2023

January 19th (Online Meeting; Recording available - please contact speaker at oisaeva@uni-bonn.de)

Transcending artistic boundaries – Pre-war Japanese Avant-Gardes through the lens of two migrant artists: David Burliuk and Varvara Bubnova

Olga Isaeva (University of Bonn)

This paper will critically address the role two migrant artists David Davidovich Burliuk and Varvara Dmitrejenva Bubnova played in (re)defining the Japanese pre-war avant-gardes during the Taishō period (1912-1926). Careful consideration will be given to the contextually based artistic practice in relation to the specific Japanese history of modernization, the establishment of art institutions, and state-controlled exhibition systems on one part. On the other hand, however, I will make an argument for complicating this context with a multipolar and yet entangled avant-gardes composed of many histories that connect and diverge at the same time. Showing the example of the Japanese Futurist Art Association and their follow-up formations, this paper will illustrate the process of applying, changing, and translating the European avant-gardes within the local context. Moving on to the case studies, the following core question will be addressed: How do the activities of the migrant artists reflect the Japanese avant-gardes? How could their choices be read as comments on the time they are involved in and the barriers they are faced with and trying to overcome?

May 11th

Kanten: The Official Juried Government-Sponsored Art Exhibition

Nicole Valentova (Waseda University)

Mirroring the national French salon, kanten, a government-sponsored juried art exhibition, differed from the large-scale export-driven national expositions or small exhibitions of the private art associations, creating an unprecedented space for everyone. The judges, selected by the Minister of Education and high-ranking bureaucrats, were meant to choose artworks that would set the national standard and, among these, elevate outstanding works that would form the national canon. In this way the modern art scene was being built in an extremely controlled environment tainted by kanten’s undeniable political affiliation, with judges being the gate keepers.

Scholarship has focused solely on individual artists or art groups, but my research maps the development of the framework and the platform itself both in Japan and in colonial Chosŏn. I suggest that the extensive involvement of the Ministry of Education secured the art world a direct channel with the political realm allowing ideological tendencies to seep through the bureaucratic layers, and consequently the displayed art reflected political discourse and was aligned with the official narrative.

During this presentation we shall explore the circumstances that led to the establishment of kanten and examine the relationship between the exhibition and the political sphere. Taking the fall of the cabinet in summer 1908 as a case study I will demonstrate how the political affiliation affected the art that was selected, and its evaluation.

June 8th

Shogakai: A Vulgar History of Japanese Literati in the Long Nineteenth Century

Jingyi Li (University of Arizona)

Shogakai, literally translated as calligraphy and painting gathering, was a popular form of social gathering for literati of early modern Japan. Beginning as exclusive events for educated intellectuals and art collectors in the late eighteenth century, shogakai became more open to a public audience in the mid-nineteenth century. From the late-nineteenth century onward, however, it was absorbed by exhibitions and auctions. The complexities of shogakai gatherings reflect, on the one hand, a transforming cultural hierarchy disturbed by the expansion of literacy and popular culture, and on the other, an emerging ideology of art and value as shogakai became a vehicle of fostering aesthetic taste for the common audience.

Building upon previous scholarship that discusses the commercial aspect of shogakai, in this presentation I analyze the dynamics of shogakai gatherings in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For producers of popular culture, shogakai provided various ways to harvest fame and profit. For consumers, the easy access to some of such gatherings encouraged them to join in the cultural production. For the Tokugawa bakufu and the Meiji government, however, shogakai was a moral degeneration that then became a convenient device to cultivate national identity through “Japanese art.” Drawing on primary sources about shogakai from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this presentation reevaluates the social significance of cultural gatherings and their creators–the literati.

July 27th

Dying for the State: The Commemoration of Sacrifice in Meiji and Post-War Japanese State Building

Adam Colgren (Michigan State University)

It is not an exaggeration to assert that modern Japan and its national identity have in many ways been defined by war, with the Boshin War of 1868 that heralded Japan’s transition to a “modern” state, the international wars against China and Russia that solidified Japan as a power on the international stage at the turn of the twentieth century, and the Pacific War that signified both a high-water mark of Japanese militarism and a marked shift to pacifism upon its conclusion.  Accompanying the conduct of the wars themselves is the commemoration of those who fell in battle.  My research uses this commemoration of the dead, with particular focus on “sacrifice,” as a lens through which to compare two key moments of national identity formation: the Meiji period (1868-1912) and the postwar period (1945-1985) with the goal of understanding two key questions:  What methods did the Japanese state employ to mobilize the memory of sacrifice for its nation-building project?  How did these methods evolve across the two aforementioned periods, which were wildly different in terms of geopolitical context and the outcome of the wars themselves?

October 26th

Why study sex with medaka: Sexual states as biological indicators in Cold War Japan

Lijing Jiang (Johns Hopkins University)

The Japanese rice fish, medaka (Oryzia latipes), has been an honored experimental organism in Japan ever since geneticist Aida Tatsuo (会田龍雄)’s famed demonstration of a sex-linked Mendelian hereditary pattern of its body colors around 1921. Major research about the fish between the 1940s and 1970s involved continued experiments on and observations of its fluid sexual states, including utilization of these states to reproduce or mark specific genetic or physiological conditions, making the fish highly valuable in studying genetics, sexual distribution, metabolism, and environmental testing. In short, medaka’s fungible sexuality was crucial in making it a useful model before the rise of molecular biology and genomics. This paper focuses on Yamamoto Toki-o(山本時男)’s and Egami Nobuo(江上信雄)’s studies on sex determination and sex physiology of the medaka to show how researchers constructed the fish into a techno-sexual organism, with its sexual states as indicators reflecting complex issues in biological science. Both researchers were heavily influenced by Okada Yo Kaname’s studies in intersex and sex reversal. They also relied on tools newly available in post-war Japan, i.e., commercialized artificially synthesized sex hormones for Yamamoto, and radio-active isotopes and radiation machines for Egami. The three decades of intense sex studies of medaka overlapped with a period when gay communities in Japan became relatively muted and when women students and scientists became increasingly present in the laboratory. The techno-sexual fish was occasionally used to articulate symbolic meanings about gender and gendered issues in science, which further fashioned the medaka as an organism of particular interest for women and other marginalized groups.

November 30th

Intersecting Lives, Silenced Stories, and the Quest for Reconciliation in the Japanese Empire's Shadow

Agnese Dionisio (Waseda University)

Historiography surrounding the 20th-century Japanese Empire, particularly its system of military sexual slavery, is extensive. While recent scholarly works successfully emphasize the significance of oral histories, I contend that further investigation is necessary to understand the interplay between individual experiences and their connection to broader historical narratives. This presentation aims to analyze the phenomenon of military sexual slavery by examining the intersections of gender, race, socioeconomic status, age, physical ability, and more. These intersecting layers formed a complex hierarchical structure, influencing each individual's position and relative privilege within the Empire. By analyzing the personal narratives of victims and survivors, this presentation reveals how government-led discourses concerning gender, race, and class intersected and mutually reinforced each other, profoundly affecting people's lives. The presentation will feature stories of individuals from across the Empire, with a focus on those who lived on the fringes of society. Personal experiences and struggles, including those of Japanese and Korean 'comfort women' taken to Chuuk Lagoon, Filipino individuals who may identify today as transgender or non-binary, and the stark disparities in the treatment of white women compared to Indonesian and Chinese women living in Japan-occupied Indonesia, will be examined. I will also discuss how these historical narratives connect to contemporary society and the ongoing struggles of individuals who still grapple with the legacies of the Japanese Empire.

December 7th

Uneven Desires: Towards A Transnational Queer History of Occupation Period Japan

Patrick Carland-Echavarria (University of Pennsylvania)

The U.S.-led Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-1952) represented a period of drastic political, social, and economic change. The breakdown of wartime ideology centered on the ideal of the family-as-nation (kazoku kokka) and the lack of a coherent ideological replacement for it created new opportunities for previously censored expressions of gender and sexuality. As Marc Mclelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and Naoya Maekawa among others have shown, Occupation-era Japan saw a proliferation of gay bars in urban spaces as well as an explosion of media discourse regarding gender transgression and queer sexualities, to the extent that some writers at the time described it as a “period of sexual liberation,” (sei kaihō no jidai). The emergence of visible queer sexual cultures in postwar Japan was also deeply intertwined with the presence of Occupation forces, particularly U.S. soldiers and related personnel. The Occupation coincided with increasingly punitive and formalized policies of homophobic exclusion in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries amid rising paranoia about communist subversion, a period that has been termed the ‘lavender scare’ by historians. In this context, postwar Japan represented a uniquely tolerant space for foreign same-sex attracted individuals, many of whom came there as part of the Occupation themselves. This presentation analyzes queer experiences of Occupation-era Japan through a transnational lens by examining Japanese and English language discourses surrounding same-sex sexuality as well as intimate relationships between queer Japanese and foreign Occupation personnel in the late 1940s and 1950s. It will compare Japanese-language discussions surrounding postwar sexual cultures with the accounts of same-sex attracted Americans who came to Japan during the Occupation and chose to remain there afterwards. Ultimately, this presentation will illuminate the shifting economic, racial, and geopolitical forces that both reinforced inequalities between Japanese and Allied personnel and created new opportunities for queer transnational encounters during a complex and often contradictory period of post-World War II history.