Meiji Art & Visual Culture

Articles

Buckland, Rosina. "Shunga in the Meiji Era: The End of a Tradition?" Japan Review no. 26 (2013): 259-276.

Chaiklin, Martha. "Politicking Art: Ishikawa Kōmei and the Development of Meiji Sculpture." East Asian History 39 (December 2014): 53-74.

Clark, John. "Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism." East Asian History 29 (June 2005): 1-38.

Conant, Ellen, ed. Challenging Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006.

Copeland, Rebecca. "Fashioning the Feminine: Images of the Modern Girl Student in Meiji Japan." U.S.-Japan Women's Journal 30-31 (2006): 13-35.

Demeulenaere-Douyère, Christiane. "Japan at the World's Fairs: A Reflection." Journal of Japonisme 5, no. 2 (September 2020): 129-151.

Foxwell, Chelsea. "Dekadansu: Ukiyo-e and the Codification of Aesthetic Values in Modern Japan, 1880-1930." Octopus: A Visual Studies Journal 3, (2007): 21-41.

———. "Japan as Museum? Encapsulating Change and Loss in Late-Nineteenth-Century Japan." Getty Research Journal 1, (2009): 39-52.

———. "Merciful Mother Kannon and Its Audiences." The Art Bulletin 92, no. 4 (December 2010): 326-347.

———. "New Art and the Display of Antiquities in Mid-Meiji Tokyo." Review of Japanese Culture and Society 24 (December 2012): 137-154.

———. "The Art of Reframing the News: Early Meiji Shinbun Nishiki-e in context." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 78, no. 1 (2018): 47-90.

Fröhlich, Judith. "Pictures of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895." War in History 21, no. 2 (2014): 214-250.

Guth, Christine M. E. "Charles Longfellow and Okakura Kakuzo: Cultural Cross-Dressing in the Colonial Context." positions: east asian cultures critique 8, no. 3 (Winter 2000): 605-636.   

———. "Japan 1868-1945: Art, Architecture, and National Identity." Art Journal 55, no. 3 (1996): 16-20.

Hirayama, Mikiko. "The Emperor's New Clothes: Japanese Visuality and Imperial Portrait Photography." History of Photography 33, no. 2 (2009): 165-184.

Hockley, Allen. "Cameras, Photographs and Photography in Nineteenth-Century Japanese Prints." Impressions 23 (2001): 43-63.

Imaizumi, Yoshiko. "The Making of a Mnemonic Space: Meiji Shrine Memorial Art Gallery 1912-1936." Japan Review 23 (2011): 143-176.

Kornicki, Peter F. "Public Display and Changing Values: Early Meiji Exhibitions and Their Precursors." Monumenta nipponica 49, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 167-196.

McCormick, Kelly M. "Ogawa Kazumasa and the Halftone Photograph: Japanese War Albums at the Turn of the Twentieth Century." Trans-Asia Photography Review 7, no. 2 (2007).

Miller, Alison. "Kijo saiho no zu: Women and Nationalism in a Meiji Print." Register (Spencer Museum of Art) 7 (2008): 42-49.

Nagahiro, Kinoshita. "Okakura Kakuzo as a Historian of Art." Review of Japanese Culture and Society 24 (December 2012): 26-38.

Notehelfer, F. G. "On Idealism and Realism in the Thought of Okakura Tenshin." The Journal of Japanese Studies 16, no. 2 (1990): 309-355.

Sapin, Julia Elizabeth. "Merchandising Art and Identity in Meiji Japan: Kyoto Nihonga Artists' Designs for Takashimaya Department Store, 1868-1912." Journal of Design History 17, no. 4 (2004): 317-336.

Snodgrass, Judith. "Exhibiting Meiji Modernity: Japanese Art at the Columbian Exposition." East Asian History 31 (June 2006): 75-100.

Tanaka, Atsushi. "The Life and Arts of Kuroda Seiki." National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo. https://www.tobunken.go.jp/kuroda/gallery/english/life_e.html (accessed August 29, 2023).

Tanaka, Stefan. "Imaging History: Inscribing Belief in the Nation." The Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 1 (February 1994): 24-44.

Tosk, Susan, and David Cole. "Japanese Imperial Silver Bonbonnières: Elegance in the Palm of Your Hand – The Nancy and Robin Markbreiter Collection." Arts of Asia (Spring 2022): 30-41.

Tseng, Alice. "Imperial Portraiture and Popular Print Media in Early Twentieth-Century Japan." Journal of Japanese Studies 46, no. 2 (2020): 305-344. 

———."Kuroda Seiki's Morning Toilette on Exhibition in Modern Kyoto." The Art Bulletin 90, no. 3 (September 2008): 417-440.

Watanabe, Toshio. "Josiah Conder's Rokumeikan: Architecture and National Representation in Meiji Japan." Art Journal 55, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 21-27.

Wattles, Miriam. "Meiji Daughters: Their Stuff and Fancy in Brocade Pictures: 1870s-1880s." Meiji at 150 Visual Essays. https://meijiat150dtr.arts.ubc.ca/essays/wattles/ (accessed August 29, 2023). 

———. "The 1909 Ryūtō and the Aesth­etics of Affectivity." Art Journal 55, no. 3 (1996): 48-56.

Weisenfeld, Gennifer, ed. Visual Cultures of Japanese Imperialism. Special edition of positions. positions: east asian cultures critique 8, no. 3 (2001).

Wendelken, Cherie. "The Tectonics of Japanese Style: Architect and Carpenter in the Late Meiji Period." Art Journal 55, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 28-37.

Yamagata-Montoya, Aurore. "Girls on a Mission – Photographs of Japanese Girls in Late Nineteenth Century America: The Example of the Iwakura Mission." Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia 29 (2016): 177-97.

Books

Aso, Noriko. Public Properties: Museums in Imperial Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

Baekeland, Frederick. Imperial Japan: The Art of the Meiji Era, 1868-1912. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1980.

Buckland, Rosina. Painting Nature for the Nation: Taki Katei and the Challenges to Sinophile Culture in Meiji Japan. Japanese Visual Culture, Vol. 8. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013.

Clark, John. Japanese-British Exchanges in Art, 1850s-1930s: Papers and Research Materials. Canberra: Department of Art History, Australian National University, 1989. 

———. Japanese Exchanges in Art 1850s-1930s, with Britain, Continental Europe, and the USA. Sydney: Power Publications, 2001.

Feltens, Frank, ed. Japan in the Age of Modernization: The Arts of Otagaki Rengetsu and Tomioka Tessai. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Scholarly Press, 2023.

Finn, Dallas. Meiji Revisited: The Site of Victorian Japan. New York: Weatherhill, 1995.

Fukuoka, Maki. The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.

Guth, Christine M. E. Art, Tea, and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Harada, Minoru. Meiji Western Painting. New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill/Shibundo, 1974.

Hota-Lister, Ayako. The Japan-British Exhibition of 1910: Gateway to the Island Empire of the East. Richmond and Surrey: Japan Library, 1999.

Jahn, Gisela. Meiji Ceramics: The Art of Japanese Export Porcelain and Satsuma Ware, 1868-1912. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, 2004.

Kowshik, Dinkar. Okakura: The Rising Sun of Japanese Renaissance. New Delhi: National   Book Trust, 1988.

Lambourne, Lionel. Japonisme: Cultural Crossings Between Japan and the West. London: Phaidon, 2005.

Lippit, Miya. Aesthetic Life: Beauty and Art in Modern Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019.

Marra, Michael F. A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001. 

———. Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999.

Meech-Pekarik, Julia. The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions of a New Civilization. New York: Weatherhill, 1986.

Merritt, Helen, and Nanako Yamada. Woodblock Kuchi-e Prints: Reflections of Meiji Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000.

Milhaupt, Terry Satsuki. Kimono: A Modern History. London: Reaktion Books, 2016.

Naoteru, Uyeno. Japanese Arts and Crafts in the Meiji Era. Tokyo: Pan-Pacific Press, 1958.

Odakane, Taro. Tessai: Master of the Literati Style. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1965.

Pitelka, Morgan, and Alice Y. Tseng, eds. Kyoto Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji Periods: The Arts of Reinvention. London: Routledge, 2016. 

Pollard, Clare. Master Potter of Meiji Japan: Makuzu Kozan (1842-1916) and His Workshop. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Rimer, J. Thomas, ed. Since Meiji: Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868-2000. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012.

Rousmaniere, Nicole Coolidge, and Mikiko Hirayama, eds. Reflecting Truth: Japanese Photography in the Nineteenth Century. Norwich: Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, 2004.

Satō, Dōshin. Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State: The Politics of Beauty. Translated by Hiroshi Nara. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2011.

Suzuki, Hiroyuki. Antiquarians of Nineteenth-Century Japan: The Archeology of Things in the Late Tokugawa and Early Meiji Periods. Edited and translated by Maki Fukuoka. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2022.

Takashi, Fujitani. Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Traganou, Jilly. The Tōkaidō Road: Traveling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan. London: Routledge, 2004.

Tseng, Alice. The Imperial Museums of Meiji Japan: Architecture and the Art of the Nation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.

Uyeno, Naoteru. Japanese Arts and Crafts in the Meiji Era. Translated by Richard Lane. Tokyo: Pan-Pacific Press, 1958.

Vollmer, John E. Re-envisioning Japan: Meiji Fine Art Textiles. Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2016.

Wakita, Mio, and Kinbē Kusakabe. Staging Desires: Japanese Femininity in Kusakabe Kimbei's Nineteenth-Century Souvenir Photography. Berlin: Reimer, 2013.

Weisenfeld, Gennifer. Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Weston, Victoria. Japanese Painting and National Identity: Okakura Tenshin and His Circle. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.

Winkel, Margarita. Souvenirs from Japan: Japanese Photography at the Turn of the Century. London: Bamboo Publishing, 1991.

Zohar, Ayelet, and Alison J. Miller, eds. The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan: Negotiating the Transition to Modernity. London and New York: Routledge, 2022.

Chapters

Berndt, Jacqueline. "Nationally Nude? The Female Nude in Japanese Oil Painting and Posters (1890s-1920s)." In Performing "Nation": Gender Politics in Literature, Theatre, and the Visual Arts of China and Japan, 1880-1940, edited by Doris Croissant, Catherine Vance Yeh, and Joshua Mostow, 347-381. Leiden: Brill Academic Publications, 2008.

Bryson, Norman. "Westernizing Bodies: Women, Art, and Power in Meiji Yoga." In Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, ed. Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Meribeth Graybill. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003.

Cesaratto, Anna, Marco Leona, and Federica Pozzi. "The Cultural Meanings of Color: Raman Spectroscopic Studies of Red, Pink, and Purple Dyes in Late Edo and Early Meiji Period Prints." In Raman Spectroscopy in Archeology and Art History, vol. 2, edited by Peter Vanenabeele and Howell Edwards, 271-288. London: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2018.

Clark, John. "Late Meiji Reprographics and the Early Modern." In Modernities of Japanese Art, written by John Clark. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 

Conant, Ellen. "Principles and Pragmatism: The Yatoi in the Field of Art." In Foreign Employees in Nineteenth Century Japan, edited by Edward R Beauchamp and Akira Iriye, 137-170. Boulder: Westview Press, 1990.

———. "Refractions of the Rising Sun: Japan's Participation in International Exhibitions, 1862-1910." In Japan and Britain: An Aesthetic Dialogue, 1850-1930, edited by Tomoko Sato and Toshio Watanabe, 79-92. London: Lund Humphries, 1991.

Finn, Dallas. "Josiah Conder (1852-1920) and Meiji Architecture." In Britain and Japan 1859-1991: Themes and Personalities, edited by Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels, 86-93. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.

Guth, Christine M. E. "Takamura Koun and Takamura Kotaro: On Being a Sculptor." In The Artist as Professional in Japan, edited by Melinda Takeuchi, 152-179. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.

Haga, Toru. "The Formation of Realism in Meiji Painting: The Artistic Career of Takahashi Yuichi." In Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, edited by Donald H. Shively, 221-256. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.

Harris, Neil. "All the World a Melting Pot? Japan at American Fairs, 1876-1904." In Mutual Images: Essays in American Japanese Relations, edited by Akira Iriye, 24-54, 273-276. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Hida, Toyojiro. "Exporters of Meiji Decorative Arts." In Meiji no Takara: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Selected Essays, edited by Oliver Impey and Malcolm Fairley, 70-94. London: Kibo Foundation, 1995.

Hockley, Allen. "New Age Warriors: Redeploying the Heroic Ethos in the Late Meiji Period." In Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints, written by Bruce A. Coats, 109-115. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2006.

Inaga, Shigemi. "A European Eye on Japanese Arts and a Japanese Response to 'Japonisme' (1860-1920)." In Rethinking Japan, vol. 1, Literature, Visual Arts and Linguistics, edited by Adriana Boscaro, Franco Gatti, and Massimo Raveri, 131-137. London: Routledge, 1995.

Keene, Donald. "The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and Its Cultural Effects in Japan." In Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, edited by Donald H. Shively, 121-176. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Merritt, Helen. "Woodblock Prints of the Meiji Era." In The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints, edited by Amy Reigle Newland, 241-260. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2005.

Redfern, Mary. "More Than 'Western': Porcelain for the Meiji Emperor's Table." In Ceramics and Modernity in Japan, edited by Meghen Jones and Louise Allison Cort. London and New York: Routledge, 2020.

Rosenfield, John M. "Western Style Painting in the Early Meiji Period and Its Critics." In Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, edited by Donald H. Shively, 181-220. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.

Satō, Dōshin. "The Policies of the Meiji Government for the Promotion of the Craft Industries and the Export Trade." In Meiji no Takara: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Selected Essays, edited by Oliver Impey and Malcolm Fairley, 56-69. London: Kibo Foundation, 1995.

Szostak, John Donald. "'Fair is Foul, and Foul is Fair': Kyoto Nihonga Anti-Bijin Portraiture and the Psychology of the Grotesque." In Rethinking Japanese Modernism, edited by Roy Starrs. Leiden: Global Oriental, 2012.

Takashina, Shuji. "Natsume Soseki and the Development of Modern Japanese Art." In Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals during the Interwar Years, edited by J. Thomas Rimer, 273-281. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Watanabe, Toshio. "Vernacular Expression or Style? Josiah Conder and the Beginnings of Modern Architectural Design in Japan." In Art and the National Dream: The Search for Vernacular Expression in Turn-of-the-Century Design, edited by Nicola Gordon Bowe, 43-52. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993.

Dissertations

Langlois, Lisa. Exhibiting Japan: Gender and National Identity at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2004.

Lippit, Miya. Figures of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Beautiful Woman in Meiji Japan. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2001.

Maeda, Tamaki. Tomioka Tessai's Narrative Landscapes: Rethinking Sino-Japanese Traditions. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 2004.

Sapin, Julia Elizabeth. Liaisons between Painters and Department Stores: Merchandising Art and Identity in Meiji Japan, 1868-1912. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 2003.

Szostak, John Donald. The Kokuga Sôsaku Kyôkai and Kyoto Nihonga Reform in the Meiji, Taishô and Early Shôwa Years (1900-1928). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 2005.

Wakamatsu, Yurika. Painting in Between: Gender and Modernity in the Japanese Literati Art of Okuhara Seiko (1837-1913). Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2016.

Exhibition Catalogs

Bailey, Bradley M. Flash of Light, Fog of War: Japanese Military Prints, 1894-1905. Chapel Hill: Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, 2017.

Clark, John. Japanese Nineteenth-Century Copperplate Prints. London: British Museum, 1994.

Clark, Timothy. Demon of Painting: The Art of Kawanabe Kyosai. London: British Museum Press, 1993.

Coates, Bruce Arthur, ed. Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2006.

Conant, Ellen, Steven D. Owyoung, and J. Thomas Rimer, eds. Nihonga, Transcending the Past: Japanese-Style Painting, 1868-1968. St. Louis: St. Louis Art Museum, 1995.

Dobson, Sebastian, Anne Nishimura Morse, and Frederic A. Sharf. Art and Artifice: Japanese Photographs of the Meiji Era. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Publications, 2004.

Earle, Joe. Splendors of Imperial Japan: Arts of the Meiji Period from the Khalili Collection. London: Khalili Family Trust, 2002.

———. Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Masterpieces from the Khalili Collection. St. Petersburg, FL: Broughton International, 1999.

Foxwell, Chelsea. Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting: Kano Hogai and the Search for Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

———, and Bradley M. Bailey. Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan. Lexington, MA: Japanese Art Society of America, 2023.

Harris, Victor. Japanese Imperial Craftsmen: Meiji Art from the Khalili Collection. London: British Museum Press, 1994. 

Hu, Philip K., ed. Conflicts of Interest: Art and War in Modern Japan. Saint Louis: Saint Louis Art Museum, 2016.

Impey, O. R., and Malcolm Fairley. The Dragon King of the Sea: Japanese Decorative Art of the Meiji Period from the John R. Young Collection. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1991.

Irvine, Gregory. Japanese Cloisonné Enamels: The Seven Treasures. London: V&A Publishing, 2006.

Keene, Donald, et al. Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Woodblock Prints from the Meiji Era, 1868-1912; Selections from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Publications, 2001.

McDermott, Hiroko T., and Clare Pollard. Threads of Silk and Gold: Ornamental Textiles from Meiji Japan. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 2012.

Morioka, Michiyo, and Paul Berry. Modern Masters of Kyoto: The Transformation of Japanese Painting Traditions, Nihonga from the Griffith and Patricia Way Collection. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1999.

Newland, Amy Reigle. Time Present and Time Past: Images of a Forgotten Master, Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900). Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 1999.

Satō, Tomoko, and Toshio Watanabe. Japan and Britain: An Aesthetic Dialogue 1850-1930. London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1991.

Sharf, Frederic A. Takejiro Hasegawa: Meiji Japan's Preeminent Publisher of Wood-Block-Illustrated Crepe-Paper Books. Salem: Peabody Essex Museum, 1994.  

———. Anne Nishimura Morse, and Sebastian Dobson, eds. A Much Recorded War: The Russo-Japanese War in History and Imagery. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Publications, 2005.

Singer, Robert T. Polished to Perfection: Japanese Cloisonné from the Collection of Donald K. Gerber and Sueann E. Sherry. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: Prestel, 2017.

Smith, Henry, II. Kiyochika: Artist of Meiji Japan. Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1988.

Stevenson, John. Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. Redmond: San Francisco Graphic Society, 1992.

Van den Ing, Eric. Beauty and Violence: Japanese Prints by Yoshitoshi, 1839-1892. Bergeyk: Society for Japanese Arts, 1992.

Yonemura, Anne. Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.

Notes

The foundations of this reading list were generously provided by Alison J. Miller and Kate Shackelford.

Suggest Additions

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