© 2019 Journal of International and Advanced Japanese Studies
Vol. 11, March 2019, pp. 139-146 (ONLINE)
Master’s and Doctoral Programs in International and Advanced
Japanese Studies
Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Tsukuba

Review Essay

Traditional Japanese Arts and Crafts
Historical and Political Trajectories from the Meiji Period until Today1

Liliana MORAISTokyo Metropolitan University, Graduate School of Humanities, Ph.D. Candidate
What do we talk about when we talk about traditional Japanese arts and crafts? What types of objects areincluded in this category and what cultural, social and ideological meanings do they entail? And finally, howhave traditional Japanese arts been invented and reinvented throughout the history of modern Japan in order toshape a unified and monolithic image of Japanese culture in a period of national identity making? In the popularimagination, the expression "traditional Japanese arts and crafts" often entails cultural expressions connectedwith the past and that convey specific ideas of "Japaneseness", such as the tea ceremony, flower arrangement,martial arts, woodblock prints and ceramics, amongst others. In this article, we will not to discuss the origin
and features of these arts, but will instead examine them in the context of an institutionalized national discoursethat reflects historical, political and social processes involved in the making of images of Japan. The goal is to
discuss the definition of traditional Japanese crafts and show how their identity is intertwined with political
ideologies, historical constructions and cultural representations. Starting from the first participations of Japanin the International Exhibitions of late nineteenth century, the rediscovery of old pottery kilns and the revivalof tea ceremony amongst the urban elite in the 1920s, the folk crafts movement of the prewar and postwar
years, the creation of the title of Living National Treasure in the 1950s and the more recent “Cool Japan” nation
branding, this article will illustrate the main historical moments that have contributed to the definition,
reinvention and revitalization of certain traditional Japanese arts in the last one hundred and fifty years, drawing
on authors from the field Japanese studies, social sciences, philosophy and art history from a transnational andtransdisciplinary perspective.
Keywords: images of Japaneseness, cultural nationalism, traditional arts and crafts

Introduction
In the last three decades, many authors (Sugimoto & Mouer, 1986; Befu, 1987, 2001; Oguma, 1995, 2002;
Morris-Suzuki, 1998; Lie, 2001) have questioned the notions of natural nation and ethnic homogeneity in the context
of Japan disseminated by the so-called theories of Japanese uniqueness (nihonjinron). Concomitantly to thedeconstruction of the idea of nation (see Anderson, 1983), the concept of tradition has also been conceptualized as
something “invented” in order to inculcate a set of normative values and behaviors through the establishment of acontinuity with the past (Hobsbawn and Ranger, 1983). Similarly, the definition of art has also been a field of
ongoing dispute and recently started being regarded not as something fixed but as a modern invention (Shiner, 2003)
and a social system with origins in the eighteenth century Europe (Luhmann, 2000).
Accordingly, the question of authenticity frequently arises when talking about national culture and cultural
traditions. And while no cultural practice is truly authentic, the Japanese government has taken an active part inreframing (trans)cultural practices within a quintessential and monolithic idea of “Japaneseness”. Furthermore,
popular images of the country and its traditional culture still reproduce simplistic stereotypes that often disregard
1This essay is based on an oral presentation given at the XI International Congress of Japanese Studies in Brazil andpublished in Portuguese in the Conference Annals as an earlier version of this essay.

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Volume 11 ONLINE / March 2019ethnic and minority groups as well as important cultural variations at a local and regional level, overlooking
questions of gender, class and, often times, historical period. Therefore, the expression Japanese traditional arts
possess the same issues as the words that compose it and is thus invariably shaped by history, society and political
ideologies.
1. Meiji period
Cultural and artistic exchanges between Japan and West started with the arrival of European Jesuits to theJapanese archipelago in 1549, prompting the first exports of Japanese objects to Europe. However, it was only inthe second half of the nineteenth century that Japanese objects became available to a wider audience, after the periodof seclusion ended with treaties to open Japanese ports that would eventually lead to Meiji Restoration in 1868. This
coincided with the beginning of the World Exhibitions that took place in Europe and the United States from thesecond half of the nineteenth century with the goal of promoting the culture and industry of participating countries.
As a newly formed nation, Japan was aware of the importance of presenting itself to the public on the international
stage (Irvine, 2013).
While the first of the World Exhibitions took place in London in 1851, it was only two years later thatJapanese objects would first be seen in Dublin. In 1867, Japan sent delegates to the Paris World Exhibition, which
received over nine million visitors and marked the beginning of the fad for Japanese things. This gave birth to theterm ‘Japonisme', with Japanese crafts having a great impact on Western artists. But it was in the Vienna World
Exhibition of 1873 that the recently formed Meiji government officially participated in the international event for
the first time. It was also then that the word bijūtsu appeared as a translation of the word “art” and the word kōgei
as the translation for "craft" and, from then on, craft would come to refer generally to manufactured products, suchas pottery, lacquered woodwork, metal or any other type of "artistic" utilitarian objects that didn't fit in the Western
category of art, which was essentially restricted to works of painting and sculpture.
In fact, while certain crafts, in particular the ceramics related to the tea ceremony, have been seen as "artistic"in Japan since feudal times, the existing word for “art” (geijutsu) in premodern Japan used to comprise a broader
meaning than its Western counterpart (Moeran, 1997: 13). According to art historian Doshin Sato (2011: 76),
geijutsu was originally used to refer to the six skills (rikugei) that any Chinese man must possess: moral behavior,
music, archery, equestrian art, calligraphy and mathematics, thus generally denoting “an extremely high level ofachievement in technical areas”. However, with the importation of the Western concept of art to Japan, whichbecame dominant from the late nineteenth century onwards, the focus on the idea of skill was changed to the conceptof beauty (bi), creating a separated word for craft (kōgei).
Yet, the Meiji government’s engagement with Western concepts, technologies and institutions, encouraged
by a need to equal the West as a modern world power, did not only lead to the creation of two new words (bijutsu
and kōgei) that originally encompassed cultural practices expressed by only one (geijutsu). It also created apreviously nonexistent hierarchy between cultural expressions that took root in the newly-created Japanese art world.
In fact, one of the most important Japanese art exhibitions of the early twentieth century, the Ministry of Education
Art Exhibition (Buten), created in 1907 and renamed Imperial Art Exhibition (Teiten) in 1919, only exhibited worksof fine art, such as painting and sculpture, excluding craft from its categories. Because of that, Japanese craftsmen
were confined to the crafts exhibitions organized by the Ministry of Commerce and Agriculture, even though it was
mainly by virtue of crafts that Japan was greatly praised in the global stage (Moeran, 1997: 14).
In fact, the international success of Japanese crafts in the 1873 Vienna exhibition led the Meiji government
to realize the potential of Japanese exports and thus, in 1876, the Government Craft Design Office (Seihin Gazugakari) was established as a department within the Ministry of Internal Affairs with the role of defining guidelines
for the designs to be created for the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878 (Yokomizu, 2013: 68). The Government
Craft Design Office led to the creation of the Japan Art Association (Ryuchikai) in 1879, which aimed to promote
the national industry and craft by encouraging the creation of designs that appealed to a Western audience.
As a result, the Western fad for things Japanese led Japanese crafts to become an important export productunder the policy of industry and manufacture promotion (shokusan kogyo), acquiring high status as industrial goods(Sato, 2011: 192). However, for its industrial character, kogei (crafts) began to be confused with kogyo (industry),since similarly to Europe before the widespread of industrialization, not only it was difficult to separate art fromcraft, but also craft from industry in late nineteenth century Japan (Moeran, 1997: 13). Thus, in order to stress theartistic qualities of Japanese crafts, the word bijutsu kogei (artistic crafts) started to be used from 1885 at theindustrial domestic exhibitions. According to Kamogawa (2015: 17), the term was created in order to stress the
position of handicrafts as an art form, distinguish it from the manufacturing industry and establish its cultural role
as a uniquely Japanese form of art.
In 1890, the Ministry of Education and the Imperial Household Agency took over the development of artistic
crafts (bijutsu kogei), naming artisans under the title of "Imperial Arts and Crafts Experts", who received support inexchange for producing works for the international exhibitions. Through these, the Meiji government took an active
part in the construction of an idealized quintessential image of a Japan, which responded to Western anxieties aboutindustrialization and romantic visions of a rural past (Karatani, 1998). The discovery of Japanese art by the West140

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represented, in part, a search for Europe’s lost pre-modern past, making Japan a ghost of that past and an idealizedreflection of it.
Because of its international success and marketability abroad, craftwork was supported by the Japanese
government to increase its trade revenue and adopted as a symbol of the newly created nation. High-quality
handmade crafts not only distinguished Japan from the West, who had lost a great part of its craft traditions after
the Industrial Revolution but also showed to Western nations that Japan had something superior to them.
Furthermore, this period of asserting itself towards the West was also characterized by an ideology that was verging
upon nationalism, prompted by the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894. In that way, the revaluation of almost
obsolete craft practices, which were reinvented and considered traditional, reveals the Meiji government's attempt
to build a continuity with the past, a practice that has often characterized nationalist policies. Waal (2002: 190) has
compared the Japanese government's approach to crafts during this period to Germany’s Third Reich support andpromotion of volkisch craftwork as a way of exalting national identity.
The inflow of Japanese things into Western middle and upper-class daily life led to the need to keep up withthe high demand through mass production and a consequent fall in the standards of craft objects, as revealed in thecriticism to the Japanese participation in the 1900 Paris Exhibition (Pollard, 2003: 80). At this time, art had started
to occupy a central place in the international exhibitions and Japanese objects were criticized for its lack of progressin comparison to the West since only in non-industrialized countries art was synonymous with handmade goods (op.
cit.). Therefore, mechanization, industrialization and mass production deflated the “aura” of Japanese crafts in
Western eyes.
All in all, in a wish to catch up with the West, Japan’s rapid industrial advancements clashed with Europe’s
romantic nostalgia for its own pre-industrial past. Feeling discontent with its own modernity, the West had found inJapan a glimpse of its lost pre-industrial past and therefore Japanese modernization, industrialization andmilitarization appeared as a threat to an idealized, innocent and peaceful image of a “traditional Japan” promotedby the Japanese government itself. Thus, after capitalizing on Western tastes and industrializing its production tomeet foreign demand, the craze for Japanese things started gradually fading as Japan emulated the modern West,establishing itself as a colonial power after the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905.
2. Interwar developments
While the development of Japanese crafts from the second half on the nineteenth century was dominated bya tendency towards mechanization and standardization, the beginning of the new century saw the rise of artistcraftsmen who stressed the importance of individual creative expression influenced by the Western modernist
movement. In this context, after the Taisho era (1910-1926), craft began to be recognized as an artistic expression
and a crafts section was introduced at the Imperial Arts Exhibition (Teiten) in 1927. The appearance of artistcraftsmen was parallel with other movements that sought to acknowledge the beauty of handmade mass-produced
objects, such as the folk crafts movement (mingei) and the peasant art movement (nomin bijutsu), which aimed toraise the manifestations of everyday, rural and simple life to the level of art. The growing modernization andurbanization of the Taisho era (1912-1926) also brought anxieties with modernity to Japan, propelling a search for
its own endangered past and traditions. The expansion of the Japanese Empire led to the need to recover a sharedpast, boosting folklore studies and archaeological excavations, which in turn led to a growing interest for Japanesetraditional practices that had been ignored during the first decades of modernization (Moeran, 1997: 14).
In fact, during this period, Japan saw the development of a new urban and educated middle class, whichappropriated forms of recreation and consumption that had before been limited to the enjoyment of a mostly malearistocratic and intellectual elite (Brandt, 2007: 74). According to Atsushi (2014: 4-7), the beginning of Taisho era
marked the first stage of Japan's consumer society, which developed between 1912 and 1941 exclusively in major
metropolitan areas such as Tokyo, where the population grew from 6.6 percent in 1920 to 10.2 percent in 1940.
Still, this increasingly urbanized and westernized middle class only accounted for between 10 to 20 percent of theJapanese population. Thus, the majority of the Japanese still lived poverty in rural areas and some still earned theirlife making handmade goods in small family enterprises, which were then consumed by a small minority of the
middle and upper class (ibid.: 10). In this context, the revival of Japanese traditions appeared as a reaction tourbanization, modernization and westernization and saw cultural traditions that had only been practiced within oldaristocratic families being appropriated by this growing urban middle class as symbols of wealth, social status anda shared sense of national identity.
One of the most emblematic Japanese cultural practices that underwent significant reappraisal during the
beginning of Showa era was that of the tea ceremony, which would come to represent a quintessential image of“Japaneseness” until today. One of the factors that contributed to the revival of the “way of tea” (chado) was the
success of Kakuzo Okakura’s (1862-1913) seminal monograph The Book of Tea. Originally published in English in1906 with the aim of reaching a Western audience, it was only translated into Japanese twenty-three years later, in
1929, coinciding with the peak of Japan’s imperial venture and the ideology of nationalism. In his work, Okakura
defines Japanese identity through the tea ceremony, which he considers one of the most representative symbols ofJapanese aesthetic culture, emphasizing its superiority based on the precepts of Zen-Buddhism and harmony with141

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Volume 11 ONLINE / March 2019nature. Influenced by the idealism of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), Okakura is considered
the founding father of the "myth of Asian spiritualism" (Marra, 1999: 65-71) and thus, it was largely thanks to himthat chanoyu came to be seen as a metaphor for Japan’s cultural identity, a paradigm of the "Japanese soul" or an
ideal representation of it (Rocha, 1996). Kristen Surak (2013) has also thoroughly examined the relationshipbetween the tea ceremony, Japaneseness and cultural nationalism. In fact, through its institutional organizations, theway of tea still acts as an important tool in the maintenance and reproduction of the ideology of homogeneity not
only in Japan but also abroad, where the Urasenke school is established in over one hundred different countries.
This role of tea as a representation of a “Japanese spirit” is also visible in the fact that the tea ceremony is almost
always present in events related to Japanese culture abroad, as explored by Guichard-Anguis (2001).
Another author that attempted to define Japan by the contrast between Western materialism and Asianaesthetics and spirituality was Sōetsu Yanagi (1889-1961), who founded the mingei (folk arts) movement together
with potters Shoji Hamada and Kawai Kanjiro in the mid-1920s. Seeking the recognition of the cultural, artistic,social and spiritual role of traditional handicrafts in a moment when Japanese traditions seemed endangered by the
fast-paced modernization and urbanization, it praised the beauty inherent to objects handmade by anonymous
craftsmen to be used in the daily lives of ordinary people. Fueled by the growing urban middle-class and its nostalgia
for a Japanese rural past that was slowly disappearing, it drew on a combination of Western romantic ideals with
Zen Buddhist concepts and the aesthetics of the tea ceremony.
In her study about the politics of folk craft in imperial Japan, Brandt (2007) has shown how, in the interwar
period, the concern for traditions endangered by modernization, together with the development of a new urban
consumer culture, contributed to the promotion of a new aesthetic based on traditional cultural practices, which wasreflected in the growing popularity of folk crafts. In particular, department stores, which sprang across Japan’s major
cities from the 1920s, had a major role in the sale and promotion of mingei products, not only throughcommercialization but also through temporary exhibitions that presented the latest trends (ibid.: 106-107).
According to the author, the popularity of folk crafts derived in part from its connection to a quintessential “Japanesespirit” that matched the nationalistic thinking of the time (idib.: 123).
The success of The Book of Tea and the impact of the mingei movement led to the proliferation ofarchaeological excavations in traditional areas of ceramic production, prompting a resurgence of the ceramics usedin the tea ceremony during the Momoyama period (1568-1615). This gave birth to a movement known as
Momoyama revival in the 1930s, mostly translated into ceramics and which had potters Toyo Kaneshige (18961967) and Toyozo Arakawa (1894-1985) as its most representative artists. Encouraged by the nationalistic climateof the time, artists interested in the technical aspect of utensils for the tea ceremony began to investigate the works
produced in the so-called six ancient kilns of Japan (rokkoyo). By reproducing the techniques used in thosecontainers, which had lost popularity during the Edo period, they contributed to establish a continuity with the pastthrough their artistic work (Moeran, 1997). In fact, Moeran (1990) argues that many of the regions known today as
old traditional ceramic kilns, such as those named after the styles Mino, Karatsu, Bizen and Mashiko, wererediscovered by the potters Toyozo Arakawa, Muan Nakazato, Toyo Kaneshige and Shoji Hamada respectively inthe 1930s. Furthermore, while the famous six-old kilns terminology was created by potter and scholar Fujio Koyama
in the post-war era, the terminology doesn’t reflect the diversity of regions with active pottery kilns in the medieval
period, which well exceeds the count of six.
In sum, while at the beginning of the Meiji period, Japanese crafts were seen as important export items,
functioning also a symbolic resource to convey images of Japan as a modern nation to the West, in the interwar
period they started to be appropriated by a growing middle class as distinctive everyday commodities and avanishing cultural resource, encouraged by feelings of nostalgia and a quest for an idealized and soon to be lost past.
In addition to folk crafts, the interest in rurality and tradition acquired new meanings, strengthened by the threatthat industrialization and urbanization posed to the preservation of traditional lifestyles. This contributed to the riseof domestic tourism as a form of recreation of a new urban middle class, fueled by a growing infrastructure ofrailways and inns leading to a domestic tourist boom in the postwar era.
3. Post-war period
After a period of cessation of craft activities during the Second World War, the postwar era saw theestablishment of several governmental measures put in place to protect traditional culture in a context of redefining
national identity after the Japanese defeat. At an international level, there was a need to change the image of thecountry from military aggressor to a peace-loving democracy and the traditional arts and crafts, associated with Zen
aesthetics, cooperative work, and harmony with nature, had also a role to play in this process.
Originated from a series of measures for the preservation of historical, artistic and cultural heritage that dateback to the Meiji period, the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties (Bunkazai Hogōhō) was first enacted in1950 as a reaction to a fire in the Hōryūji temple in Kyoto. The original provisions of the law included three
categories: tangible cultural properties, such as buildings, paintings and crafts; intangible cultural properties, which
include endangered traditional techniques and various performing arts; and historic sites, places of scenic beautyand natural monuments. The enactment of the law led to the establishment of the Committee for the Protection of142

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Cultural Properties, a precursor of the Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkacho), created in 1968 as an extraministerial bureau of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture.
Since 1954, the Agency for Cultural Affairs has been responsible for selecting individuals and groups as
official carriers of intangible cultural properties, a title colloquially known as Living National Treasure (ningen
kokuho). The receivers of the title are bestowed with an annual stipend of two million yen, as well as national andinternational prestige, in order to give continuity to traditional techniques through the training of successors anddocumentation. However, in 1955, the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties was revised in order to include
not only endangered traditional techniques but also "important intangible cultural properties". Rupert Faulkner(2001: 3-4) argues that the initial scope of the measure was extended in order to cover practices that were notnecessarily in danger of being lost but that were important for historical or artistic reasons, showing a cultural
agenda that has been institutionalizing preferred models, such as those of the tea ceremony. By receiving this title,a named craftsman is recognized not only in the artistic qualities of his work but also in the regional and national
relevance of his techniques, with his social importance impacting directly on his local community.
Harumi Befu (2001) has also argued that the governmental measures for the protection of cultural properties
often reflect the state’s approval of certain types of art and the institutional promotion of aesthetic values seen as
traditional. One example is the case of the ceramics of the Bizen region, where between 1955 and 2004 five pottershave received the title of Living National Treasure, not because the technique was in danger of extinction, but
because it represents a quintessential Japanese character, particularly through its identification as one of the "six old
kilns of Japan" and its close connection with the aesthetics tea ceremony. However, other crafts that do not conformto the state’s ideal of “Japaneseness” do not often receive the government’s support and thus struggle for survival.
Besides these symbolic power unbalances, the title of Living National Treasure has also perpetuated genderinequalities that are due, in part, to the traditional system of iemoto, in which the transmission of craft techniques ispassed down through patrilineal lineage. This is observable in the fact that, in a total of seventy individuals
considered Living National Treasures today, only eleven are women, most of which produce works traditionallyassociated with female domestic activities, such as textiles and dolls.
Yet, the institutionalization of preferred models includes not only the aesthetics of the tea ceremony and theancient pottery kilns with centuries-old history but also the more recent mingei. In fact, Brandt (2007: 225) argues
that the relations between the Mingei Association established in 1934 and the state during the war period are visible
in “the very identification of traditional handicraft techniques as an invaluable national resource, along with thehigh proportion of mingei artist-craftsmen among those first named Living National Treasures”. The author further
points that, within the first four Living National Treasures designated by the Japanese government in 1955, twowere related to the mingei movement. This shows how, by the end of the Second World War, mingei had received
official approval and ratification from the Japanese state, becoming known to almost all Japanese by the 1960s andthus turning into a “household word, a widely diffused type of commodity, and a seamless part of the common senseof Japanese cultural identity” by the 1970s (ibid.: 2).
As a result, the 1960s and 1970s saw an enormous demand for folk crafts known as the “mingei boom”,
which coincided with a process of avid Americanization and the consequent nostalgia for Japanese tradition and therural countryside (Moeran, 1997: 211). According to the author, the boom contributed to the revitalization but also
the standardization of traditional pottery centers, leading to the establishment of new kilns around Japan and the
expansion of crafts exhibitions in urban centers. Furthermore, the development of domestic tourism encouraged
urban and suburban Japanese to travel to remote sites of Japan and discover traditional aspects of their culture before
it was lost forever, contributing to this boom. Besides omiyage, many Japanese tourists began collecting objects
associated with the rural past, leading to a growing interest and consumption of folk crafts in the post-war period.
In this context, during the postwar years, department stores continued to play an important role in the
promotion and commercialization of Japanese cultural traditions, leading to a retro boom in the 1970s and 1980s.
According to Creighton (1998), the flourishment of Japanese consumer society in the decades after the war, together
with the fact that most Japanese now lived in metropolitan areas and led a modern, westernized and affluent lifestylethat had allowed them to obtain a high level of consumer goods, led department stores to start focusing on leisureactivities by helping more affluent customers to discover fulfilling lifestyles. Thus, the focus on the selling of things
was redirected to the selling of experiences, leading to what the author calls “a marketing age of mono igai no mono,or selling ‘things other than things’” (ibid.: 128.). This tendency is visible in the expansion of cultural and art
institutions, learners and enthusiasts during this period. This shows how, in this context of economic abundance, theJapanese urban middle class started pursuing a better quality of life, engaging in different cultural, recreational andleisure activities as a way of reaching personal and spiritual fulfillment (Watanabe, 1999: 61).
As for domestic cultural policy, the 1980s and 1990s saw a tendency to return to old traditions, which areseen as “the foundation upon which future cultural development will be built” (Watanabe, 1999: 77). In fact, if welook at the Agency for Cultural Affair’s budget for 2017, we realize that only less than one third of it is allocatedfor the promotion of arts and culture, including the training of artists, while the other two thirds are designated for“enhancement of cultural properties protection” and “national cultural facilities” (Commissioner’s Secretariat

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Agency for Cultural Affairs, 2017). In turn, artistic and cultural creation is relegated to the Japan Arts Funds andprivate contributions.
Two decades after the promulgation of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, the Japanese
government launched the Law for the Promotion of Traditional Craft Industries (Densan Act) in 1974, under the
responsibility of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Until today, this law has designated 225
group products as Traditional Japanese Crafts, 31 of which are ceramics. According to its brochure, the Densan(Association for the Promotion of Traditional Craft Industries), created in 1975 as a consequence of the METI law,“actively promotes Japanese Handicrafts on a global scale and contributes to their market expansion”. The leaflet
also states that for a craft to be recognized as Traditional Craft of Japan, it must fulfill all of the following conditions:
to be used mainly in everyday life; to be primarily manufactured by hand; to be manufactured implementing
traditional techniques of at 100 years old; to be produced with raw materials that have remained unchanged for atleast 100 years; and to maintain a certain scale of production and be established as a local industry.
4. Recent trends
The economic and social conditions of the postwar period led to a growing interest in Japan’s “soon to belost” traditions and the objects that represented that vanishing past within the Japanese themselves. This moment
coincided with a boom of the nihonjinron literature, prompting a search for the Japanese uniqueness in a momentof rapid economic growth and the consequent regain of confidence and national pride. During this time, the diffusionof Japanese culture abroad was made mainly through the marketing and selling of industrial and consumer products
through a process that Burgess (2015) calls “economic diplomacy”, accompanied by the discourse ofinternationalization (kokusaika) from the part of the Japanese government during the 1980s as an attempt to control
foreign images of the country.
However, the 1990s brought the end of the bubble economy to Japan, leading to economic deflation,
instability and the consequent collapse of Japan as a manufacturing society. In particular, the change to a postindustrial model was expressed in the development of service and creative related industries from the mid-1990s,
coinciding with the popularity of Japanese popular cultural abroad, which peaked in the 2000s. Thus, in this context
of economic instability, the Japanese government took advantage of the attractiveness of its popular culture to pursue
national interests abroad through what Koichi Iwabuchi (2015) calls a “pragmatic and opportunistic” national
branding cultural policy program known as “Cool Japan”. According to Burgess (2015: 113), the expression “CoolJapan” has been used by the government since 2005 but it was only in 2010 that the Creative Industries Promotion
Office was established and, from 2013, it was included in prime-minister Shinzo Abe’s political strategy with abudget of 50 billion yen. Thus, in an attempt to expand its soft power in a context of increasing globalization, Japan
shifted its focus from economic to cultural diplomacy, thus further influencing the cultural diffusion and imaginingof Japan.
However, the Cool Japan program is not limited to anime and manga, including everything related to a
“Japanese lifestyle”, from fashion to food, including traditional handicrafts and the so-called “Japanese sense of
beauty”. In May 2017, as a part of its Creative Industries policy, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
released a concept book titled Wonder Nippon!, which aims “to convey Japan’s unique sensibilities and values tothe rest of the world as the foundation of commodities and services provided under the Cool Japan Initiative”(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, n/d). The program describes several “traditional" Japanese values, manyof which are supposedly derived from the Japanese relationship with nature, and its impact on craft production. Thisreveals how Japanese crafts and its associated ideas of Japanese craftsmanship are still deeply intertwined with what
the state wants to convey to the world as Japanese culture, cultural values, tradition and identity.
Likewise, Japanese cultural events sponsored by the Japanese Embassy, other governmental agencies andmany private organizations often rely on traditional performing arts and handicrafts to convey images of“Japaneseness” abroad. In her analysis of French images of Japan, Sylvie Guichard-Anguis (2001) has pointed out
the role of “ephemeral” cultural productions such as those of the tea ceremony, flower arrangement and incense in
the presentation of Japanese cultural values such as peace, harmony, tranquility and love of nature, which have been
seen by the Japanese government as valuable resources of soft-power. Therefore, similarly to what happened in theWorld Exhibitions of the Meiji period, when the Japanese state deliberately made its first systematic efforts topromote a distinctive and often “self-exoticizing” image abroad, contemporary developments of Japan-related
events in the global stage have been responsible for creating an appealing but also often stereotyped image of“Japaneseness” through the expansion of cultural exports.
Thus, as Goldstein-Gidoni (2005: 157) has argued, the concept of Japanese culture promoted by cultural
events related to Japan abroad is strongly influenced by how Japanese culture is presented by the Japanese, both inJapan and in the structure of international organized contacts. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for theJapanese government to control the national image of Japan abroad in a context of intensive globalization, since
there are many actors besides the government who are involved in the creation of the images of the nation, such asprivate foundations, universities, museums, Japanese people abroad and foreigners living in Japan. While the “CoolJapan” project has spread Japanese culture abroad, creating what some authors have called a new vague of144

Liliana MORAIS, Traditional Japanese Arts and Crafts“Japonisme”, reflected in the expansion of Japanese-language learning overseas, the exponential growth of overseas
tourists and the rise of international students, the policy hasn’t kept up with the increasingly multicultural reality incontemporary Japanese society.
In fact, Watanabe2 claims that overlooking the situation of foreigners in Japan might actually subvert thesuccess of the “Cool Japan” policy. This is because, in today’s globalized world, foreigners living in Japan are in
daily and direct contact with their families and friends overseas through Social Networking Services and thus areactive actors in the creation and propagation of images of the country. In this sense, engaging with multicultural
policies and acknowledging foreigner nationals as active contributors to Japanese society and culture and to thecontinuity, renewal and transmission of its cultural values and traditions, might not only be necessary but also a
strategic endeavor from the part of the Japanese government if it wants to maintain the attractiveness of Japanabroad.
5. Conclusion
Throughout this article, we have examined some of the political projects, cultural negotiations and social
relations involved in the construction of specific features associated to Japanese traditional crafts, which are a resultof historical processes specific to Japanese modernity. The image of Japan centered on millenary traditions is stillreflected in the image of its arts and crafts disseminated inside and outside of Japan today. However, many of these“traditional” traits are a product of Japanese elites’ culture and had little to do with most of Japan's population until
the modern era. It was only after the democratization of society motivated by Japan’s modernization that objects,
rituals and practices that once belonged to the elite were officially institutionalized and started to circulate among
the general population. This process was called as "samuraization" by Befu (1971: 50), who defined it as "the spreadof the ideology of the ruling warrior class" amongst common people, and it was not restricted to the arts and crafts.
It extended to food, religion, ethics, marriage, family organization and other sectors of Japanese life. In this process,some traditions were invented, others were restructured and an ancient shared past was redefined in order tolegitimate the present. Even the popular art movements such as the folk and farmer crafts happened from top tobottom, being led by urban intellectuals and bureaucrats, who believed to know the best practices of production thatcraftsmen should follow. At the same time they contributed for the preservation and appreciation of these
expressions, their paternalist and reforming character also led to stereotyping and standardization, homogenizing
their identity in order to represent a “unique” local character while also being connected to national ideas of“Japaneseness”.
The purpose of this essay was thus to question concepts and ideas usually associated with Japanesetraditional arts, showing how, rather than something fixed and innate, they are the result of historical, social andpolitical projects, which include, amongst others: the dialogue between local production and Western standards andtastes; manifestations of wealth and social status; democratization of practices that once belonged to the elite;
nationalist projects to promote traditional values; as well as local, individual and artistic specificities not mentioned
here. For, as anywhere in the world, Japanese arts and crafts embrace multiple realities and features which varydepending on the region, period or social class, as well as the history, values and beliefs of the person or group that
produces it. In this sense, besides the historical, social and cultural context in which different practices are developed
or preferred, we should also look and give voice to specificities and subjectivities of groups and people whosematerial and artistic expressions are often overlooked as representative of a culture or nation. By understanding theideologies intertwined with the construction of an identity of Japanese traditional arts and crafts, we canacknowledge the various cultural manifestations of a nation or group without resorting to simplifications that ignore
the diversity and multiplicity of expressive forms, traditions and populations existing in Japan and worldwide.

2

Yashushi Watanabe in a seminar entitled The Politics of Japan’s Soft Power, held at Maison Franco-Japonaise, Tokyo, on November
17th, 2017.

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Journal of International and Advanced Japanese Studies

University of Tsukuba

Volume 11 ONLINE / March 2019

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