Out of Touch: On the sensorial in the Historical Interpretation of Japanese Lacquer

Essay based on keynote speech at "Crossing Borders" conference held at V&A Museum in 2009 suggesting multi-sensorial approach to the study of Japanese lacque

The Local and the Global: Hokusai's Great Wave in Contemporary Product Design

This article examines the impact and significance of Hokusai’s so-called The Great Wave in contemporary product promotion and design. Arguably Japan’s first global brand, this influential 19th-century woodcut has been widely adopted to style and advertise a wide range of merchandise, most of it neither manufactured in Japan nor primarily dependent on the commodification of the Japanese aesthetic or locale. Interpretation of the varied contexts in which the distinctive cresting wave appears challenges essentialising narratives that see the modern adoption of such traditional non-Western motifs as expressions of Japonisme or Orientalism. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that brings to bear design and global studies theory, Guth instead focuses on how this highly adaptive motif, with its connotations of being both nowhere and everywhere, serves to mediate between the local and the global. Despite the ubiquity of The Great Wave in the commercial realm, to date there have been no studies of its cross-cultural significance. To carry out this project, Guth conducted extensive research into the merchandise on offer in museum shops and online websites, and among global brands such as Patagonia that have made use of the motif. Guth also interviewed designers and users of the products to assess the rationale for the choice of this form of branding and the degree to which awareness of its origins influenced purchases. Guth was invited to present this new research on the global commercial impact of Hokusai’s The Great Wave at an international conference on ‘Hokusai in Context’ in Berlin in 2011. The conference paper and resulting published essay were developed to form a chapter in a book-length investigation into the global iconicity of Hokusai’s wave from its creation to the present day. The book, Hokusai’s Great Wave: Biography of a global icon, will be published by University of Hawai’i Press in 2014

The Multiple Modalities of the Copy in Traditional Japanese Crafts

Moving beyond contemporary Western frameworks that have led to the stigmatisation of copying in Japan, Guth’s original article examines this practice within the cultural contexts of the production, use and display of Japanese crafts. It illuminates the complex, changing and, often contradictory roles of the copy in transmitting the techniques, styles, and values of traditional crafts, taking into account both its ritual connotations and its promotion through government legislation aimed at preserving traditional Japanese crafts. Guth contends that copying should be interpreted in relational terms, as a dynamic practice that makes tradition possible, and that copies are thus speaking as much to history as to modernity. Guth’s critical approach was prompted by her sense that scholars had not sufficiently interrogated the significance of the copy and its associated practices in contemporary craft practice. Her essay focuses on textiles, ceramics, and lacquer – traditional crafts whose leading practitioners have since 1954 been designated ‘Intangible Cultural Property’ (or more commonly, ‘Living National Treasures’). In so doing, Guth argues for both the historical and contemporary roles of copying and the copy as valuable forms of technology and knowledge transfer. Extending Guth’s previously published research (‘Kokuhō: From dynastic to national treasure’, Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, 9(9), 313–22) on the institution of the system of National Treasures to take into account practices as well as art objects, the material in this essay was first presented in the context of a symposium at the British Museum held on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan’ (2007). It was developed for publication at the suggestion of the editors of the Journal of Modern Craft. Its contribution lies in its reassessment of current scholarship on Japanese crafts by making explicit the role that copying has played and continues to play in constructing individual and national identities

Import Substitution, Innovation and the Tea Ceremony in Fifteenth and Sixteenth-century Japan

Chanoyu, commonly known in the Anglophone world as the ‘tea ceremony’, was characterised by its most famous 16th-century practitioner Sen no Rikyū as nothing more than ‘boiling water for tea’. Yet like much writing on tea, such statements hide the true nature of a practice that, since the 15th century, has been a driving force behind the production and consumption of both imported and domestic luxury goods in Japan. As part of her exploration of fresh interpretative models for the study of a practice that had far-reaching economic implications in early modern Japan, Guth first presented this material in 2008 at a symposium on global commodities co-organised by Warwick University and the V&A Museum, and was later invited to submit it for publication in Global Design History. This article examines the culture of tea from the perspective of import substitution and innovation, following a methodological perspective discussed in an influential essay by Maxine Berg, who wrote the response to Guth’s contribution to the edited volume. Import substitution, as Berg has defined it, refers to the replacement of like with like, as when a luxury article that becomes too scarce or costly is replaced by a domestic product that simulates its appearance, but not its mode of manufacture. Guth complicates this idea by situating import substitution within tea culture discourses to demonstrate how imported ceramics from China and South-East Asia could be replaced with dissimilar ones through a process of symbolic inversion, and how these in turn could give rise to a range of innovative locally produced teawares that assumed the same luxury status as those they were intended to replace. In so doing, Guth demonstrates the importance of looking into the larger geographies in which both the production and consumption of Japanese tea ceramics were implicated

Hokusai's Great Waves in Nineteenth-Century Japanese Visual Culture

Katsushika Hokusai's 1831 woodcut "Under the Wave off Kanagawa," popularly known as "The Great Wave," occupies an iconic place in modern visual culture. Looking at the socio-cultural context in which Hokusai's iterations of this motif were first produced and consumed helps to explain why this image was singled out from the "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" of which it was a part. Waves served to express a range of ideas, practices, and even materials associated with the West. Their heroic forms became critical sites for exploring Japan's shifting geopolitical circumstances, especially the country's vulnerability to foreign invasion

Myeloproliferative Diseases as Possible Risk Factor for Development of Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension—A Genetic Study

Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is a rare disease which is often caused by recurrent emboli. These are also frequently found in patients with myeloproliferative diseases. While myeloproliferative diseases can be caused by gene defects, the genetic predisposition to CTEPH is largely unexplored. Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyse these genes and further genes involved in pulmonary hypertension in CTEPH patients. A systematic screening was conducted for pathogenic variants using a gene panel based on next generation sequencing. CTEPH was diagnosed according to current guidelines. In this study, out of 40 CTEPH patients 4 (10%) carried pathogenic variants. One patient had a nonsense variant (c.2071A>T p.Lys691*) in the BMPR2 gene and three further patients carried the same pathogenic variant (missense variant, c.1849G>T p.Val617Phe) in the Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) gene. The latter led to a myeloproliferative disease in each patient. The prevalence of this JAK2 variant was significantly higher than expected (p < 0.0001). CTEPH patients may have a genetic predisposition more often than previously thought. The predisposition for myeloproliferative diseases could be an additional risk factor for CTEPH development. Thus, clinical screening for myeloproliferative diseases and genetic testing may be considered also for CTEPH patients

Cosmic Strings are Current-Carrying

A synthesis of previous work done on the microscopic structure of cosmic strings in realistic models is made and reveals that strings are expected to be not only superconducting in the sense of Witten, but also generically current-carrying, either at the GUT scale or at the electroweak scale. This applies to any GUT string forming model leading to the standard electroweak theory as a low energy limit. The current consists of charged vector bosons. Cosmological consequences are briefly discussed.Comment: 5 pages, uses LaTeX-ReVTeX, no figure

Mutations involving the SRY-related gene SOX8 are associated with a spectrum of human reproductive anomalies.

© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. SOX8 is an HMG-box transcription factor closely related to SRY and SOX9. Deletion of the gene encoding Sox8 in mice causes reproductive dysfunction but the role of SOX8 in humans is unknown. Here, we show that SOX8 is expressed in the somatic cells of the early developing gonad in the human and influences human sex determination. We identified two individuals with 46, XY disorders/differences in sex development (DSD) and chromosomal rearrangements encompassing the SOX8 locus and a third individual with 46, XY DSD and a missense mutation in the HMG-box of SOX8. In vitro functional assays indicate that this mutation alters the biological activity of the protein. As an emerging body of evidence suggests that DSDs and infertility can have common etiologies, we also analysed SOX8 in a cohort of infertile men (n=274) and two independent cohorts of women with primary ovarian insufficiency (POI; n=153 and n=104). SOX8 mutations were found at increased frequency in oligozoospermic men (3.5%; P < 0.05) and POI (5.06%; P=4.5×10 -5 ) as compared with fertile/normospermic control populations (0.74%). The mutant proteins identified altered SOX8 biological activity as compared with the wild-type protein. These data demonstrate that SOX8 plays an important role in human reproduction and SOX8 mutations contribute to a spectrum of phenotypes including 46, XY DSD, male infertility and 46, XX POI.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex