Exporting Japanese Aesthetics Evolution from Tradition to Cool Japan

Exporting Japanese Aesthetics brings together historical and contemporary case studies addressing the evolution of international impacts and influences of Japanese culture and aesthetics. The volume draws on a wide range of examples from a multidisciplinary team of scholars exploring transnational, regional, and global contexts. Studies include the impact of traditional Japanese theatre and art through to the global popularity of contemporary anime and manga. Under the banner of “soft power” or “Cool Japan,” cultural commodities that originate in Japan have manifested new meanings outside Japan. By (re)mapping meanings of selected Japanese cultural forms, this volume offers an in-depth examination of how various aspects of Japanese aesthetics have evolved as exportable commodities, the motivations behind this diffusion, and the extent to which the process of diffusion has been the result of strategic planning. The importance of interrogating the export of Japanese aesthetics is validated at the highest levels of government, which formed the Office of Cool Japan in 2010, and which perhaps originated in the 19th Century at government-endorsed cultural “courts” at world’s fairs. Increased international consumption of contemporary Japanese culture provides a much needed boost to Japan’s weakening economy. As host of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2025 Osaka Expo, “Cool Japan” will be under special scrutiny.

Jennifer Harris teaches Japanese Art History at the University of Adelaide. Tets Kimura teaches Creative Art at Flinders University.

Contents
 
Acknowledgments
Series Preface by Mina Roces
 
Introduction: From Tradition to Cool Japan
Tets Kimura & Jennifer Harris
 
Chapter 1            
Evolution of the Perceptions of Japanese Culture in the West: From Unknown, Mysterious, Exotic to Cool
Tets Kimura 
 
Chapter 2            
“Odd and Bizarre”: The Export of Japanese Aesthetics to Nineteenth-Century Australia
Jennifer Harris
 
Chapter 3            
Japonisme in New Zealand, 1870s-1940s: A “present tendency…to possess ‘something Japanese’”
James Beattie & Richard Bullen
 
Chapter 4            
Shinto and Cherry Blossoms: The Remasculinisation of Japan at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair
William Peterson
 
Chapter 5                            
Japanese Architecture as Export
Christopher Pokarier & Erez Golani Solomon
 
Chapter 6            
Toshiki Okada’s Transcultural Dramaturgy: From No to Brecht and Back
Maggie Ivanova
 
Chapter 7            
An Afterimage of Exoticism: On the Description of Rei Kawakubo’s Early Collections
Hissako Anjo
 
Chapter 8                            
Techno-Orientalism and Remixing Ukiyo-e through GIFs
Craig Norris
 
Chapter 9            
Exporting Japanese Aesthetics through Adaptations of Hana-Kimi: Masculinity, Schemas and Scripts in Live Action Drama and Fanfiction
Sung-Ae Lee
 
Chapter 10                         
AKB48 and the Export of Kawaii Aesthetics through the Indonesian JKT48
Tets Kimura
 
The Editors and Contributors
 
Index