The book demonstrates the importance of Britain in the early dissemination of Japanese art in the West and analyses British reactions to Japanese art, both theoretical and artistic. This book differs from most others on Japonisme in that it deals with Britain rather than France and is concerned with an early period. It discusses design as well as fine art, gives the first comprehensive account of the debate among Victorian design theorists on Japanese art and utilises a wealth of little-known source material. It also proposes a radically new interpretation of Whistler's Japonisme.

Japan held a profound fascination for western artists in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the influence of Japonisme on western art was pervasive. Paradoxically, just as western artists were beginning to find inspiration in Japan and Japanese art, Japan was opening to the western world and beginning a process of thorough modernisation, some have said westernisation. The mastery of western art was included in the programme. This book examines the nineteenth century art world against this background and explores Japanese influences on four artists working in Britain in particular: the American James McNeill Whistler, the Australian Mortimer Menpes, and the 'Glasgow boys' George Henry and Edward Atkinson Hornel. Japonisme in Britian is richly illustrated throughout.

This volume complements other published works about travel by nineteenth-century women writers by locating and creating ‘space’ for Japan which is missing within recent critical discourses on travel writing. It examines the narratives of women writers who travelled to Japan from the mid-1850s onwards, when Japan was first opened to the West, and became a highly desirable travel destination for decades thereafter. Many women travelled in this period, and although most left no record of their journeys, enough did to form a discrete body of literature spanning more than fifty years – from the end of the feudal Tokugawa era to the rise of Meiji Japan as a world power. Their narratives about Japan occupy a culturally significant place, not only in the genre of Victorian female travel writing, but in Victorian travel writing per se. The writers who are the subject of this book are divided into two groups: those who were ‘travellers-by-intent’, namely, Anna D’A, Alice Frere, Annie Brassey, Isabella Bird and Marie Stopes, and those who ‘travelled-by-default’ as the wives of diplomats, namely Mrs Pemberton Hodgson, Mrs Hugh Fraser and Baroness Albert d’Anethan.

Using interdisciplinary research and critical analysis, this book examines experiences through (or with) kimonos in Britain during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Bringing new perspectives to challenge the existing model of ‘Japonisme in fashion’ and introducing overlooked contacts between kimonos and people, this book explores not only fine arts and department stores but also a variety of theatres and cheap postcards. Putting a particular focus on the responses and reactions elicited by kimonos in visual, textual and material forms, this book initiates an entirely new discussion on the British adoption of Japanese kimonos beyond the monolithic view of the relationship between the East and West. This book will be of interest to scholars working in fashion studies, British studies, Japanese studies, design history and art history.

A broad survey of the West's extraordinary love affair with Japan. From the moment of the very first contact in the sixteenth century, Japan has always possessed an irresistible fascination for the West. The fascination was if anything increased when Japan closed its borders in 1638, and for over 200 years the only contact was through a small colony of Dutch traders who were permitted to live on the tiny island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay. After 1858, full trade was resumed, and a wave of 'Japanomania' swept across Europe and America. The 1862 Great Exhibition in London was the first to display a wide range of Japanese goods in the west. Visited by hundreds of thousands of people, the prints, ceramics and lacquer work became the height of fashion. Christopher Dresser travelled to Japan in 1876 as an agent for Tiffany & Co. He visited 64 potteries and dozens of other manufacturers. Not only did he take photographs home to spread the word there, but he also advised the Japanese how best to export their trade. This two way dialogue offers a rich synthesis of fine art and the decorative arts, as well as popular culture. Lionel Lambourne tells this remarkable story in a fluent and engaging narrative that focuses on the human drama - often amusing but sometimes tragic - of the individual personalities involved in the two-way dialogue between cultures.

The opening of the ports of Japan in 1859 brought a flood of Japanese craft products to the world marketplace. For ivory it was a golden age. This book examines the role that ivory and ivory carvers played in the expression of nationalism and the development of sculpture in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Rather than focusing on German philosophy or the French avant-gardes, as many books on the history of aesthetics do, Teukolsky takes up British responses to modern art controversies, thus providing a unique view on the development of artistic forms and art history. She considers the canonical writing of authors like John Ruskin, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde alongside texts belonging to the rich field of Victorian print culture--gallery reviews, scientific treatises, satirical cartoons, advertisements, and early photography monographs among them. Spanning the years 1840 to 1910, her argument also adds substance to our understanding of the transition from Victorianism to modernism, a period of especially lively exchange between artists and intellectuals, here narrated with careful attention given to the historical particularities and real events that stamped their imprint on such interactions.

In the first section of this work, ten scholars examine E.W. Godwin's life and career, discussing his diverse contributions as a design reformer. The second section presents a fully annotated selection of over 150 items that represent the formation and flowering of Godwin's oeuvre.

The city of Kyoto has undergone radical shifts in its significance as a political and cultural center, as a hub of the national bureaucracy, as a symbolic and religious center, and as a site for the production and display of art. However, the field of Japanese history and culture lacks a book that considers Kyoto on its own terms as a historic city with a changing identity. Examining cultural production in the city of Kyoto in two periods of political transition, this book promises to be a major step forward in advancing our knowledge of Kyoto’s history and culture. Its chapters focus on two periods in Kyoto’s history in which the old capital was politically marginalized: the early Edo period, when the center of power shifted from the old imperial capital to the new warriors’ capital of Edo; and the Meiji period, when the imperial court itself was moved to the new modern center of Tokyo. The contributors argue that in both periods the response of Kyoto elites—emperors, courtiers, tea masters, municipal leaders, monks, and merchants—was artistic production and cultural revival. As an artistic, cultural and historical study of Japan's most important historic city, this book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese history, Asian history, the Edo and Meiji periods, art history, visual culture and cultural history.

The Tôkaidô Road offers a comparative study of the Tôkaidô road's representations during the Edo (1600-1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) eras. Throughout the Edo era, the Tôkaidô highway was the most important route of Japan and transportation was confined to foot travel. In 1889, the Tôkaidô Railway was established, at first paralleling and eventually almost eliminating the use of the highway. During both periods, the Tôkaidô was a popular topic of representation and was depicted in a variety of visual and literary media. After the installation of the railway in the Meiji era, the Tôkaidô was presented as a landscape of progress, modernity and westernisation. Such representations were fundamental in shaping the Tôkaidô and the realm of travelling in the collective consciousness of the Japanese people.