. These new trends are visible in a variety of aspects of Edo visual culture.
The impact of the West dramatically intensified during the Meiji period (1686–1912). Its beginnings were marked by the entry of Western colonial powers to Japan in 1853 and the restoration of the emperor's power in 1868. The sweeping changes of Japan’s political and social structure gave birth to a variety of cultural developments, which show how Japanese culture responded to the new challenges related to modernization. Rapid industrialization and socio-political transformations had an enormous impact on the traditional ways of art production and reception. Not surprisingly, initially art focused on new themes related to the transformations – new architecture, urban environment, technology, or even images of the emperor, whose appearance had never been revealed to the public before. Portraits of foreigners were also a subject of fascination. New art materials and techniques were employed in pictorial arts – synthetic pigments, canvas, linear perspective, chiaroscuro modelling, realism – changing the traditional art media, such as woodblock prints, printed books, and paintings. Another factor which greatly influenced traditional culture was international art trade. Due to the overall difficult economic situation and the collapse of the old systems of art patronage in Japan, artists and craftsmen responded to the requirements of the international market. And the market demanded certain objects complying with the Western perception of Japanese culture as a source of “decorative applied arts” – mainly porcelain, lacquerware, metalwork and woodblock prints. This triggered production of selected types of ceramics (mainly Satsuma, Kutani and Bankō), enormous numbers of inrō and tsuba, or larger metalwork items, some decorated with cloisonné enamel, which were avidly bought and collected in Europe and North America. Old systems of art study and patronage were replaced by new ones – including institutional art education (at schools and universities) and public art displays (at galleries and museums). Old-time art traditions were reinterpreted to form a new discipline of “Japanese art history”, based on Western formats. All these processes led to the birth of Japanese modern art as we know it today.
The exhibition based on a selection of objects from the collection of the Japanese Gallery in London traces some aspects of Japan’s cultural interactions with the West during the pre-modern and early-modern era and focuses on Japan as a partner in this exchange. Over the last few years, the Manggha Museum has presented a series of exhibitions focusing on Polish Japonisme, displaying works by Polish artists (Stanisław Wyspiański, Olga Boznańska, Wojciech Weiss, Jan Stanisławski) who sought stylistic or thematic inspirations in Japan’s arts. The current exhibition presents selected aspects of the Western impact on traditional Japanese arts, showing the bipolarity of cultural exchange between Japan and the West and providing a good reference to the earlier displays.
[Ewa Machotka]
The concept originated in Engelbert Kaempfer’s (1651–1716) History of Japan, which was translated into Japanese by the astronomer Shizuki Tadao (1760–1806). It gave birth to the idea of sakoku (closed country), which played a paramount role in the interpretation of the political, social and cultural situation in Edo Japan. The native term to describe the Japanese policy of control was kaikin (maritime restrictions). Sakoku served as its master narrative and foundation of the essentialistic concepts of Japan, also revealed in the idea of the “uniqueness” of Japanese arts, still operative today.
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