LANGUAGES, MATERIALITY, AND
THE CONSTRUCTION OF
GEOGRAPHICAL MODERNITIES
Edited by Toshiyuki SHIMAZU
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Japanese Contributions to the History of Geographical Thought.
2014-03-31
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ISBN 978-4-9900-5379-6

LANGUAGES,
MATERIALITY, AND
THE CONSTRUCTION
OF GEOGRAPHICAL
MODERNITIES
Edited by Toshiyuki SHIMAZU
Japanese Contributions to
the History of Geographical Thought (10)Department of Geography
Wakayama University
JAPAN
2014

Publication of this booklet was financially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant
Number 23320184) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The opinions expressed in thecontributions to this booklet are the authors’ responsibility.
All the communications concerning this booklet should be addressed toProfessor Toshiyuki SHIMAZU
Department of Geography
Wakayama University
Wakayama, 640-8510, Japan
shimazu@center.wakayama-u.ac.jp
Copyright © Toshiyuki SHIMAZU 2014
March 31, 2014
ISBN 978-4-9900-5379-6
Printed by For-You Ltd., Sakai, Osaka, 590-0982, Japan

LANGUAGES, MATERIALITY, AND
THE CONSTRUCTION OF GEOGRAPHICAL MODERNITIESCONTENTS
Introduction: Bridging Two International Gatherings in Kyoto

SHIMAZU Toshiyuki

3Contested Geographical Knowledge and Imagination:
A. H. Savage Landor and Victorian British Writings on Hokkaido

TACHIBANA Setsu

9Eating Rice and Feeding the City: ‘Body Politics’ in Modern JapanONJO Akio

29

Commodification of the Asian and Construction of Japan’s Self-image

MORI Masato

41

Ideas and Practices of the Kyoto School of Japanese Geopolitics

SHIBATA Yoichi

55

Between Two Homes: Gentaro Tanahashi and His Thoughts andPractices concerning Kyodo (Homeland) and Katei (Family Home)FUKUDA Tamami

71

Influence of Colonial Urban Planning on a Historic District of Paris:
The Marais of Albert Laprade

ARAMATA Miyo87

Installing Geography in the Open Air:The Statues of Geographers in Late Nineteenth Century Belgium

SHIMAZU Toshiyuki

97

3

Introduction:

Bridging Two International Gatherings in Kyoto
SHIMAZU Toshiyuki*
This booklet is the 10th volume of a series of publications under the title JapaneseContributions to the History of Geographical Thought . The first volume of theseries was published in 1980 and an abridged list of the series is as follows:[1] Geographical Languages in Different Times and Places (Geographical Instituteof Kyoto University 1980)[2] Languages, Paradigms and Schools in Geography (Takeuchi 1984)[3] Cosmology, Epistemology and the History of Geography (Nozawa 1986)[4] Indigenous and Foreign Influences in the Development of Japanese Geographical Thought (Nozawa 1989)[5] Unpublished[6] Social Theory and Geographical Thought (Nozawa 1996)[7] Nation, Region and the Politics of Geography in East Asia (Mizuuchi 1999)[8] Representing Local Places and Raising Voices from Below (Mizuuchi 2003)[9] To be published in 2014[10] Languages, Materiality, and the Construction of Geographical Modernities(Shimazu 2014)
The context in which the first volume of the series was published was mainly
concerned with the 24th International Geographical Congress (IGC) held in Tokyoin 1980 (Shimazu et al. 2012: 476-477). On that occasion, the pre-congress meetingof the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on the History of
Geographical Thought was held in Kyoto at Kyodai Kaikan, and the theme of themeeting was ‘The Languages of Geography and of Geographers.’ In order to prepare
for the meeting, a research group was organized by Ichiro Suizu in 1978 under the
support of a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKEN-HI) from the Ministryof Education, Science and Culture. This KAKEN research group functioned as the
local organizing committee for the meeting. The first volume of the series entitled
Geographical Languages in Different Times and Places was edited by the samegroup as a background publication on the occasion of the meeting.
*Wakayama University, JAPAN4

The subsequent volumes of the series were all published by the respective KAKEN
research groups under the financial support of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Researchfrom the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (from the Japan Society for
the Promotion of Science since 1999). The head investigators and members of these
KAKEN groups have changed over time and so too have research themes, whichrange from not only the history of geographical thought but also social and politicaltheory, spatial aspects of modernity, cultural and spatial turns, etc.
The present volume is, in a sense, an attempt to get back to the starting point of
our KAKEN research activities. The interface between language and geography, I
believe, still remains an important research theme. And here the meaning of theterm ‘geography’ is twofold: One refers to the thought and practice of geography
itself, and the other refers to geographically differentiated spaces and places.
Our KAKEN research group (with myself as head investigator) has tackled theseissues for the academic year 2011 to 2013 under the theme ‘Languages, Materiality, and the Construction of Geographical Modernities.’ We have also attempted
to organize a session under the same theme at the IGU Kyoto Regional Conferencein 2013 in collaboration with the Geographical Thought Study Group of the
Human Geographical Society of Japan (with myself also as chair for 2011-2013)
and especially with the IGU Commission on the History of Geography (Jacobo
García-Álvarez as chair for 2012-2016). By courtesy of the Commission, the preparation of the session was going smoothly and Professor Jacobo García-Álvarez andI explained the outline of our session entitled ‘Languages, Materiality and theConstruction of Geographical Modernities’ in the Commission’s official ‘Call for
Papers’ as follows:
Our Commission plans to organize a themed session to contemplate over how
different geographical languages and discourses have been deployed in thematerial and representational construction of modern spaces and places, andhow the materiality of modern social life has in turn shaped those languages
and discourses. The concept of ‘geographical modernities’ refers thus not only
to the differentiated modern spaces and places, but also to modern academic
and non-academic geographical discourses themselves. Papers are welcome
especially dealing with: relationships between the history of geography andmaterial objects, institutions and localities; critical reflections on various geographical languages (written texts, maps, photographs, paintings, engravingsand others); material cultures and the production, circulation and consumptionof geographical knowledges; imaginative geographies in academia and broader
society; academic and non-academic geographers and the planning and development of cities, regions and countryside. Participants are welcome to submit
abstracts on the topics listed above, but are not limited to those mentioned.1)
1) http://web.univ-pau.fr/RECHERCHE/UGIHG/06_Documents/2013/CALL_FOR_PAPERS_IGU_Regional_
Conference_2013.pdf (last accessed 1 March 2014)

5

Finally our session had a total of twenty papers,2) some of which were initiallysubmitted to the ‘general session’ category and were favorably merged into oursession. The venue for the conference was the Kyoto International ConferenceCenter and our session extended over two days. The session program was asfollows,3) with one paper (No.15 as indicated below) cancelled:[Tuesday 6 August 8:00-9:30 Room 665] Chair: Jacobo GARCĺA-ÁLVAREZ
1. Vincent BERDOULAY and Olivier SOUBEYRAN: Les avatars de la notion d’adaptation dans la seconde moitié du siècle dernier
2. Tetsuro CHIDA: ‘Transformation of nature’ concept by geographers and agricultural-water development in Soviet Central Asia
3. Chia-Jung WU and Jinn-Guey LAY: Interpreting water space in the history of
Taiwan: From textual towards cartographic[Tuesday 6 August 10:00-11:30 Room 665] Chair: Toshiyuki SHIMAZU
4. Tamami FUKUDA: Between home and homeland: Movements to improve people’s ways of living and ‘kyodo’ (homeland) education in early twentieth-century
Japan
5. Naoki OSHIRO: Okinawan folk geographies in modernity: Some aspects of articulation
6. Miyo ARAMATA: ‘Social mix’ and Muslim migrants: Inclusion and exclusion in
the neighborhood of the Goutte d’Or of Paris[Tuesday 6 August 14:00-15:30 Room 665] Chair: Tamami FUKUDA
7. Toshiyuki SHIMAZU: Installing geography in the open air: The emergence of thestatues of geographers in late nineteenth-century Belgium
8. Jun-Hua LIN: The return of big cameras: Women, camera and modernity
9. Akio ONJO: Eating rice: Body politics in modern Japanese city
[Wednesday 7 August 8:00-9:30 Room 665] Chair: Vincent BERDOULAY
10. Jacobo GARCĺA-ÁLVAREZ and Jean-Yves PUYO: Un épisode méconnu decoopération cartographique franco-espagnole: Le bureau topographique de Madrid (1823-1841)
11. Jacobo GARCĺA-ÁLVAREZ: Geographical knowledge and territorial representations in the demarcation of the Spanish-Portuguese boundary, 1855-1906
12. José A. RODRIGUEZ: Geographical discourses in Spain (1867-1936): On alliances and borders between Spain and Portugal[Wednesday 7 August 10:00-11:30 Room 665] Chair: Jean-Yves PUYO
2) Abstracts can be viewed from: http://oguchaylab.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/IGU2013/igu_2013.html (last accessed 3
March 2014)
3) This was extracted and compiled from National Committee of Japan for IGU (2013: 23, 30, 38, 58, 65, 73).

6

13. Hong-Lei ZHANG, Jie ZHANG, Jinhe ZHANG, Zehua LIU and Shi-En ZHONG:
The academic impact and disciplinary position of human geography: A computational scientometric perspective
14. Michael S. DEVIVO: Transformational leadership, geographic science, and paradigm change in American geography
15. Zhihong CHEN: Frontier studies and the disciplinary formation of modern Chinese geography in Republican China, 1911-1949
16. Motohide AKIYAMA: Comparison of traditional geographical thoughts between
China and Japan[Wednesday 7 August 14:00-15:30 Room 665] Chair: Naoki OSHIRO
17. Koji HASEGAWA: The achievement and prospect in the Japanese history of cartography
18. Shosuke HOSOI: Modernization efforts of Japan Meiji Restoration Governmentand rapid colored topographic mapping of Kanto Plain Area in 1880s
19. Miwako WATANABE: The 76-year history of Watanabe Kyogu. Co., Ltd. (Globe
maker of Japan)
20. Christian Wilhelm SPANG: Karl Haushofer’s theories and German-Japaneserelations
We are convinced that most of the participants enjoyed good and fruitful presentations and discussions on the theme of our session in spite of the highly diversified nature of the papers presented. This booklet, then, is part of the final output
from our KAKEN research project. Now we are recalling the meeting and publication thirty-four years ago in Kyoto and are acknowledging their relevance andvalidity in the present research setting. ‘Learning from the past’, or ‘onko-chishin’in Japanese, seems to hold true even today. On the other hand, ‘putting new winein old bottles’ may also have significance in the Japanese context and especiallyfor our research project. Here ‘new wine’ refers to the concepts of ‘materiality’and ‘geographical modernities.’ Most of the contributions to this booklet, whether
explicitly or implicitly, are touching upon these ‘novel’ aspects embedded within
what they are researching. We hope that this booklet will prompt further discussions, and moreover, further theoretical and empirical research in the fields of thehistory of geography and historical geography.

References

Geographical Institute of Kyoto University ed. 1980. Geographical languages indifferent times and places: Japanese contributions to the history of geographicalthoughts . Kyoto: Geographical Institute of Kyoto University.
Mizuuchi, T. ed. 1999. Nation, region and the politics of geography in East Asia:
Japanese contributions to the history of geographical thought (7) . Osaka:7

Department of Geography, Osaka City University.
Mizuuchi, T. ed. 2003. Representing local places and raising voices from below:
Japanese contributions to the history of geographical thought (8) . Osaka:
Department of Geography, Urban-Culture Research Center, Osaka City
University.
National Committee of Japan for IGU 2013. IGU 2013 Kyoto Regional Conference .
Kyoto: National Committee of Japan for IGU.
Nozawa, H. ed. 1986. Cosmology, epistemology and the history of geography:
Japanese contributions to the history of geographical thought (3) . Fukuoka:
Institute of Geography, Faculty of Letters, Kyushu University.
Nozawa, H. ed. 1989. Indigenous and foreign influences in the developmentof Japanese geographical thought: Japanese contributions to the history ofgeographical thought (4) . Fukuoka: Institute of Geography, Faculty of Letters,

Kyushu University.
Nozawa, H. ed. 1996. Social theory and geographical thought: Japanese contributions to the history of geographical thought (6) . Fukuoka: Institute of Geography,
Faculty of Letters, Kyushu University.
Shimazu, T., Fukuda, T. and Oshiro, N. 2012. Imported scholarship or indigenousdevelopment? Japanese contributions to the history of geographical thought andsocial and cultural geography since the late 1970s. Japanese Journal of Human
Geography 64: 474-496.
Shimazu, T. ed. 2014. Languages, materiality, and the construction of geographicalmodernities: Japanese contributions to the history of geographical thought (10) .
Wakayama: Department of Geography, Wakayama University.
Takeuchi, K. ed. 1984. Languages, paradigms and schools in geography: Japanesecontributions to the history of geographical thought (2) . Kunitachi: Laboratory ofSocial Geography, Hitotsubashi University.

9

Contested Geographical Knowledge and Imagination:
A. H. Savage Landor and Victorian British Writings on Hokkaido
TACHIBANA Setsu*
Abstract
This paper examines the publishing process of a travel narrative entitled Alonewith the Hairy Ainu (1893) by Arnold Henry Savage Landor (1865-1924) in London.

A. H. Savage Landor was a Florence-born Englishman who was educated as apainter in Paris. Manuscript letters between John Murray Publishers and A.
H.Savage Landor show how the publishing business relied on personal relationships and networks of people circulating information and knowledge. Landor
travelled in Japan independently from any scholarly network, and his sojourn
was filled with adventure. Landor’s main advantage was his artistic skill. His
travel to Japan resulted in his first book, Alone with the Hairy Ainu (1893). But
John Murray did not publish any more of Landor’s books. Later his books were
often criticised for their inaccuracy. His paper on travel to Tibet was rejected by
the Royal Geographical Society, because he had no skills of scientific observation.
However much his observations may have included exaggerations, his strong powerof narrative enabled him to entertain the reader, and this characteristic made him
a popular author.
Keywords: A. H. Savage Landor (1865-1924), travel writing, geographicalpublishing, Hokkaido, Ainu, T. W. Blakiston (1832-1891), John Murray, the Royal
Geographical Society*Kobe Yamate University, JAPAN10

1. Introduction: A. H. Savage Landor and John Murray Publishers1)
This paper explores how British travellers experienced the Japanese landscape,and the process of publishing their works as travel literature for a British audience.
It is focused on one of John Murray’s travel books on Japan, whose author was
Arnold Henry Savage Landor (1865-1924), a Florence-born Englishman, who was
educated as a painter in Paris. A. H. Savage Landor travelled widely over the world
and wrote best selling books of his journeys. A. H. Savage Landor’s book on Japan
mainly focused on his experience in Hokkaido, was entitled Alone with the Hairy
Ainu, and was published in 1893. One of the aims of A. H. Savage Landor’s visit
to Hokkaido was to meet the ‘aborigines’ of Yezo (Hokkaido) called Ainu, and heactually visited the Ainu village of Biratori in Hokkaido.
J o h n Mu rra y Pu b l i s h e rs
had roots in Scotland, wasrun as a family business,
and was famous as the poet
Byron’s publisher under John
Murray II. The portrait ofJohn Murray III (1808-1892)
gives us an impression of the
publishing business in thelate Victorian period (Figure1). This portrait was painted
in 1881, and now hangs on
the wall of Byron’s room at
Figure 1. Portrait of John Murray III
John Murray’s at 50 Albemarle(Private collection at John Murray)
Street, London. In this portrait,
another portrait of John
Murray II is depicted on the wall behind John Murray III. John Murray III sits at
his business desk writing letters, and surrounding him are letters bundled by red
ribbon. The red books behind him are the series Murray’s Handbooks for Travellers ,which fashioned the travelling culture of that period. A grey book on the desk is
the Quarterly Review, which Murray published. John Murray III is dressed in his
everyday working clothes, depicting publishing as a gentlemanly business. The
premises of John Murray was a meeting place for various authors, and somethingof a salon (Paston, 1932; Smiles, 1891). When John Murray III died in 1892, John
1) I was able to inspect archived works at John Murray, Publisher at 50 Albemarle Street, London in 19982000. I am most grateful to Mrs. Virginia Murray for allowing me to consult archive manuscripts held at John
Murray and providing me with additional information related to John Murray. Now the John Murray Archives
are held at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. See Carpenter, Humphrey (2008) The Seven Livesof John Murray: The Story of a Publishing Dynasty. John Murray. Also see Withers, Charles and Keighren,
Innes (2011) ‘Travels into print: authoring, editing and narratives of travel and exploration, c .1815–c .1857’
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36-4, p.560-573.

11

Murray IV (until then called John Murray Junior by authors) took over immediately. The period during which the correspondence of A. H. Savage Landor took
place was the time of John Murray IV (1851-1927).
According to Richard Altick, a key to understanding the nineteenth century is
the emergence of the mass media, the mass reading public and industrial bookproduction. It was a result of improvements in technology and ‘innovations likemechanics’ institutes’: ‘there took root and eventually flourished in nineteenthcentury England a revolutionary social concept: that of the democracy of print’(Altick, 1957). The visions and images created in books were the product of acomplex Victorian book industry.2) The correspondence between authors and John
Murray was crucially important, there was much discussion and negotiation onsuch matters as print run, size and shape, style of writing, information sources,
manuscript and proof, illustration, payment, contributions to magazines, thereputation of book review articles and so on.
In terms of source materials for this research, in the archive at John Murray’s,
there are three different types of correspondence materials concerning the period ofJohn Murray III (1808-1892) and IV (1851-1927):(a) letters from authors to John Murray,(b) the letter book: copies of letters from John Murray to authors(i) a collection of extract letters (green covered book, 2 vols. 1878 (11April) - 1905 (9 Dec.)) : John Murray III, IV(ii) a collection of carbon-copy letters (marble designed covered book,
3vols. A random collection of the record of letters, period covered from1892-1895) ): only John Murray IV(c) a diary (dark blue covered book and 3 vols. 1896 (4 Aug.)-1904 (19 Sep.)).
Concerning materials on A. H. Savage Landor, there exist fifteen letters fromLandor to John Murray (source (a)). There are four completed carbon-copy lettersfrom John Murray IV to Landor in the letter book (source (b-ii)). Concerning source(c) the diary, this is the record of business of John Murray IV including how hedealt with letters, manuscripts, callers, and proofs. This document is very usefulin understanding how correspondence operated in the publication business. This
paper considers the whole process of publishing Landor’s book, starting withthe correspondence between the author and the publisher. A. H. Savage Landor
2) McDonald, Peter D. (1997) British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice 1880-1914. Cambridge
University Press. Yokoyama explores particular Victorian Japanese media images in the relationship between
authors and Blackwood Publishers; Yokoyama, Toshio (1980) ‘Victoria ki Igirisu ni okeru Nihon-zo keisei ni
tsuite no oboe-gaki<1>: S. Osborne to Edinburgh no syuppansya Blackwood’ (‘The notes of the vision of Japanin Victorian Britain<1>: S. Osbourne and Blackwood Publishers, Edinburgh.’) in Jinbun-gakuho. 48. Kyoto
University. Yokoyama, Toshio (1981) ‘Victoria ki Igirisu ni okeru Nihon-zo keisei ni tsuite no oboe-gaki<2>: L.
Oliphant to Edinburgh no syuppansya Blackwood’ (‘The notes of the vision of Japan in Victorian Britain<2>: L.
Oliphant and Blackwood Publishers, Edinburgh.’) in Jinbun-gakuho. 50. Kyoto University.

12

approached John Murray Publishers after coming back from Japan.
During Landor’s time in late 19th century Britain, the status of geographicalknowledge and exploration was as Felix Driver describes:
Anxieties about the relationship between sober science and sensational discovery, ʻprofessionalʼ fieldworkand ʻpopularʼ travel, have characterized writings on anthropology (and geography) for at least two hundredyears. Indeed, one might say that the history of the field science during this period is a history of constantefforts to differentiate between, and within, the categories of travel, exploration and discovery. (Driver, 2001:
1-2)

Based in Driver’s characterisation, I examined how Landor was criticised forhaving no skills of ‘professional’ scientific observation by authorities such as
the Royal Geographical Society and Anglo-Japanese experts. For example, John
Batchelor, an Anglo-Japanese resident and expert on the Ainu, evaluated Landor’sbook as, ‘a very interesting, yet at the same time, one of the most unconscionably
incorrect and misleading books it is possible to purchase for money’ in a bookreview article that appeared in the Japan Mail, 7 Feb. 1894.
However much Landor’s observations include his inaccuracies, his travel narratives were able to entertain the contemporary general reader, and this characteristic made him a popular author. From The British Library General Catalogueof Printed Books , Landor’s publications during his life were: Alone with the
Hairy Ainu (1893, London: John Murray); Corea: or, Cho-sen, the land of themorning calm (1895, London: Heinemann); In the forbidden land: an account of ajourney in Tibet (1898, London: Heinemann); China and the allies (1901, London:
Heinemann) ; Across coveted lands: or, A journey from Flushing (Holland) to
Calcutta (1902, London: Macmillan); The gems of the East: sixteen thousand milesof research travel among wild and tame tribes of enchanting islands (1904, London:
Macmillan), Across widest Africa (1907, London: Hurst and Blackett); Acrossunknown South America (1913, London: Hodder and Stoughton), Everywhere: thememoirs of an explorer (1924, London: T. F. Unwin). It is clear that Landor’s books
were part of the global culture of late nineteenth century Britain, and this paper
looks at the production of his geographical knowledge and imagination.

2. The book production process: starting with correspondence between
A. H. Savage Landor and John Murray IV
In June 1892 John Murray IV received the following letter from A. H. Savage
Landor who was talking about his travel around the Ainu villages in Hokkaido:
Sir,
The year before last I took a very strange trip among the hairy people- the Ainu. the Savage Aborigines of
Yezo and the Kurile Islands- Otkoshk (sic) Sea (Northern Siberia). I lived with them and like them for many
months and rode some 3800 miles on horseback, perfectly alone and mostly untrodden ground, studying the13habits, manners, customs, language etc. of the natives and the geological character of the country- besides
drawing several maps of the most important rivers, lakes etc. As I am the only person who has visited andlived with all the different tribes of Ainu now exhisting (sic), I have been pressed to write a book and being an
artist by profession I have also drawn about 200 illustrations (that could be reproduced direct by process) of
the different types, their dwellings, implements, war instruments, canoes, clothes etc, besides many sketchesof the adventures and narrow escapes which I had in such an inhospitable country.
The Ainu as you probably know are the hairiest people in the world -the whole of their body being covered
with thick long hair.
The book which I have written on them is nearly finished now and being on such a strange and new subject, I
wonder if you would be willing to purchase it from me.
I have received letters from several London publishers who are anxious to get it- but as I know your house to
be the best I wish to give the first offer to you. ...
Should you care to talk about it I shall be happy to call any day and show illustrations.
I am a grandson of Walter Savage Landor.
Believe me Sir yours truly
A. Henry Savage Landor3)

This letter marked the beginning of the relationship between John Murray
Publishers and A. H. Savage Landor. John Murray published only Landor’s firstbook, Alone with the Hairy Ainu, with which he started his career as an explorer-writer. The places covered in his later travels were the Far East (Japan and
Korea), Asia (China and Tibet), India, South America, and Africa.
Fifteen letters from Landor to John Murray survive, dated from 20 June 1892 to
18 April 1900. Among them four letters were from London, seven from Florence,
three from Aberdeenshire, and one from New York. These letters reveal the processof travel book production. John Murray IV replied to Landor’s first letter as follows:
Dear Mr Landor
You said you would kindly allow me to see a portion of your MS dealing with what you consider the mostinteresting part of your journey.
Meanwhile, as I have taken great pains in reading and considering the MS you have already submitted tome, it is perhaps desirable that I should write and tell you the opinion I have formed of it.
Your subject is a very curious and interesting one but the narrative, so far as I have seen it hardly furnishes
sufficient interest or exhibits sufficient literary excellence to give promise of a successful book by itself. The
remaining portion may remove this objection, and at any rate the pictures will be a great help to the text.
I have made notes of some of the sentences and passages which require revision. These notes I send partly on
two small slips, and partly marked in very light pencil strokes on the MS.
I am so much interested in yourself and your journey that I make these criticisms frankly in the full belief
that this is the greatest service I can pay you.
Some of your sketches would I think require re-drawing to appear to the best advantage.
In short, you appear to have good material in plenty, both of pen and pencil, but it will require a good deal oflabour and care to convert that material into a really good book.
Believe me3) Letter from A. H. Savage Landor (44 St Ermins Mansions, Caxton Str. Westminster) to John Murray IV on
20 June 1892, held at John Murray Archive at 50 Albemarle Street, London (accessed 1998).

14
Yours very truly
John Murray4)

The next letter from John Murray IV, written five months latter, formalised his
interest into a financial proposal.
Dear my Mr Landor
I am very sorry to have been so long in writing to you about your MS. ... I find that it still requires a certain
amount of care and touching up to prepare it for the press, and I have again spent a good many hours inendeavouring to assist in this preparation.
It is however very greatly improved since I first saw it and I am personally so much interested in it that I
should like to be the publisher of it. My brother is unfortunately away in the South of France but were hehere I am confident that he would acquiesce in my opinion.
The book will be an expensive one to bring out. The illustrations will be numerous and must be very carefully
prepared and printed & there must be a map. We are ready to bear the entire cost of production and to pay
you either(a) half the profits of all the editions or(b) a royalty on all copies sold: viz 10% on the advertised price up to 1 thousand and 12 1/2% on all copies
beyond that number if the sales should reach that extent.
If either of these alternatives should meet with your approval we are prepared to proceed with the printing
at once.
Believe meYours very truly
John Murray5)

Alone with the Hairy Ainu was published on 23 October 1893.6) According to “TheLedger” at John Murray’s, 1000 copies were printed, and 950 copies were bound.
The price of each copy was 18 shillings.7)

4) Letter from John Murray IV to A. H. Savage Landor on 29 July 1892 (from “the letter book” (source (b-ii) vol.
2-p. 141), held at John Murray Archive at 50 Albemarle Street, London (accessed 1998)
5) Letter from John Murray IV to A. H. Savage Landor on 12 Dec.1892 (from “the letter book” (source (b-ii)
vol.2-p.337), held at John Murray Archive at 50 Albemarle Street, London (accessed 1998)
6) This is the date of “Albion Sale” (or “trade dinner”). At the “Albion Sale” on 23 October 1893, Alone with the
Hairy Ainu was sold 295 copies to the book sellers. from “Albion Sale Account”, held at John Murray Archiveat 50 Albemarle Street, London (accessed 1998). On the same day, the following books were on sale: Henry
Scott Holland et al. Jenny Lind the Artist, 1820-1851 ; University Extension Manuals, chapters in Modern
Botany. by Patrick Geddes. According to the letter from John Murray IV to B. H. Chamberlain on 20 June
1893 (“the letter book” (source (b-ii)) vol.3-p.107)), John Murray mentioned that he ‘postponed the publicationof Mr Savage Landor’s Ainu till Autumn’ because of ‘Politics and other matters’. So it seems that Murray had
prepared to publish it around June 1893, but they then postponed it. (accessed 1998)
7) The trade price was 12 shillings 9 pence. (25 as 24) from “the Ledger” (H383) and “Albion Sale Account”, heldin the John Murray Archive.‘Author’s 1/2 profit: 46.11.10, Mr. Murray’s 1/2 profit: 46.11.09’ on Dec.1893. “TheLedger” (H383), held at John Murray Archive (accessed 1998). The details of this Albion Sale were describedin a contemporary view as: ‘The “trade dinner” to which Mr. Murray annually invites “the booksellers of
London and Westminster” is one of the most interesting episodes in the history of the house of Murray. For
more than fifty years it has been held at “The Albion” tavern in Aldgate Street. After coffee is served, Mr.
Murray yields his place at the head of the table to the auctioneer of the evening, who then receives bids forthe number of books which each bookseller will take. The price is previously fixed, so that the chief advantage

15

Later, in 1900, Landor offered an American
edition to John Murray8) during his stay in America.
Interest in the Ainu there culminated at the St
Louis International Exhibition, USA in 1904, wherean Ainu village was recreated (Starr, 1904; Carlson,
1989).

3. After publication of Alone with the Hairy
Ainu (1893): criticism from book review
journalism

Figure 2. Cover design of 1stedition of A. H. Savage Landor,
Alone with the Hairy Ainu (1893),
published by John Murray,
London.

After publishing his work on the Ainu, Landor
published numerous books on regions remote fromBritain. The ‘Obituary’ in The Times judged thatthey:... revealed the authorʼs tendency to dogmatism, his scanty powerof sifting evidence, and his innocence of any adequate knowledge ofnatural history, physics, botany, physiology, ethnology, and tropical
medicine. Nevertheless, they were written in a lively style, and theresults of his acute and vigilant observation were effectively presented.
It was this gift of narration which made him popular as a lecturer.
(ʻObituary,ʼ The Times : 29 Dec. 1924)

This indicates that although Landor’s scientific scholarly observation was ‘scanty’
he had ‘a lively style’ of observation.
Landor’s narrative had been criticised for its inaccuracy by experts on the Ainu
such as John Batchelor in The Japan Mail in 1894:
Sir,- I have just finished reading a very interesting, yet at the same time, one of the most unconscionably
incorrect and misleading books it is possible to purchase for money. I refer to “Alone with the hairy Ainu,” by A.
H. Savage Landor. It is a book which will doubtless be read with pleasure by those who know nothing of Yezo
with its 450,000 Japanese and 16,000 Ainu inhabitants; but by those who know Yezo and its people it will beread with astonishment and wonder. (Batchelor, Japan Mail, 7 Feb. 1894.)9)

Furthermore, Alone with the Hairy Ainu was also reviewed in The Edinburgh
Review with another three books on the Ainu and Hokkaido.10) Landor’s style ofis a special discount and long time for payment offered to large purchasers at this sale, the amount of whichusually exceeds 20,000.’ in ‘The House of Murray,’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 9.1885. (p. 518).
8) Letter from A. H. Savage Landor (Baring Magoun, 15 Wall Street New York City, US America) to John
Murray IV on 18 April 1900, held in the John Murray Archive (accessed 1998).
9) This book review from the Japan Mail was also kept in the correspondence file of Isabella Bird at John
Murray in the 1890s. So this fact suggests that a contemporary and fellow Murray’s travel writer, Isabella
Bird, was also interested in the general reaction to Landor’s book.
10) Two of these books were published in London, and one in Washington. See Howard, B. Douglas (1893)
Life with Trans-Siberian Savages. London; Batchelor, John (1892) The Ainu of Japan. London; Hitchcock,16

travelling was described thus:
There, a casual remark determined him to throw the restful part of his programme to the winds, and seek his
pleasure, after true British fashion, in ʻbeating the record.ʼ (The Edinburgh Review Jan. 1894: p. 180).

‘Now Yezo, as our readers are aware, is by no means a terra incognita,’ and thereview goes on to say:
It has been mapped, surveyed, and planted with a circumferential chain of Japanese horse-stations, fishingstations, and inns. Only of late, however, have any serious efforts been made to develop its natural resources.
(The Edinburgh Review Jan. 1894: p. 180).

Despite Landor’s interest in the culture and environment of the Ainu:....his observations, though extensive, were necessarily superficial, and he was far too ready to generalise
from them. Anthropological inquiries, too, are evidently new to him, so that his conclusions need not be taken
as irreversible. Some of them, indeed, are certainly misleading, not through any want of good faith, but
simply from the indeliberate manner in which they were arrived at. He records, however, many curious facts;
his narrative is buoyant, unaffected, and entertaining; and his sketches show much graphic facility, no lessthan a genuine feeling for the beauty of landscape. (The Edinburgh Review Jan. 1894: p. 181).

In addition to Alone with the Hairy Ainu (1893), Landor published two texts withmaterials on Japan:(1) ‘A journey round Yezo and up its largest rivers’, the text of a lecture to
the Royal Geographical Society in 1893.
(2) Everywhere: the memoirs of an explorer (1924).

Everywhere shows that Landor’s journey to Yezo was only part of his Japaneseexperience. He arrived in Yokohama on 25 August 1889 from Vancouver. He

described Yokohama as ‘a city of little interest to me- a mere foreign settlement’and expressed his ‘craving to see something uncontaminated by Western civilization’ by travelling around Nikko, Hakone, and Tokyo. ‘After a few months, when
I had learnt the language, I was often mistaken for a Japanese by the Japanese
themselves’ (Landor, 1924: p. 77).
My first journey of actual exploration was in the Hokkaido, a group of islands in the northern part of Japan,
which comprised the large island of Yezo and the Kuriles. In the island of Yezo were to be found the lastremains of an interesting race of hairy people called the Ainu, numbering some eight thousand. (Landor,
1924: p. 85)

Romyn (1890) The Ainos of Yezo, Japan. Smithsonian Report of the United States National Museum for 1890.
Washington.

17

4. A. H. Savage Landor and the Royal Geographical Society
Landor read a paper ‘A journey round Yezo and up its largest rivers,’ at the Royal
Geographical Society, 20 January 1893. It showed a broader interest at the RGS
in the region. The following week, John Milne11) also read a paper on Yezo entitled‘Notes on a journey in North-East Yezo and across the Island’ (Milne, 1893).
According to the manuscript of the paper, Landor states:
I began my journey from Hakodate, the most southern port of the island of Yezo. Yezo and the Kurile Islands,
taken together, are called by the Japanese the Hokkaido, and it is in this part of the Japanese Empire thatare found the remains of that strange race, the hairy Ainu. I shall not dilate on my object in visiting thehirsute people, for I had no special object beyond simple curiosity and love of adventure.12)

But in the published paper, the following paragraph was inserted after thesentence ‘...that strange race, the hairy Ainu.’ and before ‘I shall not dilate...’.
Yezo is by no means as yet a well-explored island, though from its position on the charts we see that it iscomparatively within easy reach of civilised Southern Japan. From a geographical point of view especially,
Yezo has been much neglected. However, we have a very interesting account of Capt. Blakistonʼs journeyin the Journal of this Society (Vol. XLII, 1872), and I wish to draw attention to Capt. Blakistonʼs paper, for,having travelled over all the parts of the coast-line visited by him, besides many parts which he did not
visit, I am pleased to say that I can fully corroborate nearly every statement which he made as regards thecountry and its inhabitants; in his descriptions I invariably found him remarkably accurate, impartial, andopen-minded. I only read his accounts of Yezo a long time after I had returned from my journey, and therefore
had formed my own impressions. (Landor, 1893 (RGS papers): p. 519).

It could be argued that this addition is the result of the correspondence between
Landor and Keltie, a secretary of the RGS.13) This is a letter from Landor to Keltie:
Dear Mr. Scott Keltie,
Thank you for reminding me of Capt Blakiston. It was my intention not only to mention him in connection
with Yezo, but to state that I can fully corroborate every statement that he made in regions to the Island,as I have the greatest admiration for him though I never had the pleasure of meeting him. In fact in myopinion he is the only man that has written anything trustworthy about Yezo. However he did not take ajourney round the island but during the period at several years he visited different parts of the coast nearlycompleting the circuit of Yezo, and he also went up the Ishikari River where Milne has been.
After myself he is the one that has travelled the most in Ainu land and I shall be more than delighted to11) At that time, John Milne was professor of Mining and Geology in the Imperial University of Japan, Tokyo.
Also Landor’s impression of John Milne when Landor met Milne at the British Legations, Tokyo was ‘...there
was no one of mark in Tokyo, except Professor John Milne, the earthquake expert--- a jolly, enthusiastic
creature--- and Lafcadio Hearn, strange, heavily bearded, sore-hearted person infatuated with all things
Japanese.’ (Landor, 1924: p. 80)
12) Landor’s Journal MS Japan (1893), held in the Archive of the Royal Geographical Society, London.
13) Scott Keltie was a secretary of the RGS from 1893 to 1915. In Mill, Hugh Robert (1930) The Record of
the Royal Geographical Society: 1830-1930. (Published at the celebration of the Society’s centenary.) Royal
Geographical Society. London.

18
speak of him in my paper.
As for Capt. St. John, I heard his name in your letter for the first time. If you kindly send me the papers you
speak of I shall be glad to read them and mention him too if his views meet mine though I am almost surethat he did not travel by land or I should have heard of it from the natives.
Yours very truly
A Henry Savage Landor14)

Although Landor mentioned Blakiston’s15) work on Yezo as ‘remarkably accurate,
impartial, and open-minded’, he also insisted that ‘I only read his accounts of Yezo along time after I had returned from my journey, and therefore had formed my own
impressions.’ Moreover, there is no mention of Blakiston in Alone with the Hairy

Ainu.

The reaction of the RGS to Landor’s talk is evident in the discussions which
occurred after his and Milne’s papers. The main contributors to the discussion were
Mr. Meik, Professor Perry and the President.16) Mr. Meik opened the discussion:
I have very great pleasure in complying with the Presidentʼs request to speak about this island, always
called in this country Yezo... Mr. Landor has referred to Mr. Blakiston, the first European who has left any
record of his travels in Yezo. There is no doubt that Captain Blakiston has been over pretty well most of theground covered by subsequent travellers. Captain Blakiston, in addition to being a very skilled and accurate
observer, was also an enthusiastic naturalist, and has left behind him writings to this Societyʼs Journal andthose of various American societies, containing full accounts of birds, animals, and numerous other mattersrelating to Yezo, and I think this country and the whole world owes a tribute to him for what he has done inYezo. At the same time, I quite allow that there is ample field for further exploration, and I am glad to hearthat my friend, Professor Milne, has taken up the work commenced by Captain Blakiston. I resided for three
years in the island in the service of the Japanese Government, and had both to go round the island to fix
upon suitable sites for harbours and to explore its rivers with a view of developing communications. (Landor,
1893 (RGS papers): p. 538)

14) Letter from Landor (44 St Anne’s Gate) to Keltie on 13 Jan 1892, held in the Archive of the RGS.
15) Blakiston, Thomas Wright (1832-1891) explorer and ornithologist. Concerning his work on Yezo: ‘(1863) Hesettled at the treaty port of Hakodate, and founded sawmills for the export of timber to China. This businesshad to be abandoned owing to the obstructions of the Japanese government; but he remained in Hakodate asa merchant, executed surveys and designed fortifications, and soon became the best known of the European
residents-- ‘le veritable roi d’Hakodate’-- keeping open house for travellers, especially those with scientificinterests. In 1872 he contributed to the ‘Journal of the Royal Geographical Society’ (vol. xlii.) a narrativeof a journey round Yezo, containing information as to the topography, climate, forests, fisheries, mines, andpopulation, and first calling attention to the existence of a pre-Ainu race of pit-dwellers. During Blakiston’s
residence at Hakodate he paid great attention to the ornithology of Yezo. He made an extensive collectionof birds, which is now in the museum at Hakodate, and in 1878 compiled, with Mr. H. Pryer of Yokohama, acatalogue of the avifauna of Japan (Ibis, 1878, pp. 207-50) revised and republished in the‘Transactions of the
Asiatic Society of Japan’ in 1880 and 1882, and finally in London in 1884. He demonstrated that the birdsof Yezo belong to the Siberian as distinct from the Manchurian sub-region of the Palaearctic region; and thezoo-geographical line of division formed by the Strait of Tsu-garu has been termed Blakiston’s line (v. Auk,1892, ix. 75-6). In 1883 he read to the Asiatic Society (Trans. xi. 1883) a paper on‘Zoological Indications of theAncient Connexion of the Japan Islands with the Continent.’ Seven new species of Japanese birds are named
after him (for list see Auk, l.c.)’ H. E. D. B. in The Dictionary of National Biography. Suppl. p. 214-215.
16) Grant Duff was the president of the RGS from 1889 to 1893. In Mill, Hugh Robert (1930) The Record of theRoyal Geographical Society: 1830-1930. Royal Geographical Society. London.

19

And Mr. Meik went on to discuss John Batchelor:
I think the greatest authority on the Ainu question is the Rev. John Batchelor, a missionary of the Church
Missionary Society, who has done more than any other man for the tribe, and has contributed papers to the
Asiatic Society of Japan with regard to them, and published a dictionary of the Ainu Language. If any of theaudience are anxious to follow up this matter you could not do better than refer to his writings. (Landor, 1893
(RGS papers): p. 539).

Professor Perry made the following points:
I have been three times in Yezo, but never further north or east than Sapporo. I lived in Japan a numberof years in intimate relations with Professor Milne, and I have been with him over some parts of Yezo, but
nothing that I can say would add to the Societyʼs information concerning the island. To those who do notknow Mr. Milne I would say that he is an indefatigable observer as a physicist, meteorologist, geologist,
botanist, and entomologist, and when he commits himself to a statement, it may be relied upon as having
received most careful consideration. I should like to ask the last speaker, when he said that the late Captain
Blakiston had been over pretty well the whole ground described in these papers, did he mean that Professor
Milneʼs paper had not described new ground? It is to be understood that I have the highest respect for
Captain Blakistonʼs work and feel very grateful for his kind hospitality, but I should like to know whether
it is not true that what is described in Professor Milneʼs paper had not been described before. I think hewould not have sent a paper to this Society which had not something very new in it. At all events I feel surethat Professor Milne is the first to describe the country one sees in the interior of Yezo, say, in crossing from
Yubets. (Landor, 1893 (RGS papers): p. 539)

Mr Meik added:
I think Professor Perry is right; Captain Blakiston never went across from Yubets or from Ishikari. He went
as far as Kamikawa. I do not, in making these remarks, wish to take away from the credit due to Professor
Milne, and I quite agree with Professor Perry that anything he writes may be relied upon as accurate, and it
was far from my intention to detract from Professor Milne in anything I said about Captain Blakiston. (Landor,
1893 (RGS papers): p. 539)

Landor received very little credit.
The President: If no one will continue the conversation I think there is nothing for me to do except to say that
I am certain you will wish me to thank all the gentlemen who have provided so much entertainment for us
to-night. Mr. Savage Landor has struck into a very different line of work from his illustrious grandfather, but
I am sure he has shown enough energy to be worthy of his name. Both Professor Perry and Mr. Meik havecontributed very much to our information. To each and all of them you will desire me, I think, to return yourbest thanks. I may remind the Society that Captain Blakiston, who has been so often alluded to to-night,
received the patronʼs medal in the year 1862 from this Society, chiefly for his great survey of the Yang Tse
River. (Landor, 1893 (RGS papers): p. 540)

This was Landor’s only paper that was presented to the RGS. Landor subsequently submitted several papers to the RGS, but they were all rejected because of
inaccurate information.17) In addition, of course, Isabella Bird had travelled in Yezo
17) Landor’s paper which was submitted to the RGS about his journey to Tibet in 1898 was rejected for the

20

in 1878, but this discussion at the RGS ignored her observations of the Ainu.18)

5. Landor’s Alone with the Hairy Ainu (1893) and his illustrations: an
examination of his self-portrait
Landor was an artist and painter. He was also very keen to reproduce his
paintings and illustrations in his book. In Landor’s first letter to John Murray, hementioned about his illustrations:
I have also drawn about 200 illustrations (that could be reproduced direct by process) of the different types,
their dwellings, implements, war instruments, canoes, clothes etc, besides many sketches of the adventuresand narrow escapes which I had in such an inhospitable country. 19)

Landor used two different styles of illustrations in his book: reproduced directlyfrom his paintings, and engraved illustrations. On the process of organizing theillustrations, Landor proposed an idea to Murray:
I have pasted some of the illustrations where they are to go but there are yet several to go in, in some of
the chapters. I have used two or three as tail pieces. I do not know if you approve of the idea. You are quite
welcome to alter them if you do not.20)

Landor’s illustrations were originals based on observation, and he was careful
and also scholarly with the use of illustrations. He was especially careful about theaccuracy of engraving:following reasons: ‘Dear Mr Savage Landor,
In reply to your letter of the 14th, I regret very much that the R.G.S. Council should be unable to accept yourpaper; or to receive the results of your surveying work as being of geographical value.
Your observations for latitude are deficient in necessary data, and cannot therefore, be computed. You madeno observations for longitude. Your traverse survey differs 47 miles in longitude from the survey work of Nain
Sing; and I am obliged to prefer the latter because his position of Shigatze agrees with other independent
observations. None of your altitudes have been computed, and the results given in your paper are, therefore,of no value.
Under these circumstances I think you will see that your geographical work could not be accepted. At thesame time, considering all your difficulties and the great sufferings you underwent, I feel that not only no
blame attaches to you, but that you deserve praise for your perseverance in observing when such labour
entailed additional danger and suffering upon you. (signed) Clements R. Markham.’ Letter from Clements R.
Markham (The RGS, 1 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens) to Landor on 16 November 1898, held in the Archiveof RGS. Markham, Clements R. is an author of The fifty years’ work of the Royal Geographical Society. 1881.
John Murray.
18) Although Bird was one of the first female fellows selected by the RGS in 1892, it was a period of controversy
around the admission of female fellows to the RGS. See in detail in Bell, Morag and McEwan, Cheryl (1996) ‘The
admission of women Fellows to the Royal Geographical Society, 1892-1914; the controversy and the outcome’,
The Geographical Journal 162-3, p. 295-312.
19) Letter from A.H.Savage Landor (44 St Ermins Mansions, Caxton Str. Westminster) to John Murray IV on
20 June 1892, held in the John Murray Archive (accessed 1998).
20) Letter from A Henry Savage Landor (37 Via Cavour. Florence. Italy) to John Murray IV on 22 March. 1893,
held in the John Murray Archive (accessed 1998).

21
Enclosed you will find all the illustrations which wanted to be placed. I have marked on each, the title thechapter, page+line so that it will be easier to see when they are to go.- In one of them- the Rat-trap – Mr.
Walker has made a mistake and taken off the centre part of the bow. If it could be altered, it would be morecorrect. I have made a mark on the illustration so that you will see. A little touch would make it right.21)

Landor’s illustrations were original and he was concerned about the authorship of
his illustrations:
I have not given Mr McRitchie my permissions to reproduce cuts of my drawings. A presentation copy of his
work was sent me from Holland, to your care + forwarded to me, a day or two before I left London and I was
more than surprised to find two of my cuts in it. His work however, is nothing but abstracts of Miss Birdʼs,
Mr Batchelorʼs, Baron Sieboldʼs and several translations of Japanese works on the Ainu.22)

David MacRitchie was author of The Ainos published in Leiden in 1892.23) Workon the Ainu in the late nineteenth century was strongly positioned in the networkof European and American ethnographers and explorers.
Landor drew his self-portrait for the frontispiece of Alone with the Hairy Ainu (1893)(Figure 3). Landor wanted to stand out:

Figure 3. Self-portrait of A. Henry Savage Landor in

Alone with the Hairy Ainu (1893), John Murray, London.

The Hakodate Peak can be seenin the distance to the west; andonly a few more hours, only a
few more miles, and I should bein civilisation, I should see a few
European faces, and I should hear
English spoken again. ... I hurriedon my pony, I crossed the sandisthmus--- and there I was in the
lively streets of Hakodate, gazed atby the astonished Japanese, who,
I believe, were more than a little
amazed--- perhaps scandalised--at my turn-out. Such as I was,and before I went to the Japanese
tea-house, I called at the Consulate
for my correspondence. Her
Britannic Majestyʼs representative,
who knew me well enough, wasmore than thunderstruck when
I appeared before him in such a
strange attire. He was smoking apipe, and he almost let it drop, such21) Letter from A. Henry Savage Landor (37 Via Cavour, Florence) to John Murray IV on April 17, 1893, held n
the John Murray Archive (accessed 1998).
22) Letter from A. Henry Savage Landor (37 Via Cavour, Florence, Italy) to John Murray IV on April 5, 1893,
held in the John Murray Archive (accessed 1998)23) MacRitchie, David (1892) The Ainos, was published as part of the series of Internationales Archivfur
Ethnographie. 4.suppl. in Leiden. For the identification of this reference, see Norbert R. Adami eds. (1991)
Bibliography of Materials on the Ainu in European Languages. Sapporo-do Booksellers, Japan.

22
was his surprise. “Who are you?” he feebly exclaimed, looking me all over from head to foot. “Surely you are
not Landor?” he said when I told him my name. “I believe I am,” I answered, “and I have come to trouble
you for my letters.” “Oh, none have come; we have none,” he said drily. And now that I was not quite so welldressed as when I had called on my arrival at Hakodate from Southern Japan, he seemed anxious to see me
off the premises as soon as possible, I dare say for fear lest I should expire on his doorstep. (Landor, 1893: p.
201-202)

In his review of Alone with the Hairy Ainu , John Batchelor commented:
Mr. Landor speaks somewhat unkindly of the British Consul at Hakodate because he did not produce his
letters immediately upon being asked for them. But when it is remembered that, incredible though it may
appear, Mr. Landor called at the Consulate minus his trousers, it is not to be wondered at if the Consul did
get rid of him as quickly as possible. If he had no proper respect for himself or the Japanese, Mr. Landor
surely ought to have some little consideration for the feelings of others. There was not the slightest necessity
for him to wander about in such an indecent manner, for he could have got clothing at Otsukushiro, Akkesh,
Nemoro, or Apashiri. Why did he not? (Japan Mail, Batchelor, Feb. 1894)

Landor himself was nonchalant:
The preparations which I made for the long journey I was to accomplish did not trouble me much. I took next
to nothing in the way of clothing, besides what I wore, no provisions, and no medicaments. It was my ideathat if the natives could do without these things, I could also. (Landor, 1893 (RGS paper): p. 519) ...ʻI carried
no provisions and no tent.ʼ (Landor, 1893: p. iv) ... ʻno special object beyond simple curiosity and love ofadventure.ʼ (Landor, 1893 (RGS paper): p. 519)

6. Conclusion– the implication of the term ‘across’: situating his
contemporary geographical knowledge and imagination
It seems that Landor’s one favourite word was ‘across,’ as the titles of his travelbooks show:
Across Coveted Lands: or, A journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta (1902)
Across Widest Africa (1907)
Across Unknown South America (1913)‘Across’ implied manly heroic activities, the travel of an ‘explorer’ as he definedhimself in his autobiography Everywhere . Landor’s achievement was described asfollows in The Everyman Encyclopaedia :He was the first white man to reach both sources of the great Brahmaputra R. and establish their exact
position (1897), establishing, at the same time, the fact that no range higher than the Himalayas existed to
the N. of that river. He was also the first white man who explored Central Mindanao Island, discovering theexistence there of theʻwhite tribeʼ of the Mansakas. He holds the worldʼs record in mountaineering, having
reached the height of 23,400 ft. on Mt. Lumpa (Nepal) in 1899. (Boyle, A eds. 1913: vol. 8, p. 384)

The‘Obituary’ in The Times was more skeptical:

23

He claimed to have been the first white man to reach both sources of the Brahmaputra and establish their
exact position; the first white man to ascertain that no range higher than the Himalayas existed north of theBrahmaputra in Tibet; and the first white man to explore Central Mindanao and discover the “white tribe” of
Mansakas. (ʻObituary,ʼ The Times : 29 Dec. 1924).

After Alone with the Hairy Ainu, Landor talked to John Murray about a projectedbook on Tibet:
I dare say you have heard of the sharp experiences I had in Tibet. I have a book nearly ready of 120,000
words full of information, simply written and with no end of thrilling adventure and hairbreadth escapes.There is not one word of “padding”, but mere facts stated in a concise and pleasant manner.- I have 200
large watercolour illustrations (18 inch by 13 inches) of incidents implements, clothes, types, groupes etc
and 800 very good photographs. Then maps from my own surveys. A more thorough study of the Tibetans
under more extraordinary circumstances, I think has never been made by anyone. It ought to be interesting
to Anthropologists, Ethnologists & Geographers as well as to the general public for I was able to make somevaluable researches while in the country.24)

But John Murray did not publish this volume.
Landor travelled in Japan independently from any scholarly network, and his
travels were filled with adventure. Landor’s main advantage was his artistic skill.
His travel to Japan resulted in his first book, Alone with the Hairy Ainu (1893).
But John Murray did not publish any more of Landor’s books. Later his books were
often criticised for their inaccuracy. His paper on travel to Tibet was rejected by
the Royal Geographical Society, because he had no skills of scientific observation.
However much his observations may have included his exaggerations, he had apower of narrative to entertain the reader, and this characteristic made him apopular author.
Here I will briefly assess how Landor transculturated himself to the ‘other’culture. The highlight of Landor’s travel writings was his encounter with the Ainu
cultural landscape. Landor saw the Ainu as part of an exotic landscape, reflecting
the image of the ‘noble savage’ and ‘disappearing’ ‘authentic’ indigenous cultures
and ways of living, and it can be argued that a new ‘exotic’ is the most prominent
sign of travel writing. Yet, a close examination of his self-portrait (Figure 3), whichshows Landor’s ‘cross-dressing’ by wearing Ainu-designed stockings and sandals
made of straw while wearing his military jacket on his torso, suggests that this was
his way of assimilating his body to the other exotic culture.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Mrs. Virginia Murray for allowing me to examine archived
manuscripts held at John Murray and providing me with additional information
24) Letter from A.H.Savage Landor (37 Via Cavour, Florence, Italy) to John Murray IV on 8 Jan. 1898, held in
the John Murray Archive (accessed 1998).

24

related to John Murray Publisher at 50 Albemarle Street, London in 1998-2000(Now the John Murray Archives are held at the National Library of Scotland,
Edinburgh); and archivists at the Royal Geographical Society for their help withprimary sources. An earlier version of this paper appeared in ‘Chapter Four:
Cross-cultural Landscapes of Travel’ in my PhD thesis entitled Travel, Plants, andCross-cultural Landscapes: British Representations of Japan, 1860-1914 submitted
to the University of Nottingham, in June 2000. I also wish to thank two supervisorsof my PhD thesis, Professor Stephen Daniels and Professor Charles Watkins, fortheir constructive comments.

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Eating Rice and Feeding the City:‘Body Politics’ in Modern JapanONJO Akio*
Introduction
Social and cultural geographers have been interested in the issues of thehuman body, embodiment, and identity (Landzelius 2004; Valentine 2001). Someapproaches especially, such as feminism, cultural or postcolonial studies, andpolitical ecology, have made great contributions to this field during the last three
decades. In this disciplinary context, here we would like to refer to the works of D.
Harvey (1998, 2000a, 2000b) that raised several issues of the body from several
different points of view.
Harvey (2000a p. 98) proposes two basic ideas about the body: On the one hand,‘the body is an unfinished project, historically and geographically malleable incertain ways,’ and on the other it is a ‘relational thing’ which ‘internalizes theeffects of the processes that create, support, sustain and dissolve it’. As bodily
processes are intricately related to the environment in specific ways, ‘different
processes produce radically different kinds of bodies’ (Harvey 2000a), and different
societies conduct different kinds of ‘body politics’ which construct or are constructedby distinctive bodily representations and practices.
From this perspective, we shall approach the issues of reproduction of thehuman body and consumption. As Méo (2010) pointed out, the alimentary needs,
wants, and desires of the living body have been one of the basic problems inhuman geography. We have to intervene and transform nature in order to produce
foodstuffs, and food ‘is placed in the mouth, chewed, tasted, swallowed, anddigested’ within the body to sustain our organic body (Abbots and Lavis 2013). So
these metabolic processes of human beings are actively constitutive of the interfaces or dialectical relations among inner (bodily) nature, socio-cultural processes,
and the physical environment.
Bodily senses and eating practices are, therefore, the historical products or
relational things which are created, transformed, and dissolved by ecological, social,political, economic, and cultural processes. From this viewpoint, it is important*Kyushu University, JAPAN30

to note ‘the tensions between consumption based on physiological requirement
and consumption based on cultural conditions: needs and desires’ (Heynen 2006;
Lefebvre 1961). While human desires aren’t without needs and are closely related
to them, they are more specific, and determined and satisfied in a particular
historical and geographical context. Practices of consumption of foods also havesocial and symbolic meanings, and represent cultural identities and social positionsin the society (Bell and Valentine 1997; Kneale and Dwyer 2004). So we cannot
make a distinction between the social or symbolic meanings of consumption and themateriality of consumption practices.
Such symbolic meanings have quite a few effects on the economic environment.
From the economic point of view, the body as labor power is integrated into capital
circulation and embedded within complex relations and networks at multiple scales(Harvey 1998, 2000a; Smith 1993). Scale or level of reproduction is not outside
capital circulation, and more and more integrated into it under urbanization. This
scale is not restricted to households and includes various apparatuses like a part of
the urban built environment.1) So we should put the field of consumption and reproduction of laborers into the circulation of capital (Harvey 2012). We need historicalstudies of ‘the singularity of consumption (human sentiments and human wants,needs, desires)’ in order to understand the ‘generality’ of capital circulation andaccumulation (Harvey 2012, 2013).
Therefore, in modernization and capitalist urbanization, the reproduction of
the human body and consumption became important political and social issues in
the city (Guyer 1987). As food, food security, and hunger are an essential arena of
uneven power relations under the capitalist mode of production (Keil, 2005), thestudy of the urban food supply system can provide the context or field in which
the modernization of people’s desires and everyday urban life, social and political
relations, material bases, and the dynamic relationships between the city andits hinterland can be understood. By exploring the socio-cultural and physicalmeanings of eating food, and putting the body and human desires about food into
historical and geographical contexts, we will be able to reconsider some characteristics of the dialectical and contradictory power relations around food and the bodyin the city within the capitalist modernization of Japanese society during the latter
half of the Meiji era.
After the Meiji Restoration (1868), Meiji government enforced the modernizationof Japanese society from the top down by material and ideological measures.
For example, ‘the politics of industrialization and military strength’ ( 富 国 強 兵 )and the compulsory education system. In the process of ‘modernization,’ socialand economic structures changed rapidly, and various social problems arose andbecame more serious in the city. Consequently, since the latter part of the Meiji era,administrative agencies started to recognize the importance of urban social works
or politics that maintained the reproduction of labor power and pushed forward
social and economic development. And it seems that the ‘rice problem’ or ‘difficulty

31

of living’ problem that occurred in 1912, the last year of Meiji, became one of theoccasions which made administrators recognize the importance of food provision for
urban people.

Rice Supply and Consumption in the City during the Late Meiji Period
Today rice seems to be the staple of Japanese diet. It has simultaneously amaterial dimension as a foodstuff and a symbolic meaning for Japanese culture.
From the middle of the Meiji period, however, Japanese society faced shortagesof rice and the frequent skyrocketing of rice prices (Ōmanenamada, 2007). So
from about 1890 on, the Japanese government started to import foreign rice from
Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, China, and Southeast Asia. This rice was called
Tōmai (唐米) and Nankinmai (南京米) in general, and Saigonmai (西貢米) andRangoonmai (蘭貢米) in particular.
Many historians have so far discussed why the supply of rice became insecureand rice prices often rose. Although natural conditions like unseasonable weather
are a fundamental reason for poor harvests, there is no doubt that rice prices are asocio-economic and political problem related to rapid population growth and urbanization and industrialization, soaring production costs due to labor shortages inrural areas, the rise of living standards, the increasing demand for polished rice
in urban and rural society, the failure of fiscal policy and heavy taxes during theinterwar period (of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars), the tariff barrier
against the import of foreign rice, a complex food distribution system, and theholding back of rice by merchants, intermediaries, and landlords, etc.
This foreign rice consisted mainly of Indica species that were different from
Japonica species (domestic rice) in quality. As both species were different from eachother in smell, flavor, and taste, it seems that these material differences were an
obstacle to the eating and consumption of foreign rice. Consequently, Japanesepeople were forced to learn how to eat this new foreign rice. For example, policemen
who had been to Taiwan attempted to introduce people to good ways of cooking andeating this rice.
Until the mid Meiji era, Japanese people chose to eat foreign rice when rice prices
skyrocketed. However, there were distinctive regional differences between the‘center’ and ‘periphery,’ or ‘urban’ and ‘rural,’ in the consumption of foreign rice.
It was said that foreign rice circulated mainly in the Tohoku Region and was notconsumed so much in Tokyo. Within the metropolis, there were also differences
between social strata or classes in terms of consumption of foodstuffs. While quite
a few factory workers were able to eat the domestic polished rice, most of the lowerand under-class families, such as those of manual labors and ‘rickshaw men’ (人力車夫), used to eat barley, millet, foreign rice, and leftover rice disposed of from public
institutions such as military facilities, public hospitals, high schools, etc. Leftover
rice in particular was a principal foodstuff of this class not just in larger cities, but

32also in provincial ones. Public institutions were under contract to shops which werecalled ‘zanpanya’ (残飯屋) to sell their leftover rice, miso soup, and vegetables. As
military facilities were the main source of supply, leftover rice was sometimes called‘military rice’ (guntai meshi )(軍隊飯). In the slum areas of the cities there were a lotof shops that sold leftover rice and they were very prosperous (Matsubara, 1893).
According to its condition and price, leftover rice was divided generally into
three categories. The first of these, good rice, was a basic food for the urban poorand manual laborers; the second became the material for rice crackers, and thefinal category became the feed for pigs and other livestock. On the whole, leftover
rice provided an essential foodstuff to feed humans and non-humans in the urban
world.
After the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) urban-based factories and modern
industry gradually grew in six large cities: Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya, Yokohama,and Kyoto. Certain secondary cities were also impacted by this radical industrialization and urbanization of Japanese society and economy. This trend transformed
the social and economic structure in these cities. So urban economic and social
structures were transformed into industrial capitalism gradually, and the standardof living of factory workers was also raised. As a result, it was said that factorylaborers and even some lower-class workers could eat better food like the domestic
polished rice.
These transformations also led to an awakening of the social and politicalconsciousness of the general populace, and urban social unrest, labor movements,
or riots occurred frequently. The ‘crowd’ or the ‘mass’ on the street and in publicparks became one of the political actors in urban space to protest government
policies. Simultaneously the Japanese people became more ‘nationalistic’ and wereconscious of Japan being a ‘Great Power’ through their experiences of two wars,
the Sino-Japanese and the Russo-Japanese. Although a lot of people believed thatJapan had become a member of the ‘first countries’ of the world, the actual domestic
and foreign situations left little room for this optimism.
During the ‘Period of Urban Populace Riots’ (toshi minshu sōjō ki ) (都市民衆騒擾期)(Miyaji, 1973), some bureaucrats of the Ministry of the Interior drafted plans fora new social policy which was called the ‘Regional Improvement Movement’ (chihō
kairyō undō ) (地方改良運動) in 1908. This policy aimed at reconstructing local
finance, and control and reform of the disposition, mentality, and bodily conduct ofrural and urban people by encouraging them to economize on the costs of everyday
life and save money, and integrating them into various ideological practices. Several
bureaucrats and politicians intended to lead the people into becoming a docile andpolite body, or ideal ‘national subjects’ who could sustain the national policy voluntarily from below.
Thus, we can examine the dynamic, complicated, and contradictory relations andarticulations between physical, social, political, economic, and cultural processes in
the modernization of everyday life in Japanese cities through the issues of rice.

33

Some Aspects of ‘the Difficulty of Living ( 生活難 ) ’ in Urban Society,
1912
From January to July 1912, the rice price rose to about twice as much as theprevious year. With the rise of rice prices, the prices of other basic foodstuffs went
up as well and had damaging effects on economic activity and ordinary social life.
Newspapers reported that the difficult and miserable situations of the general
populace were seen not only in larger cities, but also in secondary or provincial
cities such as Sendai and Fukuoka (Onjo, 2008), so the Ministries of the Interior
and of Education researched the living conditions of local people and elementary
school children all over the country. The National Police Agency also surveyed thelower strata of salaried employees such as police and government officials. It seems
that administrative agencies paid special attention to the hardships of this class as
an important social problem in the city. These problems were not restricted to thepoor and laboring class but expanded to affect the society as a whole.
We can cite some newspaper articles that provide a general view of the situationin several cities. In Tokyo, leftover rice was sold out in some slum areas instantly.
Under- and lower-class people such as manual laborers, rickshaw men, etc., losttheir jobs and faced difficult situations immediately, and many elementary school
children could not bring a box lunch and had to suffer hunger. While many children
ate buckwheat noodles, potatoes, etc., a small number of them went to rural areasand picked the stems of rice plants in order to supplement their diet (Yomiuri
Shinbun, March13, 1912).
In Osaka, Kobe, and Hiroshima, leftover rice was quickly sold out so that somefamilies of stevedores could not eat even leftover rice and could only eat potatoes
which they gleaned near their houses (Kobe Shinbun , July 9, 1912). Quite a few
children of stevedores and rickshaw men were absent from school because they
were doing some kind of piecework at home. People tried whatever means that they
could to stave off their hunger.
In some cities, officials, high-status citizens, elementary school teachers, etc.
formed associations together in order to relieve the hardships of the poor. These
groups bought foreign or domestic rice and supplied it for free or sold it to thepoor at reduced prices. For example, Nagao Kenji, the mayor of Hiroshima City,
organized a temporary association for relief work with local people of renown andnewspaper companies, and aided the poor with donations from the residents. At
the local or regional level, these relief measures were able to partially diminish therisks of social unrest and tensions.
However, the central and many municipal governments were not always interested in taking any measures for the relief of the poor and laboring classes in difficulty. For example, in the Tokyo municipal assembly, projects for relief measures
were decided on, and Sakatani Yoshiro, the new mayor of Tokyo, also recognized
the necessity for active intervention by the central and municipal government

34

and conferred about this issue with Hara Takashi, the Minister of the Interior.
Moreover, some statesmen of the opposition party requested that the government
should take some measures. But Hara did not carry out the relief projects of thecentral government and in the end Sakatani reduced the plan for the municipal
projects. It seems that they regarded self-help by the poor themselves as a basic
way for them to overcome their hardships. The difficult conditions of the poor were
not a new social problem for the government. If administrative agencies helped thepoor and laboring classes unduly, they were worried that the poor would depend
entirely on public relief and the financial burden on the government would increase
rapidly.
Although the situation of the poor attracted considerable attention, several
professors and newspaper reporters realized and paid attention to some new
aspects of people’s attitudes that they had not observed in the past. For one thing,the impact of rice prices wasn’t restricted to the poor, and lower and middle groupsof salaried employees’ families such as policemen and ‘white collar’ workers suchas public officials and office workers (a part of the ‘new middle class or strata’),felt more hardship than the laboring class. They were not willing to buy leftoverand even foreign rice, and their wives could not be engaged in piecework at home,because they had to ‘keep up appearances’ (世間体).2) In Fukuoka City, a rice shop
owner said:
When rice prices were soaring about twenty years ago, even the middle class had taken foreign rice andmixed it with domestic rice. But now they donʼt want to buy the foreign rice, while they are surprised by theskyrocketing prices and feel difficulty and pain.… They are trying to endure this situation because of trying
to keep their ʻappearancesʼ up.
(Kyushu Nippō , June 26, 1912)

This opinion was shared by a famous statesman, Matsuda Masahisa, the Ministerof Justice. He also said:
The Japanese nation became luxurious within a short time. Until about twenty years ago, people had
accepted foreign rice willingly. But recently they felt even ashamed of buying the lower grades of domestic
rice which taste awful. We have to scold them for luxury in their everyday life and bring people to a frugal
life. I and my family have started to eat a mixture of rice and barley. It tastes good. The Japanese nationmust become modest again.
(Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shinbun, July 5, 1912)

These attitudes and this atmosphere spread among the children as well. In
Hiroshima, as elementary schoolchildren were not willing to have a lunch box thatwas filled with a boiled mixture of barley and rice, the principal and the teachers
had to bring lunch boxes of barley and rice in order to assuage the ‘vanity’ of thechildren (Chugoku Shinbun , July 7, 1912). This sense of vanity or ‘keeping up
appearances’ was regarded as the one reason that these groups needed such expenditures in order to maintain their living standard. They could not adopt the same
lifestyle as the laboring class.

35

However, according to one newspaper reporter, another and fundamental reason
for the high cost of living was traditional trade relations that were taken for
granted by this class. Since daily necessities were basically delivered by retailers
and middle class wives did not choose to go shopping, they did not have an eye forselecting better or cheaper commodities. Therefore, the cost of living for this classis considered to be not a temporary but a structural issue in the modernizationof lifestyles in the city. Several scholars used the term ‘the difficulty of living’ inorder to express these problems which were not fully recognized at the time by thegovernment or statesmen. This problem is taken up further in the next chapter.
Besides the middle class, even some lower and under-class families did not like tobuy and eat leftover rice, barley, and foreign rice, because they also felt ashamed tobuy them. In some slum areas, they concealed leftover rice from the eyes of others
in order to maintain their ‘appearances’ (Osaka Mainichi Shinbun, July 24, 1912).
We have already mentioned that after the Russo-Japanese War, some groups within
the lower class could eat polished rice, because of rising wages in some industrial
sectors. Once they ate and experienced the good taste of polished rice, they might
not be able to eat leftover rice again.
When they had to eat leftover rice or foreign rice, they preferred the former tothe latter. Why did they avoid eating foreign rice? They choose leftover rice for thefollowing reasons: First, they could not get used to the smell and taste of foreign
rice.In Kobe, ‘the lower laboring class complained about the skyrocketing price of
rice, but it was only a small number of them that used the foreign rice imported
from Taiwan’ (Kobe Shinbun, July 14, 1912).
Second, when they ate foreign rice, they became hungry again sooner thancompared to when they ate leftover rice. In a slum area in Tokyo, ‘ the lower andunder classes did not eat Nankinmai , but rather choose leftover rice with pieces ofgreens and white radish that they picked up around the vegetable markets. Whenthey had no alternative except eating Nankinmai , they could not be engaged in
hard work’ (Yomiuri Shinbun, April 25, 1912). In the end they had to pay extra
money to buy other food with which to satisfy their hunger.
Finally, ‘keeping appearances up’ was very important for the lower and underclasses. ‘When laborers opened their lunch boxes with Nankinmai , they wereashamed in front of their colleagues.’ (Jiji Shinpō, June 26, 1912). Not only thelower middle class, but also the laboring class was ashamed to eat foreign rice. The
food supply system, however, could not keep up with the desires of people. Whatpeople eat and wear, and where they live, shows their position within the society.
Consumption became the arena where we create our identity and recognize eachother.
As Harootunian (2000) put it, before World War I, ‘everyday life was inescapablycaught in the unevenness of old cycles of routine and ritual and new cycles of workand consumption.’ Capitalist modernization and urbanization accelerated, and akind of ‘consumption society’ arrived not just in metropolitan centers, but also in36

provincial or secondary cities during the inter world war era (Young, 2013). It wasfrom the 1920’s on that many thinkers in all parts of world paid attention to thisnew form and style of urban everyday life, especially the contradictory position of‘white collar’ workers in the society. However, we can confirm that the signs of thisnew urban and social reality started to appear early in the decade of the 1910’s inJapan.

‘Body Politics,’ City, and Nation
What kinds of themes can we draw from the social phenomenon of the ‘difficultyof living’ in the late Meiji period?
First, we can see ‘nationalism from below’ or the ‘geographical imagination’ of
the general populace during this period. It seems that after the Sino-Japanese War(1894-95), the Japanese nation already had begun to look down on other Asian
countries and then the consciousness of being a ‘Great Power’ heightened at thetime of the Russo-Japanese War. Many Japanese had a geographical imagination or
imaginative geography with a binary distinction between ‘civilized Japan’ and the‘uncivilized rest of Asia’ through the direct and indirect experiences of war. So thesensory experience of eating rice would play a role in strengthening this attitude,
mentality, and imagination within people. As government started to improve a
species of foreign rice and later to reform the agricultural production system inJapan’s colonies (Taiwan and the Korean peninsula), this nationalism had a big
impact on the economic activities and society in the colonies as well.
Therefore, not a need and demand for rice in general, but the desire for specificvarieties of rice stimulated or resonated with a kind of nationalism in material andsymbolic meanings. Although a physical sense is both a physiological and historical
product and process simultaneously, and the intermediate relations between needs
and desires are a complex social, cultural, historical, and geographical process,human desires are often ‘naturalized’ by the sensory experience of eating: chewing,
swallowing, filling oneself up. The human body is a material base or scaffolding for
ideological practices.
After the Meiji Restoration, the central government infused an ideological consciuosness of ‘the national’ ‘from above’ through an elementary education system,
various enlightenment campaigns, compulsory reform of traditional customs inlocal societies, etc. But discrepancies between nationalism ‘from above’ and ‘frombelow’ seem to have developed in the late Meiji era. Therefore, it was an importantand troublesome problem for the government as to how to manipulate and regulate‘national desires from below’ that always tended to seek ‘a living standard ofcivilized people.’From examining the rice issue, we can also see the latent transformation of Japanese society. At that time some scholars thought that the ‘difficulty ofliving’ could not be reduced to only the issue of rice prices and represented a transformation of social and economic structures in the aftermath of war. For example,

37

Seki Hajime (1914), professor at Tokyo Commercial University, distinguishedbetween the rise in rice prices and the difficulty of living, and thought that thelatter expressed a phase of the modernization of Japanese society: the rise of living
standards, the decline of self-sufficiency, and changes in male-female relations
within the family under the influence of urbanization and industrialization.3) Hethought that as ‘the difficulty of living’ was inevitable and a complex consequenceof the ‘progress of civilization,’ the ‘development of individual knowledge,’ etc.,
it would become increasingly difficult to solve these issues. Toda Kaishi (1912),
professor at Kyoto University, also said that the relations between production andconsumption were likely to be disproportionate, because Japanese people copied the
new consumption style of the West in spite of low production capacity.
In particular they paid attention to the living situation of the lower middle class,because they expected this class should become the core of the Japanese nationstate and society from that time on. If this class would feel discontent and deepen
their complaints about the social order and have ‘dangerous thoughts’ against
it, it could cause social unrest and stagnate the economic development. As well,
the reproduction of factory laborers also became an important realm of urban
and industrial policy for rapidly developing the national economy. They regarded
the reproduction of human bodies, and managing the daily conduct of people, as
important political and social issues. Consequently, in order to improve and manage
the ordinary lives of people in the city, Toda and a few other scholars proposed thenecessity for ‘public retail markets,’ the organization of consumption associations,the improvement of the urban transportation system, etc.4) But they thought thatthe role of public retail markets was not limited to supplying cheap foodstuffs andthat they were places for regulating the conduct and disposition of traditional
consumption activities and improving the circulation of commodities and capital in
the city. As the trade relations among wholesalers, retailers, and consumers werevery complex and often arcane, bills were often apt to turn into bad debts. And
that caused high prices for daily necessities and became an obstacle to the circulation of capital. Toda realized that through public retail market, the government
could intervene in the old-style trade system and price decisions could be managed
by tradesmen’s associations and the people, in particular by females who wereassigned the role of ‘housewife’ and who could become ‘rational consumers’ throughthe experience of regulated and ruled consumption.
From the above, we may be able to see that the new problematic of a sort of‘bio-pouvoir (bio-power) or biopolitique ’ (Foucault 1997) launched to come up witha conception and work in Japanese society from the late Meiji period on. This
bio-power, as we have seen, is body politics that feed and control a specific humanorganic body, and produce a ‘normal person or consumer.’ And As Harvey (1998,
2000a, 2000b) pointed out, this type of politics is closely related to the economic
process in which the human body was put as a consumer as well as variable capital(labor power) into the circulation of capital. While the domain of bio-power is not38

reducible to the logic of capitalist accumulation, and the body will have different
aspects and potentials from ‘the standpoints of production, exchange, consumption’(Harvey, 1998), it is intricately articulated with capitalist development.5) The development of capitalist production and social relations entails a transformation of theworking and consuming body fundamentally. The rise of industrial capitalism is notpossible without the new power relations that control populations in new ways.
But it was in 1918 that the first public retail market was built in Osaka City
after the ‘Rice Riot’ (米騒動). The issue remained still latent before this violent riot,
because heavy industrialization and urbanization had only begun at this point.

Epilogue
On July 30, 1912, the Emperor Meiji died. During the second half of July,
newspapers reported his physical condition in detail ( his temperature, respiration,pulse, urination, evacuation) day after day. Many people gathered at the Imperial
Palace Plaza to pray for his recovery from illness, and entertainments like Kabuki
performances were canceled voluntarily.
After the Meiji restoration, Meiji government used the representation of theEmperor’s body as a symbol to unify the people who had until then held the senseof belonging to their locality. As Kantorowicz pointed out ‘the King’s Two Bodies’:
the king as person and the king as an embodiment of the state and nation’ (Harvey,2003), the Emperor Meiji’s body had become the embodied subject of the newnation-state that the people gazed at and through the act of gazing they became
subject to.
It seems that the death and extinction of the Emperor Meiji’s body presented
not just the end of the turbulent period of Meiji, but also the transformation ofJapanese society. The collective body of the urban crowd on the street took part inpolitics indirectly. Administrative agencies discovered the realm of the ‘everyday,’and intervened and controlled individuals’ bodies’ conduct in ordinarily life. We cansay that the role of spectacular ‘body politics’ or ‘political body’ ended or diminished,
while micro- and macro- scale or collective ‘body politics’ or ‘political bodies’ began
or enlarged. The relations among ‘nationalization’ of the people, the democratization of state formation, and the urbanization of lifestyle and consciousness arecontradictory processes under capitalism. So we have to attempt a further reconsideration of relationships between body, city, and nation.
This paper was originally presented at the Kyoto Regional conference, IGU held in Kyoto(Aug, 6 2013).

Notes1) For the last three decades, many human geographers have discussed the
problems of scale from body to globe (Smith 1993; Herod 2011). Marston noted39

that geographers have focused on only the sphere of production and have notdiscussed the scale of social reproduction (Marston 2000, 2003).
2) ’Appearances’ is a difficult word to translate into English. It is not communityand society, but a kind of atmosphere or air that is composed of complex humanrelationships and then binds human conduct and ideas.
3) He was a specialist of social policy and urban planning. He became the Mayor of
Osaka City in 1923 and initiated a full-scale urban social policy for the first timein a Japanese city.
4) The necessity for public retail markets and social housing was also proposed by
the Investigating Committee on Production (生産調査会) that was organized by
the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce in 1912. The main reason was that the
supply of cheap and high quality daily necessities for factory and manual laborers
was an elementary measure to maintain social order and develop industrial
production.
5) Harvey observed that the studies of disciplinary apparatuses by Foucault weretaken from an inspiration from Marx’s analysis of the ‘working day’ (Harvey 2010,
p. 149).

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41

Commodification of the Asian and Construction ofJapan's Self-image
MORI Masato*

Introduction
This paper attempts to explore how geographical images of the other support theestablishment of geographical images of the subject through a cultural commoditisation of materials and a stimulation of product development. Imaginative
geography became a significant issue after Edward Said’s exploration of representations and discourses involving the Oriental (Said, 1978). Said revealed how acontinual process of representation of the Orient contributed to colonialism. The
power of discourse established a rigid distinction between the object to be observed
and the subject who was to observe; discourses repetitively characterized the vague
Oriental as a substantive object through definitions of its culture, sexuality, and soon. A monolithic geographical imagination of the Orient constituted an illusion as if
the Orient existed as a stable space.
Two contributions of this article to the discussions of geographical imagination
are brought about by inserting ideas of ontology of space and materiality. Naoki
Sakai (1996) develops the issue of Orientalism, referring to the Derridian conceptof différence that aims to counter assumptions of common origin and to emphasize
elements of differentiation. He examines how ideas of a homogeneous Japanesenation and a pure Japanese language have remained stillborn since the beginningof the modern era in Japan. He stresses the impossibility of an illusion of autonomous consciousness of Japanese identity; an ambiguous definition of Japan has
always required a definition of the other. Said’s discussion of Orientalism maytherefore be amplified using the ontology of the distinction between subject andobject. After the geographical area of an observed object had been imagined, theposition of the observing subject was endorsed; the spatial distinction between
Europe and the Orient is always relationally reconstituted with a temporal delay.
The first aim of this paper is to examine how Japan’s subjective view of itself is
upheld through an acknowledgement of the other, with reference to the rise of
discussions on the ontological understanding of the spatial (for example, Massey,
2004; 2005). Subjectivity and objectivity thus become confounded.
*Mie University, JAPAN42

Imaginative concepts of regions are also affected by products. In Marxism, thecommodity has traditionally been understood as some sort of trick; products,
which appear as if they have a certain value a priori , reify social relationships(Marx, 1867). The product is understood as an agent that conceals and distorts
the relationships between producers and consumers. In this context, conventional Marxist thought has discussed the dialectic relationship between humans
and things, which predetermines a sublation of human reason at the final stage.
However, current discussions in the area of actor-network theory undermine
the illusion of a market that processes human actions and is dominated by alinear ideology, stressing instead the fact that the market is defined a posteriori
through various actors’ actions. In fact, products and markets are involved in more
complex relationships between ethics and economical rationality (Callon, 1998).
Furthermore, the product can be conceptualized, not just as a passive ideologicalvehicle as in capitalism, but as a nonhuman agent (actant ) that stimulates or evenproduces human geographical emotions in multiple ways.
The cultural circuits of capital always entangle and twist commerce and culture(Thrift, 2005). Dwyer and Crang (2002) elaborate how the commodities encourage aprocess of differentiation of ethnicity: they stress that the vague concept of ethnicity
is continually reproduced and ethnicised subjects always relate with broader
discourses and institutions. Circuits of things and commodities are focused, apartfrom the old concept of things and commodities as mere vehicle of singular ideology.
This understanding leads us to current discussions on the issue of materiality
reflect on how humans and things are also intertwined: things always stimulate
and define people’s emotions. Tolia-Kelly (2004) reflects on the role of things in aliving room that evoke a sense of home. Geographical imagination has always been
prompted and shaped by things, rather than arising autonomously from inside ahuman subject. An emotion is fluid, is continuously being reshaped by events, andrejects the dichotomies between human an d nature, here and there, and subject
and object. Hence, the second aim of this article is to address how people’s feelings
toward things Asian are affected by Asian products.
A relational concept of the spaces of self and of the other is a complex construct.
Here, once again, the impossibility of dualism is implied. A “parliament of things”(Latour, 1993) always conceals the impossibility of Western metaphysics. Following
the Derridian idea of “trace,” products situated on the dividing line between
Japan (subject) and Asia (object) reveal the violence of the classification. This
paper discusses (1) the emergence of Japan through the commoditisation of thevague Asian spatial image as a mirror image of Japan, (2) the complex influenceof products on people’s emotions in Japan, and (3) the impossibility of a sharp
distinction between Japan an d Asia as revealed by things.

43Japan in and opposite Asia
Japan has often been classified as part of the Asian region. Various Japaneseregimes were recognized as subjects of dynasties established near the current
Chinese border, but without political dominance. Although the period of closure of
the country (1639–1853) witnessed a rise in consciousness of the purity of Japaneseculture, some cultural elements in China nonetheless continued to have an
influence on Japan.
Japan became an object observed by the West in the middle of the eighteenth
century. For example, Japonisme in Europe in the late eighteenth century depicted
Japan as an exotic country, represented by two pre-modern warrior (Samurai)
swords and a helmet at the British Museum (Yoshida, 1999). Because this objectified Japan was also conscious of being gazed upon, it instituted the Japan Tourist
Bureau in 1912 to serve foreign tourists (1). The “uncivilized” country of Japan ina developing Asian region could find an identity through its objectification by theWest, which was recognized as Japan’s goal.
Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 led the country to construct
a new self-image. On the one hand, Japan conceived of itself as a country whichtranscended modern civilization. Instead, it came to emphasize a particular
Japanese spirituality: Japan seen as releasing itself from the objectified position.
On the other hand, Japan started to objectify Asia; Oriental studies, including
history and anthropology, were instituted in the early twentieth century and upheld
the colonialist mentality. Once a series of studies on Asia had noted particularfeatures of some Asian countries, the subjective image of Japan, which lacked thesefeatures, became clarified. Japanese Orientalism enabled Japan to separate itself
from Asia (Kan, 1996; Koyasu, 2003). This intellectual project contributed to theJapanese invasions of eastern and southeastern Asia during the Second World War.
Considering the wealth of studies on the intellectual appropriation of Asian
countries in the pre-war period, the absence of studies addressing the representation of Asia in post-war Japan is remarkable. Following Yamanaka’s study on this
topic, images of Southeast Asia focused on an image of Asia which was connectedwith the relocation of factories from Japan to Southeast Asian countries in the
1970s (Yamanaka, 2000). Southeast Asian countries were represented, first as
chaotic, then as energetic. Japan’s myth of itself as a homogeneous country wasenabled through distancing itself from Asia. In general usage, the term “Asia” in
the Japanese language usually covers East and Southeast Asia. The term “Asia” asused in this paper covers these same areas.
This paper focuses on a process of commoditisation of Asian sundry goods, called“Ajia zakka ” (including baskets, pottery, ceramics, textiles, aroma candles, and soon), in Japan. These Asian sundry goods were commoditised and became popular,
especially among young women, in the late 1990s. This period witnessed a rise ofnationalism in Japan. A revisionist approach to history that legitimizes pre-war

44Japanese colonialism and highlights the purity of Japanese identity was implemented by a nationalist organization set up in 1996; the activities of this organization resulted in the publication of history textbooks for junior high school use in
2001. The national flag and national anthem law was enacted in 1999. Some local
governments, for example Tokyo, punished and even fired teachers who did notstand up and sing the national anthem in school ceremonies. Ex-prime minister
Junichiro Koizumi (1999–2006), who promoted neo-liberal policies and prevented
smooth relationships with East Asian countries expressing right-wing statements,
attracted a huge amount of national support. Although cultural critics in Japan
have characterized the outbreak of nationalism as driven by a sense of anxiety due
to globalization and economic decline throughout the 1990s, an exploration of how
such a subjective view of Japanese identity was developed and enhanced has been
completely absent. The present discussion of commoditisation therefore explores
the relationships between the commoditisation of Asia and the rise of a new
consciousness of Japanese identity in the late 1990s.

Methodology
Because many articles featuring both Asian resorts and Asian sundry goods arefound in tourist guidebooks and women’s magazines, a number of articles on these
topics are examined here (1).
Among tourist guidebooks, Rurubu , published by JTB (2) in 1973, and Chikyu no
arukikata , published by Daiyamondo-sha in 1979, are explored. Rurubu is known
as one of the most popular guidebooks for the general tourist in Japan, and Chikyu
no arukikata is equally well known as a specific tourist guidebook for backpackers.
Chikyu no arukikata continually verifies information, and the publisher of theguidebook launched other versions in the late 1990s to attract a wider range ofreaders. Because both guidebooks have been revised annually, it is possible tounderstand how Asian resorts have been developed through the examination ofboth tourist guidebooks. Travel guidebooks for Phuket Island and Bali Island, bothresorts well known in Japan, are examined.
Magazine articles on Asian resorts and products are also examined. A searchof magazine articles yielded eighty-five hits for articles on Asian resorts andeighty-one on Asian or ethnic sundry goods. Most of these articles appeared inwomen’s magazines, which are fashion-oriented except for the gossip columns (3).
Articles in the monthly magazines CREA and Olive are discussed in this paper.
CREA magazine has been published by Bungei-shunju-sha since 1989, targetinga generation of twenty- to thirty-year-olds, especially women achieving economic
independence. This magazine is now competing for the number-two position inthis market. CREA features new lifestyles, including gorgeous Asian resorts andpretty Asian sundry goods. Examination of articles in these magazines clarifies how
Asian products were commercialized in the 1990s through the mass media. The

45

other magazine, Olive , was launched in 1982 by Magazine House. This magazine
aimed to promote the “new urban girl’s culture,” featuring unique clothes, French
movies, herbal tea, organic foods, and Asian products for teenagers, until it ceased
publication in 2003. The other magazines referred to in this paper are all women’smonthly magazines.
In addition, interviews with seven women, aged between twenty and thirty-three,were conducted. Each interview took about two hours, and some further intensive
interviews were also conducted afterwards.

Sophisticated images of Asian resorts
Two resorts, Phuket Island and Bali Island, were first described as wild places
that provide water-sports opportunities for Japanese tourists. In Rurubu Thai and
Chikyu no arukikata , reading books and napping on the beach under a parasol orenjoying water and other sports (scuba diving, golf, shooting, bungee jumping, etc.)
were presented as the image of resort life on Phuket Island until the late 1990s.
Mention was also made of how to enjoy shopping, with suggestions for purchasing
brand-name products in the duty-free shop in the airport or silk products, pearls,
T-shirts, small metal objects, and folk handicrafts in local shops. In short, resort
life on Phuket Island was presented as an opportunity to enjoy water sports ina natural setting and to go shopping; some of the items for sale represented aprimitive culture. Rurubu also discussed Bali Island, well known for Balinese art,
principally as a place for water sports and golf, with a little information about
Bali material culture (furniture, painting, handicrafts, and textiles), until the late
1990s. Although Chikyu no arukikata represented the Balinese as a people living
among gods, the Ubudo district, which is the center of Balinese arts (drama, music,
painting, textiles, and sculpture), was mentioned only after an introduction to thebeaches.
The picture of resort life in tourist guidebooks changed at the end of the 1990s
from a place for water sports to a place which serves a need for healing. Chikyu no
arukikata in 1998 began to stress spa services and beauty salons which provide
relaxation for tourists on Bali Island. Rurubu in 2000 also changed its descriptionof Bali Island, featuring the Ubudo district, which provides a sense of healing withcafés, spas, and museums, on the front page. In 2001, Rurubu featured a “healing”
spa service and Balinese products for healing the spirits of tourists. The publisher
Daiyamondo-sha issued in 2002 a special guidebook featuring only resort hotels
in Asia, which presents Bali as a sophisticated island, Thailand as a place which
provides hospitality and tasty food, Malaysia as a country of nature resorts, andVietnam as a place with resorts in its highland regions. The style of writing in thisguidebook was distinct from that of other guidebooks because it focused on newly
popular aspects of these countries and services—spas and villas.
Examination of tourist guidebooks reveals a process, beginning around 2000, of

46

refinement of the image of Asian resorts, which became places which provide thevisitor with a sense of healing and ease. Although a number of articles on Asian
resorts have appeared since 1989, 1998 saw a rapid increase, with nine articles, and1999 witnessed a peak, with eleven articles. Three elements facilitated this transformation of the image of Asian resorts: a qualitative diversification of the services
provided by the resort hotels, a more stylish appearance, and cultural facilities
such as cafés and souvenir shops. The resort hotels gradually moved away fromproviding only accommodation for mass tourism and began to present themselvesin the mass media as specific hotels offering particular hospitality services to meet
tourists’ individual needs (4), although the old-style facilities still remained. Spa
services, which offer body treatments to heal guests, are an outstanding exampleof this trend. The term “spa,” which has a connotation of healing, became familiar
through the Japanese mass media around the turn of the 21st century. At the time
when spa facilities were being installed in urban hotels in Japan, Asian resort
hotels also began to offer spa services to make tourists comfortable in the tropicalatmosphere. The term “café” began to be used in Japanese in the late 1990s as
something distinct from the old term “kissa-ten,” which means a conventional coffee
shop. The café provides not just beverages, but also a stylish atmosphere withan arrangement of furniture and various goods imported from Asian an d North
European countries. Souvenir shops also appeared in the resorts, not only selling
local products, but also providing an upscale atmosphere as described below. Thus
the Asian resorts were marketed as embodying a new kind of Asian atmosphereand became involved in the transformation of Japanese styles of consumption.

Appearance of new Asian products
The transformation of the images for Asian resorts coincided with a change in thequalities of the material products, especially the kinds of souvenirs, offered in thesecountries. Jewels (sapphires, rubies, and pearls), small metal objects, and T-shirtswith connotations of naiveté and exoticism were shown as souvenirs of Phuket inboth Rurubu and Chikyu no arukikata until the end of the 1990s. This selection ofhandicrafts and preindustrial goods implies a desire for primitive simplicity whichthese places can satisfy. In tourist guidebooks for Bali Island, paintings, sculptures, silver objects, textiles, and carved fragrant woods were chosen as souvenirs
throughout the 1990s. Although Balinese arts were appreciated, they werepurchased as souvenirs and evaluated less highly than Western and Japanese art
works. However, in 1998, Rurubu established a new section showing new kinds ofproducts (aroma candles and stylishly designed plates and cups); at the same time,
the number of pages devoted to old-fashioned souvenirs was reduced in the tourist
guidebook. Moreover, Rurubu in 2001 presented the new Balinese goods using theterm zakka (sundry goods), which included baskets, textiles, tableware, lamps,
candles, clothing, and small objects, describing their forms as “natural.”

47

The transformation of the tourist products offered in Asian resorts was connectedwith a new mode of consumption which developed at the end of the 1990s. Articles
in women’s magazines reflect this change; the number of articles on Asian products
increased markedly in 1998 and reached a peak in 2001, and while small Asian
products had been called “ethnic” goods, the new term “Asian sundry goods”
came into use. In Japan, purchasing ethnic products became popular at the endof the 1980s, probably because they evoked a sense of nostalgia for lost cultures
or a yearning for a less civilized life. The ethnic goods purchased in this period
consisted of food and clothing, not small sundry goods. Nakaya Mugendo , a shop
which opened in Tokyo in 1978, is often cited as a pioneer in selling ethnic goods inJapan. This shop imports its goods mainly from India and Nepal. The more recently
popular Asian products do not include goods from India and Nepal because these“ethnic” goods are regarded as primitive and unsophisticated.
The increase in the number of magazine articles on Asia in the late 1990s
occurred in parallel with rising interest in Asian resorts. The prevalent image of
Asia at that time was stereotyped, with connotations of chaos, lack of industrial
development, and lack of sophistication. However, certain products were selectedfrom the Asian marketplace, and their designs were rearranged into a new sophisticated form for new consumers in Japan. The transformation of these designs wasbrought about by foreign designers. For example, Jenggara ceramics, producedby the Jenggara Keramic Corporation which was set up in 1976 by a Balinese
hotel owner and a New Zealand designer, are a very popular Balinese product. In
addition, a substantial number of foreign designers are contributing to the development of designs for the Balinese. These products then became the focus of tourist
guidebooks and magazines in the late 1990s. The concept of Asia was certainly
re-commodified at that point.
As an example, the women’s monthly magazine, CREA , featured Asian resorts
in 1998 and 1999 and Asian sundry goods in 1998. A CREA article, volume 10-4,
described Asian sundry goods as “creating a feeling of nostalgia when we see themfor the first time” (p. 65) and suggested how to use them in everyday life. CREA
also featured sundry goods in 2001 (volume 13-1), including small products madein Vietnam (ceramics, lacquered pieces, and cloth), Thailand (silver pieces andceramics), Bali (baskets and textiles), and South Korea (furniture). Descriptions
such as “simple,” “natural,” “stylish,” “Oriental beauty,” “warmth,” and “Asianmodern” were used for these products. The adjective “natural” used to describe
Asian products previously had a negative connotation of wildness and roughness.
However, this adjective later became used in a positive sense, expressing an ideaof purity. The articles in CREA , referred above, resulted in a special issue of CREA
Traveller which featured the Asian resorts and products (Bungei-shunju-sha , 2001)
These Asian products were decontextualised from local everyday life and commoditised in two ways. On the one hand, they came to be viewed as smart-looking
products rather than cheap ones. A women’s monthly magazine, MORE , in 2003

48

(volume 311) refers to a “luxurious resort hotel” (p. 232) as a model of smart Asianzakka . CREA also illustrates smart-looking Vietnamese products as inheriting a

sophisticated style moulded by French colonialism. The violence of colonialism,postcolonialism, and capitalism is all washed away, and a sense of smartness
becomes incarnated in Asian sundry goods.
One interviewee, who was in her twenties when Asian sundry goods became
popular, remembered some of the articles in CREA on Asian resorts and products.
She bought Asian-designed plates, incense, and a small table at a shop in her
neighborhood. Another interviewee, who has been to Bali and Phuket Islands, said
that, although she does not purchase any local products there because the qualityand design are not satisfactory, she will buy only Balinese tableware, the Jenggara
products mentioned earlier, because she finds them sophisticated. She uses plates
and cups purchased in Bali as souvenirs when she has visitors. Thus an aesthetic
quality has been found in objects transformed from local unsophisticated products.
On the other hand, a monthly women’s magazine, Olive , in 1999 (volume 399)
described Asian products as “rough, flashy, cheap, and unnatural” (p.99). Indeed,
the products described in this issue are all cheap, useless, and flashy. A woman
who often bought Asian sundry goods when she was a teenager said that, “Asian
goods are interesting because they are useless.” She shared a sense that Asian
products are kitsch. When another woman said that, “if I want to buy high-classsundry goods, I will not find them among Asian products,” she tended to assume
that Asian products are of low quality. However, this perspective on Asian goods
certainly finds an aesthetic quality in them, but in a different way: the aesthetics ofAsian products was also created through a sense of kitsch . A clear definition of theaesthetics of Asian products is not straightforward.
Some confusion of geographical scales may be found in the magazine articles.
They refer to Asian products, yet they do not cover the entire Asia region. The
products come only from certain countries, such as Thailand, Bali Island, Vietnam,
South Korea, and sometimes China. In addition, quite local products shown in thearticles carry particular national images too. The vague geographical definitions
used to commoditise specific sundry goods have affected people’s emotions towards
Asia in various ways.

Locating and re-imaging Asia at home
Magazine articles on Asian sundry goods may be classified into three groups. The
first group presents not only various sundry goods, but also shops selling them intheir countries of origin. The second group presents the local villages which makethe products, and the third group illustrates how to arrange the various products
in rooms. These articles can be related to changes in the imaginative geography of
Asia in each group.
The first point is that these products were not just souvenirs, because people

49

visiting the villages and purchasing products themselves were engaged in travel.
Old tourist guidebooks tended not to show Asian countries as providing opportunities to enjoy shopping. For example, in the Rurubu guidebook for Phuket,
shopping at duty-free shops in airports was recommended, but shopping in
local markets was not recommended because many poor-quality and counterfeit
products were sold there. The image of the local markets was ambivalent: they
were described as high-energy places selling cheap local foods and products, yetthey were also considered to be chaotic places and not good for shopping. However,a change in the concept of shopping, with a greater awareness of the aesthetic
qualities of local products, and an improvement in the quality and design of local
products accelerated the establishment of a new mode of tourism. Shops in urban
districts and in the local villages where products were manufactured themselves
became tourist spots in some Asian countries. In other words, a new imaginative
geography emerged with respect to the local people, and the range of tourist activity
was therefore enlarged.
The second group of articles, those introducing the local villages where products
were manufactured, strengthened the pre-industrial image of Asia and its products.
In fact, the images of production places mentioned in the interviews were quite
similar to each other. The materials and dyes used in the products were seen as
plant materials. The products were manufactured, not in large modern factories
in urban districts, but in rural villages by women’s hands. Two assumptions are
involved here: that of a geographical distinction between the urban districts selling
products and the rural villages producing things, and the feminization of the local
villages and the products made there. Feminized places and products were also
imagined as pre-industrial.
CREA (2001, volume 13-1) published an article introducing Bát Tràng village, asuburb of Hanoi in Vietnam, where pottery was manufactured. A picture on the firstpage of the article shows a peaceful rural landscape, including large grassy fields,
cows grazing, and people on bicycles, but not motorcycles, automobiles, or tallbuildings. The photo is framed by the title of the article, “Visit Bát Tràng village tobuy pottery filled with the sense of warmth,” and also bears a caption that stresses
the rural nature of the village; it mentions the emergence of mass production withmodern equipment, yet it still says, “In this small village, time passes so slowly, or
rather seems to have stopped for eternity” (p. 40). Ideal local village that we desire
to be as a producing area of the hand crafts is narrated here.
Statements obtained in the interviews also contain idealized images of local
places. Although some interviewees imagined the goods sold in Japan as mass
products, others saw the Asian goods sold in Japan as shared daily items usedin local villages somewhere. Furthermore, one said that Asian products that arenormally useless in Japan may play significant roles in the local village where thegoods were produced.
The third group of articles, about arranging Asian products in rooms, had the50effect that purchased Asian goods started to affect the geographical imagination ofAsia through a recreation of the atmosphere of Asia in the home. Some products,
like the Jenggara ceramics mentioned earlier, enable tourists to recall the moodof the Asian resorts they visited. CREA (2001, vol. 13-1) showed four houses
arranged according to the “Asian taste”; two of them were intended to recreate theatmosphere of resort hotels in Bali.
However, the role of the Asian products seems vague in practice, because thepictures show that the products are placed in the corners of the rooms. In anotherissue of CREA in 1998 (volume 10-1), Asian products were described as “accents”
and “spices” which are “absorbed into the atmosphere of the room as if they were
just waiting to be located there” (p. 65). The Asian zakka cannot be allowed to playa leading role in the room. Rather, they are expected to play the role of assistantto all kinds of furniture and to provide rooms with a sense of ease. The interviews
also revealed recognition of a role of the Asian zakka as an assistant. One interviewee mentioned that because locating the kitschy and flashy Asian products
in a room required an alteration of the room’s atmosphere to accommodate the
Asian products, she now hesitates to buy these products again. Another interview
provided a contrary answer: the interviewee said that when she feels like being in
Asia, she turns to the Asian zakka to create an Asian atmosphere in her room. She
did not identify countries, but just used the term “Asia.” The imagined concept ofAsia in the everyday life of the interviewees was not a concrete entity, but just amood.

Well-defined Asia/ undefined Japan
The imagined concept of Asia derived from Asian sundry goods assumes a clear
distinction between here (Japan) and there (Asia). Although Asia is explicitly
characterized as a natural, developing, pre-modern, feminine region, Japan is
implied by contrast to be a civilized, developed, modern, and masculine country.
However, reference to Japanese objects is absent in the magazine articles on
Asian sundry goods. Hiroshi Kashiwagi, an art critic, finds similarities in theprocess of institutionalization of Asian sundry goods and of Japanese folk crafts,
called mingei : both were decontextualized from daily life and commoditised
through specific aesthetic lenses (Kashiwagi, 1998) (5). However, the two are
seldom juxtaposed in magazines. A few articles juxtaposing Asian ceramics andzen -style ceramics can be found. MORE in 2003 (volume 311), a women’s monthly
magazine, placed photos of white zen ceramics and white Asian ceramics side byside, describing the zen style as “representative of Japan” (p. 232). However thecaption revealed that zen ceramics were designed by a modern industrial designer,
Sori Yanagi, and were in fact a universal design without any Japanese “traditional”
local identity. Because the concept of zen originated in the West, many Japanesepeople tend not to recognize it as an original Japanese concept; in fact, interviewees

51

did not accept the concept of zen as Japanese.
Japan as an uncharacterized, neutral subject emerges once Asia has been definedand characterized. Asia is represented and imagined by some Asian countries as acoherent region. Asian products work as devices which reproduce this consciousness
both to Asia (other) and to Japan (self) in Japanese rooms. The late 1990s, when
Asian sundry goods appeared in Japan, witnessed a boom in Japanese nationalism.
It is possible to argue that Asian products had a negative effect on the sense ofJapanese identity and therefore contributed to the rise of nationalism. However,it seems incorrect to understand the interest in Asian sundry goods as a productof nationalism. Such a viewpoint regards nationalism as a coherent and dominant
ideology, controlling human consciousness outside the lived world. Rather, various
events at various points in time resulted in the construction of a sense of theJapanese nation. Asian sundry goods are one constituent of the sense of national
identity, that is, the materiality of the Asian zakka in Japan.
The materiality of Asian sundry goods is not a coherent and singular entity,
but a changeable agency. It may also have the possibility to disturb the national
ideology. Asian products cannot be fully considered either Asian or Japanese.
Although Asian products were required to evolve from their wild and primitive
origins to become more sophisticated, they still must retain their sense of ethnic
identity. For instance, although Balinese products are presented as featuring bothmodern and ethnic aspects, they are described using sentences such as: “Balinese
furniture has a European mood, and just a touch of ethnic” (Daiyamondo-sha,
2002: 31). This exploration highlights both the sense of ethnic identity, which isestablished through the use of natural materials—grasses, woods, and bamboo—
and the modern flavor which is imparted by design. Asian products are located ona dividing line between the modern (Europe and Japan) and the ethnic and natural(Asia). Although products located on a dividing line can play a role in bringing thetwo sides together, they also imply the impossibility of establishing a dichotomy
between Japan (subject, modern) and Asia (object, nature). Thus these objects candestabilize the pre-established dichotomy between subject and object.

Conclusion: towards a more complex imagination
This paper has examined how the geographical imagination of Asia is recreatedthrough products and how objects reveal the impossibility of maintaining a
dichotomy between Japan an d Asia. At the end of the 1990s, certain kinds ofproducts were chosen and transformed into sophisticated designs by foreign
designers. This change coincided with the emergence of gorgeous Asian resorts:
Asia itself was re-commoditised. The new kinds of Asian products attracted a
substantial number of Japanese women through magazines.
Although new Asian products must distance themselves from their cheap andtacky past and accept modern design, they still must retain their ethnic flavor by52

sticking to natural materials. The products must not be stimulating, but rather
must provide a sense of healing and ease. They are expected, not to determine theatmosphere in a room, but to support the already-created atmosphere as an “accent”
or “spice.” Interviews suggested that these products evoke a specific geographicalimagination—nature, femininity, and pre-industrial character—through thematerial arrangements in the rooms. These objects give substance to the otherwise
vague human imagination.
Although many elements of Asian identity are characterized through Asian
products, elements of Japanese identity are not expressed. Images of pre-industrial
Asia lend support to Japan’s subjective view of itself as a mirror image.
Asian products fold and unfold distinctions between subject and object, here andthere, humans and things, and culture and nature, affecting people’s emotions
towards all things Asian. Asian products are devices that bridge a rigid distinction
between Japan an d Asia. Asian products are located on the dividing line between
Japan an d Asia and imply the fundamental impossibility of that distinction.
Although an illusion of dualism between Japan an d Asia is continually constructed,
its impossibility is also continually revealed.
Of course, Asian products affect people’s emotions in various ways. One woman
said that the reason why she includes the Asian zakka in her décor is that it
reminds her of the person who sold it to her. Another woman who joined an
exchange program remembers the girl of a mountain tribe in Thailand whom she
met in that program when she sees a handmade bag which was given to her on that
trip. Objects can stimulate people’s emotions in many unintended ways. Relationships between Japan an d Asia, here and there, and humans and things are always
complex, and they are reconstituted every moment.

Notes1) All quotations were translated from Japanese to English by the author.
2) The travel agency, Japan Travel Bureau Foundation, has its origins in the Japan
Tourist Bureau, set up in 1912 to promote Japanese tourism for foreign tourists.
This foundation was related to the Ministry of Railroads, which used it to attract
railroad passengers, and started issuing travel magazines and guidebooks in
1924. It operated as a semi-governmental foundation for many years and was
privatized in 1963.
3) This sort of magazine originated with an an , first called ELLE Japon, whichbegan publishing in 1970. an an was distinct from previous women’s magazines
in that it provided only information on lifestyles and fashions targeting women in
their twenties (Ueno, 1987). After the launch of an an , various women’s magazine
have emerged to address the various stages of a woman’s life.
4) A luxury resort hotel, Amanresort, has been operating since 1988 on Phuket
Island and became well known in Japan after the late 1990s.

535) Folk handicrafts remained uncategorized between the categories of arts andindustrial crafts in the Japanese modernization of the late nineteenth century.
Muneyoshi Yanagi and his colleagues found a particular Japanese beauty in folk
crafts and set up an organization to promote production of mingei (Hamada,2006).

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shoten. [J]55

Ideas and Practices of the Kyoto School of Japanese
Geopolitics
SHIBATA Yoichi*
Introduction
During the time of the Asia-Pacific War, the Kyoto school of geopolitics was
well-known for its advocacy of a specifically “Japanese,” that is to say indigenous,
brand of geopolitics. All members of the school had a more or less close relationshipwith the Department of Geography at Kyoto Imperial University during the 1930s
and 40s. The school’s head, Professor Komaki Saneshige (1898-1990, see Figure 1.),
as well as his followers, used the term Nihon chiseigaku (Japanese geopolitics) to
describe their geopolitics (Komaki 1940, 1942a, b).
Almost all previous studies of the Kyoto school have concentrated on its chauvinistic and unscientific nature and its justification of Japanese imperialistic policy(Takeuchi 1980, 1994, 2000, 2001). However, it is certain that their geopoliticalarguments had a strong influence on academic circles and the press at that time
(Murakami 1999a: 50; Yamaguchi 1943: 237). Therefore we need to discuss thefollowing questions: (1) How was it possible to establish the Kyoto school of geopolitics? (2) How were their geopolitical arguments able to win the support of contemporary people? (3) What role did the school play in carrying out total war? In otherwords, the first weak point of previous studies of this school is that they have notexamined the social impact of practical aspects of the school, that is to say, its
propaganda activities in domestic as well as foreign spheres, and its participationin the strategy considerations of the Imperial Japanese Army.1) Therefore, thepurpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of the ideas and practices of
the Kyoto school of Japanese geopolitics, paying attention to the social impact of
the school’s practical activities.
A close look at previous studies reveals that basic facts about the Kyoto schoolof geopolitics were not interpreted correctly because of insufficient analysis of the
primary sources (Fukushima 1997; Takeuchi 1980, 1994, 2000, 2001). Before myinvestigation (Shibata 2007), the connection of the school with wartime military
authorities had remained unsupported by historical documentation. This is the*Kyoto University, JAPAN

56

second weak point of previous studies. Therefore, by using a wide variety ofprimary and secondary sources, such as (1) a staff officer’s diary– the diary ofColonel Takashima Tatsuhiko (1897-1978) who worked in the Sanbō-honbu (theGeneral Staff Office) (Takashima 1938-1941); (2) contemporary documents, reports
written by some members of the school (Muroga et al . 2001); (3) a bibliography that
Komaki himself wrote (Shibata 2005, see Figure 2.); (4) the memoirs written bysome members of the school after the end of war (Asai Tatsurō 1997; Asai Tokuichi
1978; Bekki 1970; Komaki 1980; Mano 1981; Murakami 1999a), and (5) interviews
with some of the school’s members (Asai 1999; Murakami 1999b; Yonekura 1999),
I will be able to shed new light on various aspects of the Kyoto school of geopolitics
during those days.
The organization of this paper is as follows: to begin with, I will demonstrate
the connection of the Kyoto school of geopolitics to the military authorities. Next,
I will examine the ideological composition of the school. After that, I would like toexamine their propaganda activities in the domestic as well as foreign spheres, thatis to say, the practical activities of the school’s social engagement. In addition, I will
mention the circumstances of the Kyoto school after the end of war. Finally, I will
make some concluding remarks about the characteristics of the ideas and practicesof the Kyoto school of Japanese geopolitics.

The connection of the Kyoto school of Japanese geopolitics with themilitary authorities
The Department of Geography at Kyoto Imperial University was establishedin 1907 and was characterized by an emphasis on historical geography. Komaki
Saneshige received his doctorate in 1937 from Kyoto Imperial University on thebasis of a thesis on prehistoric geography,2) and in March 1938 became professor
and the third head of the department (Shibata 2006: 3-4). However, Komaki had
actually been in a position of leadership since 1936 when the second department
head Ishibashi Gorō (1877-1946) retired. As soon as Komaki finished writing his
doctoral dissertation at the end of 1936, he and his followers began to carry out
research on geopolitics (Komaki 1980; Shibata 2007: 3). They had a great antipathy
toward Western imperialism, especially that of the British Empire. Moreover
immigration issues– restrictions on immigration from Japan to the USA– wereclosely related to racial discrimination and were of great concern to them (Komaki1940). In addition, it should be noted that almost all of them had read Politische
Geographie by Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), regarded as a classic of geopolitics, inthe mid-1930s (Murakami 1999a: 50). Consequently, we can date the beginning of
the Kyoto school of geopolitics to before the outbreak of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War
in July 1937.
In November 1938 the Kyoto school was asked to conduct research on geopolitics by Colonel Takashima Tatsuhiko who worked in the General Staff Office

57(Takashima 1938-1941). Responding to this request, Komaki and his followers
began to emphasize the necessity of creating a new “Japanese geopolitics” as a “newgeography” (Komaki 1938), and held a research meeting with Takashima and someother military staff in that same month (Takashima 1938-1941). This group was
one of the affiliated groups for research on sōryokusen (total war) that had beenorganized by Takashima in the same year, and was called the Sōgō Chiri Kenkyūkai(General Geographical Study Group) (Muroga et al . 2001: 75; Takashima
1938-1941). In this paper, however, I would like to refer to it as the Kyoto school ofJapanese geopolitics. Takashima regarded the school as a geographical section to
help in carrying out total war, especially shisōsen (ideological warfare) (Mano 1981:
73-74; Takashima 1938-1941). The Kyoto school obtained financial support fromthe business community in the Kansai area (Mano 1981: 73). They rented a housenear Kyoto Imperial University, collected pertinent materials, and held weekly (orbiweekly) meetings there (see Figure 3.) (Murakami 1999a: 51-53, 1999b: 58-63;
Takashima 1938-1941; Yonekura 1999: 16-17).
Moreover, the Kyoto school also had a connection with the Jōhō-bu (the MilitaryIntelligence Division) that controlled the media during the Asia-Pacific War. Thisconnection was made by Takashima who worked at the Military Intelligence
Division before being transferred to the General Staff Office (Satō 1995; Takashima
1938a). The Kyoto school was linked with the department of the press (the Second
Section) and propaganda for domestic and foreign spheres (the Third and Fifth
Sections) in particular. They published a series of geopolitical area studies in a
magazine that was initiated by the officer Suzuki Kurazō (1894-1964) of the Second
Section (Komaki et al . 1942; Satō 2004: 268-275). Komaki was able to speak over
the radio about his geopolitics and became a member of the board of directors of
Dai Nihon Genron Hōkokukai (Japan Speech Patriotism Society) that had a strong
influence on regulation of the press in the domestic sphere because he had theconnection with the Third and Fifth Sections (Akazawa 1993; Komaki 1942c, d;Shibata 2005: 45).
Therefore, it is important to recognize that the ideas and practices of the Kyoto
school were strongly influenced by the Imperial Japanese Army. On this point, theschool differed from another famous geopolitician, Ezawa Jōji (1907-1975), who wasa member of the brain trust of the Chōsa-ka (the Research Division) of the Imperial
Japanese Navy (Takagi 1967: 196-198). This brain trust was founded by Colonel
Takagi Sōkichi (1893-1979) in November 1940, and members of the “Kyoto schoolof philosophy” such as Kōyama Iwao (1905-1993) and Kōsaka Masaaki (1900-1969)also participated in it (Ōhashi 2001; Takagi 1967: 187-207). Moreover, it is also
important to keep in mind that the Army and the Navy stood in opposition to eachother (Ōhashi 2001).

58

The ideological composition of the Kyoto school of Japanese geopolitics
The Kyoto school criticized Western exploration, conventional geography, andGerman Geopolitik for the following reasons: According to their opinion, Western
exploration served as a tool for Western colonization (Komaki 1942a: 118-120). They
held the view that conventional geography– including keikan chirigaku (landscapegeography or Landshaftsgeographie) that was the contemporary mainstream
human geography and advocated by Tsujimura Tarō (1890-1983), professor of
geography at Tokyo Imperial University (Tsujimura1937)– had been perverted by aEurocentric and, in general, Western point of view, and had lost its social relevancebecause it disregarded human decision-making and the importance of history(Komaki 1940: 56-60, 66-67). Komaki wrote that “Conventional geography wasa discipline meant to maintain the status quo ruled by the Western world view”(Komaki 1942a: 32). Members of the Kyoto school valued the practical aspectsof Geopolitik , but on the other hand criticized it for being based on racism andenvironmental determinism, and for consequently playing the role of the guardianof Western imperialism (Komaki 1940: 67-69).
Based on these critiques, then, the Kyoto school advocated “Japanese geopolitics”
as a “new geography.” According to their thinking, it was indigenous and attachedimportance to the autonomy of Japan (Komaki 1940: 75-80). Komaki wrote, “Scientific studies were neither objective nor neutral, but strongly dyed by the consideration of subjects from Western countries” (Komaki 1942b: 155). They consideredthat the most important thing was that their geopolitics had to develop on thebasis of the identity of Japan or from the viewpoint of Japan (Komaki 1940: 75-80).
From this perspective, they criticized the “simple imitation of German Geopolitik ”
advocated by some geopoliticians like Iimoto Nobuyuki (1895-1989), the general-secretary of the Nihon Chiseigaku Kyōkai (the Japan Association of Geopolitics)
which was founded in November 1941 (Komaki 1944a: 49-53).
The Kyoto school emphasized that Japanese geopolitics should constitute afoundation for national policy as well as the Japanese spiritual tradition and consequently had a practical nature to it (Komaki 1940: 174-179). Komaki wrote, “We
need to establish the new geography which aims to rebuild the world and make it
as it originally should be... This new geography is not the science of sein (what is)but one of sollen (what should be)… We can realize the “ideal” world not throughWestern-style geography based on individualism but through this new geography
based on Tennō- ism” (Komaki 1942a: 34-35). Tennō -ism meant the belief connectedwith Shintoism which was based on the so-called Kōdō (Imperial Way) ideology.
Kōdō means the way of reigning by the Tennō (Japanese emperor). In other words,
they tried to contribute to the creation of an “ideal” world centred on the Japaneseemperor.
Therefore, using their knowledge of historical and geographical scholarship, theKyoto school tried to clarify what had been destroyed or altered by Western coloni-

59

zation in Asian countries (see Figure 4.) (Komaki 1940: 81-99). This was related totheir view derived from their folklore scholarship that the nature and culture ofeach land should be maintained under an indigenous order (Komaki 1940: 73-74,
1942d: 108). They remarked on the economic problems of Asian countries causedby the dominance of the Western powers in Asia and on the racial discrimination
against Asian people (Komaki 1942d). In short, they intended to criticize Westernimperialism. However, at the same time, they sensed that the mere exposure andcondemnation of Western imperialism was not enough to legitimize the similar
imperialistic policies implemented in Asian countries by Japan. As an alternative
ideology, they posited “Pan-Asianism,” the idea of communalistic unity binding
Asian people together (Komaki 1942d). They considered that the Asian economy
should be reorganized on the basis of Asian agriculture (Komaki 1940, 1942d).
The Kyoto school also regarded the synthetic study of history and geography asa “new historical geography” (Muroga 1942a: 78). According to their ideas, this
synthetic study was able to understand an area dynamically and formatively within
modern world history that encompassed global relationships (Komaki 1942e: 4-6).
In other words, they tried to construct a “new geography” that integrated history
with geography.

The social impact of the practical aspects of the Kyoto school ofJapanese geopolitics: their propaganda activities
In this chapter, I would like to examine the propaganda activities of the Kyoto
school in collaboration with the military authorities, using various media suchas books, magazines, radio, and lectures. Even though their activities began inNovember 1938 when Komaki first emphasized the necessity of “Japanese geopolitics” (Komaki 1938), the following three turning points are very important forunderstanding their activities:
The first turning point was October 1940 when Komaki published Nihon
chiseigaku sengen (Manifesto of Japanese geopolitics) (see Figure 5.) (Komaki1940). His book got a boost from many people, especially in journalism, and thenumber of the school’s publications increased remarkably (Komaki 1980; Murakami
1999a: 50; Yamaguchi 1943: 237). The second turning point was the outbreak of
the Asia-Pacific War in December 1941. After that, members of the school wereasked to contribute geopolitical studies of the areas under Japanese influence oroutright occupation, or prospective areas that Japan might invade (Komaki 1942b;
Komaki et al . 1942; Shibata 2005: 47-56). The third turning point was January
1943 when Komaki became a member of the board of directors of Dai Nihon Genron
Hōkokukai (Akazawa 1993). After that, especially after mid 1943, the contents of
his propaganda became non-geopolitical and fanatical because he was influenced
by members of the society, and the media’s requests to write on geopolitical areastudies decreased along with the deterioration of the war situation (Komaki 1944a;

60

Shibata 2005: 47-56).
After recognizing these turning points, I examined the geopolitical area studies of
the Kyoto school that were regarded as the main result of their propaganda activities. The reason why the Kyoto school began to study geopolitical area studies was
related to the thinking of Colonel Takashima. He intended to reinforce ideological
warfare by clarifying the history and strategy of the Western imperialist invasionof Asian countries and emphasizing the holy nature of Japanese warfare to liberate
Asia from the Western powers (Takashima 1938b).
Consequently Komaki assigned to his followers the areas in which they wereto specialize (Murakami 1999a: 51-52; Yonekura 1999: 17), and the Kyoto school
began in 1940 to clarify the geopolitical importance of each area of the world fromthe viewpoint of Japan, as a geographical section to aid in carrying out total war,
especially ideological warfare (Komaki 1942a, b; Muroga et al . 2001). In addition,
after 1940 Komaki forced his students to deal with the geopolitical issues of foreigncountries in their graduation theses, in order to use their work as basic works
for geopolitical area studies (Kōno 1990: 5). The Kyoto school wrote geopoliticalarea studies based on the huge accumulation of studies compiled by Western
researchers, because during wartime they could not conduct field surveys of theareas in which they specialized (Asai Tatsurō 1997: 553; Asai Tokuichi 1978: 3;
Bekki 1970: 347).
They collaborated on publication projects to spread their geopolitical world views,
for example, (1) the series “Sekai chiri seiji taikei (Compendium of world geography
and politics)” (see Table 1.), and (2.) “Shin sekai chishi (New world regional
geography)” that were published serially in the ultra-nationalistic magazine
Shin Wakōdo (New Young Person) that was initiated by military officer Suzuki inorder to spread nationalist ideology to younger generations (see Table 2.) (Komaki
et al . 1942; Satō 2004: 268-275). Furthermore, Komaki gave speeches over theradio beamed into domestic and foreign areas, for example, the USA and China(Komaki 1942c, d), and he gave a lot of lectures in both Japan and in Manchukuo(Shibata 2005: 45). The geopolitical area studies of the Kyoto school were intensively published in 1942, because the media’s requests increased along with initial
victories in the war (Komaki 1942a, b; Shibata 2005: 47-56). Although they studied
each area of the world, their published works’ focus was clustered in countries of
the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Very few of their studies of America
and Europe were published (Komaki 1942a, b; Shibata 2005: 47-56).
In these numerous publications, the Kyoto school emphasized the unity of the
Asia-Pacific area and Australia and/or India, and insisted on their geopoliticalworld view that was unified by a concept of a unified Asia (see Figure 6.) (Komaki
1942a, b, d, 1944a), that was different from that of the West based on duality (Agnew
1998). In this sense, they opposed regarding the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere as a bloc or Grossraum (Komaki 1942f: 61, 1944a: 158-164). They called
the Australian continent the “South Asian continent,” and the North American

61

continent the “Northeast Asian continent” (Komaki 1942b: 142-157). In this way,
they tried to influence the public through their advocacy of such counter-logic towestern colonialism.
Their geopolitical area studies attracted considerable attention among academic
circles and the press and their books were widely read (Tanaka 1999: 260-261;
Yamaguchi 1943: 237). The remarks by the Kyoto school on the economic problemsof Japan caused by the dominance of the Western powers in East Asia and on the
racial discrimination against the Japanese (Komaki 1942d), had a considerable
effect on the Japanese public. In 1942, some members of the Kyoto school– Asai
Tokuichi (1913-2003), Bekki Atsuhiko (1908-1997), Yonekura Jirō (1909-2002)–
were dispatched as military administrators to Indonesia and Burma, then underJapanese occupation, because their geopolitical area studies were highly regarded
by the military authorities (Asai 1980: 5; Bekki 1970: 347; Okada 2000: 220).
The Kyoto school influenced geographical education in those days (Komaki 1942f:
56; Muroga 1942b: 83-85). For example, they published many articles in major
education circle magazines– Nihon Kyōiku (Japanese Education) and Kōa Kyōiku(Education of Rising Nations in Asia), etc. – and participated in the committee that
prepared geographical textbooks (Ozaki 1979: 3-7).
In addition, their geopolitical world view carried by Radio Tokyo (the overseas
broadcast by NHK) created a sensation in the USA (Komaki 1942d). Selden C.
Menefee, a specialist in the field of radio propaganda, wrote, “Future historians
may well rate the ‘Komaki Memorial’ as the most significant document to come outof Japan during this war” (Menefee 1943: 332). It is significant that Komaki was awell-known Japanese geographer in the USA at the time (Fifield and Pearcy 1944:
20; Menefee 1942).
As a result, the Kyoto school of Japanese geopolitics made a contribution to theimprovement of the status of geography as a discipline. For example, the Chirigaku
Bukai (the committee on geography) was newly organized in the Nihon Gakujut su
Shinkōkai (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) that had a strong influenceon academic circles (Monbu-shō Kyōgaku-kyoku 1942; Nihon Chiri Gakkai 1975:
33-34), and the Kyoto school succeeded in participating in various social activities.

The Kyoto school after the war
Soon after the defeat of Japan in the Asia-Pacific War, several officers fromthe Allied General Headquarters visited the Department of Geography at Kyoto
Imperial University in order to command Komaki to reproduce reports on the
Asia-Pacific region that were written during wartime (Komaki 1980; Murakami
1999a: 53). However, Komaki declined this command, because he had alreadybroken up the Sōgō Chiri Kenkyūkai (Murakami 1999a: 53). This fact is not irrelevant to Komaki’s reputation in the USA which was previously mentioned.
Almost all members of the Kyoto school resigned from their posts in 1945 or 1946

62

(Murakami 1999b: 63-66). Furthermore, Komaki was purged from public postson the orders of the Allied Forces in 1947 for having served as director of the Dai
Nihon Genron Hōkokukai (Shibata 2005, 2007: 15-16). Some other members of
the school were purged from public posts because they had published geopoliticalbooks (Asai 1980: 6; Murakami 1999b: 63-66; Yonekura 1999: 21). Most of the books
published by the Kyoto school during wartime were collected and disposed of byGeneral Headquarters. The reason for this is that these books were regarded as
objects of confiscation (Senryōshi Kenkyūkai 2005).
With the end of the Allied occupation in 1952, most members of the Kyoto schoolof geopolitics found posts in newly-created universities and other institutions.
For example, Komaki obtained a professorship and then became president of thenational university in Shiga (Shibata 2005, 2007: 15-16). Although he did not
publish geopolitical works, he continued to have faith in “Japanese geopolitics”
even after the Asia-Pacific War, partly because he knew of the fact that a doctoral
dissertation which made an affirmative evaluation of his geopolitics was publishedin the USA (Horiuchi 1975; Komaki 1980). Many of his former students who had
been allotted specific area studies renewed their geographical work in foreigncountries and became authorities in their respective areas of study, but without theformer geopolitical overtones (Bekki 1960; Yonekura 1960). However, some of themalso, like Komaki, had a lot of confidence in their geopolitics (Okada 2000: 250-252;
Shibata 2007: 15-16).

Concluding Remarks
Up till now, I have examined both ideological and practical aspects of the Kyoto
school of Japanese geopolitics. In this final chapter I will make some concluding
remarks about the characteristics of the ideas and practices of the school. Also, I
would like to make some suggestions derived from the ideas and practices of theschool.
First, the reason why the Kyoto school succeeded in participating in various social
activities was that they had a strong connection with the military authorities. They
were also able to start research on geopolitics and publish many books and articles
owing to this connection. Therefore I would like to emphasize that this connection
is very important in understanding the ideas and practices of the Kyoto school.
Second, it is clear that the practical activities of the Kyoto school had a social
impact. Their geopolitical arguments made from the viewpoint of Japan had astrong influence on academic circles and the press in both the domestic as well
as foreign spheres during the Asia-Pacific War. For example, their geopoliticalworld views had an effect on the geographical understanding of the world andon geographical education at that time. However, it was also true that theirgeopolitical area studies were in this sense paradoxical, since they were basedon Westerners’ contributions. The Kyoto school suggested important problems

63

concerning ‘the concept of value’ (Fukushima 1997: 419) and positionality ingeographical research, especially in non-Western countries, and the politics of thenature of geographical knowledge and the status of geography as a discipline.
Third, the Kyoto school also suggested important problems concerning the difficulty of Pan-Asianism. That is to say, it was certain that the Pan-Asianism thatthey advocated had significance as an alternative ideology to Western imperialism.
However, it did not function at all as a logic of unity for Asian people. For example,
Komaki’s lecture conducted in Manchukuo was rejected by Chinese people (Liu
1993). The reason for this is that the Kyoto school’s Pan-Asianism was an extensionof the idea of a communal state centred on the Tenno family applied to the“Asian community” as a whole. In addition, the Kyoto school could not completely
relativize not only Western knowledge but also Japan itself, and served to justify
the aggressive war of the Japanese Empire. So we have to sufficiently recognize
the ambivalent and debatable nature of Pan-Asianism and continue to question theconcepts of “Asia” and “the West.”
Last, I should emphasize that these problems suggested by the Kyoto schoolof Japanese geopolitics are not merely problems of the past. Therefore, we must
recognize and discuss these problems again and again with people from many disciplines and nationalities.

Acknowledgements

The main outline of this paper was presented at the Twelfth Asian Studies
Conference Japan in June 2008 (at Rikkyo University). This research received
financial aid from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science through grantsin-aid (no. 07J07978 and 09J01446).

Notes1) I am not concerned in this paper with the Kyoto school’s participation in strategy
deliberations of the Imperial Japanese Army. Please refer to Kobayashi andNarumi (2008) and Kobayashi et al . (2010) for further detail.
2) Komaki was a specialist in historical and prehistoric geography, especially withregard to the reconstruction of historical landscapes and interpretation of pastlandscapes (Komaki 1937).

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FigureFigure 1. Portrait of Komaki Saneshige (1938)

Figure 2. Bibliography of Komaki written byhimself

Figure 3. Research meeting at a rented housenear Kyoto Imperial University (November
1939)

Figure 4. Routes of Invasion of Asia byWestern powers
Source: Nihon Kyōiku , January 1942.

Figure 5. Front cover of Nihon Chiseigaku
Sengen by Komaki (1940)

Figure 6. Geopolitical world view of the Kyoto
schoolSource: Komaki 1944b: 143.

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Table
Table 1. Composition of “Sekai chiri seiji taikei ”

Contents

AuthorKomaki Saneshige
Yonekura Jirō
Muroga Nobuo

Japan
Manchuria and China
Indochina
Dutch East Indies

Bekki Atsuhiko

Pacific Ocean
Australia
Siberia, Mongolia and Tibet
India
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Arabia
Turkey, Syria and Palestine
EuropeAfricaNorth America
Central and South America
The North and South Pole

Published Year
Unpublished
1944.6
1941.11
1941.9Bekki Atsuhiko
Wada Shunji
Mikami Masatoshi
Asai Tokuichi
Matsui Taketoshi

UnpublishedUnpublishedUnpublished1942.7
Unpublished

Noma Saburō
Noma Saburō
Tomonaga Yōjirō
Kawakami Kiyoshi
Shibata Takao
Komaki Saneshige and
Kawakami Kiyoshi

1942.11
UnpublishedUnpublishedUnpublishedUnpublished1942.3

Table 2. Contents of “Shin sekai chishi ” (1942)

Subject Area of Article(Idea of their “new geography”)
South Asia
Latin America
Australia and New Zealand
North America
India
Manchuria and China
AfricaSiberia and Alaska
EuropeSouthwest Asia
The North and South Pole

AuthorKomaki Saneshige
Matsui Taketoshi
Bekki Atsuhiko
Wada Shunji
Kobata Akira
Asai Tokuichi
Yonekura Jirō
Tomonaga Yōjirō
Mikami Masatoshi
Noma Saburō
Matsui Taketoshi
Kawakami Kiyoshi

Month Published
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
AugustSeptember
OctoberNovember
December

71

Between Two Homes:

Gentaro Tanahashi and His Thoughts and Practices concerning
Kyodo (Homeland) and Katei (Family Home)FUKUDA Tamami*
1. Introduction
It is critical to find a Japanese equivalent for the English word “home.” It isespecially difficult for us to express the deep meaning of home, which geographers
have explored over the past dozen years or so within the framework of geographiesof home.1) The English word “home” is generally translated into Japanese as katei ,which means “family home.” The word katei was introduced into Japanese society
with the intention of constructing modern family relations at the beginning of the
Meiji era, the dawn of modern Japan (Yamazaki 2006). In the 1890s, society aspired
to a new kind of family, placing an unusually high value on happy family life andthe emotional relationships among family members (Muta 1990). In the process ofmodernization and Westernization, Japanese people found the Western word “home”
to represent an ideal image of family life. A number of scholars in women’s studies
have studied the modern conditions of home (e.g., Ueno 1994; Nishikawa 1994;
Muta 1996; Wakakuwa 1995; Kageyama 2004; Tama 2006). Their research themes
differ, but they all shed light on the following: the intimate, private, and domestic
aspects of the family in which all members—parents and children, husband andwife—have strong and affective bonds; the separation between domesticity andpublic life; the isolation of domestic life from industrialized and commercializedsociety; and the academic insensitivity to the domestic sphere. They uncovered thegender division of labor—women as domestic workers and men as public workers—
and relativized the modern family as a historical phenomenon.
However, the word “home” is not limited to a family home. Blunt (2009) defines
home as “an emotive place and spatial imagination that encompasses lived experiences of everyday, domestic life alongside a wider sense of being and belonging in
the world.” Thus, home is both concrete and abstract, both a real place to live anda relationship in which people feel comfortable. Further, the spatial scale of homealso varies, ranging from personal to regional and national (Duncan and Lambern
2004). Home is never limited to a domestic scale. Rather, as shown by recent*Osaka Prefecture University, JAPAN

72

studies, home can be fluid and relational, and associated with “moving,” whichmight seem to be totally opposite to the essence of home. This point is suggestive forthe geographical community in Japan, where geographies of home focusing on thedomestic scale have not really been investigated, while there has been considerable
research on kyodo (homeland) (e.g., Kyodo Kenkyu-kai 2003; Shimazu 2010). Somegeographers have paid much attention to the close connection between kyodo andthe geographical imagination in modern Japan. This paper takes particular note of
the recent consideration of home and the wealth of studies on kyodo in Japan. Can
we find a perspective bridging kyodo and katei ? We can point out both similarities
and differences between home as katei (family home) and home as kyodo (homeland).
Both senses of home are important concepts that were introduced in Japan during
modernization and played crucial roles in Japan’s enlightenment. On the other
hand, both senses of home were implanted and operated in different social systems
and practices. Diverse epistemic communities committed to them, various media
represented them, and consequently they were systematically investigated withindifferent academic frameworks. It might be true that consideration by diverse disciplines produced fruitful results. However, is it possible to suggest a way to consider
both homes together? That is a possible direction in which geographies of home
may move forward.
This paper focuses primarily on the thoughts and practices of Gentaro Tanahashi,
who played an important part in modern Japanese society. Gentaro Tanahashi(1869–1961) was a leader in the museological community in Japan, as shown by thetitle of his biography Tanahashi Gentaro: His Life Dedicated to Museums (Miyazaki1992). However, museums are not the only things to which he dedicated himself.
He was an influential person who was involved in various activities such as naturalscience education in schools, social education, and a movement to improve living
conditions, as well as the development of museums in Japan. Using the museum
as a core, he was active in various fields of school education, social education, andcommunity hygiene. Perhaps his greatest contribution was his deep involvementin the two kinds of home throughout his various endeavors. The question is how herecognized and made active the use of both homes—kyodo and katei —. By focusing
on his thoughts and practices during the early twentieth century, this paper
discusses the relationship that exists between kyodo and katei .

2. Gentaro Tanahashi’s life in the educational world(1) Recent critics on his achievement

Over the last couple decades, numerous studies concerning Tanahashi havebeen carried out. Reviews were predominantly performed from the perspective ofmuseology and museum studies since Tanahashi was a forerunner of museology
and the development of Japanese museums, and an honorary member of the International Council of Museums2) from 1957 until his death in 1961. For example,

73

Shiina (1978, 1981) referred to Tanahashi in a series of his detailed discussionsof the history of Japanese museums; Sato (1998, 2009) and Fukui (2004, 2006a,
2006b, 2007) focused on the Educational Museum and Tanahashi’s theories
of education; and Fukuda (2007) took particular note of Tanahashi’s legacy tochildren’s museums. They all paid a great deal of attention to the educational roleof museums.
A number of other studies discussed Tanahashi’s thoughts and practices related
to school education. Uchikawa (2004) demonstrated that Elizabeth Phillips Hughes,
a Welsh scholar, teacher, and promoter of women’s education, exerted a profound
impact on Tanahashi’s thoughts, and Saito (1998) pointed out the relationshipbetween Tanahashi’s museum theory and his theories on school education. Fromthe viewpoint of the subject of pedagogy, Miyawaki (1996) and Iwasaki (2000)
discussed Tanahashi’s methods of teaching science, and a series of reports by Ishida
and Koide (Ishida and Koide 1998a, 1998b, 1999; Koide and Ishida 1998) dealt
with Tanahashi’s commitment to handicraft education, which was introduced into
the Japanese elementary school curriculum in the late 1880s. Moreover, kyodo(homeland) and katei (family home), were referred to in several papers. Some
investigated Tanahashi’s commitment to kyodo museums and kyodo education fromthe museological and educational viewpoints (Uchikawa 1990, 1994; Ikushima
2006; Uchiyama 2007). Others referred to exhibitions concerning the family homeorganized by Tanahashi in a historical study of the “scientification of life” (Yamamoto
1997).
The fact that scholars commented on the works of Tanahashi from a number ofdifferent perspectives is a testament to the wide range of his activities. He was an
educator and actively promoted within the world of social education and museology.
As such, he cannot be evaluated within a single academic discipline. However,any evaluation of him is never separate from the subdisciplines, including school
subjects and museology. Is it possible for us to break down the boundaries of his
social positions and academic disciplines and to study geographies of home? This
paper is an attempt to remove these boundaries and to consider Tanahashi’s
commitment to the two types of home during his different life stages. Prior to 1945
Tanahashi’s life can be divided into three periods: 1) when he dedicated himself
to school education, especially natural science education and the development ofobject lessons; 2) when he was involved in social education during his term as asecretary of the Tokyo Educational Museum; and 3) when he developed museum
theory during his work with the Red Cross Museum and the Japanese Associationof Museums.

(2) Tanahashi and kyodo (homeland)

Gentaro Tanahashi, born in 1869 in Kida Village, Gifu, began to study at schooland pursue the vocation of teaching at the time when the modern educational
system was institutionalized and Pestalozzi’s educational philosophy, including

74

object lessons, was introduced in Japan. He began his teaching career as anelementary school teacher in Gifu. During this time, he continued to study naturalscience education at Tokyo Normal School and began to teach students who would
become teachers at normal schools. In parallel to his work at the normal school, he
wrote regularly about the development of teaching materials for natural science foran educational journal, Kyoiku-jiron . This phase falls under the category of the first
period mentioned above.
Thus, he studied teaching methodologies that focused on kyodo in naturalscience and developed object lessons. He also published several papers on this
topic in educational journals. In 1901, he began to address kyodo more actively.
It is important to note that he zealously provided education based on kyodo one
year after the revision of the educational ordinance in 1900. It is thought that therevision moved kyodo into the background of the educational field and curriculum,
and homeland education reached a plateau that lasted until the beginning of
the Showa era. Nevertheless, he began to evaluate kyodo thoroughly at school.
For example, he published a paper entitled “Kyodo as a basic form of education”(Tanahashi 1901a) in the journal Kyoiku-jikken-kai. He discussed homeland
education in a chapter of the book Teaching Methods in Natural Science (1901b). In
1902, he published papers focused on homeland education in the journals Kokuminkyoiku, Kyoiku-kai , and Kyoiku-jiron (1902a, b, c). His book on teaching methods
that use practical lessons was published in 1903 (Tanahashi 1903). At that time, as
an active school teacher, his interest in kyodo blossomed out of his original interestin natural science education and object lessons.
The second period began after his appointment as secretary of the Tokyo Educational Museum3) in 1906. At that time, the Tokyo Educational Museum was simply
a museum that demonstrated new teaching materials to educators. However, after
Tanahashi traveled to Germany and the United States in 1909 to study contemporary teaching methods in the natural sciences, he recognized the importance ofmuseums as modern visual institutions. The museums of these countries were more
popular with pupils and used enthusiastically by them. In contrast, he noted thatJapanese museums, which were new at the time, were not actively used (1919a).
His ideal museum was one that carried out energetic activities for the people’s
enlightenment and for school education, and played the role of an institution for
national education. He considered this kind of museum to be absolutely necessary
for Japan to be internationally competitive. Hence, with his up-to-date knowledge
and great efforts, the activities of the Tokyo Educational Museum changed dramatically. The museum was transformed from an institution focused on school education
to an institution that was open to the public. Tanahashi insisted that museums
for diffusing scientific knowledge to the public were needed at both national andregional levels. His commitment to museums stemmed from his early interestin the use of object lessons in schools. However, it is interesting to note that theword kyodo disappeared from his writings and lectures during this period. Did he75

consider that kyodo played the most important role in object lessons? While he paida great deal of attention to museums for the public, why did he stop referring tokyodo at that time? This paper considers the absence of the word kyodo later.
Let us move to the third period. In 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed
the Tokyo Education Museum. In 1925, Tanahashi quit his job at the museum andtraveled to Europe to continue his exploration of kyodo . During the time that heworked energetically for the Red Cross Museum and the Japanese Association ofMuseums, he attempted to combine the concept of kyodo with museum activities.
At that time, kyodo again became a subject of increasing interest in education. For
example, in his paper “Consideration of homeland education” (1931), Tanahashi
described kyodo exhibition facilities that used different spatial scales. He suggested
the development of three kinds of museums: 1) local data exhibition rooms to
be developed at the school district level; 2) a home museum to educate people,
especially young people, at the regional level; and 3) a museum located in a central
city, which would provide information related to kyodo to nonresidents, including
tourists. He also explored the relationship between kyodo and museums on a larger
scale outside the framework of school education. He clarified this in his paper “Public
education and home museums” (1933), which stated that one of the principal
purposes of a home museum was to heighten the levels of people’s education andimprove their lives. No less important is the fact that he gave the term kyodo a
specific meaning. Although he did not clearly define the scale of kyodo , he statedthat kyodo was a place in which people belong as members of society. He believed
people could understand social solidarity by gaining a better understanding of
kyodo .

(3) Tanahashi and katei (family home)

Let us conduct an overview of Tanahashi’s commitment to katei . During the first
period, as an educator who began his career as a natural science teacher, Tanahashi
became aware of the concept of katei (family home) by teaching homemaking at
school. Officially, the school subject kajika (homemaking) was deleted from theelementary school curriculum in 1886. It was revised as part of the natural sciencecurriculum for schoolgirls in 1911. However, Tanahashi (1904) published a paperon homemaking education in the educational journal Kyoiku-gakujutsukai in 1904,
seven years before this revival.4) In that paper, he described an instance in which
he substituted for a female teacher. He taught childcare to third- and fourth-grade
girls at a higher elementary school as one of the topics related to homemaking.
Judging from the fact that he published an article related to homeland education in
the journal Kokumin-kyoiku in 1902 (Tanahashi 1902), we might surmise that hebegan discussing homemaking education around the same time. On the other hand,
he frequently published papers focused on natural science education and kyodo(homeland) education during that period. He also provided lessons on handcraft
techniques and homemaking in school education that relied on his knowledge of

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natural science education. In other words, based on his work in natural scienceeducation, he intended to examine people’s residences and workplaces.
Let us now turn to the second period of Tanahashi’s career. After he returned
from Europe and the USA, Tanahashi published the results of his survey of current
homemaking education that included a review of curricula and educational facilities in the countries he had visited (Tanahashi 1912). He observed laundry andcooking rooms in schools in the same manner as he saw laboratories, and insisted
on regional differences in homemaking education. As mentioned in the previous
section, he was fascinated by the active and popular museums in Europe and theUSA. As a result, he opened the Tokyo Educational Museum to the public. He
regularly developed thematic exhibitions at the museum that focused on social anddomestic lives. Some of the exhibitions offered between 1916 and 1923 included
the following: the Prevention of Leprosy Exhibition presented in 1916; the War
and Science Exhibition presented in 1917; the Food Sanitation and Economics
Exhibition , Prevention of Smallpox Exhibition , Recycling Exhibition , andHomemaking and Science Exhibition presented in 1918; the Disaster Prevention
Exhibition and Improvement of Living Exhibition presented in 1919; the “Time”
Exhibition presented in 1920; the Mineral Resource and Civilization Exhibition
presented in 1920; the Physical Exercise Exhibition and Consumers’ Economy
Exhibition presented in 1922; and the Engine Exhibition presented in 1923
(National Museum of Nature and Science 1977). This list demonstrates that themuseum featured topics directly related to the home and to people’s ways of life.
Of these, the Homemaking and Science Exhibition , held between November 1918
and January 1919, was the most popular and influential. The exhibition addresseda wide range of domestic issues including clothing, food, housing, hygiene, andchildcare. It proposed that modern homes and homemaking were ideally suited
to the demands of the new times. The Homemaking and Science Exhibition was a
popular exhibition that received about 50,000 visitors. After the exhibition closed,

Figure 1. The front page of Shin-katei in 1918.

77

some of the displayed materials were loaned to commercial exhibitions held inOsaka and Aichi Prefectures. A special issue of the magazine Shin-katei publishedin 1918 featured the exhibition in detail (Figure 1). Moreover, taking this opportunity, people from both the public and private sectors promoted the establishment
of Seikatsu Kaizen Domeikai (the Union of Life Improvement). Tanahashi, as an
executive director, actively promoted the diffusion of the idea of life improvement.
The third period is when Tanahashi dedicated himself to his duties for the Red
Cross Museum and the Japanese Association of Museums upon his return from
Europe. During this period, he never discussed homemaking education in schools.
Simultaneous with his development of a museum theory that focused on kyodo, aspart of his work at the Red Cross Museum he organized hygiene exhibitions that
often addressed domestic lives. The first issue of The Bulletin of the Red Cross
Museum , published in 1927, includes a detailed explanation of the permanent
exhibition. Two of the three rooms illustrated the organization and history of theJapanese Red Cross. The third room was devoted to social hygiene. In particular,
it focused on home hygiene, such as food, clothing, and shelter. Furthermore,
Tanahashi curated many special exhibitions that focused on people’s ways of lifethat coordinated with activities conducted by the Red Cross Museum. Home anddomestic ways of life became the focus of his museum activities.

3. Tanahashi’s conception of two homes(1) Home as kyodo

How did Tanahashi define kyodo ? Let us investigate his conception of kyodo in
the first and third periods described above. In the first period, he was involved in
kyodo education (homeland education) and often referred to kyodo . The description
in his paper “Kyodo as a basic form of education” (Tanahashi 1901a) shows thatkyodo was a starting point for practical lessons based on object lessons influenced
by Pestalozzi’s educational ideas; the advanced educational system of Heimatkunde ; an integrated study of local history, geography, and natural history inGermany; and the concrete illustration of teaching methods in the Elementary
School attached to Tokyo Normal School. It is clear that kyodo was always
positioned within the context of teaching methods. His paper “Teaching kyodo ”(1902a) supplied the following definition of kyodo : 1) it was suitable for teachingboth subjectively and objectively, 2) it was a model of a country or the earth andincluded everything necessary to learn about the earth (these thoughts stemmed
from German geographers, especially Carl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt),
and 3) it was a unit for teaching. More importantly, kyodo was defined as a whole,including the natural world and human existence. We can also find his sense of
kyodo in his paper “On the Teaching Method of Geographical Materials” (1902c). He
insisted that kyodo should be treated as a natural domain, not as a historical andpolitical domain. His insistence can be considered partly as a strong criticism of

78

the former conditions of teaching kyodo in the classroom. He was critical of the factthat although object lessons based on local things were suggested in 1891, many
schools taught kyodo using a book that was edited and published by an administrative unit.
After the period when the word kyodo disappeared from his writings and lectures,
he returned to kyodo through his activities in the Red Cross Museum and theJapan Association of Museums. It is worth noting that he emphasized kyodo again
through museum activities, partly because of the changing society in the late 1920s
and the early 1930s, after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. In Japan, therestructuring of society was urgently needed for the progress of urbanization andthe devastated countryside. He considered a museum to be an effective, enlightening institution that was indispensable for social restructuring.
Kyodo garnered increasing interest in educational circles again at that time. In
1930, Kyodo Kyoiku Renmei (the Local Education League) was founded, and anational subsidy for setting up local data study and exhibition rooms was provided
to normal schools. While these rooms were located in schools, the number of homemuseums that would serve the public was increasing. Under these circumstances,
he developed his ideas, which combined the idea of kyodo with museums. For
example, we see in his paper “Consideration of homeland education” (Tanahashi1931) that he mentioned exhibition facilities for kyodo at different spatial scales.
He also explored the relationship between kyodo and museums on a larger scaleoutside the framework of school education. This was clarified in his paper “Public
education and home museums” (1933), which stated that one of the principal
purposes of a home museum was to heighten the level of people’s education forthe sake of improving their lives. No less important is the fact that he gave theterm kyodo a specific meaning. Though he did not clearly state the extent of theboundaries of kyodo , he defined kyodo as a place where people belong as membersof society and where people could get an idea of social solidarity through comprehension of kyodo . For that purpose, he said it was absolutely necessary for people
to understand both the good and bad points of their kyodo and to feel a sense of
responsibility for the area’s renewal and development.
Returning to the definition of kyodo Tanahashi tried to promote, as the presenceof kyodo declined in education and law around 1900, Tanahashi’s definition of
kyodo as a model of the earth in teaching natural science and practical lessons was
not stressed at this time. In the relationship between kyodo and museums, theprevious purpose of understanding the objective natural world fell behind in importance compared to the responsibility of a member of society.
In his book Home Museums (1932), which epitomizes his museum theory,
Tanahashi first cited an example from Europe and the USA and confirmed the ideaof kyodo with an emphasis on natural science and practical lessons. He argued that
it was based on a certain place that expanded as one grew. Here we might find thetraces of his stress on the importance of kyodo as a part of object lessons. However,

79

the points he emphasizes have clearly altered. We can recognize the ideologicaltrend of the time in his descriptions that stressed the emotional side—that is, thelove for one’s home place—and connected the idea of kyodo not to the earth but tothe nation.

(2) Home as katei

Tanahashi’s commitment to katei began with school education. As alreadymentioned in 2(3), he made a trial practice of teaching kajika (homemaking
education), especially childcare, in March 1904 at a higher elementary school, andpublished a report that included teacher-student interaction in the class and his
brief comments (Tanahashi 1904). In this report, he insisted on two points. First,
teaching homemaking at school requires a basic scientific knowledge, and teaching
childcare requires a comprehensive knowledge of child psychology, physics,
chemistry, physiology, hygiene, and pedagogy; therefore, homemaking should betaught in a science class, not in a moral training class. Second, the teaching content
should be carefully selected from a viewpoint where the current condition of an
average student’s family home is considered as the standard. In the early 1900s,
he published an enormous number of papers and books about teaching methodology in elementary schools. They covered every school subject, including naturalscience, geography, kyodo education (homeland education), foreign language, and afield trip class, but his focus was on natural science and objective lessons. Considering his work at this time, katei, as well as kyodo , was a starting point for object
lessons and natural science education. This was highlighted in his paper (Tanahashi1912), which was written after his travels to Germany and the USA. The purposeof his travel was to study teaching methods in natural science. It is important tonote that he also observed homemaking education in these countries in addition to
studying the current conditions of natural science education. He remarked that hestudied homemaking education because it was closely connected to natural scienceeducation. It can be said that homemaking education was part of, or a women’s
version of, natural science education for him.
While he didn’t form a definition of katei when he was involved in school
education, Tanahashi made a definite statement of his concept of katei anddomestic life after successfully producing the Homemaking and Science Exhibition
held at the Tokyo Educational Museum in 1918–1919. What did the concept of katei
mean to him? Based on a close examination of his writings, the following suggestions can be made.
Tanahashi placed significant emphasis on scientific knowledge and attitudes inschool education. He wrote,
When we step into a home, we may find that people donʼt respect science. They often act unscientifically andprimitively. They donʼt recognize any necessity for scientific applications. They just maintain unscientificways of life. Consequently, they misspend their time and labor. (Tanahashi 1918a)

80

He highlighted the absence of scientific applications in the home and argued
that homes, as well as manufacturing plants, should apply scientific knowledge(Tanahashi 1918b). What does he mean by the term “scientific knowledge”? Basedon his frequent comments on Western society, this term might mean modern
and Western knowledge based on rationality. Tanahashi may have promoted the“scientification of life,” a slogan used by movements devoted to the improvement ofpeople’s ways of life that flourished during the early twentieth century in Japan.
However, it is important to note that he also relied on people’s mental attitudes.
For example, he stressed the value of industriousness and simplicity. Scientification
implies the application of scientific knowledge to homes and factories, as well as topeople’s practices and attitudes.
In addition, Tanahashi directly appealed to women, in particular to middleclass and urban women. He assumed that women would play crucial roles in the
improvement of home and domestic life. Therefore, he believed they needed tolearn scientific knowledge at school and at various exhibitions. Looking back at theprevious section’s list of special exhibitions held in the Tokyo Education Museum,
we can see that he selected the topics and organized these exhibitions for women.
In addition, he often contributed articles to women’s magazines such as Fujin-kai(Tanahashi 1919b, 1921) and made general comments on the improvement ofpeople’s ways of living as an expert in the magazine Fujin-no-tomo in 1919.
However, he never believed homemaking was solely women’s work. Women played
reproductive roles at home. The development of healthy and productive homes
contributed to the development of a prosperous country and a strong army. Thus, atthat time, the concept of home was constituted within the social context.

4. Between kyodo and katei
Here, we will again focus on the second period in Tanahashi’s career. Table 1
shows his commitment to the two homes: kyodo and katei . It is noteworthy that
he did not write about home as kyodo during that period. In my previous paper(Fukuda 2011) focusing on Tanahashi’s idea of kyodo , I just pointed out the absence
Table 1. Tanahashi’s commitment to the two homes

the 1st period
home askyodo

Kyodo education(homeland
education) at school

the 2nd period

the 3rd period

Not stated

Kyodo museum(home museum)Museum exhibition Museum exhibition
home as Kajika (homemaking
and home, especially and home, especiallyeducation) at school
katei
home hygiene
domestic lives

81of kyodo but could not develop the further consideration, However the conception ofa home as a multiscale site—in other words, my comparison of Tanahashi’s social
activities in relation to katei and kyodo —provides another perspective. Consider
that he became consistently focused on the concept of home. Would it be possible
to conclude that his interest in the concept of home might not have included kyodo
during that period?
If this assumption is plausible, then his concept of home was both fluid andelastic. The value of home—kyodo and katei —served as a type of incubator for themodern scientific knowledge that Tanahashi attempted to teach students and thegeneral population. During the first period, home always served as a site wherescientific knowledge was taught in school. Home could be divided into two school
subjects: homeland education and homemaking education. We must not neglect thedifferences in the foundations of their individual school curricula. While homeland
education was characterized as a core of integrated study (which formed a bridge
between geography, natural science, and history), homemaking education was
initially a part of natural science. However, it is significant to note that Tanahashi
got involved in the concept of home during the period when these two trends inmodern Japanese education intersected, and that object lessons were at this intersection. The former was intended for all elementary school pupils, and the latter
was intended only for girls.
It is also worth considering that a museum was used to connect kyodo and katei .
What did a museum represent to him? We need to return to his influential book,
Educational Institutions that are Visually Appealing to the Public (Tanahashi1930). A museum represented an effective body of material and a representational
device that Tanahashi could employ. If a home served as an incubator for scientificknowledge, then a museum offered a stage for the visual presentation of scientific knowledge. In other words, a home and a museum worked together to help
Tanahashi achieve his educational goal of promoting people’s scientific knowledge
during that period.
How should we view the absence of kyodo during the second period? Let us returnto the shift of his attention from school education to museology and focus on his
consistent belief in the concept of home. We need to further examine the connection
between the introduction of the modern institution of museums and the two types
of home. Because Tanahashi recognized the advantageous effect of museums, hehad been using museums to disseminate the latest scientific knowledge concerning
katei (family home) and domestic life. During the second period, he tried to do thisat the Tokyo Educational Museum in tandem with a social movement to improve
people’s lives, and during the third period he did it at the Red Cross Museum. In
contrast, the tie between museums and kyodo (homeland) was a little late. Though
he appreciated the visual power of museums when he traveled to Europe for the
first time, it was not until he went to Europe again in 1925 to inspect the current
conditions of social education in these countries that he began to envisage the kyodo

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museum (home museum). It is in 1932 that he published one of his outstanding
works, Home Museums (Tanahashi 1932). In this book, he described the Altonaer
Museum in Germany as a model for kyodo museums and introduced the theory ofhome museums delivered by Otto Lehmann, the director of the Altonaer Museum.
The lag between katei and kyodo can be explained from two viewpoints: global
trends in museums and political conditions in the educational field in Japan.
Finally, we have to mention the other characteristic common to the two types
of home. Both kyodo and katei were considered as starting points where scientific knowledge and attitudes were taught, but they were not only objective—theywere also thought of as emotional and affective. They were the places where one’s
identity as a member of a group was constituted at the local and familiar levels.

5. Conclusion
This paper examined the concept of home as represented by Gentaro Tanahashi.
Following my previous paper (Fukuda 2011), it focused particular attention on
Tanahashi’s second period, during which he served as secretary of the Tokyo
Educational Museum, and discussed the relationship that exists between kyodo(homeland) and katei (family home). Both types of home were investigatedseparately, but a cross-disciplinary and multiscale examination is required when
we discuss Tanahashi’s commitment to the two types of home. No, they were notoriginally divided. From the beginning, Tanahashi had only one concept of home,which was fluid and multiscale. Investigation of Tanahashi’s thinking about homeprovides a clue for considering such characteristics of home. For him, home was animportant object in the education of scientific knowledge. At the same time, it wasalso thought of as appealing to people’s sentiments. At its core, he may have foundthe modern institution of museums to be an emotional apparatus.
This paper is merely a starting point for going more deeply into the meaning ofhome in the Japanese context. It now offers us the possibility of developing geographies of home in Japan. Consideration of home is needed not only for the study ofgeographical imagination in modern times but also to critically examine current
conditions concerning the two types of home.

Notes1) Regarding research trends in the geographies of home, see a comprehensive bookand the following review articles: Domosh 1998; Blunt 2005; Blunt and Dowling
2006; Fukuda 2008. In the 2000s, two geographical journals featured articles on“home”: “Domesticity and Other Homely Spaces of Modernity” in Antipode 35(3),2003, and “Geographies of Home” in Cultural Geographies 11(1), 2004.
2) The International Council of Museums is an organization of museums andmuseum professionals with a global scope committed to the promotion and83

protection of natural and cultural heritage—present and future, tangible andintangible—established in 1946.
3) It was a predecessor of the National Museum of Nature and Science.
4) Noda (1986) thought that Tanahashi’s approach was a strong initiative forrika-kaji (homemaking education in natural science).

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methods of geographical materials),” Kyoiku-kai 1(10): 34-40. (J)Tanahashi, G. 1903. Jinjo shogaku niokeru jikka kyojuho (Teaching jikka inelementary school). Konko-do. (J)Tanahashi,G. 1904. “Kajika kyoju (Homemaking education),” Kyoiku-gakujutsukai
9(1): 51-53. (J)Tanahashi,G. 1912. “Oubei niokeru kajika kyoju no jissai (The current condition ofhomemaking education in Europe and America),” Kyoiku-kenkyu 96: 8-15. (J)Tanahashi,G. 1918a. “Kajikagaku tenrankai nitsuite (the Homemaking and Science
Exhibition),” In Shin-katei rinjizokan Kajikagaku tenrankai , 2-5, Genbun-sha. (J)Tanahashi, G. 1918b. “Kajikagaku tenrankai no kaisai nitsukite (Hosting theHomemaking and Science Exhibition),” Kyoiku-jiron 1205: 6-8. (J)Tanahashi, G. 1919a. “Honpo shakaikyoiku no fushin (Inefficient social educationin Japan),” Kyoiku-jion 1214: 16-18. (J)Tanahashi, G. 1919b. “Wakaki shufu no kakusei (Awareness of young housewives),”
Fujin-kai 3(2): 2-6. (J)Tanahashi, G. 1921. “Kaizen subeki wagakuni no kekkon (Marriage in Japan needs
to be improved),” Fujin-kai 5(1): 17-21. (J)Tanahashi, G. 1930. Me ni uttaeru kyoiku kikan (Educational institutions that are
visually appealing to the public). Houbun-kan. (J)Tanahashi, G. 1931. “Kyodo kyoiku no ichi kousatsu (Consideration of homeland
education),” Kyoiku-kenkyu, 367: 37-43.(J)Tanahashi, G. 1933. “Koumin kyoiku to kyodo hakubutsukan (Public education andhome museums),” Koumin-kyoiku : 3(8): 20-22.(J)Tanahashi, G. 1932. Kyodo hakubutsukan (Home museums) . Toukou-shoin.(J)Uchikawa, T. 1990. “Kyodo kyoiku no hensen (Development of homeland education)(1),” Bulletin of Museology, Kokugakuin University 15: 54-65. (J)Uchikawa, T. 1994. “Kyodo kyoiku no hensen (Development of homeland education)(2),” Bulletin of Museology, Kokugakuin University 19: 1-10. (J)Uchikawa, T. 2004. “E.P. Hughes to Tanahashi Gentaro (E. P. Hughes and Tanahashi Gentaro),” The Journal of the Museological Society of Japan 29(2): 63-73. (J)Uchiyama, D. 2007. “Heimat and ‘community’ in museums and the exhibition: thegenealogy of the viewpoint of ‘synthesis’,” History and Folk Culture Studies 12:
49-63. (J)Ueno, C. 1994. Kindai kazoku no seiritsu to shuen (The formation and end of themodern family) . Iwanami-shoten. (J)Yamamoto, T. 1997. “A historical study of the ‘scientification of life’: scientificideology in the Taisho and the early Showa era,” Studies in Lifelong Learning and
Adult Education 21: 47-55. (J)Yamazaki, N. 2006. “‘Home training’ in modern times in Japan: the change of
positioning of ‘a housewife’ seen during the Meiji period,” The Bulletin of the
Graduate School, Soka University 28: 173-192. (J)Wakakuwa, M. 1995. Senso ga tsukuru joseizo (The image of women made bywars) . Chikuma-shobo. (J)87Influence of Colonial Urban Planning on a HistoricDistrict of Paris:
The Marais of Albert Laprade
ARAMATA Miyo*
1. Introduction
The protection of an urban area through recognition of its historic value has
been systematized since the middle of the 20th century in Europe.(1) A French law
in 1962, commonly known as the Malraux Act, is an example of this system. The
Marais district of Paris, which had already been mentioned in the deliberation overthis law, was designated as a secteur sauvegardé (SS, safeguarded sector) under
this law in 1964. Not being an object of Haussmann’s urban renovation in the 19th
century, this area was rediscovered for its charm in the first half of the 20th century
and the state decided to conduct urban planning there focused on the area’s historiccharacter.
Before this decision, there was a forerunner project in the southern part of the
district which started in the 1940s. This project was conducted by the local administration, the department of the Seine, and was the first operation of preservationof a historic district in France. Because it had some success, the project was raised
to the national level to be more regulated. This process seems to be important but
there are few studies about the project during that time.(2)One of the key people influencing the change of the local project to a national one
was the architect Albert Laprade. He participated in the project in the southernpart of the district in the 1940s, and suggested the entire Marais be treated as animportant area. His method was later implemented in the national project. Whatis interesting is that Laprade often referred to the Moroccan urban planning which
he participated in at the beginning of the French protectorate. Therefore, the plan
which he developed for the Marais was influence by the concepts which he learned
through colonial urban planning. In other words, French colonial urban planningwas connected to the later development of the capital city.
In this paper I will start with an overview of urban planning in Morocco during
the early protectorate era, particularly the planning of Casablanca. I will investigate how the architect was influenced by this and how he utilized it in the*Keisen University, JAPAN88

preservation of the Marais through an analysis of his texts and documents. Then
I will consider the impact of the colonial experience on the colonial power’s urban
planning.

2. The Protectorate of Morocco and urban planning
Morocco became a French and Spanish protectorate in 1912. France substantiallyruled the central part where the major cities were located. Morocco was the lastcountry to be taken over by France except for the mandate territories following
WWI. Therefore all the experience that France had gained from its colonies could
be applied there. In addition, geographical proximity to France made it possible
to engage people who had cutting-edge thinking and technology. Moroccan urban
planning during the early protectorate thus provided many elements which later
became reference points.
The most well-known novelty of colonial urban planning in Moroccan cities
was zoning.(3) It was a technique which had already been implemented in othercountries, but was not necessarily emphasized in France where the ideal situation
for living was seen as a mix of different people. The first case of zoning in thehistory of French urban planning was implemented in Morocco by the architect
Henri Prost, recipient of the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome.
In Moroccan cities, there were two roles of zoning. One was dividing industrial
and residential areas. Figure 1 represents the zoning of Casablanca. It shows theorientation of winds and we can see all possible sources of pollution were locatedFigure 1. Prost’s zoning plan of Casablanca (Cohen et Eleb 1998)

89

downwind, for example industrial areas, the cemetery, rail stations, a slaughterhouse, and barracks. Prost was a member of a sanitation research group in a social
reformist organization, the Musée social. It can be said that the plan consideringurban sanitary conditions of the city was a realization of his ideals.
The other role of zoning was to divide rulers and subjects. Just after the protectorate treaty, a big protest occurred in the capital city of Fez, and there weremore than 60 deaths on the French side alone.(4) Hubert Lyautay, the first
Resident-General, moved the capital from Fez to Rabat, which was a small cityon the Atlantic coast. Because the destruction of a historic city like Fez could
strengthen local resistance, Lyautay decided to build a new capital. In other cities
also, European developments were banned from entering the old parts known as“medinas.” Consequently, European areas were built outside of the medina andthey closely resembled European cities.
Casablanca, which developed rapidly as a port city at the beginning of the 20th
century, was also planned with this dual structure. An area marked VI in Figure 1
which faces the port is the old medina. It was a residential area for locals, but there
was a great deal of rural-urban migration to Casablanca which was developing into
the largest Moroccan city. A place to receive new arrivals was needed. So the Frenchplanned to construct a new residential district for locals on the route to inland
cities, which is also shown as VI. Albert Laprade elaborated a plan for this district
which was later called the Habous district.
Laprade was entrusted with making the new residential area for local people, thatis, in Arab fashion, according to French thought. Figure 2 is Laprade’s plan for this
district. There are houses in stucco, arcades with vines, and blocks structured byrelatively narrow streets. Its models were the old medinas of Rabat and Salé.

Figure 2. Plan for the Habous district (Archives Nationales 403 A.P.)

90

As there is a manhole in the picture on the right in Figure 2, a French sewage
system was planned there. Laprade later wrote: “It is for France a grand title ofglory to be able to register in the list of colonial works its efforts to improve hygieneand habitation for all the peoples of the Empire.”(6) According to him, Arab design
with French sanitary facilities signified the biggest favor which France could giveto locals.
However, it was not a plan conceived to fit local needs with respect to the people.
About the design of the district, Laprade said that he had tried to reproduce “theimpression of sloppiness which is so dear to Muslims.”(7) It shows that he did notseek to understand the city through local logic, and that he only expressed theEuropean’s outsider impressions. This one-sided outlook was also shown in the
choice of model, not the medina of Casablanca which was relatively new, but Rabat
and Salé which were older and more “authentic.” Cohen and Eleb (1998) evaluate
the Habous district as being akin to world exhibition pavilions. That is, it was notplanned for living but for appearance, like a transient event.
In addition, the Habous, which was constructed over a long period of time, could
not keep up with the influx of workers to Casablanca, and squatter areas calledbidonvilles spread along the edges of the city. Urban planning in Casablanca thenconcentrated on how to extinguish them. In that sense also, it can be said that the
Habous was just a result of France’s complacency, and it emphasized visually thedivision of rulers and subjects.
However, as Laprade recorded in his text about the district, the planning of
Habous had a grand influence on his thinking. In the next section, Laprade’s activities after returning to France will be examined.

3. Commitment to historicity
Laprade established his own office in Paris in 1919. Some of his commissions were
works related to his colonial experience, for example a Moroccan house in the ParisInternational University City, and a Moroccan pavilion in the colonial exposition in
1931. He created some buildings of cutting-edge design like the permanent Colonial
Museum, utilized now as the Immigration History Museum.
While such ties with Morocco were maintained, Laprade became interested in
the historic districts of Paris. The city administration proceeded with an urban
renovation in areas called “unsanitary blocks,” chosen for their high mortality
rates from tuberculosis. 17 blocks were chosen in 1921, and the first unsanitary
block (now the area containing the Pompidou Centre) which was evaluated as themost problematic was destroyed in 1934. There was a group of intellectuals against
this policy who insisted on protecting the historic center of the city in the 1930s;
Laprade was one of them.
His thinking was revealed in an article in L’Illustration entitled “The Metamorphosis of Paris, City of Art.”(8)91When one asks foreign friends about the reason for their stay among us, they admittedly praise thousandsof beauties: The Champs-Elysées, the Concorde, the incomparable greenery decoration of the Seine with the
spread of the palace. However, next to the grandiose and the exceptional, nothing delights them more thanpicturesque old streets, with unsuspected spiritual value. If the autochthonous spirit is raised every step, theframework is there for something! (…) For perpetual creation, for ferment of thoughts, certain atmospheres
are indispensable.

Gorgeous districts like the Concorde and the Champs-Elysées might be the greatthings about Paris, but according to Laprade, what attracted foreigners wereinstead picturesque old streets. There was “autochthonous spirit” and atmospherefor creation there. In Paris, which had presented a model view of a modern city,
what was valuable, for him, were areas left intact.
The urban renewal of the 19th century, which destroyed the old city and built widestraight streets, had been criticized by intellectuals from that time, as expressed in
Baudelaire’s oft-quoted passage of “The Swan.” However, it is also certain that theurban cityscape of Paris created as a result inspired artists of new eras such as the
Impressionists. Is it a stretch to compare the old streets of Paris with a colonial city
as a means to contrast the modern with the old? I would like to focus on the slightly
contemptuous word “autochthonous” used by Laprade. There was an idea with thisthat the appearance of a modern city was universal and areas left unchanged had
local character. It is this double structure that France created in Moroccan cities.
On the other hand, the autochthonous character in the capital of a large colonial
empire was not found in areas where the wealthy lived. The districts left intact
were those of low-income residents. People who lived there could be seen as “natives”
left out of modernity. Therefore, Laprade could use the above-cited adjective. He
did not see the residents at all. About the unsanitary blocks, he did not care, andeven said that it was good to destroy those situated on the periphery in order toconstruct a “radiant city” with a lot of green space.
Then how should they maintain the historic city? He referred to the experience of
Morocco in the same text:
Why, retaking an initiative of Lyautay in Morocco, do we not let them (poets) monitor our museum-districts
with such rich memories and beauty? They could perhaps explain to “technicians” some mysterious
contingencies, the need, for example, to protect at any cost houses “without interest” in appearance, but
playing a role of “pause,” in order to brighten some jewel-like houses.

What he suggested was not a technical method for protecting a historic city.
Rather he expressed the need for powerful initiatives and spirituality. The
important things were to decide to protect the areas and to leave decisions up to
people who could feel the atmosphere. This was exactly the orientation appliedin Morocco. It seems that Laprade thought of himself as a poet rather than atechnician. His greeting cards for the New Year had a reference to people such as

92

Père Goriot and Victor Hugo.(9)However, he did not ignore the technical aspects. He remarked on the method of
eliminating dense areas, which was utilized in Bern. The method called curetage(literary curettage), like the original meaning of the word, meant without touching
the outside, to tear down the dense portion inside. The idea was introduced in
the 1930s, and it would be often used as a method for the maintenance of historic
districts in France afterwards.
Laprade’s experience in Morocco may also have influenced him in this method.
Léandre Vaillat, who often wrote about Laprade’s works, published a text in 1931:
We believe generally (…) that it is enough to bring air into the city by opening wide roads with all kinds ofpiping. How, behind more or less monumental façades, there would be courtyards with wells, without air,without light, it does not matter! Yet (…) in the old city of Moroccan natives, the streets are narrow, but if you
enter the houses, through one of the entrances with a bayonet (…), you are in a patio large enough, where a
portico often surrounds a garden where geraniums, bananas, sometimes even a coconut grow. (…) It is withthinking about the proportion between street and courtyard that the architect (Laprade) started his work inorder to establish the plan of a new Medina. (10)What Laprade got from the experience of Morocco was not just the importanceof the historic character of the city. The creation of the Habous district gave him
both the idea and the technique for preserving a historic district. Then, how did herealize his idea in Paris?

4. Continuity of ideas
Among the 17 unsanitary blocks, the 16th block, which was situated in thesouthern part of the Marais, was investigated at an early stage because of its
centrality in Paris.(11) After the plans of 1936 and 1941, which proposed a total
demolition, the prefect of the department of the Seine decided to protect the historicity of the district and charged three architects with the project. Laprade wasone of the architects. He dealt with the western part of the 16th block with SaintGervais Church, and succeeded in revitalizing the area without destroying its
outlook by using the method of curetage (Figure 3). It was epoch-making enough to
be exhibited in an international exposition of urban planning in 1947.(12)
Laprade succeeded in the project from the other two architects and continued tomaintain the 16th block. He was asked to investigate a broader area to elaborate a
protect plan in 1957. It was almost the same area as the Marais. At that time, herequested that the city administration expand the historical bird’s-eye-view map of1739 (the Plan Turgot) to 1/2000, and to take aerial photos from the same angle as
the map, and the administration accepted.(13) Laprade thought the ideal state forthe area was that of the 18th century and tried to reproduce it.
He said in 1959 at the Commission of Old Paris: “The center of Paris must be apark where we will have an extremely rare joy of being able to walk around on

93foot.”(14) The lives of the residents did not exist in his vision. He also presented aplan to transfer economic activities to the suburbs. His ideal was that the historic
district of Paris would become a place of creation for poets.
He presented a more concrete plan for some specific areas with large curetage in1960. He was supposed to be the main architect for the Marais with a contract in
1964.(15) However, as the Marais was designated as an SS or safeguarded sector,
the state chose four other architects. Laprade was also advanced in age.
Yet the concepts of Laprade influenced these state appointed architects. There
were also meetings on at least 21 occasions from 1964 to 1968 among people who
had experience of the Marais project, and Laprade participated in them.(16) His
ideas were incorporated into the first preservation plan of the Marais. 22 aerial
photos were newly taken and a comparison with the Plan Turgot was also done.
Large curetage was supposed to create not only green space but also 10 hectares of
new construction sites in the heart of Paris.(17)This plan was approved by the city council of Paris in 1969. However, due tochanges in the political and social situation, significant changes were later forced
to be made in the preservation plan many times, and it took until 1996 for final
approval. But this does not signify that Laprade’s ideas were a temporary thing. As
gentrification has advanced in the district and cultural institutions like libraries
have increased, the Marais became a place of contemplation for intellectuals rather
than a locus of economic activity. Laprade could not continue his work there, but herealized his ideas. In this sense, a historic district brought about by colonial urban

Figure 3. Practice of Curetage in the 16th block (Pitt 2002)

94

planning took shape in the heart of the capital.

5. Conclusion
In this paper, I followed the footsteps of an architect who had an opportunity toengage in urban planning both in a colonial protectorate and in Paris. If we see thisas the initial experience of his career being utilized in subsequent works, it might
be viewed as a common occurrence. However, in the sense that a historic district, inwhich the authentic history of a country is embodied, could be created in relation
to an externalized history of a colony, the experience of this architect should not
be underestimated. Following the thoughts of the architect, there were colonial
features to the work in Paris, such as the neglect of residents’ lives. Because oflength constraints, I could not describe in detail the process of change of the Marais
into an intellectuals’ district, but the initial ideological background may have influenced it.
Traces of French rule in Moroccan cities can also be widely found. The characteristics of the residents of old and new cities differ greatly from the past. On the other
hand, there is also a movement to re-evaluate the architecture of that time. I would
like to discuss this in another article.

Notes1) Nishimura and the Research Group of Street Views 2000.
2) Gady (1993) showed in detail the local project but he did not indicate how it
connected to the project in the 1960s. The contents of sections 3 and 4 of thispaper were published in ARAMATA 2011.
3) Baudouï. 2001.
4) Belfquih et Fadloullah. 1986.
5) “Habous” means a religious mutual aid system and it was initially used toconstruct a mosque or a religious school. France re-interpreted it to be used forany buildings of local people (Luccioni 1982). This residential area of Casablanca
was also constructed with this system.
6) Laprade 1932-1935.
7) Laprade 1932-1935. Laprade left this district for other works in Rabat, and twoother architects, August Cadet and Edmond Brion, realized the plan.
8) L’Illustration, May 28, 1938.
9) Archives Nationales, 403 A.P. (Fonds Albert Laprade)10) Vaillat 1931
11) Gady 1993, Archives de Paris 1427W87/88/89 Aménagement de l’îlot 16. The
16th block was a residential area of Jewish people and that may have influenced
the decision of the city administration. See Janin 2005.
12) Exposition internationale de l’urbanisme et de l’habitation, 10 juillet - 17 août

95

1947 au Grand Palais et au Cours la Reine, Paris [programme officiel] / Ministèrede la reconstruction et de l’urbanisme.
13) Archives Nationales, 403 A.P. (Fonds Albert Laprade)
14) Procès-verbal de la Commission du Vieux Paris, séance du 28 avril 1959.
15) Archives Nationales, 403 A.P. (Fonds Albert Laprade)16) Archives Nationales, 403 A.P. (Fonds Albert Laprade)17) Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine 97/064/40-43.

References

ARAMATA, M. 2011. Mythology of Paris and urban landscape: Logic of sanitizationand exclusion in the safeguarded sector of the Marais (Paris shinwa to toshikeikan: Marais hozen chiku ni okeru jouka to haijo no ronri). Akashishoten.
Tokyo.
Baudouï, R. 2001. « Les acquis de l’expérience colonial française au Maroc (19121925). » In Berdoulay V. et P. Claval (dir.). Aux débuts de l’urbanisme français ,pp.151-160. L’Harmattan. Paris.
Belfquih, M. et A. Fadloullah. 1986. Mécanismes et formes de croissance urbaine

au Maroc: cas de l’agglomération de Rabat-Salé, 1. De la Médina à l’agglomération
millionaire . Librairie El Maârif, Rabat.
Cohen, J-L. et M. Eleb. 1998. Casablanca: Mythes et figures d’une aventure urbain .

Editions Hazan. Paris.
Gady, A. 1993. « L’Îlôt insalubre No 16: un exemple d’urbanisme archéologique, »Paris et Ile de France mémoires publiés par la fédération des sociétés historiqueset archéologiques de Paris et de l’Ile de France . Tome 44. pp.207-299.
Janin, F. 2005. « Spoliations d’habitants de « l’Ilot 16 ». » In Azéma, J-P.(dir.) Vivre
et survivre dans le Marais , pp.409-442. Le Manuscrit. Paris.

Laprade, A. « Une ville créée spécialement pour les indigènes à Casablanca. »In Jean R. (dir.). L’Architecture et l’urbanisme aux colonies et dans les pays

tropicaux. Communications et rapports du congrès international de l’urbanisme
aux colonies et dans les pays de latitude intertropicale . vol.1. La Charité-sur-Loire, Delayance, 1932-1935.
Luccioni, J. 1982. Les Fondations Pieuses « Habous » au Maroc : depuis les origines
jusqu’à 1956 . Imprimerie Royale. Rabat.
Nishimura, Y. and the Research Group of Street Views. 2000. Planning oflandscapes in cities: Landscape control in western countries, technique andpractice (Toshi no fukei keikaku: Oubei no keikan control, shuhou to jissen).

Gakugei publishing. Kyoto.
Pitt L. 2002. Promenades dans le Paris disparu: un voyage dans le temps au Coeurdu paris historique . Parigramme. Paris.
Vaillat, Léandre. 1931. Le visage français du Maroc . Horizons de France. Paris.

97

Installing Geography in the Open Air:The Statues of Geographers in Late Nineteenth Century Belgium
SHIMAZU Toshiyuki*
I. Introduction
Science and art seemingly look like two opposite, often conflicting things. Nevertheless, these two are the same human act based on human reason in its broadest
sense. As Alexander von Humboldt put it in his grand oeuvre Kosmos , ‘Science
begins at the point where mind dominates matter, where the attempt is made to
subject the mass of experience to the scrutiny of reason; ...... The external world
exists to us only when we receive it into our interior, when it has fashioned itself
within us into a natural perception. Mysteriously indivisible, as are mind andlanguage, as are thought and the fructifying word, even so and to us all consciously,
does the external world blend with the interior in man, with thought and withemotion’ (Von Humboldt 1845: 71-72).
If science in general is such an enterprise, geography in particular is no less.
Humboldt’s integrated depiction of the natural world, fully exemplified in Kosmos ,was accomplished not only with a rigorous scientific mind but also with esthetic
and ethical sensitivity (Buttimer 2009). The first volume of Kosmos was publishedin 1845, and four years later, in 1849, a chair of geography was established at
Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. The chair is said to be the second oldest‘modern’ geography chair in the world following that held by Carl Ritter at the
University of Berlin in 1820. This first geography chair in Poland was occupied byWincenty Pol, a renowned Polish poet. As one of the followers of a Humboldtian
spirit, Pol tried to give an integrated qualitative account of all the elements ofnature and human life in Poland, though he was expelled from the university in1853 for his intense patriotism under Austrian rule (Babicz 1978).
In my view, geographers and artists have always stood on common ground in thatthey both have been involved in expressing their ‘internal’ landscapes, whether
scientific or artistic, based on their respective understandings of the ‘external’landscapes. In this respect, it is not surprising that recent scholarship in humangeography and art history has witnessd a rapidly emerging concern with the inter*Wakayama University, JAPAN98

connection between geography and art (Wallach 1997; Kaufmann 2004; Pinter2009; Che 2010; Hawkins 2011, 2013). Today, human geographers are increasinglyinterested in the commonality between geography and the plastic arts in terms
not only of their subject matters, but also of their perspectives and methodologies. However, so far only insufficient attention has been paid to the functions
and meanings retained by art within the historical development of geography inits broadest sense, though a few exceptions have emerged (Nicolaï 2008). Here thenotion of geography encompasses not only ‘academic’ or ‘scientific’ geographies,
but also ‘official’ or ‘professional’ geographies, and ‘popular’ or ‘folk’ geographies(Buttimer 1998). There may be a multiplicity of relationships between the historicaland geographical trajectories of geography on the one hand, and the ideas andpractices of art on the other. My opinion is that truly broad-minded historians ofgeography should take artistic forms and representations more seriously than ever.
From the point of view of the history of geography, the plastic arts including
paintings and sculptures have long been employed as a language conveying avariety of ‘geographical’ messages, as well as national and imperial authorities,
civil protests, religious doctrines and cultural values. These works should be understood as part of those objects which materialize and visualize what has been called‘geography’ throughout all of historical times. The materiality and visuality of
those objects, in turn, may play an important role in communicating the meaningand significance of geography not only to scholars and specialists, but also to thegeneral public.
Among the plastic arts, I shall focus here particularly on sculptures, especiallypublic open-air statues. Public monuments, memorials and statues are all situatedin the material landscape as part of it. They are usually more expressive of the
explicit ideas and implicit presuppositions―for example, those concerning gender
relations―shared by directors and artists than any other parts of the material
landscape (Monk 1992). In particular, the statues of geographers themselves, so far
rarely touched upon seriously by historians of geography, are the subject matterof this paper. I shall pay specific attention to late nineteenth century Belgium,
where the installation of statues representing geographers or geography itself took
place repeatedly. Broadly speaking, these statues had been planned and installed
under the process of nation-state building after Belgian independence in 1830.
Nevertheless, I do not intend that this paper will be fully colored by some kind ofpolitical determinism in which nation-state building is viewed as the sole structural
determinant for that matter. Rather, my main concern here is with the intricate,multi-participated processes in which various statues were planned and installed
and with the resultant multiple meanings taken on by these statues.
In the following, first, in section II, I shall deal with the case of the first international geographical congress held in Antwerp, with which the projects for erecting
the statues of Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius were contingently articulated. Second, in section III, I will focus on the case of the Palais des Académies

99in Brussels, in which Auguste Rodin was engaged in the making of a putto statue
symbolizing the practice of geography. Third, in section IV, I will turn my attention
to the case of the Square du Petit Sablon featuring the statues of sixteenth century
heroes including Mercator and Ortelius. Finally, section V will be reserved for someconcluding remarks.

II. The First International Geographical Congress and the Statue ofMercator
As a latecomer in the formation of an independent country, the Kingdom of
Belgium had not experienced the institutionalization of academic geography until
the previous turn of the century (Nicolaï 2004: 36-37). In Belgium, as well as in the
Netherlands, the elevation of geography to the university level was rather delayedin comparison to Germany, Austria, France, and the United Kingdom. However,
the emergence of academic geography accounts for only a small portion of modern
geographical endeavors undertaken in this small but vigorous country. Aside from
Mercator and Ortelius in the sixteenth century, who had been in part ‘Belgianized’
after the Belgian Revolution of 1830, respected geographer Philippe Vandermaelen
founded the Établissement Géographique de Bruxelles in the same year as therevolution. This renowned private institute, located in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, asuburban industrial commune of Brussels,1) published varieties of maps, atlases,
and gazetteers, and manufactured many kinds of terrestrial globes. Vandermaelen
and his institute enjoyed the visits of learned scholars including Alexander von
Humboldt and Carl Ritter (De Smet 1952: 13; Gilbert De Cauwer 1970: 14). On
the other hand, the Dépôt de la Guerre, established by the Belgian government in
1831, made a number of topographical maps on various scales for the country basedon triangulation data (Lemoine-Isabeau 1988).
Within these political and intellectual contexts, the idea of an international
congress discussing the topics of geography and related sciences was elaborated under the leadership of Charles Ruelens, a conservator at the BibliothèqueRoyale de Belgique.2) Ruelens was born in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean and there hehad frequently visited in his youth days the excellent library of the Établissement
Géographique de Bruxelles founded by Philippe Vandermaelen. Ruelens’s broadconcerns encompassed fine arts, geography, bibliography, paleography, literary
history, and general history. As for the field of geography, Ruelens was particularlyinterested in the history of exploration and cartography (Hymans 1908-10). He also
founded with his Belgian peers the Société Belge de Géographie in 1876. Its designation was changed to the Société Royale Belge de Géographie in 1882 under the
auspice of King Leopold II, and Ruelens became president twice in 1884 and 1888
(Anonymous 1890).
1) Molenbeek-Saint-Jean as a commune had a population of 27,418 as of 1867 (Jourdain 1868-9b: 647).
2) For the most extensive and valuable discussion on this topic, see Vandersmissen (2009).

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From 1869, Ruelens had been in the business of preparing the international
congress with some key members of the Société de Géographie in Paris and withsome of his Belgian colleagues. His idea was that the inauguration of the statuesof Mercator and Ortelius should be celebrated with an accompanying international congress to be held in Antwerp and to be devoted to discussing a varietyof questions concerning geography (Anonymous 1872: i-viii). What is interestingis that the projects for erecting those statues preceded this idea of an international geographical congress. Mercator was born in 1512 in Rupelmonde, a small
commune3) located on the left bank of the Scheldt and not too far from Antwerp,
where Ortelius was born in 1527 and died in 1598. Ruelens’s idea was truly
innovative in that there was no inherent connection between these preceding
projects and an international congress. Rather, this should be viewed as one of
the cases in which two discrete elements are contingently articulated in certain
socio-historical conditions.4)
Both Mercator and Ortelius, now commonly referred to as ‘cartographers’ or‘mapmakers,’ had been broadly perceived as ‘geographers’ at least in post-independence Belgium. They had been repeatedly counted as being among the ‘intellectual
heroes’ or ‘great men,’ but not necessarily in national terms. The proximity of
their birthplaces and the regionalism prevailing even now in present-day Belgium
might have acted as a condition under which they were likely to be nominatedas ‘local’ or ‘regional’ celebrities rather than as ‘national’ ones. In Antwerp, from1855 to 1858, a municipal undertaking was going on to honor the city’s commercial
glory by painting frescoes in the chamber of commerce within the stock exchangebuilding. The frescoes included the standing portraits of Mercator and Ortelius, theformer of which was painted by Godfried Guffens, and the latter by Jan Swerts.5)
Antwerp was a proud port city once called a ‘metropolis.’ It had 123,498 inhabitants
as of 1867, the second largest in the Kingdom of Belgium next to Brussels, whose
inhabitants amounted to 189,337 in the same year (Jourdain 1868-9a: 33, 146).
It should be noted that the frescos of Mercator and Ortelius, together with that ofChristopher Columbus, were intended to represent ‘geography, hydrography andcosmographical discoveries, which through their progress contributed powerfully tothe development of commerce in the sixteenth century’ (Mertens 1858: 11). Unfortunately, in 1858, these frescoes were destroyed by a suspicious fire which completely
burned down the stock exchange building itself. Thirteen years later, in 1871, thecartoons for those frescoes depicting Mercator and Ortelius were displayed in themain meeting room for the Congrès des Sciences Géographiques, Cosmographiqueset Commerciales, the venue of which was the Académie Royale des Beaux-arts
in Antwerp (Anonymous 1872: 19; Génard 1888: 374-375, 551; Marchal 1902:
3) As of 1867, Rupelmonde had 2,961 inhabitants (Jourdain 1868-9b: 826).
4) For the articulation theory, see Slack (1996).
5) Guffens and Swerts were both renowned Belgian painters. For their biographies, see Marchal (1902) andSolvay (1926-9).

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203-205). This ‘citation’ of the preceding paintings of Mercator and Ortelius might
be understood as one of the distant outcomes of the above-mentioned articulation.
There is no evidence for the direct connection between the destruction of those
frescoes and subsequent projects for the installation of the statues of Mercator andOrtelius. Nevertheless, it may be reasonable to suppose that there existed a certain
linkage as Pierre Génard, an archivist for the City of Antwerp and one of Ruelens’s
collaborators regarding the geographical congress, regretfully mentioned the lost
frescoes of Mercator and Ortelius in his voluminous oeuvre Anvers à travers lesâges (Génard 1888: 374-375, 551).
In the 1860s, Antwerp and Rupelmonde were separately considered as the sites
for the planned statues of their respective ‘native’ geographers. In this regard,
Ortelius in Antwerp anticipated Mercator in Rupelmonde by one year, with theformer plan originating in 1865 and the latter plan in 1866 (Van Raemdonck 1869:
xxv; Vandersmissen 2007: 378). Unfortunately, the Antwerpers have never seen
any public statue of Ortelius in their native city in spite of all their efforts, oneof which was undertaken by the Société de Géographie d’Anvers founded in 1876
(Anonymous 1877b: 440-441). Pierre Génard was one of the founding members
and functioned as the first secretary-general for the society (Anonymous 1877a: 6).
Like its counterpart in Brussels, the designation of the society was changed to the
Société Royale de Géographie d’Anvers in 1882 thanks to the backup from King
Leopold II (Anonymous 1882: 99-100). This might be regarded as one of the cases inwhich local or regional matters were ‘Belgianized’ in the course of the building of amonarchical nation-state. Finally, in 1890, a marble statue of Ortelius was set up
in Brussels, the capital of an emergent nation-state. This meant that Ortelius wasmemorialized there as a ‘Belgian’ hero rather than a native ‘Antwerper’ (see section
IV).
Contrary to the Antwerp case, Rupelmonde was successful in hosting abronze statue of Mercator. The key person was Jean-Hubert Van Raemdonck, a
Sint-Niklaas based physician with a doctor of medicine degree and an archaeologist. He was also another collaborator of Charles Ruelens in the Antwerp congress.
Sint-Niklaas, a local town with 24,107 inhabitants as of 1867, has been seen as
the de facto capital of the Waasland, a historical region occupying the eastern
periphery of the County of Flanders (Jourdain 1868-9b: 848, 1039). Rupelmonde
was also situated in the same region. In the late nineteenth century, the Waasland
was no longer a political or administrative district; nevertheless it remained asan ‘imagined’ regional community evoking a regional consciousness or a sense ofregional identity. In 1861, Van Raemdonck established with some local intellectuals
the Oudheidkundige Kring van het Land van Waas (Cercle Archéologique du Paysde Waas) to search for and conserve their own historical and cultural identities(Willemsen and Van Hooff 1900; Bolsée 1936-8). And it was in 1866 when Van
Raemdonck and his circle for the first time proposed to erect a statue of Mercator in
Rupelmonde to commemorate this celebrated ‘Waasien.’ Thus, the ‘grand géographe

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de Rupelmonde’ was initially regarded as a celebrity originating in the Waaslandrather than in the Kingdom of Belgium (Van Raemdonck 1869: xxv).
Needless to say, Van Raemdonck also referred to Mercator and Ortelius as ‘cenoble couple Belge’ in his voluminous biography of Mercator published in 1869 (Van
Raemdonck 1869: 196). However, unlike Ortelius, the ‘nationality’ of Mercator wasa controversial issue. Mercator studied at the University of Leuven in the Duchyof Brabant and taught at the Academic Gymnasium in Duisburg in present-day
Germany, where he died in 1594. In the same year of 1869, Arthur Breusing,director at the Marine School of Bremen, contended that Mercator was a ‘German
geographer’ (Breusing 1869).6) In the next year, Van Raemdonck quickly repliedthat Mercator was an illustrious ‘Belgian exile’ (Van Raemdonck 1870: 77).7) In thequest for nation-state building and national identity, the nationality of Mercator
was thus hotly contested between Belgium and Germany and the controversy
continued for at least ten years (Van Raemdonck 1880).
Nevertheless, the planned statue of Mercator was not necessarily flavored with a
Belgian nationalist color only. Van Raemdonck also insisted firmly that Mercator
was a ‘Flemish geographer’ because of his birthplace in Flanders (Van Raemdonck
1870, 1880). In addition, Van Raemdonck fought against the Antwerpers for the‘affiliation’ or ‘belonging’ of Mercator. Henri-Emmanuel Wauwermans,8) an honorary
lieutenant-general and president of the Société Royale de Géographie d’Anvers,
suggested that Mercator could be seen as one of ‘des Anversois’ in his 1889 speech(Anonymous 1889: 275). In quick response to this, Van Raemdonck charged that
Mercator was not an ‘Anversois’ any more but a ‘Rupelmondois’ (Van Raemdonck1890). In opposition to Antwerp, which had long been called a ‘metropolis’ andsituated in the Duchy of Brabant, Rupelmonde-born Mercator was enthusiasticallymobilized as an outstanding symbol for the regional identity of the Waasland, andmoreover, the County of Flanders.
It was Sint-Niklaas-based sculptor Frans Van Havermaet who was entrusted withmaking the statue of Mercator. His work was completed in 1870.9) One year later,
the bronze statue was inaugurated on May 14, 1871 under the sponsorship of the
Oudheidkundige Kring van het Land van Waas with many attendees including
Belgian ministers Baron d’Anethan and Kervyn de Lettenhove, Charles Ruelens,Jean-Hubert Van Raemdonck and Frans Van Havermaet (Anonymous 1871). Latera plaster cast replica was made and placed in the city hall of Sint-Niklaas (Engelen
and Marx 2006c: 3770-3771). This tall statue, with Mercator’s hands grasping a
map-like object and a compass, was accompanied by a globe and several books at his6) For the biography of Breusing, see Wolkenhauer (1903).
7) American geographer Elial F. Hall wrote in his paper on Mercator, ‘I refrain, however, from taking any partin this controversy’ (Hall 1878: 164). For the biography of Hall, see Anonymous (1905).
8) For the biography of Wauwermans, see Vander Linden (1938).
9) For the biography of Van Havermaet, see Boel and Heyvaert (2006). Later Van Havermaet made the marble
bust of Mercator in the Palais des Académies (see section III) and also sculpted the bust of Van Raemdonckhimself.

103feet (Fig. 1). This configuration could be characterized as one of the popular representations of geographers and their work, as seen in Johannes Vermeer’s famous
painting. The statue itself seems to have gained a certain kind of popularity, for it
later appeared in a picture postcard (Fig. 2). Also notable is that the stone pedestalof the statue had only Dutch and Latin inscriptions and no mention was made of
the international geographical congress, which would have been dominated by the
French language. It seems particularly meaningful, given the fact that the Countyof Flanders had traditionally been using as its mother tongue the Dutch language,
which had been officially subordinated to the French language for a long time.
About three months later, the Congrès des Sciences Géographiques, Cosmographiques et Commerciales was held on August 14th to 22nd in Antwerp. On
August 20th, an excursion to Rupelmonde was carried out for paying homage tothe ‘founder of modern geography,’ as the Latin inscription under the statue put
it.10) The Belgian government provided a steamship for international participants
to go upstream on the Scheldt toward Rupelmonde on the opposite bank from
Antwerp. Among the participants were Erasmus Ommanney from the UnitedFig. 1 Statue of Mercator in Rupelmonde(Photograph by author, 2006)

Fig. 2 Statue of Mercator in Rupelmonde(Postcard from author’s collection. It is dated
May 1904 and has non-divided address side)10) The original Latin inscription is recentioris geographiae conditori (Fig. 1). No such expression is found in
the Dutch inscription.

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Kingdom, Nicolas de Khanikoff from the Russian Empire, Cristoforo Negri fromthe Kingdom of Italy, Marie-Armand d’Avezac de Castera-Macaya, Francis Garnier,Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau, Joseph Pons d’Arnaud Bey andRichard Cortambert from the French Republic, Alexander von Tóth and Karl
von Czoernig-Czernhausen from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and François
Paul Louis Pollen from the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Van Raemdonck 1871).
It was just at that time that the Mercator statue was given a new meaning as acommemoration of the international geographical congress. Thus Mercator was also
enshrined as a symbol of the ‘internationality’ of the science of geography.
On the other hand, this international meaning had its root at least in the early
1860s. Edward Van Even, an archivist for the City of Leuven,11) mentioned in his
1862 letter to Van Raemdonck that Polish political activist and geographer Joachim
Lelewel had been eager to see a statue of Mercator in Rupelmonde, in Leuven, in
Flanders, or in Belgium (Van Raemdonck 1869: 229-230; Anonymous 1871). Lelewel
lived in Brussels from 1833 to 1861 and there he published his monumental five
volumes work Géographie du moyen âge between 1850 and 1857 (Wilczyński 2010).
Regretfully, he died in Paris ten years before the inauguration of the statue ofMercator in Rupelmonde (Anonymous 1861: 5). The meaning of the Mercator statue
might be of a contested and varied nature in terms of geographical scale, ranging
from regional through national to international.

Fig. 3 Palais des Académies in Brussels(Postcard from author’s collection. It is estimated to have been issued before 1906
because of its non-divided address side. For the dating of postcards, see Staff (1979))
11) For the biography of Van Even, see Van Uytven (1965).

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III. Palais des Académies and Auguste Rodin’s ‘Amour Géographe’
Another example of the statue of a geographer is that which has been attributed
to the famous French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It is a stone statue of an allegoricalputto (a Cupid-like figure) measuring a globe with a compass (Fig. 5). The statue
is placed on the exterior fence of the Palais des Académies (Fig. 3), which is locatednear the Palais Royal in Brussels.
The Palais des Académies was the former Palais du Prince d’Orange, which was
inaugurated in 1828 for the future William II of the Netherlands. He was expelledfrom there after the Belgian Revolution of 1830, and it was not until over forty
years later that the palace was refurbished. The renewed edifice was intended tohouse two Belgian royal academies, namely, the Académie Royale des Sciences,des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique and the Académie Royale de Médecinede Belgique. The refurbishment was completed in 1876 and the edifice was given a
new appellation, the ‘Palais des Académies’ (Delvoye 1980: 7-9, 38).
Auguste Rodin lived in Brussels during his training period from 1871 to 1877.
There Rodin formed a partnership with Belgian sculptor Antoine-Joseph Van
Rasbourg to undertake the making of several public sculptures under thecommission of Belgian government authorities. A pair of ornamental stone statues
displayed on the exterior fence of the Palais des Académies was viewed as among
their common undertakings (Pierron 1902: 159; Lawton 1906: 34-35). One is a torso
with a mandolin, a musical score, and so on (Fig. 4). Its figuration has been understood as being based on the famous Belvedere Torso now housed in the Vatican
Museums (Anonymous 1899; Butler 1993: 79-80; Marraud 1997: 92-94). And so far
it has been commonly recognized that the torso symbolizes ‘art’ (Meirsschaut 1900:

Fig. 4 Statue of a torso symbolizing art, or the ‘torse du Belvédère’(Photograph by author, 2009)

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23; Hanotelle 1997: 18-23). The other is the putto mentioned above, measuring
the terrestrial globe with a compass (Fig. 5). This is further ornamented withan anchor, an object like a Columbus-type map, and a harvest of grain. To datethe statue has been referred to in three ways: first as ‘La Science, le Commerce
et l’Agriculture’ (Meirsschaut 1900: 23; Marraud 1997: 91-92), second, simplyas ‘(La) Science’ (Butler 1993: 79; Hanotelle 1997: 18), and third, as ‘(L’) Amour
géographe’ (Marraud 1997: 93; Van Gossum 2000: 4; Bovy 2000: 47). It is certainthat the putto statue has been interpreted at least as an allegory of science. These
two statues were made in 1874, two years before the refurbishment of the palace
would be completed (Cladel 1936: 104; Butler 1993: 79, 523). An allegorical combination of art and science seems quite fitted to the characteristics of the Palais desAcadémies, given the fact that the refurbished palace housed the Académie Royale
des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique which covers both art andscience.
Almost all of the previous studies say that the two statues were realized solely
by Rodin himself, despite the fact that both are signed by Van Rasbourg. Lawton(1906: 34) suggested that Rodin could act freely in sculpting them by sacrificing his
right to claim authorship. In the present research context, what deserves attention
is that, as mentioned above, the putto statue has been regarded by some authors
as representing a geographer. Like the statue of Mercator in Rupelmonde (seesection II), the putto statue is accompanied by a globe, a compass, and a map-likeobject. The putto itself is viewed as a Renaissance invention from the early
fifteenth century (Dempsey 2001: 18). The most interesting thing is that the triple
combination of a putto, a globe, and a compass often appeared in the decorative

Fig. 5 Statue of a putto symbolizing science, or the ‘Amour géographe’(Photograph by author, 2009)107

cartouches on the maps and atlases published in the early modern Low Countries.
One of the earliest examples might be that which is found in Willem Blaeu’s
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1635 (Duncker and Weiss 1983: 98-99). Similar icons
are also seen in his son Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Maior of 1665 (Blaeu 2010: 430, 451).
These cartouches could be understood as being one of the mediums through which
the potential reader got attracted by the ‘works of geography, cosmography, exploration and travel’ (Shirley 2008: 341). It could be said that Rodin’s putto faithfully
followed this tradition of the Low Countries and hence represented geographers or
geography itself in particular, as well as science in general. Furthermore, it should
be noted that geography had long been conceived of as representative of science
itself in the Western intellectual tradition. This idea could be popularized anddisseminated in part in the form of public statuary. Rodin’s putto may be a case inpoint, and it was also included in a guidebook of the open-air sculpture of Brussels
published in 1900 (Meirsschaut 1900: 23).
The twin allegorical statues of art and science in the open air seem not to express
regionalism or nationalism, but to symbolize the internationalism or universalism
deemed inherent in them. The Palais des Académies, however, has itself never beena ‘neutral’ institution. It has housed a number of the busts of eminent intellectuals
and artists recognized as ‘Belgians,’ and therefore, it has also been functioning as
one of the ‘pantheons’ enshrining and commemorating national intellectual andartistic heroes (Tollebeek and Verschaffel 2004). A remarkable fact is that a marble
bust of Gerardus Mercator is included in this pantheon (Fig. 6). It was sculptedin 1877 by Frans Van Havermaet who already had made the bronze statue ofMercator in Rupelmonde (see section II). This was the outcome of a petition to theFig. 6 Bust of Mercator in the Palais des Académies
(Photograph by author, 2009)

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Belgian government by Jean-Hubert Van Raemdonck and his archaeological circle(Van Raemdonck 1880: 40; Van Lennep 1993: 172, 428-429). Nevertheless, they did
not think that Mercator should be commemorated as a Brussels hero. For them,and moreover for the Belgians, the bust of Mercator in the Palais des Académies
stood not as a regional hero but as one of the national heroes.
On the other hand, it must also be noted that the Palais des Académies was where
the present International Geographical Union was originally set up in 1922 at thesecond General Assembly of the International Research Council (A. R. H. 1922:292). The council was first organized in 1919 at the same Palais des Académies
(Greenaway 1996: 23). Its objective was ‘to promote the formation of International Unions in the different sciences or groups of sciences.’ Under this initiative, theInternational Geographical Union was born there, with Prince Roland Bonapartefrom the French Republic as President, Sir Charles Close from the United Kingdom
as General Secretary, and General Nicola Vacchelli from the Kingdom of Italy as
the First Vice-President (A. R. H. 1922: 291-292). As a matter of consequence, theformation of the International Geographical Union was conforming to the international meaning of Rodin’s putto statue. The Palais des Académies was not only
ornamented by an allegorical ‘amoretto geographer’ but also was an important site
for the international history of geography.

IV. Square du Petit Sablon and the Sixteenth Century Heroes
On the occasion of the first international geographical congress in Antwerp, in
addition to Gerardus Mercator, native ‘Antwerper’ Abraham Ortelius was also
nominated as an eminent geographer to be commemorated in the form of a statue

Fig. 7 Square du Petit Sablon in Brussels(Postcard from author’s collection. It is estimated to have been issued after 1906
because of its divided address side)109(see section II). Ironically, the statue of Ortelius turned out to be realized not in
Antwerp but in its rival city Brussels when the Square du Petit Sablon was inaugurated in 1890 (Fig. 7).
The Sablon district is situated southwest of the Palais Royal in Brussels. It is
within the old inner city area, occupying the slope between the upper and lower
town. While it had been a privileged residential area for the aristocracy from themid sixteenth century onward, the gradual decentralization of the upper class had
transformed it into a largely working-class area by the mid nineteenth century(State 2004: 267-268). After that, an inner city renewal plan was elaborated under
the initiative of Charles Buls, a conservationist burgomaster of the City of Brussels.
In opposition to a ‘Haussmannian’ grandiose urban redevelopment scheme
promoted by King Leopold II, Buls rather pursued the conservation and restoration of historic monuments and favored urban renewal schemes on a relatively
micro scale. The Place du Petit Sablon was a small square behind the Church of
Notre Dame du Sablon and Buls made it an object of renewal. His vision was thatit should be transformed into a ‘pantheon dedicated to the driving forces of thecountry.’ These ‘driving forces’ meant for him ‘the heroes of scientific, political andcultural renewal’ in the ‘glorious and tragic sixteenth century’ contributing muchto ‘the formation of the national character’ (Smets 1995: 102). The reason why thesixteenth century matters is that it was generally conceived of as a difficult period
in which the ancestors of the Belgians were struggling against Spanish domination
for freedom and liberation.
The square was thus redeveloped into a charming garden with a neo-Renaissancestyle (Fig. 7). Belgian architect Henri Beyaert12) was entrusted with designing thelayout of the garden, which was inaugurated in 1890 and named the ‘Square duPetit Sablon.’ It should be noted that the garden is regarded not only as ‘one of
the most subtle creations’ by Beyaert (Victoir 1990: 35), but also as ‘an important
contribution to European architecture’ (State 2004: 35). As a consequence of thevision conceived by Charles Buls mentioned above, the Square du Petit Sablon
was designed to represent the national history of Belgium, which was imaginatively supposed to date back to the sixteenth century. There are twelve statuesof the sixteenth century ‘Belgian’ heroes in the garden. The most emblematic are
the tall twin statues of the Counts of Egmont and Hornes placed on one and thesame pedestal in the upper center of the garden (Fig. 7). They were both executedat the Brussels Grand-Place in 1568 under the rule of King Philippe II of Spain.
The twin bronze statues were originally installed on the site of the execution in1864 and were moved to the present site in 1879 (Thomas 1958: 38; Derom 2002:
47). Another ten marble statues, including those of Mercator and Ortelius, encircle
the two tragic heroes. These twelve statues were all carved by Belgian sculptors,
with Louis Van Biesbroeck for Mercator and Jef Lambeaux for Ortelius.13) Antoine12) For the biography of Beyaert, see Victoir (1990).
13) For the biographies of Van Biesbroeck and Lambeaux, see Engelen and Marx (2006a: 2224, 2006b: 3514-3515).

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Joseph Van Rasbourg, who had been Auguste Rodin’s collaborator in Brussels (seesection III), also joined the project by making the statue of Henri de Bréderode who
had resisted firmly against the Spanish Inquisition (Derom 2002: 47-48). Moreover,it also should be noted that sculptors were all requested to base their work on
the sketches drawn by Belgian painter Xavier Mellery14) to ensure coherence andunity (Van Lennep 2000: 83). Thus, the Square du Petit Sablon became ‘a sort ofBelgian pantheon of the sixteenth century’ (Meirsschaut 1900: 61), as Charles Buls
imagined it would be.15) It is seemingly ironic that Buls was doing the same thingas his opponent King Leopold II in enhancing patriotic sentiments and nationalism.
In the final analysis, their differences would lie not in their objectives but rather intheir methodologies.
The configuration of the statues of Mercator and Ortelius shares, at least in part,a common feature with those statues of geographers found in Rupelmonde and in
the Palais des Académies. The Mercator statue, with no indication of date, has a
globe and a compass in both his hands (Fig. 8). The Ortelius statue, with the dateof 1888 (Derom 2002: 47), has a globe and books at his feet and a large atlas byhis right hand (Fig. 9). It is important again that both statues were clearly recognized as those of ‘geographers’ at that time. A guidebook of the open-air sculpture of

Fig. 8 Statue of Mercator in the Square duPetit Sablon (Photograph by author, 2006)

Fig. 9 Statue of Ortelius in the Square duPetit Sablon (Photograph by author, 2006)

14) The biography of Mellery, see Sulzberger (1964).
15) In the present context, Van Lennep (2000: 83) characterizes the garden as ‘a Belgian pantheon of thesixteenth century.’ Tollebeek and Vershaffel (2004: 100) depict it as one of the ‘chronologically defined galleriesof the nation’s famous.’

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Brussels published in 1900, already mentioned in section III, portrayed Mercator
as a ‘geographer, cosmographer and mathematician,’ and Ortelius as having ‘devoted
himself entirely to the study of geography. It is he who published the premieratlas’ (Meirsschaut 1900: 62-63). Both statues played a certain role in showing
the general public of the day what geography was like and how geographers were
working.
On the other hand, it is probably not surprising that these two geographers were
mobilized as among the members of heroic patriots of the sixteenth century, forgeography has itself long been conceived of as getting involved in the defense of
territories and populations. In this case, for directors such as Charles Buls andHenri Beyaert, and for artists such as Louis Van Biesbroeck and Jef Lambeaux,
the meaning of these statues was straightforward rather than ambiguous, incontrast to the case of the Mercator statue in Rupelmonde. If the statue of Ortelius
had been erected in Antwerp, it could have also taken on a regionalist meaning.
In reality, the Ortelius statue in the Square du Petit Sablon, although sculptured
by Antwerp-born Jef Lambeaux, was neither an Antwerper nor a Brabantian.
The newly formed constitutional monarchy needed its own heroes to integrate its
diverse land and people into a coherent nation-state. Moreover, this constitutionalmonarchy needed these heroes concretized in the material landscape to disseminate
its glorious and tragic history to the general public. Mercator and Ortelius havebeen deployed to date as part of this open-air strategy.

V. Conclusion
This paper has dealt with the multiple and varied processes in which thestatues of geographers were planned and installed in public spaces based on three
Belgian case studies. It has also been discussed how those statues could be imbued
with different meanings depending on different time-space contexts. In the latenineteenth century, the Kingdom of Belgium experienced the installation of a seriesof statues representing famous geographers of the past or symbolizing geography
itself as representative of science. In the case of the first international geographicalcongress in Antwerp, the projects for erecting the statues of Mercator and Ortelius
were contingently articulated with the congress. The resultant statue of Mercator
could be deployed as a representative of Rupelmonde, the Waasland, the Countyof Flanders or the Kingdom of Belgium. It also took on another meaning, that is,a symbol of the internationality of geography as a result of the contingent articulation mentioned above. The case of the Palais des Académies revealed that while
the exterior putto statue was intended to symbolize the universality of science ingeneral and geography in particular, the interior bust of Mercator conveyed his
status as one of the Belgian intellectual heroes. Finally, the case of the Square duPetit Sablon suggests that the statues of Mercator and Ortelius were eventuallymobilized to enhance patriotic sentiments and nationalism under the reign of King

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Leopold II.
The story presented here is an intricate one. Thus, the same statue may havedifferent meanings for different actors based on different processes involved. On theother hand, different statues may take on the same meaning under the influenceof the overall political process, although this sort of political determinism or ‘grandnarrative’ should not be exaggerated. In conclusion, it could be said at least thatthe statues of geographers discussed exemplify the complex and often contingent
relationships between the history of geography on the one hand, and regionalism,
nationalism and internationalism on the other.
The plastic arts, in particular the statues of geographers, could be employed asa tangible medium communicating various ‘geographical’ messages to the generalpublic, especially when they were situated in the open-air settings. However, they
have not been a neutral and transparent medium conveying messages automatically and uninterruptedly. Rather, as Marshall McLuhan once put it, ‘the medium
is the message because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale andform of human association and action’ (McLuhan 1964: 9). After all, the statuesof geographers are also to be understood as part of the message itself. And then,in the present research context, what would be crucial is that the plastic arts are
not a mere materialization or concretization of abstract messages, that is, ideas
and thoughts. On the contrary, the materialized or concretized in turn can evoke
different kinds of ideas and thoughts for different audiences. The statues of geographers, in these three Belgian cases, may arouse different senses of what geography
was like and how geographers were working. In sum, geography in its broadest
sense could be imagined differently on the part of the general public through theplastic arts in the open air. This paper lacks any empirical evidence in this regard
and this remains a future task.

Postscript
This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant Number
23320184) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. An earlier versionof this paper was presented at the IGU Kyoto Regional Conference on August
6th, 2013, held at the Kyoto International Conference Center. The author thanks
Professors Kazutoshi Abe, Vincent Berdoulay, Charles Watkins, Jacobo García-Álvarez and Jean-Yves Puyo for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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