No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
The Carnival of Edo: Misemono Spectacles From Contemporary Accounts
... Het 'testikelmeisje' kwam echter te overlijden na een geslachtsoperatie waarbij gepoogd werd om de testikels te verwijderen. 31 Onder invloed van het neoconfucianisme was het Japan van vroeger een hiërarchische en patriarchale maatschappij waarbij het ene lichaam ondergeschikt is aan het andere lichaam. De persoon met een vulva werd beoordeeld op haar schoonheid of reproductieve kwaliteiten. ...
Hoe werd het intersekse lichaam verbeeld in premodern Japan? Wie maakten die verbeelding en welke rol spelen zij in hoe er vroeger - en nu - wordt gekeken naar gender, geslacht en seksualiteit? Een visuele analyse van shunga en shunpon verklaart de rol van makers met een penis in het verafschuwen, bespotten of erotiseren van intersekse lichamen.
... 16-17). The bussankai was thus part of a broader culture of public display that complemented two other Edo Period exhibition forms: on the one hand, kaichō 開帳 "temple fairs" that were typically a temporary exhibition of otherwise sequestered but efficacious relics or images by shines and temples for the benefit of pilgrims and other patrons; and on the other hand, misemono 見世 物 "carnivals" that often showcased "monsters" and human oddities for public viewing (see Furukawa 1970;Markus 1985). ...
Setting out from Okakura Kakuzō and Ernest Fenollosa’s famous “discovery” of the Yumedono Kannon, this article will trace the contested construction of the categories of “religion” (shūkyō) and “fine art” (bijutsu) in Meiji Japan. In religious studies circles, it has become commonplace to think of “religion” as the only disciplinary master category with issues. However, not only was “religion” invented in Japan, but “fine art” was invented there too. Indeed, categories from “culture” to “society” to “politics” have similar issues. Attending to these will help refocus crucial debates away from an obsession with translation and onto more fundamental issues about “cultural categories” as such. This paper will advance the debate by explaining the attendant constructions of “religion” and “fine art” as process social kinds. In doing so, it will showcase the museum and the temple as central sites of materialized disputation over global categories and their local instantiation. It will show how assimilation to the world-system in the long nineteenth century was a complex multi-generational process of negotiation and contestation, producing new hybrid spaces, returns, transformations, and innovations that then reflected back on global systems, changing them in subtle but profound ways.
... W ten sposób w Tokio w budkach misemono zaprezentowano m.in. piłę oscylacyjną (1866), wiertarkę pionową (1866), bębenek wybijający rytm impulsów telegraficznych (1869) i napędzane parą koło zamachowe (1874) 15 . ...
English:
The article discusses the transformations that took place in the form and functions of the magic lantern shows in Japan during the 19th century. The paper distinguishes three breakthrough moments: the development of a local variant of the entertainment shows of the magic lantern (utsushi-e) at the beginning of the 19th century, the emergence of the idea of employing a modern version of this apparatus (gentō) for educational purposes in the 1870s and its use for spiritual and economic mobilization of Japanese citizens during the First Sino-Japanese War. The part concerning utsushi-e outlines the specifcity of this kind of shows, the formal treatments applied in them and the properties of the projection apparatus itself, made not of metal, as in the case of western projectors, but of light wood. In the section on educational presentations, it was noted that the idea of using a magic lantern for this purpose was put forward by Seiichi Tejima in 1874, and the Japanese authorities quickly accepted the idea. The differences in the form of entertainment and educational shows were also discussed, noting that in the latter, the spontaneity of reception was eliminated. In the section on the war between Japan and China, it was stated that the magic lantern was one of the many media involved in the process of reporting and depicting military actions. In the section on the war between Japan and China, it was stated that the magic lantern was one of the many media involved in the process of reporting and depicting military operations. It was also emphasized that, contrary to previous educational shows, during these war ones the audience reacted spontaneously to the projected images and the narration of the speaker.
Polski:
W artykule omówione zostały przeobrażenia, jakie dokonały się w formie i funkcjach pokazów latarni magicznej w Japonii na przestrzeni XIX wieku. Wyróżniono w nim trzy przełomowe momenty: wykształcenie się lokalnego wariantu rozrywkowych pokazów latarni magicznej (utsushi-e) na początku XIX w., pojawienie się idei zaprzęgnięcia nowoczesnej wersji tego aparatu (gentō) do celów edukacyjnych w latach 70. XIX w. i wykorzystanie go do duchowej i ekonomicznej mobilizacji obywateli w czasie I wojny chińsko-japońskiej. W części dotyczącej utsushi-e nakreślono specyfikę tego rodzaju pokazów, stosowane w nich zabiegi formalne oraz właściwości samego aparatu projekcyjnego, wykonywanego nie z metalu, jak miało to miejsce w przypadku projektorów zachodnich, lecz lekkiego drewna. W części poświęconej pokazom edukacyjnym wskazano, że pomysł wykorzystania latarni magicznej w tym celu przedstawił w 1874 roku Seiichi Tejima, a władze Japonii szybko się do tego pomysłu przychyliły. Omówiono też różnice w formie pokazów między pokazami rozrywkowymi i edukacyjnymi, wskazując, że w tych drugich wyeliminowana została żywiołowość odbioru. W części dotyczącej wojny między Japonią i Chinami wskazano, że latarnia magiczna stanowiła wówczas jedno z wielu mediów zaangażowanych w procesy relacjonowania i obrazowania wojny. Podkreślono także, że w przeciwieństwie do wcześniejszych pokazów edukacyjnych, podczas pokazów wojennych widownia żywiołowo reagowała na rzutowane obrazy i narrację prowadzącego.
... In his Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, Hearn introduces his chapter about Japanese ghosts and goblins as a first hand encounter: "I have seen Japanese goblins, and I do not like them" (Hearn 1894, 637). When Hearn speaks here of having seen Japanese ghosts and goblins, he is not actually talking about real ghosts and goblins, but a tableau of Japanese media forms that made ghosts and goblins visible and tangible, a monstrous media mix, which he encountered in a sideshow exhibition, a misemono (Markus 1985;Figal 1999, 21-25). 2 He begins with oral narratives of legendary y okai like Yuki-Onna (the snow woman) (1894, 637-639). Hearn asks his friend Kinjuro: "And what is the Yuki-Onna?" ...
This article approaches the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, an exotic, wandering, homeless "ghost of no place" (Nabae 2014), born in Greece, raised in Ireland, who became a fiction writer famous for turning both New Orleans and Japan into weird, haunted, literary landscapes. Hearn always insisted his writings should be examined in their own terms as a transnational, transmedia and trans-species aesthetics of "weird" contact between worlds. There are three kinds of contact between worlds: transnational, a traffic in spirits across spaces in an orientalist imaginative geography; transmedia, as the monstrous qualities of ghosts, goblins and fairies bleed into and across media forms; and trans-species, as monstrous qualities moves across species, between humans, goblins and insects. The forms of representation of monsters take on the properties of the monsters they are most associated with, ghostly photographs and colorful fairylands, that I will call monstrous media. At the same time, this transnational and transmedia aesthetics of the weird moves from images on Japanese fans to the wings of insects, from Japanese cemeteries to insect ecologies and Buddhist cosmologies in which humans are reborn as goblins, insects, or hybrid goblin-insects.
... Unlike some of the finer examples of iki ningyō that have teeth made of bone or ivory, the teeth of the majority of these masks are part of the wooden mask structure.The iki ningyō art form emerged in Osaka during the 1850s and quickly spread throughout Japan.[26] Displays featuring these dolls (or figures) were massively popular components of misemono ( ), literally meaning "show" or "attractions," which can be understood as "private exhibitions of unusual items, individuals, or skills, conducted for a limited span ofPontsioen: The Alexander Graham Bell Collection of Japanese Masks at the Smithsonian Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 17, no. 2 (Autumn 2018)time inside a temporary enclosure for the purposes of financial gain."[27] There was a rapid increase in the number of misemono shows throughout the major urban centers of Japan during the latter half of the nineteenth century. ...
... Mniej więcej w tym samym czasie Vachel Lindsay stwierdził, że najważniejszą ze społecznych właściwości kina jest jego zdolność do przekształcania zróżnicowanych mas ludzkich w jednolity naród amerykański 18 . Zaduma nad edukacyjno-wychowawczym potencjałem kina nieobca była i przedstawicielom przemysłu filmowego -David Wark Griffith lubił powtarzać, że film w jeden tylko wieczór może przekazać widzowi tyle prawdy o historii, ile osiąga się przez miesiące studiów 19 . Nieco wcześniej na japońskim gruncie do podobnych wniosków doszedł socjolog Yasunosuke Gonda, który na kartach Teorii i praktycznego zastosowania ruchomych obrazów (Katsudō shashin no genri oyobi ōyō, 活動写真の原理及応用) określił film mianem nosiciela nowej cywilizacji i wieścił mu rolę medium dostarczającego rozrywki masom, przy jednoczesnym podnoszeniu ich wiedzy. ...
Artykuł poświęcony jest skandalowi – jego przebiegowi, przyczynom i konsekwencjom – wywołanemu w Japonii w drugiej dekadzie XX. w. za sprawą premiery francuskiej serii kryminalnej Zigomar. Punkt wyjścia artykułu stanowi syntetyczne omówienie formuły francuskiego filmu seryjnego, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem jego wariantu kryminalnego. Druga część artykułu poświęcona została szczegółowemu omówieniu okoliczności i przebiegu japońskiej premiery pierwszej odsłony cyklu filmów poświęconych postaci Zigomara – początkowej niechęci importera do wyświetlenia filmu i jego niespodziewanego sukcesu. Następnie przeanalizowane zostały przyczyny skandalu, jaki stał się udziałem serii: refleksja nad społecznymi właściwościami kina, burza medialna wywołana przez prasę oraz promowanie przez japońskie władze koncepcji „edukacji popularnej”. W kolejnej części artykułu omówiona została najważniejsza konsekwencja „Skandalu Zigomarowskiego”, jaką było stopniowe wykształcenie się scentralizowanych i w pełni autonomicznych regulacji z zakresu cenzury filmowej. Artykuł wieńczy omówienie wpływu nowych przepisów na funkcjonowanie japońskiego przemysłu filmowego.
... In the 1820s, P. F. von Siebold made reference to the story of a fisherman claiming to have caught a mermaid that, with its dying breath, predicted a time of great prosperity but also a fatal epidemic that could be averted by owning a likeness of the mermaid (see Busk 1841). 3 With this encouragement, examples of manufactured ningyo began to appear alongside a variety of attractions and goods at Misemono carnivals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (see Markus 1985). Moreover, it might be expected that they would conform to a narrow set of depictions, since they were meant to be in the likeness of the original. ...
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 provenance, it is unusual for
such specimens to be interpreted with reference to stories from their culture
of origin; they are thus usually discussed on the basis of their authenticity—
or lack thereof. Indeed, they are commonly regarded as hoaxes constructed
from monkeys attached to fish, largely on the basis of supposition influenced
by historical narratives (see Overmeer Fisscher 1833, Timbs 1867). The most
infamous example of such a specimen is the eponymous Feejee Mermaid,
exhibited by master showman P. T. Barnum from 1842 until it was probably
destroyed in a museum fire between 1865 and 1880 (see Bondeson 1999: 56).
The notoriety of Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid was a product of clever and
deliberate obfuscation and manipulation of the facts (see Cook 2001), which
has served to create an aura of mystery and confusion around feejee mermaids
in general. Lack of honest depictions of, and information about, the Feejee
Mermaid has allowed speculation that some mermaid figures, such as the
specimen at the Peabody Museum (see Levi 1977), or the example discovered
in a domestic attic in Southend (see Anonymous 1988) may be Barnum’s
famous specimen. Such claims are ill-founded (see Nickell 2005) and blur
distinctions between different specimens. With such a background of inveterate
misinformation, it is little wonder that museums interpret and care for their
feejee mermaids on the unchallenged understanding that they are taxidermy
chimeras.
With the advent of new technologies, such as computed tomography (CT)
and phosphor plate X-radiography, such received wisdom can be put to the
test by undertaking detailed non-invasive analysis of specimens. Minimally
destructive methods such as sampling of DNA, protein, and hair may also be
used to establish what materials have been used in the construction of specimens.
Mermaids Uncovered
Of course, such methods require expertise, necessitating interdisciplinary
collaboration and communication. Such collaboration can inform and inspire
more varied and exciting interpretations of objects when they are displayed.
In this article we report some of the outcomes from such an approach
applied to mermaid specimens held by the Horniman Museum & Gardens and
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery. The work was stimulated by the ‘Object in
Focus’ loans project run by the Horniman and funded by Arts Council England
(formerly MLA). ‘Objects in Focus’ improved access to underutilized objects
in the Horniman collection by loaning them to other organizations, along with
a display-case and interpretation developed in collaboration with external
partners.
... A transgression in a previous life could cause a person to be reborn as an hermaphrodite. See Markus 1985, 529. 35. ...
This essay introduces the translation of Shimizu Shikin's "Tosei futari musume" (Two Modern Girls, 1897), which follows, and argues that by separating the body from gender, Shikin (1868-1933) effectively threatened the dimorphic ideology of sex that underpinned the literary establishment of Meiji Japan. In an essay written in 1896, Shikin posits an hermaphrodite combining allegedly gendered character traits in a "perfect" body, thus asserting that behavioral traits are not limited to one sex. Shikin calls attention not only to "the second sex" but a third sex decades before twentieth-century writers did in Japan and elsewhere, and she was erased because of it.
This article addresses the striking resemblance of a late nineteenth-century obstetrical simulator to contemporary commercial paper dolls. This period is often characterised in histories of medicine as one of increasing institutionalisation and professionalisation of childbirth through hospital training and state regulation. But this narrative is only part of the story. It marginalises the perspective of patients and midwives, and those outside of the geographic ‘West’, and it silences aspects of medical culture: social and caring relationships, emotion, play, and humour. While these aspects of medical history are less well represented in textual sources, material objects like Shibata Kōichi’s ‘Obstetrical Pocket-Phantoms’ can help to give a fuller picture.
Beginning by situating Shibata’s phantoms in the conventional histories of obstetric training and the intermedial spaces of the clinic and lecture theatre, I then ask how the phantoms might have been used and understood differently outside of these spaces. Using Robin Bernstein’s concept of ‘scriptive things’, I employ a visual and material study of the objects, informed by the wider cultural contexts of dolls and popular print culture in Germany, the USA and Japan, to argue for a history of Shibata’s phantoms as paper dolls that encouraged many forms of play: from learning and explorative, to mothering and caring, to humorous and subversive. By acknowledging that Shibata’s phantoms would also have been recognised as paper dolls, I present a history that centres unrecorded aspects of, and under-studied agents in, medical culture.
The paper examines the relations between three different visual media with inherent oral narration which have coexisted in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century – magic lanterns, silent cinema and kamishibai (paper theater). The figures of the oral narrators present in these three media, most notably represented by the benshi, are intertwined with each other and derive from a much older, transmedial storytelling practice, which in Japan became known as etoki. The author explores different roles and modalities of these three media, highlighting their performative aspects and examining the relations of power between all of their agents, including their socio-political background. They are also treated as representatives of a performative visual spectacle. Although the paper focuses on the local context of Japan, the media under discussion come across as significant for the evolution of both the local and international media landscape, fitting the methodology of media archaeology.
El objetivo del presente estudio es dar a conocer en el ámbito hispanohablante El diario de Hirohachi, un dietario de viaje que Hirohachi Takano, como supervisor de la Compañía Imperial Japonesa, fue redactando a lo largo de la gira mundial de dicha agrupación circense, entre finales de 1866 y principios de 1869. El recuento que hace Hirohachi de la estancia del grupo en la península ibérica, en 1868, puede considerarse el primer registro escrito de una visita japonesa a España después del periodo de aislamiento de Japón o sakoku. Este hecho pone de manifiesto por sí solo el valor historiográfico del texto, así como la relevancia y la pertinencia de su traducción. Esta está basada en las ediciones de 1977 y 2005, que a su vez reproducen con fidelidad el diario tal como fue hallado en 1975.
Rakugo, a popular form of comic storytelling, has played a major role in Japanese culture and society. Developed during the Edo (1600–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods, it is still popular today, with many contemporary Japanese comedians having originally trained as rakugo artists. Rakugo is divided into two distinct strands, the Tokyo tradition and the Osaka tradition, with the latter having previously been largely overlooked. This pioneering study of the Kamigata (Osaka) rakugo tradition presents the first complete English translation of five classic rakugo stories, and offers a history of comic storytelling in Kamigata (modern Kansai, Kinki) from the seventeenth century to the present day. Considering the art in terms of gender, literature, performance, and society, this volume grounds Kamigata rakugo in its distinct cultural context and sheds light on the 'other' rakugo for students and scholars of Japanese culture and history.
Emerging from the confluence of Greco-Roman mythology and regional folklore, the mermaid has been an enduring motif in Western culture since the medieval period. It has also been disseminated more widely, initially through Western trade and colonisation and, more recently, through the increasing globalisation of media products and outlets. Scaled for Success offers the first detailed overview of the mermaids dispersal outside Europe. Complementing previous studies of the interrelationship between the mermaid and Mami Wata spirit in West Africa, this volume addresses the mermaids presence in a range of Middle Eastern, Asian, Australian, Latin American and North American contexts. Individual chapters identify the manner in which the mermaid has been variously syncretised and/or resignified in contexts as diverse as Indian public statuary, Thai cinema and Coney Islands annual Mermaid Parade. Rather than lingering as a relic of a bygone age, the mermaid emerges as a versatile, dynamic and, above all, polyvalent figure. Her prominence exemplifies the manner in which contemporary media-lore has extended the currency of established folkloric figures in new and often surprising ways. Analysing aspects of religious symbolism, visual art, literature and contemporary popular culture, this copiously illustrated volume profiles an intriguing and highly diverse phenomenon. Philip Hayward is editor of the journal Shima and holds adjunct professor positions at the University of Technology Sydney and at Southern Cross University. His previous volume, Making a Splash: Mermaids (and Mermen) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media, was published by John Libbey Publishing/Indiana University Press in 2017.
Taking into consideration cultural expressions of the double that have appeared in literature, art, folklore, and film from around the world, Brown focuses on the role of Japanese horror as a productive cultural medium for doubles—a topic that has received relatively little attention thus far in J-horror scholarship. Analyzed both in terms of its evocations of the uncanny and with respect to the ghostly effects of the cinematic apparatus itself (with particular reference to the complex framing techniques employed to help visualize the unstable dynamics between self and double), Brown investigates the figure of the doppelgänger primarily in relation to the J-horror films Bilocation (Bairokēshon; dir. Asato Mari, 2013), Doppelgänger (Dopperugengā; dir. Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2003), and Box (dir. Miike Takashi, 2004).
„Sześć widoków na kinematografię japońską. Kulturowe, społeczne, polityczne i instytucjonalne konteksty kina” jest analizą wybranych aspektów japońskiego przemysłu filmowego, jego gatunków i często pojawiających się motywów. Autor opisuje m.in. filmowe interpretacje opowieści o 47 roninach, źródła popularności, pierwsze obrazy i reakcje widzów na filmy z Godzillą czy sport we wczesnym kinie japońskim. Przedstawia także początki japońskiej kinematografii i początki japońskiego systemu cenzury filmowej.
This book presents a thoroughly researched and meticulously documented study of the emergence, development, and demise of music, theatre, recitation, and dance witnessed by the populace on thoroughfares, plazas, and makeshift outdoor performance spaces in Edo/Tokyo. For some three hundred years this city was the centre of such arts, both sacred and secular. This study outlines the nature of the performances, explores the social relations which lay behind them, and reveals vast complexity: an obligation of gift-giving on the part of observers; performers who were often economic migrants fallen on hard times; relations of performance to social class; a class system much more finely gradated than the official four caste system; and institutions of professional organization and registration, enforced by government, with penalties for unregistered performers. The book discusses how performing, witnessing, and rewarding performance were closely bound up with economy, society and government, how the interaction between various groups related to socio-economic advancement, how the system of street performance reinforced social control, and how the balance between different groups shifted over time.
Author Institution: Columbia University, University of Delaware
The content of this article is primarily a transcription of two events: A demo of a video-conference with the Geminoid HI-2 at Osaka University (Systems Innovation Department in the Graduate School of Engineering), and a conversation about Geminoids with Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro at ATR (Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute International—Kyoto). As Professor Ishiguro says during the conversation, his quest “is harmony between humans and robots”. By creating and manipulating androids (human-like appearance robot), the roboticist reveals and highlights the assembly, disassembly and reconfigurations of human representation and human presence.
After nearly ten years of training in France, the artist Kuroda Seiki returned to Japan to mark his professional debut with the exhibition of his controversial painting Morning Toilette (1893). Kuroda's painting of a nude woman standing before a mirror was first shown publicly in Paris and Tokyo but did not gain widespread recognition and notoriety until its display at the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition held in Kyoto in 1895. Receiving both public censure and official distinction, the painting embodied the conflicted ambition of the host city and the nation at large to modernize and revitalize Japanese art.
I begin this discussion of Hans Christian Andersen's “The Little Mermaid” in Japan with a brief history of some Japanese mermaid stories, including the introduction of Andersen's famous literary fairy tale in 1904. I then focus on one contemporary transformation of the tale written by Ogawa Yōko in response to illustrations by Higami Kumiko: “Ningyo hōseki shokunin no isshō” (The Life of a Mermaid's Jeweler, 2006). After analyzing Ogawa's exploration of gender roles, voice/voicelessness and unreliability, and her images of loss of self through death, dissolution, and disappearance, I suggest some of the ways in which these elements may relate to the pleasures of reading fairy-tale transformations.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.