Keynote speech

Narratives of Japanese Art in European and North AmericanMuseumsDr. Yoshida Kenji
Director-General, National Museum of Ethnology
ProfileKenji Yoshida is the Director- General at the National Museum of Ethnology,
Osaka, specializing in museum-anthropology. He has been carrying out
fieldwork on the expressive culture and cultural heritage of Southern Africa
especially in Zambia. He has also been organizing various exhibitions on art
and culture by networking art museums and cultural museums. His major
exhibitions and publications include:
Discovering of Cultures (Bunka no Hakken, in Japanese) 1999, Image of
Other Cultures (ed. with John Mack exhibition catalogue) 1997, Self & Other:
Portraits from Asia and Europe (ed. with Brian Durrans, exhibition catalogue)
2008, Power of Images: National Museum of Ethnology Collection (exhibitioncatalogue) 2014.

The two ‘Japanese arts’
When visiting museum and galleries across the world,
visitors will often see Japanese art represented by netsuke
toggles, swords and ukiyo-e. For Japanese people, though,ukiyo-e only occupies one small corner of Japanese art history,
with netsuke hardly mentioned at all.
After Japanese decorative art objects won high acclaim atthe Vienna World Exposition of 1873 (Meiji 6), Japan activelypromoted the export of these objects for encouragement of anew industry. The import of Western clothing to Japan had led
to a decrease in domestic demand for netsuke and inro
medicine cases, while the spread of printed materials had Photo 1: The display of Japanese objects at therendered ukiyo-e obsolete to a certain extent. As a result, these Vienna World’s Exposition, 1873 (Meiji 6) (fromobjects and artifacts were exported overseas in bulk and 1897’s Proceedings of the Austria Exhibition)
attracted Europeans. In 1868 (Keio 4), the Meiji government
passed the Ordinance Separating Shinto from Buddhism. This
led to the anti-Buddhist movement, called ‘Haibutsu Kishaku’. Buddhist statues and paintings wereremoved from Buddhist temples across Japan, with many eventually finding their way overseas.
Since then, many exhibitions of Japanese art have been organized in the West based on thecollections consisted of such objects that have found their way into overseas collections in theseways.
In contrast, the Japanese art history familiar to many Japanese people has its roots in Histoire deL’Art du Japon (The History of Art of Japan), a work prepared by the Imperial Museum (TokyoNational Museum’s predecessor) to coincide with the exhibition of Japanese artworks at the ParisInternational Exhibition of 1900 (Meiji 33). This book explained transition of art of Imperial country
over the years. With a focus on art related to the Emperor, the book explored the ‘treasures’associated with rulers from each period. These artworks in turn were arranged by period, startingfrom the arrival of Buddhism on Japan’s shores and continuing on through the Asuka, Nara, Heian(Konin/Fujiwara), Kamakura, Muromachi, Momoyama and Edo periods. These categories are stillused in more-or-less the same way in the domestic study of Japanese art history today. Japanesepeople are now used to viewing Japanese art history through the prism of different periods andrepresentative works of each period, but it would be fair to say this conventional view was invented
back then in 1900.
So now we have a contrast. On the one hand, we have an image of Japanese art that was built
up and presented to the outside world as a means to foster the bulk export of decorative art objects
as a new industry. On the other hand, we have a domestic view of Japanese art history that centersaround ‘treasures of imperial country.’ It seems only natural that these two viewpoints would diverge
sharply over time.
Japanese art collections in European and American museums
We tend to think that Japanese artworks are handled in the same way as Western artworks andkept in the art museums, but this is not always the case. In particular, ‘ancient’ artworks created
before the Edo period are rarely held by art museums that house Western art. Rather, they are oftenfound in museums or in art museums that specialize in Asian art. In large part, this reflects how theWest views itself as different from other cultures. At the same time, in contrast to the catch-all word‘museum,’ in Japan we have long used the words ‘bijutsukan’ and ‘hakubutsukan’ to separate
institutions that mainly handled art from those that mainly handled historical artifacts, so perhaps wehave taken this distinction for granted and foster the distinction even further.
Exhibitions of Japanese art in Western museums
Ignoring regular exhibits for a moment, if we look at temporary exhibitions of Japanese artwork,
we can see that exhibitions of collections of Japanese art housed in the West have indeed tended
to focus on ukiyo-e, painting, calligraphy and exported ceramics.
However, the Western view of Japanese art also shifted, particularly after the Second World War,
thanks to exhibitions of Japanese ‘treasures’ held in the West with support from governmental
entities, such as the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Japan Foundation. For example,
the Exhibition of Japanese Paintings and Sculpture toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art and otherinstitutions in the US in 1953. This was mainly organized by Japan’s Committee for the Protectionof Cultural Properties. It featured 92 masterpieces (including National Treasures and Important
Cultural Properties) of Japanese art dating from the 6th to the 19th century, including 77 paintingsand 14 examples of sculpture and decorative art objects. This exhibition made more American
people, who had tended to regard Japanese art as merely an offshoot of Chinese art, had becomeaware of the independent development of Japanese art. Exhibitions of important Japanese culturalproperties like this would not be possible without the involvement of the Agency for Cultural Affairs
and the Japan Foundation. In other words, the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Japan Foundation
have played a major role in shifting or guiding Western views of Japanese art closer to the view
prevailing in Japan.
Two of the most popular overseas exhibitions in recent years
were 2013’s Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art and2019’s Manga, both held at the British Museum. Neither themes
had been the main subject of ‘art exhibitions’ in Japan before
then. However, exhibitions of shunga were subsequently heldat the Eisei Bunko Museum in Tokyo and the Hosomi Museumin Kyoto.
Looking back, in addition to shunga and manga, there havebeen other examples of artists or artworks that have beenrediscovered and reappraised in Japan in light of a growinginterest overseas. In other words, the views of people living in
Photo 2: Front page of the Shunga: Sex andJapan have been changed by overseas exhibitions on several
Pleasure in Japanese Art catalogue (Theoccasions. The exhibitions of different cultures and works ofBritish Museum, 2013)
those held at museums are nothing but where such mutualinteraction can take place.