Richard McDonald

552695

Assignment Three

Politics of Culture

Carlo Bonura

An Analysis of the Politicised Nature of the ‘Modern Japan’ Room in The British Museum.

Situated in the uttermost heights of the British

Museum, the ‘Modern Japan’ room is the last of three

rooms that together, trace a chronology of Japan

‘From prehistory to the present’. This essay takes

great interest in how the British Museum has

constructed the ‘modern’; through exploring both the

political discourses that may have shaped the

construction of the room and the political

ramifications of the way in which the works are

presented, this essays aims to offer a brief, yet

critical examination of the politicised nature of the

‘Modern Japan’ room. It is not the aim of this essay

to dismantle the narratives under discussion, but to

highlight the explicit and implicit ways in which the

Museum is complicit in their maintenance.

As the final of three rooms, the Modern Japan

room suggests a tangible chronology to the history of

Japan. Most interestingly, the Modern room places

particular emphasis on recollections of Anglo-

Japanese relations and ascetically ‘western’ Japanese

artworks. One plaque, named ‘Japan Opens, 1853-68’,

situated at the entrance to this room appears to

signal the start of Japan’s modern period. It

describes how the United States coerced Japan in

opening its shores to trade, which caused great

political change leading to the Meji restoration and

its related era.

Artworks in the room such as a woodblock

depicting the first British residence in Yokohama,

Japan, bolster the notion that modernity is

inextricably linked to western influence. As the

Museum itself writes, the focus of the modern room

is: ‘…nation-building and empire, city and Country

and freeing the Self’ (Great British Museum, 2006).

However, the most enduring theme is Anglo-Japanese

interaction. Another plaque, ‘Cultural Exchange 1862-

1912’ places great importance on the ‘significant

cultural exchanges’ Japan made in this period,

bolstering the notion that western consumption of

Japanese culture is in part a validation of Japan’s

entry into the modern age.

Further presentations of conflations of ‘East and

West’ comes in the form of Kojō Kōkan’s ‘Near the

Bank of England (1930), a landscape painting of

London in the traditional Nihonga technique ‘with a

modern flair’, it seems as though ‘modern’ implies a

western ascetic influence. Another example is

‘Spiritual Force’, by Sukita Masayoshi and David

Bowie, depicting David Bowie clad in avant gardé

Japanese clothing. This is problematic. Bowie has

notoriously appropriated various Japanese cultural

artefacts throughout his career, in an attempt to

make his characters more alien. Literally speaking,

his ‘Ziggy Stardust’ character who specifically wore

Kabuki-influenced garments on his ‘Aladdin Sane’ tour

was an extra-terrestrial. By promoting this

appropriation as a cultural milestone for Japanese

fashion, the museum is again validating the

aforementioned notion of western absorption as entry

into modernism (Oda, 2009, pp. 39-42).

In light of these examples, the room can be seen

as Orientalist for the following reasons: as an

institution with the ability to mould cultural

discourse through the information it disseminates in

its socially-accepted position as an arbiter of

‘historical truth’, the small collection of work

perpetuates: the fetishisation of Japanese culture by

western artists; the adoption of western techniques

and locations by Japanese artists; the forced trade

incited by the west and a plethora of west/east

interactions as the most important signifiers for

Japan’s entry into modernity. Indeed, not only does

this help to obscure the Orientalist history of

British interaction with Japanese culture,

perpetuating and validating it; it also paints the

history of Japan in favourable colours. The political

impact of this collection is that Japan’s entry into

modernity was merely due to the interactions of

western and eastern culture, not the economic or

political developments occurring within Japan at the

same time.

It has been suggested that Japan’s entry into

modernity could be better explained through the

enacting of its Imperial agenda and the adoption of

Industrial capitalism following the Meji Restoration

(Sewell, 2004, pp. 216-222). It is, of course; not

within the Museum’s best interests to portray this

alternative, scholarly narrative; the appearance of

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the day the

research for this essay was undertaken shows the

important place the British Museum has in aiding

cultural links and the Imperialist, Capitalist

Japanese narrative is less bombastic and flattering

than one including Bowie and Manga. As Neil

MacGregor, former Director of the British Museum

comments, the British Museum is a place: ‘…Where many

of the world's cultures can come to write their

narratives of history…’ (Sylvester, 2009, p. 10).

While this may hold some truth, curators also hold in

mind how the collection will be received in the

respective country when forming coherent historical

exhibitions, which undoubtedly influences the

historical validity the exhibitions hold.

In conclusion, the modern Japan room in the

British Museum is spuriously suspect. While

attempting to show a thematic and chronological link

between its three rooms, the size of the exhibition

is so small, that the impact of the art chosen is

magnified, exemplifying its political ramifications.

The art itself is coherent in the narrative it

constructs; interactions between Japan, the United

Kingdom and the USA are marked as the beginning of

Japanese modernity while more infrastructural

economic and political changes in Japan are ignored.

Worryingly, albeit in one case; the appearance of

David Bowie, an artist often criticised for cultural

appropriation of Japanese culture, validates the

historic and contemporary fetishisation of Japanese

culture, bringing the integrity of the room, as a

curated construct; into question.

BibliographyGreat British Museum. (2006, October 18). Japan from prehistory to the present The Japanese Galleries reopen at the British Museum. Retrieved December 20, 2014 from The British Museum: http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/press_releases/2006/japanese_galleries_reopen.aspx

Oda, C. (2009). Yellow Fever: Orientalism in Popular Music from the 19th century to the 21st century. London: Goldsmiths, University of London.

Sewell, B. (2004). Reconsidering the Modern in Japanese History: Modernity in the Service of the Prewar Japanese Empire. Japan Review , 16, 213-258.

Sylvester, C. (2009). Cultures, Nations, and the British Museum . InC. Sylvester, Art/Musems: International Relations Where We Least Expect It. London:Paradigm Publisher: Boulder.