Showing posts with label visual culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label visual culture. Show all posts

Friday, September 16, 2016

EVENT: The Regime and the Scene. Or, What Difference Did the Tokugawa Shogunate Make to the Visual World of Early Modern Japan?

“Visual World” is spongy shorthand for the physical, representational, and conceptual space of the Edo period. It can conjure the imagery of painting, prints, cartography and other texts. It can conjure urban planning and cityscapes, architecture and infrastructure, and the “look” of the built landscape (from the scale of construction to the universe of night). It can conjure interiors and clothing.

Speakers:

Mary Elizabeth Berry, Department of History, UCB
Julie Nelson Davis, Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania
Matthew McKelway, Department of Art History, Columbia University
Timon Screech, Department of the History of Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Kären Wigen, Department of HIstory, Stanford University
Marcia Yonemoto, Department of HIstory, University of Colorado
Mary Elizabeth Berry, Department of History, UCB
Julie Nelson Davis, Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania
Matthew McKelway, Department of Art History, Columbia University
Timon Screech, Department of the History of Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Kären Wigen, Department of HIstory, Stanford University
Marcia Yonemoto, Department of HIstory, University of Colorado

Friday, October 28, 2016
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Women's Faculty Club Lounge
University of California, Berkeley
url: http://tokugawavisualworld2016.weebly.com/

Thursday, February 4, 2016

"Japan’s picture ID before World War II"


Images and text borrowed from The Japan Times, 2/2/16.

[T]he Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo currently has an exhibition of tourism posters and other promotional material from the 1920s and ’30s. It is a fascinating and at times unusually beautiful glimpse into how different art movements, regional craft practices and the spirit of the times contribute to forming commercial visual culture.

Given that the function of a promotional poster is to seduce you, with perhaps only a few seconds in which to do it, you can expect to feel pandered to — complex history and culture, beautiful landscapes and far-east exoticism have been condensed into powerfully sweet eye-candy. A surprising range of media were employed in this, including traditional woodblock prints, painting and photography. For many of the exhibits, the level of creativity and design is very high, commensurate with the desire to show off Japan at its best.

Apart from this, the exhibition is a great opportunity to consider how Japan’s national identity was constructed in the interwar years. It should be no surprise that the “come hither” message relied heavily on sexuality to catch the viewer’s eye. Many of the posters use images of young women in kimono as a stand in for Japan as a whole.

In a 1911 poster for the South Manchurian Railway by artist Renzo Kita, a demure female companion sits across from us in a railway carriage with the sun setting behind an ancient stupa in the window behind her. The poster is sponsored by Thomas Cook, and is in the style of an Edwardian illustration. The copy tells us that the new rail link brings London “within a fortnight’s journey from Tokyo, Peking and Shanghai, thus saving much time and money, as well as the tedium of a long sea-voyage.”

Our female companion is depicted in a style characteristic of the Gothic period to portray aristocratic or sacred figures; languid, expressionless, elongated and pale. Her blue kimono is decorated with white lilies, symbolic of chastity and purity. On her obi is a butterfly, the symbol of the soul, and perhaps a nod to the opera by Puccini, which had premiered seven years earlier. The undergarment below the kimono is a warm ruddy orange, and using a visual pun common to shunga (erotic prints), appears at the edge of the sleeves as wrinkled slit-shaped orifices. The artist seems to be the same Renzo Kita who later created the solemn historical painting “Last Moments of Admiral Yamaguchi,” which commemorates the admiral’s death in the 1942 Battle of Midway.

...

“Visit Japan: Tourism Promotion in the 1920s and 1930s” at the The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo runs until Feb. 28; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. ¥430 (includes admission to the “MOMAT Collection”). Closed Mon.


Source: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/02/02/arts/japans-picture-id-world-war-ii/

Exhibition website: http://www.momat.go.jp/english/am/exhibition/visit_japan/

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Interesting new content at Japan Focus: "On Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923" by Gennifer Weisenfeld

Image and text borrowed from Japan Focus (see full citation below). 
Caption reads: Taishō 12.9.1 Actual Conditions of the Great Tokyo Earthquake: Twelve Stories.

Disaster is an ever-present, and ever-timely, issue both in Japan and around the world. The triple disaster of 3.11 and its extensive media coverage are a vivid reminder not only of disaster’s critical and catalytic role in history, but the dynamic agency of images in mediating our experiences of natural or man-made events to produce that history. The 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, which devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures, was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Having marked the 91th anniversary of the quake on September 1st, we have an opportunity to learn anew from the media scale of this catastrophe, how different media produce modes of seeing, understanding, and, eventually, remembering. Only by analyzing contending visual responses within disaster communities and how they are codified into collective memory to form a national narrative can we ultimately understand how major events like the Great Kantō Earthquake—or 3.11—become history.

Disaster is an ever-present, and ever-timely, issue both in Japan and around the world. The triple disaster of 3.11 and its extensive media coverage are a vivid reminder not only of disaster’s critical and catalytic role in history, but the dynamic agency of images in mediating our experiences of natural or man-made events to produce that history. The 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, which devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures, was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Having marked the 91th anniversary of the quake on September 1st, we have an opportunity to learn anew from the media scale of this catastrophe, how different media produce modes of seeing, understanding, and, eventually, remembering. Only by analyzing contending visual responses within disaster communities and how they are codified into collective memory to form a national narrative can we ultimately understand how major events like the Great Kantō Earthquake—or 3.11—become history.


Read and see more at the source: "On Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 6, No. 2, February 9, 2015. http://japanfocus.org/-Gennifer-Weisenfeld/4270

Saturday, July 19, 2014

ONLINE COURSE: Visualizing Japan

Announcement from H-NET Notifications:

Harvard-MIT MOOC: Visualizing Japan (1850s-1930s): Westernization, Protest, Modernity

Seminar Date: 2014-09-03 Now open for registration. Free!

A first-time MIT/Harvard MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), Visualizing Japan opens windows on Japan’s transition into the modern world through the historical visual record. Teachers include John Dower (MIT), Andrew Gordon (Harvard), and Gennifer Weisenfeld (Duke).

This co-taught course looks at Japanese history and the skills and questions involved in reading history through images now accessible in digital formats. The course is based on the MIT "Visualizing Cultures" website devoted to image-driven research on Japan and China since the 19th century (visualizingcultures.mit.edu). The introductory module considers methodologies historians use to “visualize” the past, followed by three modules that explore the themes of Westernization, in Commodore Perry’s 1853-54 expedition to Japan; social protest, in Tokyo’s 1905 Hibiya Riot; and modernity, as seen in the archives of the major Japanese cosmetics company, Shiseido.

This MOOC will be followed by Visualizing Postwar Tokyo by Shunya Yoshimi of the University of Tokyo.


REGISTER FROM THE edX COURSE SITE: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx-mitx/harvardx-mitx-vjx-visualizing-japan-2331

Monday, August 19, 2013

"University of Michigan New Digital Image Collections in Japanese Studies"

Announcement from H-Japan:

University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service (DLPS) has completed 3 new digital image collection projects in Japanese studies. These collections are open to the public for educational and research purposes.

Brower Fund Collection: Playing Cards:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/brower1ic

Alfred Hussey Collection: Japan's Constitution Slides: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/hussey1ic

Alfred Hussey Collection: Japan's Constitution Photo Album: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/hussey2ic

See also the UM Digital Library Production Service (DLPS) for all of their on-line resources: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/lib/colllist/

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Visual Anthropology at the AJJ


The 2012 Anthropology of Japan in Japan (AJJ) Fall Workshop@Kyoto
Doshisha University, Muromachi Campus (Imadegawa) 
December 1st & 2nd, 2012

“Belonging in Japan and Beyond”

This meeting will explore what it means to feel a sense of Japanese cultural and/or national heritage within Japan or beyond its territorial borders.

***

Lots of good visual anthropology going on this week. Many thanks to my students for their efforts in creating photographs and films - both the photo exhibition and film festival were extremely successful. Thanks to all who came to both events.

In case you need another dose of visual anthro, you are in luck. The AJJ Fall Workshop is in the Kansai this year and has a lot of interesting presentations scheduled. Of particular interest to visual anthropologists will be this session:

Sunday, December 2nd, 13:30~15:30
Session 6 (Law School at the “Kambaikan,” 2F, Room KMB208)

Sights of Community: Exploring Belonging in Visual Practice
Organizer and Chair: Steven C. FEDOROWICZ (Kansai Gaidai University)

Belonging in the Work of Japanese Contemporary Artist Fuyuko Matsui (Eva MISKELOVA, Masaryk University / Kansai Gaidai University)

Exploring Devotees of a Sexy Cyber Green-Haired Guru (John SHULTZ, Kansai Gaidai University)

Fujoshi Between Pleasure and Danger: Yaoi/BL Fandom and the Management of Spoiled Identities in Japan (Jeffry T. HESTER, Kansai Gaidai University)

How to Play Deaf in Japan (Steven C. FEDOROWICZ, Kansai Gaidai University)

For more information about the AJJ Fall Workshop, check out the AJJ Blog: http://www.ajj-online.net/www.ajj-online.net/Blog/Entries/2012/11/19_Annual_Meeting_Program.html 

For directions to Doshisha University: http://www.doshisha.ac.jp/english/access/ima-access.html

Monday, July 11, 2011

July meeting of the Kyoto Asian Studies Group: "Mediating Women's Lives in Early Twentieth-Century Japan: Visual Advertising in Department-Store and Women's Magazines"

Announcement from H-ASIA:

The speaker for the June meeting of the Kyoto Asian Studies Group is Julia  Sapin, who will present "Mediating Women's Lives in Early Twentieth-Century Japan: Visual Advertising in Department-Store and Women's Magazines."

The lecture will be held on Tuesday, July 12th from 6:30-8:30 in Room 213  of the Fusokan on the Doshisha University Campus (see link below for access information).

Abstract

Women became a target for advertisers in early twentieth-century Japan and  thus a primary market for social trends that were mirrored in these commercial ventures. The kimono shops that would become Japan's first department stores were among advertising's biggest users, producing posters, flyers, postcards, and publicity magazines that employed bold and novel visual elements for their power of persuasion. Department-store magazines have been a little-studied aspect of the department-store advertising machine and their similarities to women's magazines have also been overlooked. The first women's magazines predated department store magazines, but the most prominent and representative examples of the former, such as Fujin koron (1916) and Shufu no tomo (1917), did not develop until after the big department stores had launched their publicity magazines. This paper compares these two media, considering their textual content, but focusing primarily on how they incorporated visual forms to achieve their primary objectives. While on the surface it would seem that these two media had very different aims, they were actually rather similar in terms of their visual framing of possibilities for women's lives, offering alternatives to the government-prescribed notion of womanhood.

Julia Sapin is Associate Professor of Art History at the Department of Art at Western Washington University.

Sponsored by the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies.


For access information see:
http://www.doshisha.ac.jp/english/access/ima_campus.html


Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Announcement: "7th Annual Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference"

Announcement from H-ASIA:

7th Annual Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference

THE POLITICS, PRACTICES, AND POETICS OF THE ARCHIVE

SINGAPORE, 19 - 22 JUNE, 2012


Each year, the conference has included film practitioners in recognition of the crucial role they have played in increasing film education and discourse in the region. We have previously provided space for independent filmmakers and screenings of their works, focused on curriculum development, and highlighting alternative cultures of cinema. This year, the conference seeks to include workshops that bring together film archivists from within the region.

We invite panels that address this theme, particularly questions concerning:

Film Archival Materials as Intertexts
Comparative Studies of Archives or Case Studies of Specific Archives
Role of the Academic / Film Critic / Filmmaker in Relation to the Archive
Technology / New Media
Production of Temporalities and Spatialities
Politics of Taste
Preservation and Dissemination
Archival Research Methods
Intellectual Property
The Relationship between Southeast Asian Archives and the
International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)
Historiography
Scholarly Accessibility
Subtitling and the Archive
Film Policy and the Archive
The State and the Archive
Short Films and the Archive

We also welcome submissions for the open call. Please check ourwebsite archives and conference programs for past paper topics as we are less likely to accept topics that have been covered before:

http://seaconference.wordpress.com/conference-program/

Abstract Submission Deadline: Nov 30, 2011

Please send an abstract (max. 500 words) and short bio (max. 100 words) to: Sophia Siddique Harvey (soharvey@vassar.edu), Khoo Gaik Cheng (gaik.khoo@gmail.com) and Jasmine Nadua Trice (jntrice@gmail.com). We are currently attempting to get funding for travel subsidies and accommodations but cannot offer any as of yet.


Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Visualizing Asia in the Modern World: A Conference on Image-Driven Scholarship

Announcement from The Society for East Asian Anthropology:

Visualizing Asia in the Modern World:
A Conference on Image-Driven Scholarship
May 20-21, 2011
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Jointly sponsored by the Visualizing Cultures project at M.I.T. and the following programs at Harvard: Asia Center, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Korea Institute, Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies.

This two-day conference will consist of image-driven presentations addressing both Asian and non-Asian representations of 19th and 20th-century developments in the history of East and Southeast Asia.

The conference will be open to the public. Contributors will be provided lodging, but should be prepared to cover their travel expenses. "Visualizing Asia in the Modern World" follows a lively conference on this same subject held at Yale in the spring of 2010, and we again look forward to international participation in opening these new windows of perception and understanding.

The presentations themselves will be relatively brief, no more than 20 minutes in length. Proposals for presentations, up to 3 pages double spaced, plus a small number of representative images, should be submitted by December 1, 2010 to Scott Shunk, Program Director of Visualizing Cultures at shunk@mit.edu.

For a suggestive sense of possible topical and thematic approaches, including innovative formatting of online scholarship and pedagogy, see visualizingcultures.mit.edu as well as the list of presentations made at the Yale conference http://www.visualizingasia.com/. Priority will be given to those who did not present at the previous conference.

Monday, November 9, 2009

New Horizons of Academic Visual-Media Practices: 13th Kyoto University International Symposium

New Horizons of Academic Visual-Media Practices: 13th Kyoto University International Symposium

December 11[Fri] 10:00-18:30, 12[Sat] 10:00-18:30, 13[Sun] 10:00-18:00, 2009

Kyoto University Clock Tower Centennial Hall

With visual media and discussions from such diverse fields as medical science and astrophysics, to biology, Anthropology, sociology, psychology and Informatics, we present a revolutionary interdisciplinary endeavor unique in the world! Pioneering new fields of academia through the visual practices, Kyoto University opens the door to a century of academic films with this International Symposium!

Applications [limited to 400 people] and Inquiries:
visual-media.practices[at]cias.kyoto-u.ac.jp


WEBSITE: http://gaia.net.cias.kyoto-u.ac.jp/visual-media.practices/

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Summer Program on Japanese Visual Culture in Tokyo

An announcement from Temple University Japan via EASIANTH:

For the sixth consecutive year, an exciting six-week Summer Program on Japanese Visual Culture will take place at the Tokyo Campus of Temple University Japan (TUJ), May 18 – June 29, 2009 (tentative dates). This program consists of two coordinated courses: the first focuses on approaches to studying the richness and complexity of visual culture in Japan; the second allows students to develop modest visual projects (digital still, video or web) on selective topics immediately relevant to visual culture. Instruction is in English. All course work will be supplemented with an active program of cultural events, trips and lectures in and around Tokyo. Students live in Temple dormitories alongside Japanese students studying English at TUJ. This program grants course credits to both undergraduate and graduate students.

For additional information, details, and application forms see:
http://www.temple.edu/studyabroad/programs/summer/japan/visual-anthro.html

Application deadline: February 16, 2009.