#1. Jan. 16: INTRODUCTIONS AND DISCUSSION OF SYLLABUS
 

#2. Jan. 23: WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF MATERIAL CULTURE?

St. George, Robert Blair, ed., Material Life in America 1600-1860, (Northeastern University Press, 1988), "Introduction" (pp. 3-13).

Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Blackwell, 1987; with new epilogue, 1994), "Introduction" and "Epilogue" (pp. 3-18, 218-227).

Ian Hodder, Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology (Cambridge Univ Press, 1986; 2nd ed, 1991), pp. 1-18.

Christopher Tilley, Material Culture and Text: The Art of Ambiguity (Routledge, 1991), pp. 16-23, 179-183.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "Why We Need Things," in Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery, History from Things: Essays on Material Culture (Smithsonian Press, 1993), pp. 20-29.

Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (Columbia University Press, 1983), Ch. 1: "Patterns of Modern Materialism" (pp. 1-29).

Ann Smart Martin, "Makers, Buyers, and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework," Winterthur Portfolio, 28:2/3 (1993), pp. 141-157.

Thomas Schlereth, Cultural History and Material Culture: Everyday Life, Landscapes, Museums (UMI Research Press, 1990), pp. 17-33.

Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Polity Press, 1991), "Introduction," "Anxieties about Things," and "Conclusion" (pp. 1-7, 141-173).
 

#3. Jan. 30: UNRAVELING JAPANESE TEXTILE HISTORIES

Louise Allison Cort, "The Changing Fortunes of Three Archaic Japanese Textiles," in Annette Weiner and Jane Schneider, eds., Cloth and Human Experience (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), pp. 377-415.

Monica Bethe, "Reflections on beni: Red as a Key to Edo-Period Fashion," in Dale Carolyn Gluckman and Sharon Sadako Takeda, eds., When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan (Weatherhill and Los Angeles County Museum, 1992), pp. 133-153.

Monica Bethe, "Color: Dyes and Pigments," in Amanda Mayer Stinchecum et al., Kosode: 16th-19th Century Textiles from the Nomura Collection (Japan Society and Kodansha International, 1984), pp. 58-77.

Henry Smith, "Blue and White Japan, 1700-1900: Indigo, Porcelain, and Berlin Blue in the Transformation of Everyday Life." Ukiyo-e Society of America, Inc.: Notes from the President, May-June 1995, pp. 1-4.

Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, "Textiles of Okinawa," in William Jay Rathbun, ed., Beyond the Tanabata Bridge: Traditional Japanese Textiles (Seattle Art Museum and Thames and Hudson, 1994), pp. 75-90.

Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, "Japanese Textiles and the Mingei Aesthetic," in Robert Moes and Amanda Stinchecum, Mingei: Japanese Folk Art from the Montgomery Collection (Art Services International, 1995), pp. 45-55, plus catalog entries on textiles, 225-313.

Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, "A Common Thread: Japanese Ikat Textiles," Asian Art. Winter 1990, pp. 37-61.
 

#4. Feb. 6: TEXTILES AND FASHION FROM MOMOYAMA TO EDO

Mukerji, From Graven Images, chs. 5-6 ("The Fashion for Calicoes," "The British Cotton Industry"), pp. 166-242.

Kawakatsu Heita, "The National Seclusion Policy Reappraised," Japan Echo, 19/2 (Summer 1992), pp. 67-76. [For a recent analysis of Kawakatsu's ideas, see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, "Rewriting History: Civilization Theory in Contemporary Japan," positions 1/2 (Fall 1993), pp. 526-549.]

Kären Wigen, "Bringing the World Back In: Meditations on the Space-Time of Japanese Early Modernity," paper presented at workshop "What's 'Early Modern' and What's 'Japanese' about 'Early Modern Japan'?", Princeton University, Dec. 14-16, 1995.

Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, "Kosode: Techniques and Designs," in in Amanda Mayer Stinchecum et al., Kosode: 16th-19th Century Textiles from the Nomura Collection (Japan Society and Kodansha International, 1984), pp. 22-57.

Nagasaki Iwao, "Designs for a Thousand Ages: Printed Pattern Books and Kosode," in Carolyn Gluckman and Sharon Sadako Takeda, eds., When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan (Weatherhill and Los Angeles County Museum, 1992), pp. 95-113.

Maruyama Nobuhiko, "Fashion and the Floating World: The Kosode in Art," in ibid., pp. 221-235.
 

#5. Feb. 13: MEIJI MATERIAL CULTURE

I. EXERCISE: Explore the Meiji microfilm for interesting materials related to material culture, consumerism, fashion, daily life, and so forth. Be imaginative, and focus on some particular area of your own interest.

An alternative exercise would be to take a volume or two from the series Konishi Shirô, ed., Bakumatsu Meiji no rekishi (12 vols.), and look at them for evidence of change in material culture. Use vols. 5-12. It would perhaps be best to return these directly to the shelf in Starr when you have finished with them, so that others can look at them.

II. GENERAL BACKGROUND ON MEIJI MATERIAL CULTURE

Susan Hanley, "The Material Culture: Stability in Transition," in Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji (Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 447-469.

The following selections are from three volumes in the Meiji Bunkashi series that was originally published for Kaikoku centennial in 1954 from Yôyôsha, and translated into English in the late '50s as "Japanese Culture in the Meiji Era," published by Tôyô Bunko:

Ueno Naoteru, ed, Japanese Arts and Crafts in the Meiji Era: "Ceramics" and "Textiles" (pp. 141-159).

Shibusawa Keizô, ed., Japanese Life and Culture in the Meiji Era: "Clothing" (pp. 5-49).

Yanagita Kunio, ed., Japanese Manners and Customs in the Meiji Era: "Clothing, Food, and Housing" (pp. 9-68) and "Consumption of Goods" (pp. (pp. 279-90).

III. GENERAL READINGS ON DRESS

Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothing (UC Press, 1975), Ch. 5: "Dress" pp. 311-390.

Roland Barthes, "Written Clothing," from The Fashion System, reprinted in Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (UC Press, 1991), pp. 432-445.

IV. READINGS ON MEIJI DRESS

Nagasaki Iwao, "Bunmei kaika on Dyed and Woven Goods--Bunmei kaika Amond Ordinary People," Daruma, 1/4 (Autumn 1994), pp. 16-22.

Julia Meech, The World of the Meiji Print, skim for parts related to dress, esp. 128-143.

Keiichirô Nakagawa and Henry Rosovsky, "The Case of the Dying Kimono: The Influence of Changing Fashions on the Development of the Japanese Woolen Industry," Business History Review, 37/1-2 (Spring-Summer 1963), pp. 59-80.
 

#6. Feb. 20: MUSEUMS AND EXHIBITIONS IN MODERN JAPAN

GENERAL:

James Clifford, "On Collecting Art and Culture," The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Harvard Univ Press, 1988), pp. 215-251.

Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, "Objects of Ethnography," in Karp and Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures, pp. 386-443.

WORLD'S FAIRS:

Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions, and Worlds Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester University Press, 1988), Read Introduction and Chapters 1-2 (pp. 1-50), and skim through the rest of the book in accord with your interests. One copy of the book will be on the shelf.

Curtis Hinsley, "The World as Marketplace: Commodification of the Exotic at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893," in Karp and Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures, pp. 344-365.

Harris, Neil. "All the World a Melting Pot? Japan at American Fairs, 1876-1904." In Akira Iriye, ed., Mutual Images--Essays in American-Japanese Relations (Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 24-54 plus endnotes.

BEFORE MEIJI:

Yamaguchi Masao, "The Poetics of Exhibition in Japanese Culture," in Karp and Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures, pp. 57-67.

Peter Kornicki, "Public Display and Changing Values in Nineteenth-Century Japan: Provincial Exhibitions in the Early Meiji Period," Monumenta Nipponica.

MEIJI:

Yoshimi Shun'ya, "Industrial Expositions in Modern Japan: A Gauge of the Changing City," paper presented at AAS, Los Angeles, Narch 1993.

Christine Guth, "Masuda Don'o: Tea and Art Collecting in the Meiji Era," Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 53 (1988), pp. 7-34.
 

#7. Feb. 27: [Class cancelled for Rey Chow lecture at NYU]
 

#8. March 5: COMMODITIES, CONSUMPTION, AND CONSUMERISM

COMMON READING:

Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Harvard University Press, 1984): xi-xiv (Preface), 1-7, 99-125, 226-234, 243-256, 466-484.

Pierre Bourdieu, "Social Space and Symbolic Space: Introduction to a Japanese Reading of Distinction," Poetics Today 12:4 (1991), pp. 627-638.

Arjun Appadurai, "Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value," in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge Univ Press, 1986), pp. 2-63.

Reviews of Distinction:

Mary Douglas, "High Culture and Low," Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 13, 1981.

Stanley Hoffmann, "Monsieur Taste," New York Review of Books 33/6 (April 1986)

Elizabeth Wilson, "Picasso and Pâté de Foie Gras: Pierre Bourdieu's Sociology of Culture," diacritics 18/2 (Summer 1988), pp. 47-60.

BACKGROUND ON BOURDIEU:

Randal Johnson, "Pierre Bourdieu on Art, Literature, and Culture," in Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, pp. 1-25.

Moishe Postone et al., "Introduction: Bourdieu and Social Theory," in Craig Calhoun et al., Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (The University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 1-13.

Edward LiPuma, "Culture and the Concept of Culture in a Theory of Practice," in ibid., pp. 14-34.
 

[March 12: SPRING BREAK]
 

#9. March 19: MODERN HISTORIES OF JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE

Jordan Sand, "House and Home in Modern Japan, 1880s-1920s" (unpublished Phd dissertation, Columbia, 1995), Chs. 3 ("Decorating the Dwelling") and 4 ("Leisure, Simple Living and Bungalows): pp. 142-259. NOTE: A copy of ch. 2, "Molding Modern Housewives," will also be available on the reserve shelf for those interested in the topic, but is not required reading.

Ken Tadashi Oshima, "Den'enchofu: Building the Garden City in Japan." Manuscript, 20 pp. plus illustrations.

Jonathan Reynolds, "Japan's Imperial Diet Building and the Construction of a National Identity." Manuscript.
 

#10. March 26: MATERIAL CULTURE IN INTERWAR JAPAN

ALL MUST READ:

Miriam Silverberg, "Constructing the Japanese Ethnography of Modernity," Journal of Asian Studies, 51/1 (February 1992), pp. 30-54.

Louisa Rubinfien, "Commodity to National Brand: Manufacturers, Merchants, and the Development of the Consumer Market, 1900-1930," paper presented at David Center, Princeton University, March 10, 1995, colloquium on "Business, Enterprise, and Culture in Japan." 40 pp.

Jeffrey Hanes, "Advertising Culture in Interwar Japan," The Japan Foundation Newsletter, 23/4 (1996), pp. 8-12.

ALL STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO READ:

Leora Audlander, "The Gendering of Consumer Practices in Nineteenth-Century France." (57 pp.) [Report by Lyn]

Rosalind Williams, "The Dream World of Mass Consumption," from Mukerji and Schudson, ed., Rethinking Popular Culture (UC Press, 1991), pp. 198-235 (originally ch. 3 of Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (UC Press, 1982). [Report by Suzanne]

REPORTS ON READINGS IN JAPANESE:

Copies of Kon Wajirô and Yoshida Kenkichi's two major collections of "Modernology" research, Kôgengaku saishû (Kensetsusha, Dec. 1931) and Moderunorojio [Kôgengaku] (July 1930) will be placed on the reserve shelf. Please select one study from either of these volumes that you find of interest, and be prepared to offer a brief report in class. [Reports by Miwako, Morihiro]

From Yamamoto Taketoshi, Kôkoku no shakaishi (Hosei Univ. Press, 1984):

"Hyakkaten kôkoku no taitô to ryûkô-zukuri," pp. 103-109. [Leila]

"Sekken, hamigaki no tasai na kôkoku senryaku to seijô bunka no shintô," pp. 109-114. [Teresa]
 

#11. April 2: "FOLK" AND MATERIAL CULTURE: MINZOKU, MINGEI, MINGU

Kim Brandt, "The Folk-Craft Movement in Early Shôwa Japan, 1925-1945," Columbia PhD thesis, Introduction and chs. 1-3.

Yanagi Sôetsu, "The Kizaemon Tea-bowl" (1931) and "The Way of Craftsmanship" (1927), in The Unknown Craftsman--A Japanese Insight into Beauty (Kodansha Intl, 1972), pp. 190-215.

Louise Allison Cort, "The Kizaemon Teabowl Reconsidered: The Making of a Masterpiece," Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 71 (1992), pp. 7-30.
 

#12. April 9: THE HISTORY OF FOOD IN MODERN JAPAN

COMMON READINGS:

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, pp. 177-200.

Tsuchiya, Yoshio, A Feast for the Eyes--The Japanese Art of Food Arrangement (Kodansha Intl., 1985), 67-73, 137-151.

REPORTS:

MORIHIRO: Otsuka Tsutomu, 'Shoku' no kindaishi (Kyôikusha Rekishi shinsho 137, 1979).

MIWAKO: Koyanagi Kiichi, Tabemono to Nihon bunka (Hyôgensha, 1972).

SUZANNE: Watanabe Minoru, Nihon shoku-seikatsushi (Yoshikawa Kôbunkan, 1964), ch. 12 (pp. 270-306).

LEILA: Katô Hidetoshi, Shoku-seikatsu sesôshi (Seikôsha, 1977), pp. 3-51.

LYN: Ishige, Naomichi, "The Way We Eat" (seialized in AjiCommunications, nos. 1-19 (Nov. '79--Feb. '83).

TERESA: "Japanese Food: Customs and Traditions," Understanding Japan, no. 56 (1989). 82 pp.
 

#13. April 16: PAPER REPORTS

Presentation of paper topics: By noon on Monday (April 1), each member of the class should place 2 copies of your paper proposal on the Smith shelf, and one copy in Smith's EALAC box. Read through these and write down memos of any suggestions you may have.
 

#14. April 23: NO CLASS:

A week of rest to enable you to complete your papers.
 

#15. April 30: DISCUSSION OF RESEARCH PAPERS.

Three copies of your completed paper must be placed on the Smith shelf in Starr by noon Monday, April 29. DO NOT BE LATE. ABSOLUTELY NO EXTENSIONS. You will then be expected to read ALL of the papers before we meet the following day. Please expect the session to continue longer than usual; food and drink will be provided to keep your spirits up.