National Museums and Other Cultures in Modern Japan

This article examines the representation of Japan at three national museums in Japan: the Tokyo National Museum, the National Museum of Japanese History and the National Museum of Ethnology. It explores the way in which the museums have displayed difference both within Japan and between Japan and the other countries to which it is compared. The essay examines how this has produced a claim of Japanese uniqueness in the museum, the difficulty museums therefore have in connecting the Japanese past to the present and a number of recent attempts to overcome these problems in the representation of Japan

The Logic of Spectacle c. 1970

This paper examines the site plan and theme exhibit of the Osaka Expo of 1970, together with a week-long protest staged in the Tower of the Sun, which was the main element of the Theme Exhibit. Attempts to communicate a critical account of contemporary society and so transform the visitor were undercut by the Expo's ability to accommodate diverse interests and investments and to account for almost anything that was exhibited or staged on site. The Expo thus suggests that we need to supplement our understanding of spectacle as communication with an analysis of spectacle as a system

Peopling landscapes, ethnographic and otherwise: European images of Asians from the 15th to the 19th centuries

This article examines European depictions of Asians during the early modern period, arguing that images were determined by the conditions of the relationship between Europe and Asia. Europe's marginal position and limited access in the 16th and 17th century encouraged invention rather than observation. Increasing access and dominance in the 18th and 19th did not necessarily encourage greater accuracy. It remained rare for an Asian to escape landscape and history: for portraits to allow the individual to emerge from the type that he or she illustrated, or for Asia to escape the past to which it had by then been consigned