Rethinking Resources for Japanese Studies: Using Realia in Research Papers
Kristina Troost, Duke University
EAJRS, Sofia Bulgaria
September 2019
Today’s presentation grows out of my experience working with a postdoc who wasteaching Japanese Art History at Duke. It asks how students can do original research inJapanese studies even if their library resources and museum collections are not strong, andmore germanely to Duke, they don’t have fluency in Japanese. The paper is based on anassignment in a course whose goals were to introduce the students to the diverse artistic
production of Japan over the past four centuries through painting, crafts, print media, andarchitecture, using items gifted to Duke at various times. By interrogating the relationshipbetween art and its sociopolitical context, the course examined the critical questions ofrepresentation and power as well as art historical writing on Japan and the reception ofJapanese art in the USA.
The students were asked to write a literary story of an object’s life; they were referredto Edmund De Waal’s, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance as an inspiring example.
Most of these objects -- a kimono, hina dolls, a sword, a tea house, pottery, photographalbums, woodblock prints which are known colloquially as realia -- are the sorts of things thatvisitors to Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought back with them or are family
treasures that someone decided they (the family) no longer wanted and looked to find a homefor. They are not high art; indeed, I would say that many libraries and museums no longer wantto accept such items. The assignment taught the students the fundamentals of research -- thequestions to ask – that could be asked of almost any object.

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Students were required to include:•A visual description of the object and its material qualities•

Trace its provenance•

Provide a contextual analysis of its production in Japan•

Analyze its subsequent reception in the USA.

Students were encouraged to identify similar objects in other collections or groups of objects towhich their particular object belongs. For example, the “Ishii Vases in the Lilly Library” could be
examined within the context of Meiji era export crafts or photographs in conjunction withwoodblock prints.
While I would like to think that similar projects can be done with images found online,
both the physical description and tracing the provenance might prove challenging as only somewebsites detail the provenance or use iiif so the viewer can zoom into the details. The exercise
required the student to work closely with the librarian or archivist who managed access to theitem.
The first step was for the students to examine their object and describe it. Their
descriptions were meticulous; for instance, one student described in detail a sword she
examined: “The Japanese Imperial Naval Officer sword has a 62 cm blade, which was typical of
the length of a Japanese katana (samurai long sword), 60-65 cm.” She continues, that “Insteadof covering the wooden handle of the sword with a criss-crossed cloth wrapping like traditional
Japanese swords, the handle is wrapped with thin leather bands. The sword’s hilt is about 8 cm,longer than the traditional length of the Japanese sword’s 6 cm hilt. On the back of the hilt isthe crest, two crossed feathers enclosed in a circle. The hilt distinguishes the Japanese Imperial2Naval Officer Sword from an army officer sword in that it does not feature any side pieces withvarious emblems on the backstrap. Along the hilt is a D-shaped ring connected to the backstrap
with a red and gold oval tassel tied to it. The D- shaped ring as well as the top and bottom
sections of the scabbard are some metal alloy. The top section of the scabbard has three rings
meant for the sword to be able to be hung on the walls either in the officer’s homes or theiroffices. The Japanese Imperial Naval sword’s wide D-shaped ring along the hilt matches thesword mountings called the Russo-Japanese War style.”1
Another student examined some Japanese hina dolls. She begins, “They are composedof the three primary elements: wood, silk textile, and gofun. Only the hands, feet, and heads
have been carved from wood. Typically, within the hina tradition, the dolls heads are carved
into oval shapes atop long tapering necks that are inserted into a stuffed body cavity. Due tothe fragility of the two dolls, the heads were not removed to confirm, but other extant
examples from this period adhere to this construction.2 The rest of the dolls consist of silk
textile, likely stuffed with silk wadding or straw-like wood shavings, lacquerware pieces, and silk
fibers. These two dolls, though meant to represent imperial personages, wear clothing that isactually quite inaccurate to the clothing of noble / imperial personages at the time. The
function of these dolls garments is likely more for sumptuary display than accuracy.”3 She
continues with an extensive description of the dolls, focusing on their construction, their faces,

1Shin, Christina, “The lives of a sword: From owner to owner, function to function.” Unpublished paper written forJapanese Art 1600 to the present, November 2018.
2Pate, Ningyo, 12.
3
Johnson, Reilly, “Bostock Library Hina-Matsuri Dolls: A Historical and Physical Analysis.” Unpublished paper,
December 2018.

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the materials used to give luster to the faces or to die the hair, the fabric in the robes, how thebrocades were designed to represent many layers of sleeves, and the purpose of the satin stitch
embroidery used in the brocades. When she discusses the chirimen used in the Empress’hakama, she explains that it was most likely dyed with a chemical dye used in Meiji times orlater, since it has not faded. Although Duke was told that they were Tokugawa era dolls, thestudent argues that they were produced in the Meiji period since such dyes are characteristic ofMeiji and later. She continues her analysis all the way to the absence of feet, explaining that“female me-bina are always rendered without feet because it is considered immodest.”
As these examples suggest, description of the object requires a keen eye and an interestin detail. The description of the two dolls, including photographs of separate parts, extends
over 6 pages of text. The author documented what she observed and found support for her
arguments both in print and online.
The next part of the assignment, a discussion of provenance, was often challenging. The
information on the provenance of the Parrish papers is very slight; the catalog says that they
were acquired through a combination of gifts and purchases, but the provenance file only lists
gifts from Lenox D. Baker, and there is no indication of what his connection to the Parrish’s was.
I assume that their acquisition was most likely tied to the fact that Parrish attended Trinity
College which became part of Duke University,4 and/or Parrish’s involvement in American
Tobacco which merged with Duke Tobacco, which was involved in the founding of Duke.

4Trinity College was founded in Randolph County and moved to Durham in 1892 and became Duke University in1924. https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/uarchives/history/articles/narrative-history4

We have no records of how we received the wedding kimono, and the recollections ofat least two people differ. The sword came as part of a collection, the papers of Robert L.
Eichelberger who commanded all ground occupation troops during the Allied Occupation ofJapan, and the student used the papers to research the provenance. The Eichelberger papers
document that he received seven swords from General Doihara, Lieutenant General Honma,
Lieutenant General Kuroda, Rear Admiral Yokoyama, Rear Admiral Miyoshi, Vice Admiral Ugaki
and General Tojo, of which two were copies, but Duke got only five, and today has three. It
seems most likely that the sword came from Miyoshi, who wrote Eichelberger on September
26, 1945 that he was handing over two swords: “a long one... appraised by a sword expert asGi-Yoshimitsu’s make of the Ashikaga Period (about 5-600 yrs. ago)...[and] a short one...a later
make generally known as the Kamakura sword.”5 Miyoshi goes on to elaborate how the GiYoshimitsu sword was a gift from his grandfather “to commemorate his entrance into the Naval
Academy and bears [his] family crest as well the maker’s name, Yoshimitsu.”3 The student
then continues by discussing the fact the kamon on the sword matches that of the Asanofamily; rather than having a black square diamond with a smaller square diamond associatedwith the Miyoshi family, it has two crossed falcon feathers that was historically used by theAsano clan. The student speculates on the relationship of Miyoshi to the Asano clan but did not
dig further.
The difficulties with identifying provenance that the students encountered highlighted
for me how important it is for us to document it when we receive something. The kimono wasgifted to Duke while I have been working there, and it did not cross my mind to ask the person

5Shin, p. 35

at our institute for any documentation, and she did not submit any to gifts and records. We got
the dolls more recently, and I have a series of emails asking us if we would take them -- theDuke gardens asked us to accept them so they could use them for girl’s day, because they had
no suitable place to store them -- but until the students did this exercise, I had made no effort
to ensure that the correspondence would be available for future students to use. I can see thatnext spring before I retire, I will have to do some serious work going through my files, bothprint and electronic, deciding what to leave my successor and what to store in archives.
Students were also asked to do a contextual analysis of the object’s production in Japanand discuss its subsequent reception in the United States. This was easier for some projects
than others. The student who worked on the Parrish album had an abundance of material towork with as there have been other studies of nineteenth century photography and tourism inJapan6 in addition to the family papers.
Edward Parrish was a tobacco auctioneer in North Carolina in the second half of thenineteenth century who fell into debt and took an offer from the American Tobacco Company
to be a company representative in Japan in 1899. Parrish and his family lived in Yokohama forsix years and brought home 9 souvenir photograph albums. The student examined one album,
in box number 15, quite closely, analyzing the numbers and captions on the photographs. For
instance, most of the photos have handwritten captions; some have numbers that are easilyseen; this one of the Tokaidō road has 908 embedded in the photo and a handwritten caption,

6Work, such as Eleanor Hight’s, points out how photographs despite their illusion of objectivity, can be staged andmanipulated to serve the desires of the buyer. Capturing Japan in Nineteenth-Century New England Photography
Collections, Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2011.

6while the one of the porcelain shop has a printed tag with the number 865. While it might bereasonable to suppose that the photo albums were purchased as is, the student carefully
analyzes the photos to argue that Parrish, like many collectors, selected the photographs
himself, and compiled the book after procuring a sufficient number of images.
That said, the coloring in the photographs is remarkably consistent. In order to argue
that the photographs in the album could have been made by different photographers, thestudent investigated how the photographs were colored. She found a book on the internetarchive which explained the colors used in turn of the century photographs; The Peerless
Japanese Transparent Water-Colors handbook was published in 1902 by the Japanese Water
Color Co,7 and describes fifteen colors that were available to photographers to tint theirphotographs. For instance, “geranium pink” is described as “a very useful color for flower workand one of the most brilliant of all reds…. In its diluted gradations it is a beautiful pink,producing carnation pink, rose pink, apple blossom pink and rose madder for delicate fleshtints.” (p.36)
While the students varied in how they approached their objects – one student spent
more time describing it, another the provenance, and a third analyzing the reception in thewest – they all engaged in a close reading. At the same time, few students were successful inseeing the relationship to other items. Looking at the picture a girl in a rainstorm or Mt. Fuji
from Kumagawa river, one can see the continuity with woodblock prints. Rather than being a7

Nicholson, C. F. Peerless Japanese Transparent Water Colors. New York City, NY: Japanese
Water Color, 1902. July 19, 2017. Accessed September 8, 2019. https://archiveorg.proxy.lib.duke.edu/details/gri_33125012878498/page/n17

documentation of daily life, they are a careful construction of a pictorial motif rendered in anew medium. The girl is not in a rainstorm; rather she is posed in a shop, standing motionlessso that the image does not become blurred. One can also find analogous photographs of young
women, equally or even less convincingly staged, or woodblock prints of people in rainstorms.
Fujisan, too, was routinely depicted in woodblock prints.
The final question the students had to address was the reception in America. The
student who looked at Ogata Gekko’s book was the most successful in doing this. The copy of itis part of the Parrish collection, and she examined it together with Rosa Parrish’s diary andletters. She demonstrates how Ogata Gekko’s prints in the US became detached from their
Meiji context and “became merely an exotic object.” To establish this, she read about womenin late 19th century Japan, citing Rebecca Corbett’s Cultivating Femininity as well as several
Japanese women’s magazines and other voices who did not support the subjugation of women
to men, and argues that there were women in the late 19th century who endeavored tochallenge traditional ideas.” But she found in reading Rosa Parrish’s diary, that the complicatedsocial context seen in the prints became vague under her exoticizing gaze. She says, “ToAmericans, the women were cute and fragile “like quaint little dolls.” She continues that eventhough Parrish was interested in women’s rights in the US, she does not seem to consider theissue in Japan and concludes that “despite having lived in Japan, Rosa Parrish viewed Japanesewomen merely as exotic and small people just like her American contemporaries did, and did
not recognize the changing social situation of women.”88Kwon, Ashley. “Meiji Era Japanese women through Ogata Gekko’s “Manners and Customs of Women.”
Unpublished paper, December 2018. Japanese Art History: 1600-Present, p.11.

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I found this project of reading these student papers interesting to pursue. In conclusion,
I want to say that I discovered how much students were able to do with a single item, an itemthat we would not often consider “high art.” I was particularly impressed with their meticulousdescriptions; they examined their objects closely and with great care. Then they related themto trends in Japanese art and culture. While Duke students have easy access to recent
scholarship, nonetheless, I think these are projects that could be done by university students
with fewer resources. The skills they learned – to carefully examine an object, to trace its
provenance, and to relate it to broader trends in Japanese art history and to the reaction toJapanese art in the US (or anywhere outside of Japan) – are useful skills that they will take withthem after they graduate.

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