ASCJ 2009
SUNDAY JUNE 21, 1:00 P.M.-3:00 P.M
Session 37
Producing Japanese Visual Modernity, 1920s-1930s
Organizer: Kari Shepherdson-Scott, Duke University/ Waseda University
Chair: Chinghsin Wu, University of California, Los Angeles
1) Younjung Oh, University of Southern California / University of Tokyo
Dream of Mass Utopia: Avant-garde Art and Department Stores in 1920s Japan
2) Chinghsin Wu, University of California, Los Angeles
Machines and the Arts in 1930s Japan: Rationality as an Ideal Modernity
3) Kari Shepherdson-Scott, Duke University/ Waseda University
Modernity in Manchukuo: Representations of a Japanese, Urban Ideal
Discussant: Nancy Lin, University of Chicago
Discussant: Olivier Krischer, University of Tsukuba
Producing Japanese Visual Modernity, 1920s-1930s
Organizer: Kari Shepherdson-Scott, Duke University/ Waseda University
Chair: Chinghsin Wu, University of California, Los Angeles
The 1920s and 1930s was a
crucial period in the development of the meaning of modernity in Japan.
Influenced by the growth of an urban mass culture, the inundation of
pictorial representations that drew on international circuits of
imagery and representational practices, and the reconstruction of Tokyo
following the disastrous earthquake of 1923, the “modern” in Japan had
far-reaching social and artistic impact. Modern subject positions were
reconstituted in new urbanized spaces in both Japan and its colonies.
There, they were embedded in a complex socio-aesthetic matrix shaped by
the circulation of new signs, symbols, bodies, commodities, industry
and capital.
This panel investigates some
of the visual cultures that exemplified a new, direct engagement with
contemporary, everyday life. The new spaces, art, and images that
emerged at this time were instrumental means in the production and
negotiation of “modernity” for the newly constituted metropolitan
subject. From the department store as the converging site of
avant-garde art and mass consumption (Oh) and the production and
reception of images of the machine and machine aesthetics (Wu), to the
constructed images of Japan’s colonial urban projects in Manchukuo as
escapist utopia (Shepherdson-Scott), this panel seeks to explore some
of the visual cultures that contributed to the dynamic development of
modernity in Japan during this period.
1) Younjung Oh, University of Southern California/ University of Tokyo
Dream of Mass Utopia: Avant-garde Art and Department Stores in 1920s Japan
Appearing at the turn of the
twentieth century, the department store introduced the concepts and
practices of modern living in Japan by symbolizing a new social
dimension of consumption. Not only was the department store a key agent
of Japan’s consumer capitalism, but concurrently it was a major venue
for artistic activities of self-proclaimed Japanese avant-garde
artists. The most radical avant-garde art groups in the 1920s such as
Mavo, Action, Bunriha, and Sousha regularly held their exhibitions in
department stores and frequently created designs for store
advertisements, magazines, shop windows, and buildings. Avant-garde
artists opposed pure aestheticism and thus sought to eliminate the
autonomous and elitist notion of “fine art” by reintegrating art into
the praxis of everyday life. To expand the realm of their artistic
practice, avant-garde artists exploited the new exhibition venues such
as department stores rather than display their works within official
art exhibition spaces. Nonetheless, how can we interpret the seeming
incongruity of avant-garde artists’ collaborations with department
stores whose capitalist nature would seem to directly contradict the
proletarian and revolutionary sympathies of the artists? My paper will
address this question by examining both the department store’s
reputation as a cultural institution that shaped vision of modern daily
life and the avant-garde artist’s belief in the democratic potential of
nascent consumer culture within the context of their common dream of
mass utopia
2) Chinghsin Wu, University of California, Los Angeles
Machines and the Arts in 1930s Japan: Rationality as an Ideal Modernity
This paper
examines the theory of machine aesthetics in 1930s Japan in the
discourse of its conception and its application to the arts. Starting
from 1929, Japanese art critics and artists began to take notice of a
new form of art that was related to the beauty of machine. In their
view, this mechanical expression or the machine itself held the promise
of a new way to transcend the conventional formalism of the past and
create a new format, not only for creating art itself, but also
allowing art to be more involved in society.
Inspired by,
but different from art of the 1910s and 1920s, when Italian Futurism
and Russian constructionism emerged, Japanese trend toward mechanism in
the 1930s did not simply embrace mechanical beauty, but sought a more
balanced portrayal that would treat the machine as a logical, rational,
and scientific object that could modernize art. This new format or new
concept of machine aesthetics emerged simultaneously in different
genres of art, such as fine arts, applied arts, literature, films,
photography, and architecture. Meanwhile, this mechanical idea often
crossed the boundaries of the traditional definitions of each genre and
blurred the distinctions between them. This paper investigates
understandings of the machine and the mechanical in 1930s Japanese art,
including machine as an object in the arts, the influences of machine
aesthetics on the arts, and the close ties between machine aesthetics
and proletarianism.
3) Kari Shepherdson-Scott, Duke University/ Waseda University
Modernity in Manchukuo: Representations of a Japanese, Urban Ideal
Kari Shepherdson-Scott, Duke University/ Waseda University
The developing
space of the city played an important role in the production of
Japanese modernity. This was especially true in the years following the
Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. However, hindered by various legal and
economic concerns, urban planners were unable to fully realize their
transformation of Tokyo. On the other hand, planners and bureaucrats
perceived Japan’s puppet state of Manchukuo (1932-1945) as a “blank
slate” which could be developed without constraint. Their vision,
coupled with the desire to develop new spaces for population overflow
and industrial development, led to an ambitious, continental building
boom.
My paper
investigates the possible meaning of these spaces for an urban
demographic still living in Japan. I focus upon images of the new
Manchurian capital of Xinjing in Manshū Gurafu (1933-1944) – a
monthly magazine that was distributed to major urban centers in Japan –
to first identify the means used to laud the new buildings, parks, and
wide boulevards. Then, I investigate how the subject of these images
began to change in the late 1930s, a time marked by war and pressure
for Japanese continental emigration. In contrast with the themes of
self-sacrifice in the metropole featured in contemporaneous magazines
such as Asahi Gurafu,
Manshū Gurafu presented to its
readers a picture of middle-class life on the continent filled with
leisure, prosperity, and consumption. These images not only obscured
ongoing violence on the continent but also posited the ideal urban
modernity of Manchuria as an escapist safe haven in a time of conflict.
Discussant: Nancy Lin, University of Chicago
Discussant: Olivier Krischer, University of Tsukuba