Figure 2 - uploaded by Paolo Viscardi
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The 'Japanese Monkey-fish' in the collections of the Horniman Museum (NH.82.5.223): (a) complete figure, (b) close-up of mouth, (c) close-up of skin. From photographs taken for the museum by Paolo Viscardi in July 2010. Courtesy and copyright, Horniman Museum & Gardens.
Source publication
Many museums and private collections in the UK, Europe, and the USA
hold cultural artefacts of the type commonly referred to as mermen or ‘feejee
mermaids’. Most of these are accompanied by little in the way of information
about their origins, but they are generally associated with Asia and particularly
with Japan. Perhaps as a result of their poor...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... given that the socio-political climate leading to the Meiji upheaval eroded many of the traditions of Edo-period Japan (see Groemer 1999), specimens in private Japanese hands may have been sold by their owners Japanese Monkey-Fish 'Is the merman real?' and 'What is the merman made from?' are two of the questions that are most frequently asked of the Horniman's Collections Conservation and Care department. It was in an effort to answer these questions that Viscardi, a natural history curator with experience of identifying animals from teeth and bones, became involved with the 'Japanese Monkeyfish', as the merman is described in the Horniman's accession register ( Figure 2). The specimen is part of the Horniman's natural history collections, perhaps in wry acknowledgement of its status as an unusual 'species', but more likely because it was considered to be a taxidermy creation and thus better off stored with objects of the same type. ...
Context 2
... inspection revealed that the interpretation of the merman as a taxidermy monkey attached to a fish was incorrect. The specimen lacks the distinctive set of four incisors in top and bottom jaws found in simians; instead the jaws contain several rows of teeth ( Figure 2b) and appear to be from a fishmost likely a type of wrasse. 4 Close examination of the torso of the specimen under a microscope revealed a matrix containing fibres, consistent with papier-mâché. ...
Context 3
... Close examination of the torso of the specimen under a microscope revealed a matrix containing fibres, consistent with papier-mâché. The only part of the specimen to match expectations was the tail, whichgiven the structure of the scalesis most likely from a species of carp (Figure 2c). It was hoped that species-level identification of the fish would confirm the region of the world in which the specimen was made. ...
Citations
... As late as the 19th century, mermen and mermaids were manufactured by artisans in the Far East (e.g., the Japanese ningyo [43]). Some were shipped to Europe and displayed in private scientific and ethnographic collections of curiosities, or to the paying public ( Figure 1). ...
... They were less lovely than the romantic painted inventions of John William Waterhouse (A Mermaid, 1901), but no less seductive, attracting considerable sums and public interest. The freak-show creatures were faked by stitching or wiring wooden and clay parts to the jaws, tails and other bones of fish, sometimes disguising junctions and framework with papier-mâché or lacquer-soaked cloth, sometimes adding hair for effect [43]. Naturalists worth their salt were unconvinced by these "Feejee mermaids," but nature kept the scientifically inclined on their toes too. ...
Artists and engineers have devised lifelike technology for millennia. Their ingenious devices have often prompted inquiry into our preferences, prejudices, and beliefs about living systems, especially regarding their origins, status, constitution, and behavior. A recurring fabrication technique is shared across artificial life art, science, and engineering. This involves aggregating representations or re-creations of familiar biological parts-techno-hybridization-but the motives of practitioners may differ markedly. This article, and the special issue it introduces, explores how ground familiar to contemporary artificial life science and engineering has been assessed and interpreted in parallel by (a) artists and (b) theorists studying creativity explicitly. This activity offers thoughtful, alternative perspectives on artificial life science and engineering, highlighting and sometimes undermining the fields' underlying assumptions, or exposing avenues that are yet to be explored outside of art. Additionally, art has the potential to engage the general public, supporting and exploring the findings of scientific research and engineering. This adds considerably to the maturity of a culture tackling the issues the discipline of artificial life raises.
This article explores how the resurgence of a forgotten chimeric figure from the Japanese history of disasters and epidemics, the prophesizing Amabie, intersects with some central ecological and political discourses in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially those asso-ciated with culinary practices, human rights and relations with other historical epidemics. This uncanny from southern Japan in the pre-modern Edo period addresses contemporary lives as they are caught in a suspension of our usual temporal and spatial dimensions.
