Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T12:20:47.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conflicting Politics and Contesting Borders: Exhibiting (Japanese) Manchuria at the Chicago World's Fair, 1933–34

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2015

Kari Shepherdson-Scott
Get access

Abstract

In 1933 and 1934, the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway Company and the government of the newly formed nation-state, Manchukuo, sponsored a Manchuria pavilion on the Japanese exhibition grounds of Chicago's A Century of Progress World Exposition. Though small, this pavilion bore immense political weight. Opening a year after the Japanese Kwantung Army declared the formation of the new state in Northeast Asia and just three months after the Japanese delegation announced Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations, the Manchuria exhibit demonstrates how Japanese military and corporate interests attempted to sway international public opinion on the cultural world stage. This paper examines the ways in which the Manchuria displays functioned during this crucial diplomatic moment and how the visually dazzling American exhibit, the Golden Temple of Jehol, upset Japanese claims of dominance in the region.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 539 - 564
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Botsugo 80 nen: Moriya Nobuo ten [80 years after his death: An exhibition for Moriya Nobuo]. 2007. Sakura City: Sakura-shiritsu bijutsukan.Google Scholar
Century of Progress International Exposition. 1933a. Official Book of the Fair, Giving Pre-exposition Information, 1932–1933, of A Century of Progress International Exposition, Chicago, 1933. Chicago: Century of Progress International Exposition.Google Scholar
Century of Progress International Exposition. 1933b. The Official Pictures of A Century of Progress Exposition. Chicago: Reuben H. Donnelly Corporation.Google Scholar
Century of Progress International Exposition. 1933c. The Official View Book, A Century of Progress Exposition. Chicago: Reuben H. Donnelly Corporation.Google Scholar
Chicago Daily Tribune. 1933. “A Century of Progress Notes.” August 29, 6.Google Scholar
The Chinese Lama Temple Potala at Jehol: A Century of Progress Exposition. 1932. Chicago: Lakeside Press.Google Scholar
Chou, Fang-mei. 2010. “1933–34 nian Zhijiage shijie bolanhui Zhonghua Minguo he Riben yipin zhi zhanshi” [Chinese and Japanese art exhibited in the 1933–34 Chicago World's Fair]. Yishu xue yanjiu 6(5):161–230.Google Scholar
Christ, Carol. 2000. “‘The Sole Guardians of the Art Inheritance of Asia’: Japan and China at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 8(3):675–709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 2003. Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Elliston, H. B. 1933. “Oriental Tom-Toms.” North American Review 235(1):35–44.Google Scholar
Findling, John E. 1994. Chicago's Great World's Fairs. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Han, Suk-Jung. 2004. “The Problem of Sovereignty: Manchukuo, 1932–1937.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 12(2):457–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hedin, Sven. 1932. Preface to The Chinese Lama Temple Potala at Jehol: A Century of Progress Exposition. Chicago: Lakeside Press.Google Scholar
Hosley, William N. 1990. The Japan Idea: Art and Life in Victorian America. Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum.Google Scholar
Japanese Chamber of Commerce of New York. 1933. Manchukuo: The Founding of the New State in Manchuria. New York: Japanese Chamber of Commerce.Google Scholar
Kawakami, Kiyoshi Karl. 1933. Manchoukuo: Child of Conflict. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kish, George. 1984. To the Heart of Asia: The Life of Sven Hedin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Kramer, Hanae Kurihara. 2012. “Film Forays of the South Manchuria Railway Company.” Film History 24(1):97–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lancaster, Clay. 1963. The Japanese Influence in America. New York: Wilton H. Rawls.Google Scholar
Lohr, Lenox R. 1952. Fair Management, the Story of A Century of Progress Exposition, a Guide for Future Fairs. Chicago: Cuneo Press.Google Scholar
Manchukuo Bureau of Information. 1937. Manchoukuo, a Pictorial Sketch. Manchuria: Bureau of Information, State Council, Manchukuo Government.Google Scholar
Manchukuo Government and South Manchuria Railway Company. 1933. Economic Construction Program of Manchukuo. New York: New York Office of the South Manchuria Railway Company.Google Scholar
Manshū Graph. 1940. “Mantetsu eiga” [Films of the South Manchuria Railway Company]. 8(5).Google Scholar
Nihon chūō sanshikai. 1934. 1933 nen Shikago shinpo isseiki bankoku hakurankai sanka shuppin jigyō hōkoku [Report on the work sent to the 1933 Chicago A Century of Progress International Exposition]. Tokyo: Nihon chūō sanshikai.Google Scholar
Okamoto, Shunpei. 1983. Impressions of the Front: Woodcuts of the Sino-Japanese War, 1894–95. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art.Google Scholar
South Manchuria Railway Company. 1933–34. The Progress of Manchuria. Pamphlet for A Century of Progress International Exposition at Chicago. New York: South Manchuria Railway Company.Google Scholar
Takeba, Jō. 1994. “‘The Sun of a New Nation’ – Ikyō no modanizumu, arui wa mō hitotsu no riarizumu” [Strange modernism or yet another realism]. In Ikyō no modanizumu: Fuchikami Hakuyō to Manshū Shashin Sakka Kyōkai [“The depicted utopia”: Another facet of Japanese modern photography in Manchoukuo]. Nagoya: Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan.Google Scholar
Takemura, Tamio. 2008. “1925 nen kindai Chūgoku Tōhokufu (Kyū Manshū) de kaisaisareta Dairen kangyō hakurankai no rekishiteki kōsatsu: Shichōkasareta Manmō” [Historical investigation of the Dalian Industrial Exhibition held in modern northeast China (former Manchuria) in 1925]. Nihon Kenkyū 38 (September):81–119.Google Scholar
Takenaka, Akiko. 1990. “The Construction of a War-time National Identity: The Japanese Pavilion at New York's World Fair, 1939/40.” Master's thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Tupper, Eleanor, and McReynolds, George E.. 1937. Japan in American Public Opinion. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Walters, F. P. [1952] 1960. A History of the League of Nations. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, E. T. 1933. “Japan and Jehol.” American Journal of International Law 27(2):215–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yamaji, Katsuhiko. 2006. “Manshū wo miseru hakurankai” [Exhibitions showing Manchuria]. Kansei gakuindaigaku shakaigakubu kiyō 101 (October):43–67.Google Scholar
Yamaji, Katsuhiko. 2008. Kindai Nihon no shokuminchi hakurankai [Modern Japanese colonial exhibitions]. Tokyo: Fukyosha.Google Scholar
Shin'ichi, Yamamuro. 2006. Manchuria under Japanese Dominion. Translated by Fogel, Joshua A.. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Yamashita, Kiyohide, ed. 1934. Shinpo Isseiki Shikago Bankoku Hakurankai: Manshū shuppin hōkokusho [A Century of Progress World Exhibition in Chicago: A report of Manchurian exhibits]. Tokyo: Shinpo isseiki Shikago bankoku hakurankai Manshū shuppin sanka zanmu seiri jimusho.Google Scholar
Young, Louise. 1998. Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar