Master Potter of Meiji Japan

Master Potter of Meiji Japan PDF

Author: Moyra Clare Pollard

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9780199252558

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This is the first book in a European language to make a comprehensive study of the life and works of the astonishingly versatile and accomplished Meiji potter, Makuzu Kozan (1842 - 1916), who was acclaimed as one of the greatest ceramic artists of the Meiji period.The Meiji period, after the opening of Japan to the West in the mid-nineteenth century, was a time of momentous change for Japanese society and Kozan's Makuzu workshop makes an ideal case study to examine the effects of these changes on the Japanese ceramic industry. This book tells the story ofKozan's Makuzu wares from their origins in a traditional workshop in Kyoto to their maturity in a prolific factory in the newly-opened port of Yokohama, where Kozan's ability to cater to the demands of a new Western export market and to incorporate new Western glaze techniques led to enormoussuccess, both in Japan and abroad at the international exhibitions that flourished from the 1850s.Lavish illustrations highlight Kozan's remarkable and technical and artistic achievements, while ceramic marks and box inscriptions are analysed as a practical guide to dating Makuzu ware. Clare Pollard discusses the role of later generations of the Miyagawa family in the running of the workshop andrelates developments in Makuzu ware to the work of other major potters of the era, both in Japan and in Europe and America.Incorporating contemporary sources (including previously unstudied archival material from the Makuzu workshop itself), recent research and the study of a large corpus of Makuzu wares in museums and private collections all over the world, the book examines the artistic, political, and commercialfactors that influenced Kozan and his contemporaries as they strove to come to terms with shifting life-styles and changing attitudes to the arts, and moved towards the creation of a modern ceramic industry.

Exporting Japanese Aesthetics

Exporting Japanese Aesthetics PDF

Author: Tets Kimura

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2020-05-04

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1782846581

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Exporting Japanese Aesthetics brings together historical and contemporary case studies addressing the evolution of international impacts and influences of Japanese culture and aesthetics. The volume draws on a wide range of examples from a multidisciplinary team of scholars exploring transnational, regional and global contexts. Studies include the impact of traditional Japanese theatre and art through to the global popularity of contemporary anime and manga. Under the banner of soft power or Cool Japan, cultural commodities that originate in Japan have manifested new meanings outside Japan. By (re)mapping meanings of selected Japanese cultural forms, this volume offers an in-depth examination of how various aspects of Japanese aesthetics have evolved as exportable commodities, the motivations behind this diffusion, and the extent to which the process of diffusion has been the result of strategic planning. Each chapter presents a case study that explores perspectives that situate Japanese aesthetics within a wide-ranging field of inquiry including performance, tourism, and visual arts, as well as providing historical contexts. The importance of interrogating the export of Japanese aesthetics is validated at the highest levels of government, which formed the Office of Cool Japan in 2010, and which perhaps originated in the 19th century at governmentally endorsed cultural courts at world fairs. Increased international consumption of contemporary Japanese culture provides a much needed boost to Japans weakening economy. The case studies are timely and topical. As host of the 2020/2021 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2025 Osaka Expo, Cool Japan will be under special scrutiny.

Designing Modern Japan

Designing Modern Japan PDF

Author: Sarah Teasley

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2022-05-06

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1780232306

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A revealing look at Japanese design weaving together the stories of people who shaped Japan’s design industries with social history, economic conditions, and geopolitics. From cars to cameras, design from Japan is ubiquitous. So are perceptions of Japanese design, from calming, carefully crafted minimalism to avant-garde catwalk fashion, or the cute, Kawaii aesthetic populating Tokyo streets. But these portrayals overlook the creativity, generosity, and sheer hard work that has gone into creating and maintaining design industries in Japan. In Designing Modern Japan, Sarah Teasley deftly weaves together the personal stories of people who shaped and shape Japan’s design industries with social history, economic conditions, and geopolitics.. Key to her account is how design has been a strategy to help communities thrive during turbulent times, and for making life better along the way. Deeply researched and superbly illustrated, Designing Modern Japan appeals to a wide audience for Japanese design, history, and culture.

Ceramics and Modernity in Japan

Ceramics and Modernity in Japan PDF

Author: Meghen Jones

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-10-16

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0429631995

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Ceramics and Modernity in Japan offers a set of critical perspectives on the creation, patronage, circulation, and preservation of ceramics during Japan’s most dramatic period of modernization, the 1860s to 1960s. As in other parts of the world, ceramics in modern Japan developed along the three ontological trajectories of art, craft, and design. Yet, it is widely believed that no other modern nation was engaged with ceramics as much as Japan—a "potter’s paradise"—in terms of creation, exhibition, and discourse. This book explores how Japanese ceramics came to achieve such a status and why they were such significant forms of cultural production. Its medium-specific focus encourages examination of issues regarding materials and practices unique to ceramics, including their distinct role throughout Japanese cultural history. Going beyond descriptive historical treatments of ceramics as the products of individuals or particular styles, the closely intertwined chapters also probe the relationship between ceramics and modernity, including the ways in which ceramics in Japan were related to their counterparts in Asia and Europe. Featuring contributions by leading international specialists, this book will be useful to students and scholars of art history, design, and Japanese studies.

Since Meiji

Since Meiji PDF

Author: J. Thomas Rimer

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2011-10-31

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 0824861027

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Research outside Japan on the history and significance of the Japanese visual arts since the beginning of the Meiji period (1868) has been, with the exception of writings on modern and contemporary woodblock prints, a relatively unexplored area of inquiry. In recent years, however, the subject has begun to attract wide interest. As is evident from this volume, this period of roughly a century and a half produced an outpouring of art created in a bewildering number of genres and spanning a wide range of aims and accomplishments. Since Meiji is the first sustained effort in English to discuss in any depth a time when Japan, eager to join in the larger cultural developments in Europe and the U.S., went through a visual revolution. Indeed, this study of the visual arts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggests a fresh history of modern Japanese culture—one that until now has not been widely visible or thoroughly analyzed outside that country. In this extensive collection, which includes some 190 black-and-white and color reproductions, scholars from Japan, Europe, Australia, and America explore an impressive array of subjects: painting, sculpture, prints, fashion design, crafts, and gardens. The works discussed range from early Meiji attempts to create art that referenced Western styles to postwar and contemporary avant-garde experiments. There are, in addition, substantive investigations of the cultural and intellectual background that helped stimulate the creation of new and shifting art forms, including essays on the invention of a modern artistic vocabulary in the Japanese language and the history of art criticism in Japan, as well as an extensive account of the career and significance of perhaps the best-known Japanese figure concerned with the visual arts of his period, Okakura Tenshin (1862–1913), whose Book of Tea is still widely read today. Taken together, the essays in this volume allow readers to connect ideas and images, thus bringing to light larger trends in the Japanese visual arts that have made possible the vitality, range, and striking achievements created during this turbulent and lively period. Contributors: Stephen Addiss, Chiaki Ajioka, John Clark, Ellen Conant, Mikiko Hirayama, Michael Marra, Jonathan Reynolds, J. Thomas Rimer, Audrey Yoshiko Seo, Eric C. Shiner, Lawrence Smith, Shuji Tanaka, Reiko Tomii, Mayu Tsuruya, Toshio Watanabe, Gennifer Weisenfeld, Bert Winther-Tamaki, Emiko Yamanashi.

A Mirror of Japanese Ornament

A Mirror of Japanese Ornament PDF

Author: Dover

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2010-08-19

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 048647318X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This magnificent treasury of 100 full-color plates — many with multiple images — ranges from ornate florals, elegant cranes, and fierce dragons to Silk Road imports and Edo-era textile patterns.

The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan

The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan PDF

Author: Lúcio De Sousa

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-01-21

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 9004388079

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan: Merchants, Jesuits and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Slaves, Lúcio de Sousa offers a study on the system of traffic of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean slaves from Japan, using the Portuguese mercantile networks; reconstructs the Japanese communities in the Habsburg Empire; and analyses the impact of the Japanese slave trade on the Iberian legislation produced in the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries.

Challenging Past and Present

Challenging Past and Present PDF

Author: Ellen P. Conant

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2006-02-28

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0824840593

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The complex and coherent development of Japanese art during the course of the nineteenth century was inadvertently disrupted by a political event: the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Scholars of both the preceding Edo (1615–1868) and the succeeding Meiji (1868–1912) eras have shunned the decades bordering this arbitrary divide, thus creating an art-historical void that the former view as a period of waning technical and creative inventiveness and the latter as one threatened by Meiji reforms and indiscriminate westernization and modernization. Challenging Past and Present, to the contrary, demonstrates that the period 1840–1890, as seen progressively rather than retrospectively, experienced a dramatic transformation in the visual arts, which in turn made possible the creative achievements of the twentieth century. The first group of chapters takes as its theme the diverse cultural currents of the transitional period, particularly as they applied to art.The second section deals with the inconsistent yet determinedly pragmatic courses pursed by artists, entrepreneurs, and patrons to achieve a secure footing in the uncertain terrain of early Meiji. Further chapters look at how painters and sculptors sought to absorb and integrate foreign influences and reinterpret their own stylistic mediums.