Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:13:40.936Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Imaging History: Inscribing Belief in the Nation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2010

Stefan Tanaka
Get access

Extract

A commission sponsored by the meiji government and headed by Okakura Tenshin (Kakuzō), Kanō Tessai, and Ernest F. Fenollosa traveled to Nara Prefecture in 1884 to catalog the important artifacts in temples and shrines. Fenollosa's later description of an event of this trip, which is often presented to show how he with the assistance of Okakura “saved” Japanese art, brings out the major argument of my article: the role of fine art in the formulation of belief in the nation. Fenollosa describes his “discovery” of the Guze Kannon (Goddess of Mercy), a seventh-century gilt-wood sculpture, at the Hōryūji temple:

I had credentials from the central government which enabled me to requisition the opening of godowns and shrines. The central space of the octagonal Yumedono was occupied by a great closed shrine, which ascended like a pillar towards the apex. The priests of the Horiuji confessed that tradition ascribed the contents of the shrine to Corean work of the days of Suiko, but that it had not been opened for more than two hundred years.

Type
Dimensions of Ethnic and Cultural Nationalism in Asia—A Symposium
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , February 1994 , pp. 24 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1994

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

Abe, Stanley K. Forthcoming. “Inside the Wonder House: Buddhist Art and the West.” In Donald, Lopez, ed., Curators of the Buddha. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Benedict, Anderson. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Barnes, Susan J., and Melion, Walter S., eds. 1989. Cultural Differentiation and Identity in the Arts. Washington, D.C.: Center for the Advanced Study of Visual Arts.Google Scholar
Isaiah, Berlin. 1980. “Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power.” In Against the Current. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
Homi, Bhabha. 1990. “Introduction: Narrating the Nation.” In Bhabha, , ed., Nations and Narration. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chisholm, Lawrence W. 1963. Fenollosa: The Far East and American Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
James, Clifford. 1989. “On Collecting Art and Culture.” In his The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Warren I. 1992. East Asian Art and American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Conant, Ellen P. 1990. “Principles and Pragmatism: The Yatoi in the Field of Art.” In Beauchamp, Edward R., and Iriye, Akira, eds., Foreign Employees in Nineteenth Century Japan. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Ino, Dan. 1931. “Art.” In Inazo Nitobe, et. al., Western Influences in Modern Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Michel, De Certeau. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans, by Rendall, Steven F.. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Terry, Eagleton. 1990. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. London: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Norbert, Elias. 1992. Time: An Essay. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
James, Elkins. 1988. “Art History without Theory.” Critical Inquiry 14:354–78.Google Scholar
Fenollosa, Ernest F. 1911. Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.Google Scholar
Edmund, Gilday. 1993. “Dancing with Spirit(s): Another View of the Other World in Japan.” History of Religions 32(February):273–300.Google Scholar
Grapard, Allan G. 1984. “Japan's Ignored Cultural Revolution: The Separation of Shinto and Buddhist Divinities in Meiji (shimbutsu bunri).” History of Religions 23(February):240–65.Google Scholar
Helen, Hardacre. 1989. Shintō and the State. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mikiso, Hane. 1982. Peasants, Rebels, and Outcasts: The Underside of Modern Japan. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. 1975. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Trans, by Knox, T. M.. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Eric, Hobsbawm, and Ranger, Terence, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Julian, Hochberg. 1972. “The Representation of Things and People.” In Gombrich, E. H., Hochberg, Julian, and Black, Max, Art, Perception, and Reality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Toshihiko, Izutsu and Toyo, Izutsu. 1981. The Theory of Beauty in Classical Aesthetics of Japan. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.Google Scholar
Kōjin, Karatani. [1988]1993. Origins of Modern Japanese Literature. Trans, ed. by Bary, Brett de. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ketelaar, James Edward. 1990. Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and its Persecution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kunitake, Kume. 1889-1990. “Nihon fukuin no enkaku.” Shigakkai zasshi 1(December-February): 15–20, 10-17, 9-17.Google Scholar
Bruno, Latour. 1986. “Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands.” Knowledge and Society 6:1–40.Google Scholar
David, Lowenthal. 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mayo, Marlene J. 1973. “The Western Education of Kume Kunitake.” Monumenta Nipponica XXVIII:3–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seiroku, Noma. 1961. The Arts of Japan, Vol. I, and The Arts of Japan: Late Medieval to Modern, Vol II. Trans, by Webb, Glenn T.. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd.Google Scholar
Pierre, Nora. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux des Memoire.” Representations 26 (Spring):7–25.Google Scholar
Notehelfer, F. G. 1990. “On Idealism and Realism in the Thought of Okakura Tenshin.” Journal of Japanese Studies 16.2:309–55.Google Scholar
Tenshin, Okakura. 1904. The Awakening of Japan. New York: The Century Co.Google Scholar
Tenshin, Okakura [1906[1956. The Book of Tea. Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle.Google Scholar
Tenshin, Okakura. [1903[ 1970. The Ideals of the East. Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle.Google Scholar
Tenshin, Okakura. [1904[1922. “Modern Art from a Japanese Point of View.” In The Heart of Heaven. Tokyo: Nippon Bijutsuin.Google Scholar
Tenshin, Okakura 1939. Nihon Bijutsushi. In Okakura Tenshin zenshū, Vol. 4. Tokyo: Rokugeisha.Google Scholar
Donald, Preziosi. 1992. “The Question of Art History.” Critical Inquiry 18:363–86.Google Scholar
Sally, Price. 1989. Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Renato, Rosaldo. 1989. “Imperialist Nostalgia.” Representations 26(Spring): 107–122.Google Scholar
Robert, Rydell. 1984. All the World's a Fair. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sack, Robert David. 1980. Conceptions of Space in Social Thought. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Eugene, Soviak. 1971. “On the Nature of Western Progress: The Journal of the Iwakura Mission.” In Shively, Donald, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rabindranath, Tagore. [1917]1985. Nationalism. Madras: MacMillan India Limited.Google Scholar
Stefan, Tanaka. 1993. Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Charles, Taylor. 1975. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Charles, Taylor. 1979. Hegel and Modern Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ryōsuke, Tokunō, ed. 1880. Kokka Yohō, 5 vols. Museo d'Arte Orientale (Genoa), acq nos. 3264–3268.Google Scholar
Yukio, Yashiro. 1987. “Jo—bijutsushi to bijutsu.” In Yashiro Yukio, Nihonbijutsu no saikentō. Tokyo: Perikansha.Google Scholar