Those Almond-Eyed Children of the Far East

Those almond-eyed children of the Far East.

An exploration of japonist thought and Japanophilia in fin-de-siècle Nordic painters.

Word count: 28948

Charlotte Van Hulle Student number: 01504426

Supervisor(s): Prof. Dr. Mick Deneckere

A dissertation submitted to Ghent University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Oriental Languages and Cultures–Japanese Language and Culture.

Academic year: 2019–2020

PREAMBLE CONCERNING COVID-19

Due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic of 2020, it should be kept in mind that the research conducted for the purpose of this thesis could not take place as originally intended.

The outbreak of the pandemic had direct consequences for the process of completing this master’s thesis—at the time when I began my research, I resided in Finland as a student at the University of Helsinki. A significant part of this thesis relied on the access to source material, as well as access to translation by native speakers of Finnish and Swedish, that this location provided. However, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, I was unable to stay in Finland, and saw myself forced to leave the country. Before the borders closed, I flew out to Sweden, to be with my partner and family-in-law during this crisis.

I was, overall, among those fortunate enough to be able to move ahead with their research throughout the pandemic. That is, no field work was conducted for the purpose of this thesis’ argument, meaning that closed borders and national lockdowns had no bearing on my research as such. Further, the Swedish response to the pandemic allowed me to continue my research with only minor inconveniences, as public libraries remained open. I was thus able to retain access to a majority of the sources I intended to use for the purpose of this thesis, even though I also needed to substitute a number of sources with articles and books that could either be obtained digitally, or through a public library.

As a result of the circumstances, it is thus possible that the reader discovers that there are sources which could have provided valuable additions to the arguments made in this thesis, but were not used due to a lack of availability. I ask that this is kept in mind throughout the reading process, and thank the reader for their understanding.

ABSTRACT

After the forced reopening of Japanese ports for international trade in 1854, an infatuation with all things Japanese took the European art world by storm. This infatuation, which by the late nineteenth century had developed into a veritable art movement, was at its height dubbed japonisme. Recent research, particularly conducted in the framework of the 2016 exhibition Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875-1918, has shed light on the existence of a japonisme movement in the Nordic countries—a region until then largely unexplored in this context. This dissertation, by using case studies from the Nordic japonisme movement, aims to offer new insights on the nature of japonisme as not merely an artistic movement, but as a thought process. In other words, this thesis asks the question: what do the writings of different Nordic japonists of the late nineteenth century tell us about the nature of japonisme as a socio-cultural phenomenon? To achieve an answer to this question, a case study was conducted where primary source material written by Nordic japonists was carefully searched for mentions of Japan, in order to discover patterns which could be attributed to underlying socio-cultural aspects of the movement as a whole—these sources were then analysed within the theoretical framework of Orientalism studies. The results of this analysis provide new insights into the nature of japonisme as an Orientalist phenomenon, showing that the emergence of the japonisme movement was much more complex than mere artistic interest. These insights hope to serve further research on the topic of japonisme with an interdisciplinary approach, as an approach from the perspective of social- and cultural studies has in this thesis shown to add to our understanding of not only the movement itself, but the circumstances in which the movement arose, as well as the thought process and dominant mindset which accompanied it.

Keywords: japonisme, Nordic japonisme, Orientalism

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ABSTRACT (NEDERLANDS)

Nadat, in 1854, Japanse grenzen onder druk van de Amerikaanse vloot werden opengesteld voor internationale handel, ontstond in de Europese kunstwereld een obsessie met de Japanse importgoederen die massaal het continent binnenstroomden. Deze obsessie, die in de late negentiende eeuw was uitgegroeid tot een waarachtige kunststroming, werd het japonisme genoemd. Recent onderzoek, hoofdzakelijk het onderzoek gevoerd in het kader van de tentoonstelling Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875-1918, heeft nieuwe inzichten geboden over het bestaan van het japonisme in de noordse landen, een regio voordien vaak over het hoofd gezien in studies over het japonisme. Deze thesis tracht, door middel van casussen uit het Noord- Europese japonisme, nieuwe inzichten te bieden over het japonisme niet enkel als kunststroming, maar als gedachtegoed. In andere woorden stelt deze thesis de vraag: wat kunnen de brieven van verschillende Noord-Europese japonisten uit de late negentiende eeuw ons vertellen over het japonisme als een socio-cultureel fenomeen? Om een antwoord te voorzien op deze vraag werd een casusonderzoek gevoerd waarin primair bronnenmateriaal achtergelaten door Noord- Europese japonisten zorgvuldig werden doorzocht voor vermeldingen van Japan—dit om eventuele patronen te ontdekken die in het japonisme een onderliggend socio-cultureel aspect onthullen. De bronnen werden vervolgens geanalyseerd binnen het theoretisch raamwerk van het Oriëntalisme. De resultaten van deze analyse bieden nieuwe inzichten over de aard van het japonisme als een manifestatie van Oriëntalisme, en tonen aan dat het ontstaan van het japonisme een stuk complexer was dan enkel een artistieke interesse. Deze inzichten hopen tot verder onderzoek te leiden over het japonisme, vooral deze die de kwestie benadert vanuit een interdisciplinaire ooghoek—deze thesis heeft immers aangetoond dat een benadering vanuit de sociale- en cultuurwetenschappen kan bijdragen tot een beter begrip van niet alleen de kunststroming zelf, maar eveneens de omstandigheden waarin de kunststroming ontstond, evenals het denkproces en gedachtegoed waarmee het hand in hand ging.

Trefwoorden: japonisme, Noord-Europees japonisme, Oriëntalisme

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Serving as the culmination to five years at the University of Ghent, writing a master’s thesis is a daunting task, to be sure—and therefore I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has accompanied me on this endeavour.

I would like to express my gratitude first and foremost to my thesis supervisor, professor Mick Deneckere, for not only providing me with the necessary guidance in the research process of this thesis, but having assisted me on numerous occasions throughout my studies at the University of Ghent.

I would also like to express my thanks to the University of Ghent, as well as the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, for providing me with the opportunity to complete the final year of my master’s degree at the University of Helsinki in Finland, an opportunity that has provided me with a plethora of valuable experiences, as well as connections that have proven to be an invaluable addition to the research presented in this thesis.

To my fiancé Henning, for not only providing me with support and encouragement throughout my studies, but for his tireless patience in helping me understand and translate academic articles written in Swedish—there is no doubt that without his help, a myriad of valuable sources would have been lost to me.

To my mother, for the sacrifices she made working tirelessly to provide me with the opportunity to be the first person in our family to attend university, and for always being there to teach me how to navigate my first steps into the world of adulthood–I may not have gotten the hang of it just yet, but I promise I’ll get there one day.

And, finally, thank you to the friends I made in Ghent, for five years of companionship and encouragement, many drinks and many laughs, and equally many hours of lamenting our deadlines. Likewise, to all the friends I met while studying abroad, for broadening and enriching my view of the world, and for helping me to time and time again build a home away from home.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... vii I. Research methodology ...... 1 II. Historical overview of early modern Japan ...... 3 i. Rise of the Tokugawa shogunate ...... 3 a. Administrative developments under Tokugawa governance ...... 3 b. Societal developments ...... 5 c. Cultural developments in Tokugawa Japan ...... 8 ii. International relations under the Tokugawa shogunate ...... 12 a. Sakoku—Edo era isolationist policies ...... 12 b. Trade exceptions ...... 15 c. Kaikoku—the end of the bakufu’s protectionist policies ...... 18 d. Diplomatic relations with the Nordics ...... 20 III. Japonisme in Europe ...... 23 IV. Case study—the Nordic Japonists ...... 32 i. Carl Larsson (1853-1919) ...... 32 ii. Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905)...... 38 iii. Karl Madsen (1855-1938) ...... 44 iv. A note on the absence of Norwegian and Icelandic case studies ...... 50 V. A socio-cultural analysis of Nordic japonisme ...... 55 i. Defining Orientalism ...... 55 ii. The debate on japonisme as Orientalism ...... 56 iii. ‘Cultural othering’ in the nineteenth-century Nordic context ...... 59 iv. Patterns of Orientalism in Nordic artists ...... 62 Conclusion ...... 69 Bibliography ...... 72

INTRODUCTION

“From the Swedish horizon, Japan had been for centuries almost a land of legend, shrouded in myth and vague imagination.”1

Referred to by some as an emerging cultural superpower, the mark left by Japan on contemporary popular culture is one that is difficult to overlook. From anime to manga, from food to traditional crafts, Japan is cool—to such an extent, in fact, that the country’s coolness and its export of domestic popular culture have fallen under the scrutiny of numerous researchers for its potential as a soft power strategy. Yet, the Western infatuation with the land of the rising sun is nothing if not a recurring theme throughout recent history. The intriguing exoticism associated with the island grew significantly in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when, after several failed attempts to open the then-isolated military government to foreign trade, the opening of the country was unilaterally effected under the pressure of a fleet of U.S. warships under the command of Commodore Matthew C. Perry. The subsequent budding of international trade relations between Japan and Western nations acted as the catalyst for a movement marked by the Western upper class’ obsession with all things Japanese and fine artists’ incorporation of Japanese aesthetics and techniques into their own art, a movement that was at its height dubbed japonisme. In recent years, increasing academic interest in this phenomenon has engendered a number of studies in a variety of fields, predominantly art history.

Unsurprisingly, much of the existing research on the impact of the japonisme movement on European artistry is centred around its proverbial birthplaces, France as well as the British Empire; though to a lesser extent, some attention has been given to other regions where the influence of japonisme was particularly visible, including Germany and Belgium. Yet, there is at least one region that, until recently, has been largely overlooked by researchers of japonisme—namely Northern Europe. Academia had been relatively silent on the possibility of a Nordic iteration of japonisme until, in early 2016, an exhibition was opened at the Finnish National Gallery titled Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875-1918.2 The result of years of extensive research conducted by chief curator and art historian Gabriel P. Weisberg together with curator Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff and Hanne Selkokari, the exhibition brought to the fore a glimpse into the extent that Japan and its art

1 Willman, O. E., Bernström, J., & Wretö, T. (1992). En kort beskrivning på en resa till Ostindien och Japan den en svensk man och skeppskapiten, Olof Eriksson Willman benämnd, gjort haver. T. Fischer. p. 5. 2 Weisberg, P. et al., eds. (2016). Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 1875-1918. Mercatorfonds.

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influenced the cultural elite of the Nordics and, in doing so, proved that the phenomenon merits further academic exploration.

This thesis, inspired by the research presented in the aforementioned exhibition, aims to explore the proliferation of japonisme as a movement in the Nordic countries, bringing to the fore as cases a number of noteworthy fine artists whose works display clear influences from Japanese traditional art forms and styles and, through their personal narratives, endeavouring to provide the reader with a better understanding of Northern Europe’s place in the 19th-century Japan craze that swept across the Western upper class. In order to strengthen the discussed artists’ connection to the japonisme movement, part of the thesis will also be dedicated to pointing out Japanese influences in the artists’ works in a classic art analysis—the analyses offered, unless otherwise specified, are my own contribution. Further building upon this, the intent is to use the individual narratives of the different Nordic fine artists presented as references for an exploration of japonisme as a socio- cultural phenomenon—this approach to japonisme has not remained entirely unexplored in the field of cultural studies, with some research suggesting strong connections between japonisme and Orientalism. However, what this thesis hopes to add to the existing debate on the japonisme movement as a socio-cultural phenomenon is an insight into how japonist thought manifested in individual fin-de-siècle artists, using these case studies to identify any patterns that arise, and as such come to a conclusion on the bearing of Orientalist thought on the japonisme movement as a totality. As alluded to earlier, the focus of this thesis is the Nordic region; this decision was prompted by the exhibition Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875-1918 and the research presented therein, as well as an overall lack of exploration of primary source material left behind by artists in this region. In other words, the question this thesis aims to answer is “What do the writings of different Nordic japonists of the late nineteenth century tell us about the nature of japonisme as a socio-cultural phenomenon?”

In summary, this thesis intends to further aid in pulling the current status quaestionis on the topic of japonisme away from its art historical focus and, while still acknowledging that the movement’s impact was visible primarily in the realm of the arts, to add to the hitherto existing research exploring the academic value of the japonisme movement as a socio-cultural phenomenon.

Concretely, the structure of this thesis can be broken down into three major sections: firstly, an overview will be given of the historical events leading up to the arrival of Japanese culture and traditional art forms to the West—that is to say, the focus here will primarily revolve around the domestic politics of the Japanese shogunate prior to the opening of the country’s borders, an event

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known in Japanese as kaikoku 開国 (lit. open country), as well as the effect that the state of domestic affairs had on Japan’s artistic landscape. This in order to contextualise the japonisme movement in the historical sense and, in doing so, attempting to provide a clearer understanding of why the japonisme movement occurred when it did. Further, this chapter will give a brief background on the origin of japonisme; that is, the means by which Japanese culture and traditional art forms reached the West, how they rose in popularity and ultimately engendered the japonisme movement, and the manner in which this movement manifested. The second part of the thesis will be dedicated to a case study of sorts where, as mentioned before, an array of fine artists from the Nordics contemporary with the japonisme movement will be introduced, for the purpose of creating an image of their personal narrative and experience of the mania surrounding Japan and, ultimately, an image of exactly how japonisme manifested as a mindset among individuals, as well as how this mindset fits into the movement in a broader sense. The third and last main section of this thesis, then, is focused on placing the artists’ narratives within the context of a theoretical framework to come to an understanding about the nature and implications of a movement like japonisme, relating the expressions of the fine artists discussed in the case study to concepts such as white supremacy, cultural othering, and exoticisation. That is to say, the purpose of this section is to examine whether we can designate the views that contemporary fine artists held about Japan—to the extent that we are able to gather—as being Orientalist in nature, and more broadly the socio-cultural implications of the japonisme phenomenon. Once again, trough tying these three sections together, this thesis ultimately uses the case of Nordic japonisme to highlight the insights that the Nordic iteration of japonisme can bring to the fore into japonist thought and influence as a form of Orientalism, and on a larger scale the insights it may give into intercultural dynamics between the West and other cultures.

I. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents an overview of the methods employed for the research conducted throughout this thesis, in order to help the reader understand the approach taken in finding an answer to the research question posed. As mentioned, this dissertation aims to explore the implications of the fin-de-siècle japonisme movement in Europe on the development of Orientalist perceptions of Japan among the European social elite, and how japonistic views of Japan may help us to better understand intercultural relations in a context of white supremacist thought, racial fetishisation, and so-called “cultural othering”, among others. This dissertation aims to do this through a historical overview of the conditions that led to the emergence of the artistic japonisme movement when it did, followed by a study of primary source material in which contemporary views of Japan and its art are brought to the fore.

In order to achieve the research presented for this dissertation, an extensive literature review was conducted. This method was applied as it is the appropriate method of research when the aim is to provide a sufficient overview of the status quaestionis of a phenomenon, and to bring to the fore previous findings and hypotheses in relation thereto. In this case, the literature study was used to form a framework not only on the topic of Nordic japonisme, but also on the development of Japanese art during the Edo period, as well as on the japonisme phenomenon at large. This was done to provide the reader with sufficient background information on the topic of this thesis, so that further research may be easily understood.

Insofar the primary source material is concerned, a quantitative method of research was employed. This method was used as the aim is to explore the manifestation of certain views of Japan in fin- de-siècle Nordic fine artists known to have been involved with and influenced by the japonisme movement. A selection of primary source material was made in order to present an image that is as close as possible to the genuine experiences and thought processes held by the artists in question. The decision to focus on Nordic fine artists in this dissertation can be attributed to two factors. Firstly, as already mentioned, this thesis was prompted by the 2016 exhibition Japanomania in the North 1875–1918, which was held in several museums across the Nordic countries and served as the first comprehensive research effort on japonisme in the Nordic region as a totality. Hitherto, the available material on a Nordic iteration of the japonisme movement has been rather limited, and this thesis as such aims to both add to the existing status quaestionis as well as offer a new angle to the field of research, one approached from the perspective of socio-

cultural studies rather than the dominant art historical perspective. Bar the novelty of Nordic japonisme-research, then, the decision to focus on the Nordic japonists was driven by familiarity with the Nordic languages, which allows for a more complete analysis of primary source materials written in the discussed artists’ respective native languages.

The primary source material was procured primarily through access to databases compiling artists’ letters, which were then thoroughly searched for mentions of Japan, as well as other relevant keywords, such as those referring to Japanese imported items or artistic concepts. The databases consulted for these primary sources are considered reliable as they are not only curated by respectable organisations, e.g. literature societies and museums, but equally so given that the primary source material has been transcribed from the original letters, and in many cases proofread, thus giving the sources a high level of credibility. As the majority of the primary source material presented in this dissertation consists of private correspondences, these sources were approached in the manner appropriate for what this essay desires to achieve. That is, these letters are taken at face value as the expression of the author’s personal feelings and thoughts which, when placed alongside other contemporary correspondences authored by others, may reveal a certain pattern. As for the primary source material presented for the case of the Danish art critic Karl Madsen (1855–1938), a different approach was used, given that this source is not a private correspondence, but rather a published book authored by Madsen himself. In this case, it was kept in mind that due to the less intimate nature of the source as well as the difference in intent between a private letter and a book intended for publishing, the views reflected in the book may be more nuanced in terms of reflecting the author’s own views and thoughts.

Finally, the selected primary material was placed in the context of the existing theoretical framework surrounding Orientalism and the concept of cultural othering. As such, in the final chapter of this thesis, the work of Edward Said will be heavily referenced, as well as the research that has been conducted in the field after Said. This means that the aforementioned primary sources will be discussed within the context of phenomena such as white supremacy, nationalism, and exoticisation, in order to finally come to a conclusion about the extent to which japonisme was merely an artistic movement, and the extent to which japonisme was ultimately fuelled by, or even outright caused by, a generation of Orientalist thought among the European cultural elite. While an effort was made to include sources by Japanese scholars where possible so as to provide a more complete argument, it should be noted here that, particularly due to the recent nature of specific research on this topic, Japanese scholarship on this topic is still rather scarce.

II. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF EARLY MODERN JAPAN

In order to gain an adequate understanding of the historical circumstances which ultimately acted as the catalyst for the inception of the japonisme movement, this chapter is dedicated to providing an in-depth overview of the socio-political developments that occurred in feudal Japan prior to the widespread cultural exchanges between Japan and the West, as well as the events that occurred internationally as a reaction to these new developments in the global landscape.

i. RISE OF THE TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE

The first precedent for the rise of the japonisme movement can be traced back to the end of the sixteenth century, a decidedly eventful era in Japanese history. The country had then just emerged from a long period of civil war and social upheaval, known now as the sengoku jidai 戦国時代 or Warring States period, which began circa 1467 and ended at the beginning of the seventeenth century—the exact end date of the sengoku jidai is disputed among scholars, as there are several crucial events which effected the end of the civil turmoil. Most commonly named as the end of the Warring States period are either 1603, the year which marked the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate and the final step in the rise to power of military leader and feudal lord Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康 (1543-1616); or 1615, the year in which the Siege of Osaka occurred, which saw the last of the opposition to the new shogunate snuffed out.3 For convenience’s sake, this thesis considers 1603 as the clear delineation between two eras, and as such this date will be regarded as the start of the Tokugawa period, henceforth referred to as the Edo period–so named for the relocation of the capital of the Tokugawa shogunate to the eastern city of Edo, modern-day Tokyo.

a. ADMINISTRATIVE DEVELOPMENTS UNDER TOKUGAWA GOVERNANCE

When Tokugawa Ieyasu rose to power as the first shogun of the Tokugawa military government or bakufu 幕府, it heralded an era of transformation for the newly unified island nation. These transformations occurred in the political, social, economic, as well as the cultural sphere. Ieyasu did not revolutionise the political structure of Japan completely; much as before the sengoku period, there existed a system of vassals to the shogun, named daimyō 大名. These were powerful and influential feudal lords belonging to the samurai class who owned and controlled vast domains, or han 藩—a concept comparable to the contemporary European fiefdoms—which they ruled over

3 Turnbull, S. (2012). War in Japan 1467–1615. p. 85.

locally. Under Tokugawa rule, however, land was redistributed in a strategic fashion, favouring daimyō that had supported the Tokugawa clan since before the battle of Sekigahara and giving them vast stretches of land which were more important from a strategic perspective. Under this umbrella fell on one hand the shinpan daimyō 親藩大名, those related by blood to the Tokugawa clan, and the fudai daimyō 譜代大名, those who had been vassals of the Tokugawa clan since before the decisive Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. So-called tozama daimyō 外様大名 or “outsider daimyō”, those who had found themselves supporting the losing side until after the Battle of Sekigahara, were allowed to retain their title and lands–though these lands were often curtailed in size–but their situation was overall much more disadvantageous as they were systematically kept on the margins of the state, and generally did not attain high government positions until later in the Tokugawa period.4 This strategic redistribution of land was ultimately intended to steer power away from those deemed untrustworthy and potential rivals, and to ensure the daimyō’s dependence on the ruling clan.5 Aptly, this process of land distribution was referred to as daimyō no toritsubushi 大名の取り潰し, which can be translated akin to “the crushing of the daimyō” .6

A similar method effected by the Tokugawa clan in order to tighten control over the noble classes, implemented by the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu 徳川家光 (1605-1651) was the so-called sankin-kōtai 參勤交代 (tr. “alternate attendance”) policy. As the name suggests, this system entailed an obligation for the daimyō to move between their own han and the capital Edo, spending alternating years in either.7 The sankin-kōtai policy was an immensely effective way of controlling the daimyō for several reasons, one being that the policy placed an immense financial strain on the feudal lords given the expenditures required to maintain not only an opulent residence in their own fiefdom, but one in the capital, as well. This financial strain was intended to weaken the daimyō’s power and to make it virtually impossible for them to wage war. Moreover, the sankin-kōtai policy required the feudal lords to leave their wives and heirs at the court in Edo, effectively creating a hostage situation should a daimyō ever turn against the shogunate.8 Though this system was officially implemented by the shogunate in the year 1635, a rudimentary version of this policy had already been put into place by general Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the predecessor of Tokugawa Ieyasu. During the sengoku jidai, Hideyoshi demanded from his allies that they leave their wives and heirs

4 Goodman, G. K. (2013). Japan and the Dutch 1600-1853. p. 3. 5 Sansom, G. B. (1958). A history of Japan, 1615-1867 (Vol. 3). p. 3-4. 6 Ibid., p. 4. 7 Ibid., p. 47. 8 Boot, W. J. (2001). Keizers en shōgun: een geschiedenis van Japan tot 1868 (Vol. 1). pp. 86-87.

at Osaka Castle as hostages, in order to prove their loyalty. The Tokugawa shogunate in turn adopted this system, and arguably perfected it.

b. SOCIETAL DEVELOPMENTS

Bar the administrative changes for the samurai class, the rise to power of the Tokugawa clan brought about significant changes for the other layers of Japanese society, as well. Under the new shogunate, a new social order was put into place—a hierarchy named the shinōkōshō 士農工商 system. A concept originally espoused by scholars in Zhou dynasty China9 and reminiscent of the Indian caste system in its rigidity, this four-tiered class system divided Japanese society according to the Confucianist mode of thinking; that is, according to one’s supposed usefulness to society as a whole. At the top were the shi 士 or the samurai class, who had taken on a more bureaucratic or scholarly role—the original meaning of the character in its Chinese context—in a time void of war. Next came the nō 農, the farmers. From a Western point of reference, it may strike one as odd that farmers were second only to the samurai, but this logic is deeply rooted in the Confucianist world view; farmers were indispensable to the state given that they not only produced essentials for the survival of the state and its subjects, agriculture was an important source of state revenue, as well.10 Third were the artisans or craftsmen as indicated by the kō 工—the artisans, similarly to the farmers, produced items considered essential; hence their position in society. The bottom rung of society was then made up of the merchants or shō 商; as merchants did not produce anything and effectively did not provide anything for the state, they were seen by the military government as disposable, or even parasitic. In practice, however, merchants did not truly end up at the bottom rung of society. At the very bottom would have been the hinin 非人 and eta 穢多: closely intertwined, these two minority groups were treated as outcasts due to their occupations—hinin were usually beggars and street performers, whereas the name eta was reserved for those with occupations regarded as “polluted”. These were occupations which involved death and blood and included butchers, tanners, and gravediggers.11 Heavily discriminated against even to this day, Tokugawa Japan did not consider these people to be a part of society. Yet, despite the bakufu’s decidedly strict approach to domestic governance, the Edo period was ultimately an era of great prosperity;

9 Xi, G. (1999). Chunqiu guliangzhuan 春秋谷梁传. Yishu zhongguo wang 艺术中国网. p. 78. 10 Von Mandach, S. L. (2014). Neo-Confucianism and industrial relations in Meiji Japan. Journal of Management History. p. 389. 11 Keiji, N. (1979). The Medieval Origins of the Eta-Hinin. Journal of Japanese Studies, 5(2), 385-403. doi:10.2307/132103. p. 387.

this was not in the least due to the near total internal peace that prevailed throughout the country for well over two centuries. This prosperity and domestic stability ultimately saw Japan mature significantly, economically as well as culturally so.

The most immediate consequence of this rare time of peace was, as one might assume, an accelerated population growth. Throughout the seventeenth century, the population of Japan shot up from circa twelve million people to a staggering 30 million12–in only a century, the population of Japan had more than doubled. This, combined with the sankin-kōtai policy that had forcibly made the city of Edo into the political and cultural heartbeat of Japan, lead to a development which is widely considered to be a prerequisite for modernisation; that is, urbanisation. As a consequence of the system of alternate attendance, the daimyō had part of their entourage permanently posted in Edo, causing the city to grow quickly. By the early eighteenth century, an estimated ten percent of the total population of Japan lived in bigger cities, with over a million in Edo alone 13—an urbanisation rate on par with other preindustrial societies at the time. Gradually, the samurai grew to be a predominantly urban class, concerning themselves little with the governance of their rural fiefdoms.

The samurai, having previously been able to seek their glory on the battlefield, now found themselves without wars to wage and instead began to turn to scholarly endeavours, leading to a blossoming intellectual landscape as well as a vibrant cultural scene.14 This cultural boom was facilitated by a drastic increase in literacy–whereas literature has previously been a pass-time restricted to the social elite, the Tokugawa shogunate had brought literacy, at least to a limited extent, through the introduction of temple schools or terakoya 寺子屋, an early equivalent to modern primary schools. By the end of Tokugawa reign, this had led to nationwide literacy rates ranging between 40 and 50 percent for men and around 15 percent for women.15 In the city of Edo proper, we find numbers as high as 80 percent for men and 25 percent for women,16 with an impressive school attendance rate of around 70 to 80 percent.17 These numbers far exceed the contemporary

12 Boot. (2001). p. 93. 13 David L. Howell, (2008). Japan: Historical Overview. Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, vol. 4, p. 286. 14 Ebrey, P. B., & Walthall, A. (2013). East Asia: A cultural, social, and political history. p. 288. 15 Matthi, F. (2002). 研究発表江戸時代後期の文学の享受―図像・彫像のテーマから見えるもの―. In 国際日本文学研究集会会議録, no. 25, pp. 137-148. p. 137. 16 Fujimoto, M. (2003, August 10). Edo: City spirit of an era. The Japan Times. Retrieved from http://japantimes.co.jp 17 Hideki, K., Mann, T. E., & Takeshi, S. (2002). Breaking the State Monopoly on Public Affairs. Governance for a New Century: Japanese Challenges, American Experience. p. 38.

average literacy rates in other Asian states, and particularly the literacy rates in the city of Edo are comparable to those of the British Empire at the time.

Along with increased literacy, the Edo period saw the advent of commercial printing and publishing. Until the end of the sengoku era, written works would have most commonly circulated among the literate upper class as manuscripts; this changed when Tokugawa Ieyasu’s predecessor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, brought back woodblock printing equipment from the Korean Joseon state to Japan in 1598. Initially, mainly classical Chinese texts were copied and published by order of the shogun— yet already in the second half of the seventeenth century there were hundreds of shops selling books in the city of Kyōto, where the industry emerged.18 The subject matter of the works published ranged from poetry, to travel guides, to Confucian texts and all genres of prose. This, along with the other developments that shaped early Edo society, gave way to the cities becoming a hotbed for culture of all manners in the centuries to follow.

18 Clements, R. (2015). A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan. p. 21.

c. CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS IN TOKUGAWA JAPAN As one might suspect, much of the cultural scene in Tokugawa Japan was dictated by the increase in urbanisation; a key component of the development of urban culture in the early Edo period was the emergence of a new social class: the chōnin 町人, literally “townsmen”. The coming into existence of this class, primarily composed of merchants and to a lesser extent craftsmen, occurred simultaneously with the accelerated urbanisation of the seventeenth century— hence their name. Even though merchants would have made up the bottom rung of Edo society according to the earlier mentioned shinōkōshō caste system, this new bourgeoisie quickly grew in power and influence as the city of Edo expanded; the aristocracy, which had been relocated to the city of Edo due to the implementation of the sankin-kōtai system increasingly depended on the services of the chōnin to not only aid them with the construction of the lavish mansions they were obligated by the bakufu to maintain, but also to satisfy their desire for high-class items through the trade of expensive import goods. Particularly as the city’s local economy developed into a heavily cash-based one, the daimyō with their salary made up predominantly of rice Fig. 1 – Utagawa Hiroshige’s series of prints titled Meisho Edo Hyakkei 名所江戸百景 or stipends grew increasingly powerless, and eventually One Hundred Famous Views Of Edo became financially beholden to the merchants providing illustrates the extent of urbanisation that occurred in the seventeenth century – note them with cash and consumer goods.19 that the most prominent feature of this print is the merchants’ shops in the foreground. Image courtesy of Brooklyn Museum. It should thus come as no surprise that, given their economic dominance, the chōnin played an equally dominant role in the development of new forms of performing arts, new literature genres, and popular styles of painting. While classical forms of art such as noh-theatre 能 continued to be held in high regard and enjoyed as refined art forms by the shogunate and the daimyō, the growing influence of the bourgeoisie and their desire to see their own everyday environment reflected in the art they

19 Sheldon, C. (1983). Merchants and Society in Tokugawa Japan. Modern Asian Studies, 17(3), 477- 488. p. 486.

consumed led to the development of a range of whimsical, irreverent art forms that catered to the wealthy merchant class, rather than those based around lofty tales of warriors and their moral code.

The common consensus among scholars is that urban elite culture truly blossomed during the Genroku era (1688–1704); the cultural realm of the early Edo period is now often referred to as Genroku bunka 元禄文化, “Genroku culture”. The culture was centred around the term ukiyo 浮世, “the floating world”. A clever play on the homophone ukiyo 憂き世, the physical world of longing and suffering that Buddhists hope to break free from, the culture of the floating world was deeply rooted in the worldly, the carnal—and it should therefore come as no surprise that much of the Genroku culture revolved around the pleasure quarters, or yūkaku 遊郭. In Edo, this would have been the Yoshiwara district.20 Perhaps the most prominent art form to come out of the principle of ukiyo was the aptly named ukiyo-e 浮世絵, “images of the floating world”. As the advent of woodblock printing techniques had been facilitated by the ability to now print not only texts, but also images on a large scale, these prints essentially served the same purpose as posters, particularly in the early stages of the art form; many of them advertised, for example, local theatre productions, or the services of shops, teahouses, and even brothels.21 However, the style quickly developed from predominantly monochrome prints to Fig. 2 – Especially in the early Edo period, ukiyo-e colourful, artistically elaborate works of art, woodblock prints were primarily used as a means of becoming one of the most popular art styles in the advertisement, for example for kabuki plays and actors; this particular print, painted by Utagawa Kunisada II, city–and well beyond: many of the prints produced depicts the actor Bandō Mitsuemon in the role of Akaiwa Gajirō from the epic Book of Eight Dog Heroes, in the capital were brought back to the provinces, Hakkenden inu no sōshi no uchi 八犬傳犬のさうし乃内. Image courtesy of Ukiyo-e Gallery Shukado.

20 Gerstle, C. A. (2012). 18th century Japan: culture and society. p. 3. 21 Harris, F. (2012). Ukiyo-e: the art of the Japanese print. p. 14.

effectively exporting Edo culture to the rest of the country.22

As mentioned, many ukiyo-e served as advertisement for theatre productions, often for kabuki 歌舞伎 or bunraku 文楽 plays. Likewise a product of the new urban cultural environment, these two forms of performance quickly gained popularity among the chōnin. Kabuki came into existence as the counterpart to the already existing noh theatre, a form of entertainment associated with the samurai class. Where the stories told in noh pieces were often esoteric, kabuki was more worldly, made to appeal to rich merchants and commoners—one of the most common motifs in kabuki, for example, is the conflict between giri 義理 and ninjō 人情; the duty one has to society and one’s family versus emotional love. Bunraku, then, was a type of puppetry performance that flourished alongside kabuki theatre, and was similar in content, as well. Particularly under the scrutiny of later censorship laws, bunraku’s popularity soared–a puppet proved the perfect vessel to deliver social criticism that an actor might wind up imprisoned for.23

In addition to serving as a means of advertisement for theatrical pieces, ukiyo-e commonly appeared as illustrations for ukiyo-zōshi 浮世草子, the “tales of the floating world”. Much like its counterpart in the realm of visual art, the subject matter of ukiyo-zōshi revolves around the habits of the chōnin, and their experiences in the pleasure quarters. The genre was built and popularised by Ihara Saikaku 井原西鶴 (1642–1693), one of the most well-known authors of the Edo period. Ukiyo-zōshi ultimately dwindled in popularity, and by the mid-eighteenth century had disappeared in favour of gesaku 戯作. Gesaku, literally “frivolous composition”, can be understood as most any type of satirical literature produced throughout the Edo period. Other genres that developed along the same vein throughout the latter half of the Edo period and that are considered to be subgenres of gesaku are the kibyōshi 黄表紙 or “yellow book” genre–these were satirical picture books, often of a sexually charged nature, and the sharebon 洒落本, “witty books” or “stylish books”, which usually parodied the mannerisms of the men who frequented the pleasure quarters. 24 These popular genres of literature formed a stark contrast to the refined, long-standing literature often preferred by the nobility such as classical Chinese poetry or kanshi 漢詩, Japanese traditional waka 和歌 poetry.

22 Nishiyama, M. (1997). Edo culture: daily life and diversions in urban Japan, 1600-1868. p. 64. 23 Perez, L. G. (2009). The history of Japan. p. 68. 24 Deal, W. E. (2007). Handbook to life in medieval and early modern Japan. p. 258.

Though primarily written for the sake of entertaining the urban elite, rife with puns and parodies, the satirical gesaku works often carried a tongue-in-cheek undertone of social critique and resistance of the status quo, mocking society and the political system25—and while it appears that these works were initially tolerated by the bakufu, urban culture ultimately came under the scrutiny of the military government under the Kyōhō reforms 享保の改革,26 an array of economic and cultural measures introduced by shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune 吉宗 (1684-1751) in the 1730s. Whereas particularly the production of ukiyo-e was already subject to a rudimentary form of censorship, mandating the print be sent to the bugyō 奉行 or magistrates before publication, it was the Kyōhō reforms that first introduced strict censorship laws. Subject matter that was deemed inappropriate unsurprisingly included criticism of the Tokugawa government, as well as content of an erotic nature and matters relating to Christianity.27

A second wave of censorship arose with the Kansei reforms 寛政の改革, a series of conservative policies implemented between 1787 and 1793 with the goal of resolving the financial crisis that burdened the country due to a number of devastating natural disasters that had damaged the nation’s agriculture in the years prior28–but, as had been the case for the earlier Kyōhō reforms, the perceived moral crisis that Edo society was facing, as well. As such, many of the moral principles that drove the Fig. 3 – In this ukiyo-e, advertising a Kyōhō reforms were reiterated during the Kansei reforms, as performance of the historical kabuki well. The reforms, instituted by chief counsellor of the play Kiichi Hōgen sanryaku no maki 鬼一法眼三略巻, “The strategy book of Tokugawa shogunate Matsudaira Sadanobu 松平定信 (1759- Kiichi Hōgen”, we see a so-called aratame-in 改印, a printed censor seal, 1829), were heavily influenced by the counsellor’s own ideas, here indicated by the number 3. Implemented during the Kansei reform which were strongly Neo-Confucianist in nature; in the reforms era, this stamp showed permission for publication of the work in question. he sought to curtail the bakufu’s and the daimyō’s expenditures Image courtesy of Ritsumeikan in a pattern he has based on his own austere habits, and sought University.

25 Yonemoto, M. (2003). Mapping early modern Japan: space, place, and culture in the Tokugawa period, 1603-1868 (Vol. 7). Univ of California Press. p. 102. 26 The names Kyōhō as well as Kansei are the names of the respective eras in which these reforms were issued, and signify the reign of a particular emperor. 27 Ishii, R. and Takayanagi, S. (1934) Ofuregaki Kanpō Shūsei 御触書寛保集成, p. 993. Also refer to above. 28 Soranaka, I. (1978). The Kansei Reforms-Success or Failure? Monumenta Nipponica, 33(2), 151- 164. doi:10.2307/2384123. p. 152.

to stomp out what he perceived to be the moral degeneration of the state.29 Apart from cracking down on prostitution, gambling, and mixed bathhouses, the shogunate instated strict censorship on different forms of media, particularly prints such as ukiyo-e and sharebon. New publications were held under the scrutiny of the bakufu, their contents watched closely for anything inappropriate30. One of the leading authors at the time, Santō Kyōden 山東京伝 (1761–1816), was one of those who fell victim to the shogunate’s strict censorship; in the third year of the Kansei period—1791 according to the Gregorian calendar—he was arrested and imprisoned for fifty days for the immorality depicted in his three most recently published sharebon, Shikake bunko 仕懸文庫 “A library of contrivances”, Nishiki no ura 錦之裏 “Behind the brocade”, and Shōgi kinuburui 娼妓絹籭, “The courtesan’s silken sieve”31. Even through this censorship, however, the erotically tinged culture of the urban elite was never successfully suppressed—as suggested by the frequency at which the edicts were reissued—and even saw a surge in popularity once the censorship laws had loosened32.

ii. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS UNDER THE TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE

a. SAKOKU—EDO ERA ISOLATIONIST POLICIES

The impressive flourishing of Japanese urban culture, as described in the previous section, took place against a peculiar and rapidly shifting political landscape. Since the second half of the sixteenth century had begun the development of rudimentary international relations between Japan and Europe, despite the former having been plagued by internal strife for nearly a century at that time. Initial contact with Europeans occurred primarily with Portuguese merchants who had been driving a contraband trade along the Chinese coast and saw profit in acting as a middle man between the two nations,33 as the Chinese emperor had decreed a trading embargo against Japan following continued wakō 倭寇 piracy raids on the Chinese coast. Early relations between the Japanese and the Portuguese were rather successful, particularly given the response to conversion efforts by Jesuit missionaries, which yielded a drastic increase in Christians—mainly among the Japanese upper class in the Kyōto region—by the beginning of the seventeenth century, with an

29 Ibid., p. 154. 30 Ibid., p. 153. 31 Ishikawa, R. (2011). ”Kinsei inbun no ryoku 近世韻文の力.” Nihonbungaku 日本文学, 60 (10), 22-29. p. 28. 32 Soranaka (1978). p. 154. 33 Boxer, C. R. (1967). The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650. p. 91.

estimated 150,000 converts by the year 1582 AD.34 This period of open trade between Portugal and Japan is now referred to as the Namban 南蛮 trading period; the term namban literally translates to “southern barbarians” and refers to the Portuguese. However, even though early contacts proved promising, anti-European sentiments began to emerge as early as the end of the century, rising particularly under the rule of the great unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉 (1537– 1598). Allegedly, he quickly became distrustful of the Europeans, given their ships and military power. Particularly after the colonisation of the Philippines by the Spanish, Hideyoshi’s doubts about the Europeans’ intentions were further exacerbated. One altercation in particular is recounted as follows on a woodcut engraving, published in 1599 by German printer and publisher Adam Berg (1540–1610) in München as per a translation of the original Spanish text:

“Auss befelch Herrn Francisci Teglij Gubernators, und general Obristens der Philippinischen Inseln, urn welcher kurtzlich angezeigt wird, welcher Gestallt sechs geistliche Brüder auss Hispania, dess Ordens S. Fransisci von der Obsernantz sambt andern 20 newlich von ihnen bekehrten Japonesern im. Konigreich Japon den 14 Martij dess verschinen 1597 Jars umb dess christlichen Glaubens willen seyn gecreutziget worden und durch die Gnaden Gottes die seligste Marter Cron erlangt haben.”35

The text—roughly translated—speaks of six monks of the order of S. Fransisci, as well as twenty newly converted Japanese, who were crucified on the 14th of March, 1597, and who in doing so “had the martyr’s crown bestowed on them”. The story tells that they were arrested and sentenced to death by order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi after having aroused his suspicions when acting as an embassy for a stranded Spanish ship whose captain had naively claimed that the Spanish crown had be so successful in conquering foreign lands by “first sending monks into foreign lands and then gaining support for Spanish soldiers from the baptized natives”36.

The bakufu’s attitude towards Europeans briefly changed under the rule of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The first Tokugawa shogun initially welcomed Europeans with open arms, encouraging foreign trade and seemingly being eager to strengthen Japan’s position on the international stage. However, as trade with Europe began to flourish, so did the influence of Christianity; this was particularly true for the island of Kyushu, in the southwest of Japan. The increasing proliferation of Christianity gave

34 Honour, H., & Fleming, J. (2005). A world history of art. p. 562. 35 Munsterberg, O. Early Christian Missions in Japan and Their Influence on Its Art. The Open Court, 1912 (12), 3. p. 730. 36 Ibid.

way for Tokugawa Ieyasu to begin fostering a similar attitude to the one held by his predecessor; fearing conversion to be a way of conquering Japan, he became ever more wary of the implications this new religion might have for the future of the shogunate. Hence, already in the year 1611, came the first of a series of decrees intended to curb the spread of Christianity. This first decree prohibited the preaching and practicing of the Christian faith, but was altogether rather mild—for example, the decree did not apply to the religious beliefs of traders, craftsmen, and farmers, who could freely continue to practice Christianity provided they did not do so in an organised way. More drastic was the subsequent decree issued only three years later, which effectively intended to remove all missionaries from Japan. After these two decrees, and particularly after the death of Tokugawa Ieyasu and subsequent rule of his grandson Tokugawa Iemitsu,37 anti-European sentiments began to escalate,38 ultimately culminating in a seclusion edict, issued in 1635 and now commonly referred to as the Sakoku Edict or sakoku-rei 鎖国令, the “chained country edict”. An excerpt from the English translation of the edict reads:

1. No Japanese ships may leave for foreign countries. 2. No Japanese may go abroad secretly. If anybody tries to do this, he will be killed, and the ship and owner(s) will be placed under arrest whilst higher authority is informed. 3. Any Japanese now living abroad who tries to return to Japan will be put to death. 4. If any Kirishitan (i.e. Christian) believer is discovered, you two [Nagasaki bugyō] will make a full investigation. 5. Any informer(s) revealing the whereabouts of a bateren39 will be paid 200 or 300 pieces of silver. If any other categories of Kirishitans are discovered, the informer(s) will be paid at your discretion as hitherto. 6. On the arrival of foreign ships, arrangements will be made to have them guarded by ships provided by the Omura clan whilst report is being made to Yedo (i.e. Edo), as hitherto. 7. Strict search will be made for bateren on all incoming ships.40

37 Note that Tokugawa Iemitsu was the third shogun of the Tokugawa bakufu and not the direct successor of Tokugawa Ieyasu – the successor of Tokugawa Ieyasu was his third son Tokugawa Hidetada, who ruled from 1605 until 1623. Though formally Hidetada was head of the bakufu, Ieyasu retained significant de facto power until his death in 1616. 38 Kshetry, G. (2008). Foreigners in Japan: a historical perspective. p. 73. 39 Bateren, in Japanese バテレン is a Japanese word denoting Christian missionaries – particularly Portuguese Jesuits – derived from the Portuguese word padre, father. 40 Boxer (1967). p. 440.

Reading the measures detailed within the edict, the intentions of the shogunate are abundantly clear: bridle foreign influence—and particularly the spread of Christianity—in Japan, no matter the cost. Thus began an era of national seclusion that would wind up lasting over two centuries, now commonly referred to as the sakoku 鎖国 period.

A note should be made regarding the term sakoku, the idea of a country in chains. The national seclusion policies of the Tokugawa shogunate were not, in fact, referred to as sakoku until the early 19th century, during the tumultuous final decades of the Edo period. The word was first used by Japanese interpreter Shizuki Tadao 志筑忠雄 (1760-1806) when translating the work of German traveller Engelbert Kaempfer titled Geschichte und Beschreibung von Japan, “a history and description of Japan”. Shizuki published the translation under the title Sakoku-ron 鎖国論, after which the word spread and became widely used by Japanese intellectuals.41 Before the introduction of the term sakoku, the policies implemented by the shogunate were referred to as kaikin 海禁 policies, “maritime prohibitions”42. Thus, it should be kept in mind when engaging with sakoku-era Japan, that it is highly unlikely that the shogunate viewed the implementation of its policies as “putting the country in chains”, as the name suggests— particularly not when re-evaluating the Western perception of Japan’s national seclusion, and what the sakoku policies entailed in reality.

b. TRADE EXCEPTIONS

As mentioned in the previous section, the isolation of what we now refer to as the sakoku era was not total, and has been particularly perceived as an era of seclusion from a Eurocentric scholarly point of view. That is to say, the main parties affected by the Sakoku Edict of 1635 were the alien element in Asia; namely the Europeans. Rather than completely isolating itself, the intent of the Tokugawa government was to restore the international order in Asia to what it had been prior to the increasing European influence on the continent–and prior to Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s campaigns to conquer the Korean peninsula a few decades earlier, the aftermath of which continued to ripple, and ultimately wound up upsetting the balance of power between sovereign and tribute states that had existed in Northeast Asia for many centuries at this point

41 Kazui, T., & Videen, S. (1982). Foreign Relations during the Edo Period: Sakoku Reexamined. Journal of Japanese Studies, 8(2). p. 284. 42 Eiichi, K. (1990). The Age of the Great Voyages and Japan’s “National Seclusion”. National Committee of Japanese Historians (ed.) Historical Studies in Japan VII: 1983-1987. p. 47.

in time.43 More still, the bakufu sought to shift the balance to put itself at the centre, where previously China, the middle kingdom, had been. Whereas contact with other Northeast Asian states at the time was restricted to an extent, these policies need to be approached within the context that they were implemented in—and upon doing so, one will find that the restrictive measures in foreign trade and relations were not all too different from those found in Japan’s neighbouring countries at the time.44 As Ronald P. Toby put it, “a seclusion analysis ignores the fact that Japan is in Asia, and divorces European relations (“seclusion”) from Asian relations and foreign policy in general.45 Hence, to say that the sakoku era was one of total seclusion would be not only a faulty statement, but equally one that is inherently Eurocentric. Indeed, the notion of Japan’s seclusion has been woefully misinterpreted by many.46

Contact with Europe, as mentioned before, was limited to the Netherlands, represented by traders of the East India company or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, in Dutch; the primary reason for allowing trade with the Dutch to continue was that, in the few decades of trade between Japan and the Portuguese, there had grown a demand for imported goods among the social elite, the trade of which the bakufu had apparently deemed worth continuing. These included not only Western goods, but also imported goods such as textiles from India and China, and sugar from Southeast Asia—each regions that the East India Company had established trading posts in.47 As such, the East India Company was allowed to continue trade with Japan, as the Dutch were more readily prepared to cast aside the missionary aspect of their interactions with Japan, agreeing with the military government to seize all proselytizing efforts in order to be able to continue trading.48 The presence of the Dutch was limited to Nagasaki, on an artificial island by the name of Dejima 出島. One might consider it surprising

43 Kazui, Videen (1982). p. 287. 44 Eiichi (1990). p. 47. 45 Toby, R. (1977). Reopening the Question of Sakoku: Diplomacy in the Legitimation of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Journal of Japanese Studies, 3(2), pp. 323-363. doi:10.2307/132115 p. 325. 46 To clarify: throughout the sakoku era, the Tokugawa shogunate maintained formal relations with the Joseon dynasty on the Korean peninsula, as well as the Ryūkyū kingdom on the Ryūkyū Islands (i.e. modern-day Okinawa prefecture). Similarly, rudimentary relations existed between Japan and the Chinese Ming- and Qing dynasty, though this went no further than private dealings with Chinese traders in Nagasaki. Another easily forgotten trading connection maintained by the Tokugawa shogunate were the indigenous Ainu people in the north; though now part of Japan, the Tokugawa administration considered them foreigners, and as such trade dealings with the Ainu at the time would have been included under the umbrella of international affairs (Kazui 1982, 289). 47 Matsui, Y. (2018). Japanese-Dutch Relations in the Tokugawa Period. Transactions of the Japan Academy, 72, 139-154. pp. 146-147. 48 Ring, T., Watson, N., & Schellinger, P. (Eds.). (2012). Asia and Oceania: International Dictionary of Historic Places. p. 342.

that Japan’s relations with the Netherlands were formally consolidated by the bakufu whereas the island nation’s dealings with the Ming—and Qing dynasties were not, mandating the chief agent of the East India Company or kapitan to pay a formal visit to the Tokugawa government upon taking the position (fig. 4).49

The idea of the city of Nagasaki as Japan’s only window to the world should be considered carefully, as well. While it is undoubtedly true that Nagasaki was the primary international trading post and was considered by scholars to be Tokugawa Japan’s only point of contact with the outside world; recent scholarship, however, has shown that this was not the case. Several clans and daimyō throughout Japan’s islands maintained trade relations with foreign entities with permission and even encouragement from the bakufu. For example, the Satsuma clan on the island of Kyūshū was authorized to trade with the Ryukyu kingdom and China; the Tsushima clan in modern-day Nagasaki prefecture was authorized Fig. 4 – 江戸の長崎屋に滞在するオランダ人 to trade with Korea,50 and the Matsumae clan of Hokkaidō を好奇心でみている日本人, “Curious Japanese peeking at Dutchmen staying at engaged in trading relations with, as aforementioned, the Nagasakiya in Edo”. This painting, made by 51 Hatsushika Hokusai in 1802, is one of many Ainu in the north. This mode of trade remained the depictions of Dutchmen in Japan. Here status quo until, towards the end of the Tokugawa reign, depicted is Nagasakiya 長崎屋 or “the Dutch house”, where the chief of the East Indian both domestic and foreign actors began to urge for the Company would have been lodged while visiting the bakufu in Edo. Image courtesy of country to be opened to foreign trade at large. Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden.

49 Kazui, Videen (1982). p. 289. 50 Toby (1977). pp. 325-6. 51 Tezuka, K. (1998). Long-Distance Trade Networks and Shipping in the Ezo Region. Arctic Anthropology, 35(1), p. 355.

c. KAIKOKU—THE END OF THE BAKUFU’S PROTECTIONIST POLICIES

Although the shogunate’s isolationist policies more or less maintained their status quo for well over two centuries—with the exception of a number of Russian fleets—Japan’s domestic political landscape began to change at a rapid pace around the mid-nineteenth century, proving to be a decisive time in redefining power dynamics in Asia. A particular turning point was the year 1842, the end of the First Opium War. From a Japanese perspective, this conflict conveyed the worrying message that even the powerful Qing dynasty was unable to defend itself against the Western barbarians, and ultimately buckled under the military strength of the British Empire. Mizuno Tadakuni 水野忠邦 (1794-1851), daimyō of the Hamamatsu domain, wrote as follows in a letter to a vassal upon learning of China’s defeat: “This concerns a foreign country [China], but I think that it should provide a good warning for us.”52 From this moment onward, Japan found itself acting on the defensive more than ever before, having to ward off French and English fleets off the coast of the Ryūkyū archipelago in 1844 and 1846, an English war ship in Nagasaki in 1845, and commodore James Biddle (1783-1848) on the warship USS Columbus at the mouth of Edo Bay in 1846; these ships all arrived in an attempt to open up Japan to foreign trade; all were unsuccessful.53

During the summer of 1853, however, came a fleet determined not to be turned away. On the 8th of July, the flagship USS Mississippi and her squadron sailed into the Uraga Channel, heading for Edo Bay. On it was Matthew C. Perry (1794–1858), commodore of the US Navy, armed with soldiers and a letter from then-president of the United States, Millard Filmore (1800-1874), demanding the shogunate sign a trade agreement with the United States. Though reluctant, the local military realised it would be at a disadvantage in the event of an altercation, and allowed the commodore to pass the aforementioned letter to shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi 徳川家慶 (1793 -1853). Upon Perry’s return a year later, the Tokugawa government was presented with an ultimatum; it was clear that denial of the United States would doom Japan to the same fate that China had suffered in the First Opium War only a few years earlier. Well aware that Japan would not be able to hold its ground against American firepower, the Treaty of Kanagawa was signed by Ieyoshi’s successor, Iesada 家定 (1824-1858). Within the following year, similar treaties were signed with the

52 Narsimhan, S. (1999). Japanese Perceptions of China in the Nineteenth Century: Influence of Fukuzawa Yukichi. p. 22. 53 Boot (2001). p. 101.

British Empire, as well as the Russian Empire.54 With that, the bakufu’s fate was sealed–their isolationist policies had come to an end, and kaikoku 開国, the opening of the country, was a fact.

While the opening of the country heralded a great change for the future of Japan, the start of foreign trade bred opposing views towards the Tokugawa government. Of course, critics and supporters of the military government had already existed well before the arrival of commodore Perry, but the Convention of Kanagawa did nothing if not exacerbate the issue. On one hand, there were those who supported the bakufu in opening up international trade relations with the West, advocating for the positive implications of foreign relations. On the other hand were those who came to be referred to as shishi 志士 or ishin shishi 維新志士. The term shishi may be translated as a “man of resolve”, or “patriot”, whereas ishin is translated as “restoration”. These critics of the bakufu championed the slogan sonnō jōi 尊王攘夷, “revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”. In their eyes, the Tokugawa government was weak, with a fragile economy and outdated system of government and—as had now been proven—ultimately unable to even defend itself against foreign powers. The debate between these opposing parties ultimately escalated to a veritable civil war, which ultimately led to the collapse of the bakufu and reinstatement of imperial rule in Japan in 1868, in what is known as the Meiji Restoration 明治維新.55

It was precisely this historical background, then, which ultimately provided the ideal conditions for the emergence of a Western infatuation with Japan after the opening of the country. Under the country’s two-century isolation from most of the West, it had first of all developed a rich culture and artistic tradition due to increased urbanisation and the subsequent emergence of an urban elite– and above all one that, due to the seclusion that the sakoku era brought with it, has been described as “purely Japanese”,56 free from outside influences. The Tokugawa government’s seclusionist policies, at the same time, brought about an interesting dynamic in the West vis-à-vis Japan; as Europeans had been in contact with Japan before and some form of contact continued to exist between Japan and the Dutch, an image of Japan as a far-away land shrouded in mystery and

54 Ibid. 55 This is a simplified synopsis of the complex series of events that ultimately led to the collapse of the military government and, of course, much more could be said on the matter – however, as the political details of the domestic affairs of Japan post-kaikoku are less relevant to the subject of this thesis, I have chosen to omit them. 56 Guichard-Anguis, S., & Moon, O. (Eds.). (2008). Japanese tourism and travel culture. p. 45.

intrigue was easily formed.57 As such, it is hardly surprising that the Western infatuation with Japan emerged at the time that it did—and this extends to the Nordic region, as well.

d. DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH THE NORDICS

As had the United States, the British Empire, and the Russian Empire, so too did the Nordic countries soon catch wind of Japan’s kaikoku—and before long, they too sought to consolidate trade relationships with the island nation.

The first of the Nordic countries and the first foreign country at large to sign an official treaty with the Meiji government was Sweden. Of course, it should be noted that while hitherto, the Nordic countries have been referred to by their current names and within a modern context, the region was divided in a rather different fashion in the second half of the nineteenth century. When referring to Sweden in this historical context, this denotes the United Kingdom of Sweden and Norway (in Swedish: Den Svensk-Norska Unionen) which was established on January 14th of 1814 in the Treaty of Kiel,58 and peacefully dissolved in 1905 after the acknowledgement of Norway as an independent monarchy. Hence, for the purpose of clarity, this thesis considers formal diplomatic relations between Norway and Japan to have first been established while the former was in a personal union with Sweden—that is, by the signing of the Swedish-Japanese treaty in 1868. After the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian Union in 1905, diplomatic relations between Norway— now autonomous—and Japan were established that same year.

It should be noted that the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between these nations does not necessarily mean that there was no contact whatsoever before this. The first Swede recorded to have set foot in Japan was a sailor by the name of Olof Eriksson Willman (ca. 1620–1673). He sailed to Japan as an employee of the Dutch East India Company as early as 1651 and later recorded his travels in a book titled “A short description of a journey to East India and Japan, which a Swede and sea captain by the name of Olof Eriksson Willman has made”.59 Other Swedish nationals later followed in Eriksson Willman’s footsteps, with perhaps the most famous name being Carl Peter Thunberg (1743–1828), a botanist and physician accredited with being among the first to pioneer Western medicine in Japan. He travelled to Japan as a surgeon working for the East

57 Okumura, Y. (1994). Redefining Japonisme: discerning the impact of Japanese art in the work of Berthe Morisot. p. 17. 58 Von Schinkel, B. (1855). Minnen ur Sveriges nyare historia (Vol. 7). PA Norstedt & söner. vol. 7. p. 330. 59 Willman et al. (1992). “En kort beskrivning på en resa till Ostindien och Japan den en svensk man och skeppskapiten, Olof Eriksson Willman benämnd, gjort haver.”

India Company in 1775, and likewise documented his stay there in a book titled “Journey to and from the empire of Japan in the years 1775 and 1776″.60

Similarly to Norway, Finland was not a sovereign state at the moment that Japan opened its borders to foreign trade. At this time, the region was known as the Grand Duchy of Finland—an autonomous region under the rule of the Russian Empire. The domestic affairs of Finland were rather turbulent in the latter half of the century, with a rising sense of Finnish nationalism resulting from attempts by the Russian government to assimilate the Grand Duchy in a series of Russification policies. Finnish independence was declared in 1917 following the October Revolution and consequent collapse of the Russian empire; the power vacuum ultimately resulted in a civil war from which Finland ultimately emerged in 1918 as a sovereign, democratic republic. Here once again, as Finland fell under Russian rule at the time of kaikoku, the argument can be made that diplomatic relations between Finland and Japan began with the Treaty of Shimoda in 1855, the first of three treaties establishing formal relations between the Russian Empire and Japan. However, due to its geographical position and particularly given the fact that relations between Japan and the Russian Empire quickly deteriorated in the second half of the nineteenth century, it is difficult to determine the extent to which there was direct contact between Finland and Japan at this time. We know of at least one instance, however, of a Finn travelling to Japan during the sakoku policies: in 1791, Fennoswedish lieutenant Adam Laxman (1766-ca. 1806) was tasked with leading an expedition to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō in order to return two Japanese castaways to their homeland and, in doing so, endeavour to establish trade relations between the Russian Empire and Japan.61 Though unsuccessful in the latter, his travels to Japan are significant as he was among the first Russian subjects to set foot in Japan–and the first known Finn to have done so. Officially, relations between Finland and Japan were established on May 24th, 1919, following the recognition of Finland as a sovereign state by Japan.

Finally, Denmark established diplomatic relations with Japan already in 1867 with the signing of the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation between Japan and Denmark. At this time, Denmark was a sovereign state and had been so for around nine centuries. As such, relations between Denmark and Japan at this time were rather straightforward.62

60 Thunberg, C. P. (1980). Resa til och uti Kejsaredömet Japan åren 1775 och 1776 (Vol. 86). 61 Lensen, G. (1950). Early Russo-Japanese Relations. The Far Eastern Quarterly, 10(1), 2-37. doi:10.2307/2049650. pp. 18-19. 62 History of the Bilateral Relationship (2015, August 18). Retrieved from the website of the Japanese Embassy in Denmark: https://www.dk.emb-japan.go.jp.

Overall, we can conclude from the early establishment of contact between Japan and the different Nordic countries that, in the grand scheme of things, the Nordic countries were not especially disconnected from the international stage insofar Japan is concerned. This, combined with other factors which will be discussed further along in this dissertation, means that when forming an image of the Nordic countries and their relation to the newly opened Japan, it should be kept in mind that in all likelihood, these countries were not any less familiar with Japan than more “central” Western countries such as France and Belgium would have been at the time. Similarly, the fact that in some cases, formal friendship treaties between the different Nordic countries and Japan were only signed a relatively long time after the opening of Japanese borders, is to be attributed to the fact that these countries—as is the case for Norway, for example—may not have yet been sovereign states at the time of the opening of the country.

III. JAPONISME IN EUROPE

The opening of Japanese borders to foreign trade, and the subsequent zeal of Western countries in pursuing diplomatic relations with the island nation, led to the Western market being flooded with imported goods—including vast amounts of art. Of course, it has already been established that the seclusion of Tokugawa Japan was not as total as it is sometimes portrayed to have been, and so it merits noting that there had already been Japanese items, particularly porcelain, circulating in the West prior to 1854. At the Great Exhibition of London in 1851, for example, some Japanese art pieces were exhibited, even though these pieces were placed in the Chinese Court and considered chinoiserie (fig. 5). 63 Nevertheless, given the limited nature of trade Fig. 5 – “Part of the China Court”, from Recollections of even with the Dutch, art and other goods imported the Great Exhibition by John Absolon (1851). The few Japanese wares exhibited in 1851 were considered from Japan would have been hard to come by. chinoiserie, and as such placed in the Chinese section without much distinction between the two. Image The sudden availability of Japanese goods, courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum. combined with the country’s development of a rich urban culture and artistic scene during its past two centuries of relative seclusion, provided the ideal setting for the obsession with the mystifying country in the Far East that would take the European upper classes by storm over the next few decades.

The seed of the japonisme movement was planted in the two largest cities in Europe at the time, namely Paris and London. The 1851 Great Exhibition was followed in 1862 by the International Exhibition, which was attended by an embassy sent by the Tokugawa shogunate with the intention of learning, ratifying treaties, and potentially delaying the opening of Japanese harbours to foreign trade. The embassy, dubbed the Takeuchi embassy, consisted of 38 members, including author and reform advocate Fukuzawa Yukichi 福澤諭吉 (1835-1901) as well as author and critic Fukuchi Genichirō 福地源一郎(1841-1906). Though the exhibition did not have officially have any Japanese exhibits, the exhibition drew upon the personal collection of Sir Rutherford Alcock (1809-1897), the first British Consul-General in Japan, who had amassed a great number of Japanese industrial art and trinkets during his stay in Japan from 1858 to 1864. The largest exhibition of Japanese art thus

63 Daniels, G., & Tsuzuki, C. (2002). The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600-2000. p. 147.

far in Europe, the pieces exhibited were admired and praised by its European audience–the Japanese embassy, however, was not as content with the items displayed. In his travel dairy, embassy member and treasurer Fuchinobe Tokuzō 淵辺徳蔵 (date of birth and death unknown) later wrote that the exhibition was “unbearable to look at. The idea behind the exhibition is that by showing one’s best products, manufactures, machinery and so forth to the people, it should be possible to increase the profitability of one’s exports… For this reason, [it is imperative that] fine and discriminatingly chosen goods are sent.”64 He also wrote: “In addition, there were many objects that had been sent by residents in Yokohama who were trying to attract customers. These included women’s second-hand clothes (kimonos), swords of crude workmanship, and such items as bows and arrows, armour, lacquerware, pottery and—worst of all—paper lanterns, clogs, bowls, wooden pillows, and so on, a collection of odds and ends that looked exactly like a junk shop.”65

However, much as the embassy members were critical of the items displayed at the International Exhibit, it was precisely these odds and ends, this Japanese bric-à-brac, that most captured the hearts of the Europeans. During the same year that the International Exhibit was held, a shop selling all manner of imported Japanese trinkets was opened in Paris at 220, Rue de Tivoli, by a woman known as Madame Desoye (1839-1901). The shop was named La Porte Chinoise, “the Chinese gate”, and already in its early days, it was frequented by the likes of Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Charles Beaudelaire, and even James McNeill Whistler, indicating a rapidly growing interest in all that Japan had to offer Fig. 6 – the Japanese delegation present at the Exposition Universelle, sent by the Tokugawa shogunate. Central in the picture 66 among the cultural elite. is Tokugawa Akitake 徳川秋武 (1853-1910), brother to shogun Yoshinobu 慶喜 (1837-1913), aged 14 at the time of the exposition. Engraving from a photograph, 1867 Le Monde Illustré.

64 Foxwell, C. (2009). Japan as Museum? Encapsulating Change and Loss in Late-Nineteenth-Century Japan. Getty Research Journal, (1), p. 40. 65 Sterry, L. (2009). Victorian Women Travellers in Meiji Japan: Discovering a 'New' Land. p. 49. 66 Chiba, Y. (1998). Japonisme: East-West Renaissance in the Late 19th Century. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 31(2), p. 5.

Having said that, perhaps the foremost catalyst for the japonisme movement was the Exposition Universelle, in Japanese bankoku hakurankai 万国博覧会, held in Paris in 1867. It was decreed in 1864 by emperor Napoleon III (1801-1873) that a world exposition should be held in Paris. Preparations began immediately, and the exposition’s grand opening was held on April 1st, 1867. With over nine million visitors total, it was the biggest world fair held thus far. Among the countries participating was, once again, Japan: the Tokugawa government had sent out a delegation, including the shogun’s own younger brother Akitake (fig. 6), as representatives to participate in the exposition and exhibit Japanese art and crafts of all manners, including lacquers, ceramics, fans, and woodblock prints. The highlight of the exposition, however, became a thatched Japanese teahouse built in a Japanese garden not by the shogunate itself, but by a Japanese merchant. At the teahouse, guests could view all manner of wares brought over from Japan. Yet, noteworthy is that by far the main attraction of the teahouse was the presence of three Japanese geisha. Dressed in ornate kimono and made up in typical geisha style, these girls— named Kane, Sumi, and Sato—drew much attention from visitors, who lined up with spyglasses, desperate to get a glimpse of the “exotic” view.67

The exposition, held only a year before the fall of the bakufu, also provided a glimpse into Japan’s domestic tensions. Upon being confirmed as

Fig. 7 – a view of the Japanese teahouse at the Paris World Expo. participants in the exposition, the Pictured are the three Japanese girls – Kane, Sumi, and Sato – being admired by visitors as they sit in the tatami room, surrounded by Tokugawa government asked its displayed Japanese items such as paper lanterns and shoji screen domains to contribute exhibits. Among dividers. Print from the Illustrated London News, November 16th of 1867. those who chose to participate was the domain of Satsuma, on the southern island of Kyūshū. Yet, upon the Tokugawa delegation’s arrival in Paris it became clear that the domain had no intention of being part of the shogunate’s exhibition. In the years leading up to the world exposition, the Satsuma domain, along with the Chōshū domain in western Honshū, had played a prominent role in the emergence of a movement to overthrow the shogunate—and as such, dealings between the Satsuma domain and the government were tense.

67 Lockyer, A. (2001). Japan at the exhibition, 1867-1877: From representation to practice. Senri ethnological studies, 54, p. 67.

Upon the delegation’s arrival in Paris, they were informed that the Satsuma delegation had already arrived and, rather than introducing themselves as delegates of Japan, they had introduced themselves at the opening ceremony as the Embassy of the Kingdom of Ryūkyū. That is, Satsuma was participating in the world exposition as an independent state.68 After a heated debate with the Tokugawa delegation, however, they softened their title to Gouvernement de Taishiou 大将 de Satsouma, the government of the Satsuma feudal lord. The specifics of Japanese domestic affairs was unknown to the Western audience, however, and so whether the implications of the Satsuma domain’s actions at the world exposition went unnoticed or not remains unclear.

Regardless, the presence of Japan at the Exposition Universelle was a key moment in the emergence of the japonisme movement. At this point, Japanese woodblock prints, ukiyo-e, and curiosities were everywhere. However, the exposition introduced Japan, in all its exoticism and mysticism, to a broad European public, and was almost definitely responsible for the surge in popularity of Japanese art and bric-à-brac, as well as the assimilation of Japanese styles and techniques into the works of European artists and craftsmen alike, in the following decades69—this not in the least due to the presence of many prominent artists at the World Expo, including Dutch post-impressionist Vincent Van Gogh (1853- 1890) and French impressionist Édouard Manet (1832-1883). That which captured the attention

Fig. 8 – Van Gogh’s Self-portrait as a Bonze (1888). particularly of fine artists was that Japanese artworks In this portrait dedicated to Gauguin, Van Gogh has portrayed himself as a bonze—a French seemed to embody style elements and aesthetics bastardisation of the Japanese word bonzō 凡増, a opposite to those prevalent in Western art at the Buddhist monk. In a letter to his brother, Van Gogh explained that in the portrait, he had altered his time—asymmetry, the use of negative space, and facial features to resemble those of Japanese prints. Image courtesy of Harvard Art Museums. absence of perspective, to name a few. This from the

68 Kunio, Y. (2010). “Hakurankai to Meiji no Nihon 博覧会と明治の日本.” Tōkyō 東京 : Yoshikawakōbunkan 吉川弘文館. p. 32. 69 Chiba (1998). p. 6.

Western perspective queer approach to art surely served to strengthen the idea of Japan as strange and mystifying.70

In Vincent Van Gogh, certainly, the 1867 Exposition Universelle, and particularly his later stay in Paris during the 1890s, gave way to a fascination with Japan and its art that is hard to overlook– bar obvious Japanese influences in his later work in particular (fig. 8), as well as some copies of ukiyo-e, his fascination with the country was equally apparent in his correspondences. In one letter which he wrote from Arles in the French Midi to his brother Theo, he writes: “The weather here remains fine, and if it was always like this, it would be better than the painter’s paradise—it would be absolute Japan,”71 equating in his mind Japan to a veritable utopia. In his other letters, he describes Japan similarly, continuously holding the country to be a beautiful place where existence is light and where the Japanese live as a Rousseau- esque homme de la nature—an image which he may have gotten while reading Edmond de Goncourt’s Manette Salomon (1867) and Maison d’un artiste (1881), as well as Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème (1887), all of which paint a distorted, however lofty image of Japan as an exotic, mysterious country.72

Van Gogh’s affectionate sentiments towards the island nation were shared by many—the artists who had frequented La Porte Chinoise and the Exposition Universelle soon took to incorporating Japanese styles and aesthetics into their daily lives, as well as implementing Japanese motifs into their Fig. 9 – La Japonaise au Bain or The artworks—as early as the 1860s, we see artists such as James Japanese Girl Bathing (1864) by James Tissot. Image courtesy of Musée des Tissot (1836-1902) begin to take Japan as inspiration for his Beaux-Arts Dijon. art, for example in his La Japonaise au Bain (fig. 9). Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) took obvious inspiration from Japanese aesthetics as well—even his garden in Giverny was modelled after Japanese aesthetics, including elements such as a footbridge over a pond as well as native Japanese plant species, which were inspired by the

70 Ibid. 71 Kōdera, T. (1984). Japan as Primitivistic Utopia: Van Gogh's Japonisme Portraits. Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 14(3/4), p. 189. 72 Kōdera (1984). pp.

sceneries found in ukiyo-e.73 Of course, this wave of infatuation occurred not just in Paris, but in Europe at large. However, given Paris’ role in the emergence of japonisme even beyond the Exposition Universelle, it would be negligent to attempt to paint a picture of the movement without describing how japonisme manifested there. As mentioned before, a fascination with Japanese imported items was already emerging among the Parisian social elite at the time of the 1867 Exposition Universelle—of course, this fascination was exacerbated exponentially after the exposition. The collecting of Japanese prints had become common among the Parisian cultural elite as these imports continued to flow into the West–among the most prolific collectors of Japanese prints were Van Gogh, of course, but also those who had frequented La Porte Chinoise in earlier years; Monet, for example, had a collection of over a hundred ukiyo-e prints by Kitagawa Utamaro 喜多川歌麿 (1753-1806), Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾北斎 (1760-1849), and Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川広重 (1797-1858), among others.74

One of the most influential collectors of Japanese art, however, may have been art critic Philippe Burty (1830-1890), who first coined the term japonisme in 1872. Given his early interest in Japan and its art, his authority in the field was widely acknowledged, and he is seen as one of the foremost figures in the japonisme movement as a whole.75 Already before the opening of the World Expo, he along with fellow japonists Félix Bracquemond (1833-1914) and Ernest Chesneau (1833-1900) founded a secret society of japonists and self—proclaimed Japanophiles called the Société du Jing- lar.76 Though at its heart a drinking society, the members of this society came together on a near- monthly basis throughout the 1860s to discuss Japan and its art, wear kimonos, and eat with chopsticks.77

Burty’s zeal in spreading the influence of Japanese art on the world was far more extensive than this small coterie of japonists, however—in the 1880s, over a decade after the World Expo, he saw interest in Japan dwindling due to the immense number of imitations that saturated the market and saw the need to introduce Japanese art to a wider audience, and so he intended to launch a periodical on the topic of japonisme. His own attempt did not run for more than a single issue, but

73 The Claude Monet Foundation (n.d.). The Japanese prints. Retrieved from http://fondation- monet.com/en/giverny/the-japanese-prints/ 74 The Claude Monet Foundation. (n.d.) 75 Weisberg, G. (1975). Aspects of Japonisme. The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 62(4), 120- 130. p. 120. 76 Jing-lar or jinglar is a mock-Japanese term referring to the French word ginglard, a slang term denoting a cheap, sharp wine – here used to refer to Japanese sake. (Reed, C. (2015). p. 112.) 77 Weisberg, G. (1976). Japonisme: Japanese influence on French art, 1854-1910. p. 5.

where Burty had failed, another influential collector as well as dealer of Japanese art by the name of Siegfried Bing (1838-1905) picked up on the seed that Burty had planted and soon after launched Le Japon artistique, or Artistic Japan. Being both much wealthier and more business-savvy than Burty, Bing’s periodical was far more successful, running for three years from 1888 to 1891 with monthly issues78 and receiving positive reviews internationally not only from Great Britain and Germany, but Scandinavia, as well.79 Overall, the influence of the periodical on the artistic scene in Europe was considerable, leading to a surge in the study of Japanese art and a renewed infatuation with the country overall in the decade that followed, lasting into the 20th century.

With japonaiserie having become as en vogue in Paris as it was, the spread of the mania surrounding Japan and its art to the rest of the West became nigh inevitable. As imported Japanese items rose in popularity, so grew the demand for them among elite social circles throughout Europe, even in the Nordic region, where many artists had brought French japonisme back with them to their home countries. For example, as had been the case with La Porte Chinoise in Paris, a store opened in Stockholm in the late 19th century named Japanska Magasinet or “the Japanese Depot”, which sold Japanese import goods and art prints. Later, also in Stockholm, a store under the name Sub Rosa was opened which specialised in the sale of Japanese- inspired English goods, so-called anglo-japonisme.80 In Fig. 10 – The cover of the January 1889 issue of Copenhagen, then, the Nordic Exhibition of Industry, Le Japon artistique. The print evokes the style of Japanese ink paintings or sumi-e 水墨画, Agriculture and Art was held in 1888 and featured a popularised in Japan in the 14th century. Image courtesy of the University of Wisconsin Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture.

78 Weisberg, G., Rakusin, M., & Rakusin, S. (1986). On Understanding Artistic Japan. The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 1, p. 8. 79 Ibid., p. 12. 80 Ekholm, T. (2018). Då har Japan upphört att vara Japan–Det japanska tehuset vid Etnografiska museet, samt bilden av chanoyu i Sverige och väst, 1878-1939. Göteborgs universitet, Göteborg. p. 53.

large number of Japanese artworks, assembled by Siegfried Bing.81

On a business level, as well, companies in Northern Europe were influenced by the japonisme movement. Nordic ceramic companies, for example, saw merit in manufacturing products that could compete with other European manufacturers of ceramics which catered to the tremendous popularity of Japanese ceramics and aesthetics.82 Danish porcelain manufacturer Bing & Grøndahl as well as the Swedish Rörstrand, among others, hired designers who were well-versed in Japanese artistry. Bing & Grøndahl, for instance, hired painter Pietro Krohn (1840-1905) as artistic director in 1885; Krohn closely studied Japanese as well as Chinese art, and was part of a circle of collectors in Copenhagen, as well. He designed the Heron Service ceramics collection for Bing & Grøndahl, which evokes Japanese and Chinese motifs due to the use of a blue underglaze.83 Similarly, Rörstrand in Sweden later employed Nils Emil Lundström (1865-1960) as the company’s pattern artist in 1896.84 Present also in his most famous porcelain service set Ostindien, which translates to East India, much of his work for the company bears obvious Japanese influence, sometimes featuring Japanese aesthetics and other times depicting Japanese scenes, as can be seen in his statuette of a Japanese fishing couple (fig. 11).

Bar the assimilation of Japanese aesthetics by Nordic companies, the spread of japonisme to the Nordic countries occurred on an interpersonal level among European artists as well. Many Nordic artists stayed in Paris or London at least at some point in their careers given the capitals’ status as the cultural heartland of Europe. During their stay there, Fig. 11 – Lundström’s statuette of a Japanese fishing couple, designed for and they hoped to build their reputations and networks, learn manufactured by Rörstrand in the 1920s. about art, and perhaps to buy Japanese imported goods Picture from antique auction website worldantique.net. from sellers such as Siegfried Bing. Hence, most Nordic

81 Gelfer-Jørgensen, M., & Davidson, J. F. (2013). Influences from Japan in Danish Art and Design 1870- 2010. Danish Architectural Press. p. 42. 82 Crabbe, G. (2016) Inspired by the land of the rising sun. FNG Research No. 2, 2016. Finnish National Gallery. p. 3. 83 Opie, J. H. (2001). Scandinavia: ceramics & glass in the twentieth century: The collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum. p. 27. 84 Nordiska museet, Skansen (1967). Fataburen: Nordiska museets och Skansens årsbok, 1967. p. 97.

artists had a network of British and French artists whom they had either met during their own travels to the cities, or encountered in their native region, for example when Claude Monet visited Sandviken in Norway and painted Mount Kolsaas, calling it the Mt. Fuji of Norway.85 Nordic artists gradually developed the same infatuation with Japan that they saw in their British and French peers, incorporating similar motifs into their works by way of following the Parisian fashion and assimilating into local artistic circles. The Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905), for example, incorporated the theme of a young woman depicted with Japanese objects in a Parisian interior setting as a means to reconcile his status as a displaced foreigner.86 The extent to which different Nordic artists were influenced by the Parisian Japanomania and, by extension, Japan itself, will be discussed more in-depth through a series of case studies in the next chapter.

85 Borggreen, G. (2016). Crazy about Japan: Japonisme in Nordic Art and Design on Display. Orientaliska Studier, 147, 171-186. p. 179. 86 Kortelainen, A. (2016). “‘Only the Useless is Beautiful’. Those Wonderful Ladies in their Kimonos.” In Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875–1918, ed. Gabriel Weisberg et al. p. 107.

IV. CASE STUDY—THE NORDIC JAPONISTS

In this chapter of the dissertation, the Nordic iteration of the japonisme movement will be explored more thoroughly through a series of case studies, which analyse a number of individual Nordic fine artists of the late 19th century in regards to the influence of japonisme not only on their works, but on their view of Japan beyond the artistic realm, as well. That is to say, this chapter will examine primary sources written by the artists—primarily letters and diary entries—for mentions of Japan, and the manner in which the country and its people are portrayed by the artist therein. In doing so, the aim is to look in these excerpts for any of the artists’ personal opinions and views falling within the realm of Orientalist thought, upon which their relevance to japonisme studies will be further discussed within a theoretical framework in the final chapter of this thesis. While primary source material has not remained entirely unexplored in the field of japonisme studies, this dissertation seeks to add new insights to the subject by seeking recurring patterns in the letters of several different artists and analysing Orientalist views among japonist artists as a totality, with the conclusions made for japonisme in the Nordic countries being applicable for the japonisme movements elsewhere. As stated before, the analyses offered of both the written sources as well as the artworks mentioned are my own, unless otherwise specified.

For the sake of creating as comprehensive an image of Nordic region as available source material will allow, the artists in these case studies each represent a different country in the region, with the exception of Iceland and Norway. For their absence in this case study, an explanation will be provided later on. The source material presented here will also be placed in its biographical context, providing the reader with an introduction to the individual artists’ lives insofar as is relevant: the focus will be on how the artists first came into contact with Japanese art, whether they were known to be collectors of japonaiseries or art prints, as well as how the artists’ japonisme manifested in their works. Bar their geographical relevance, the artists discussed in this chapter were selected based on their significance as artists in general, as well as on the amount of primary source material available.

i. CARL LARSSON (1853-1919)

Carl Olof Larsson was born in 1853, at Prästgatan 78 in in the old quarter of Stockholm, in former Ladugårdslandet or current day Östermalm, which Larsson would describe in his autobiography Jag as “hell on earth”.87 His youth was spent in poverty and hardship, with an alcoholic father, he

87 Gedin (2011). p. 17.

writes in his autobiography, who once told young Carl that “he cursed the day he was born”.88 Larsson showed artistic promise already from a young age, however, and so went on to study at Konstakademien in Stockholm, one of Sweden’s oldest art academies. At the age of 16, already, his illustrations garnered enough attention to earn young Larsson commissions from the satirical magazine Kasper, as well as the newspaper Ny Illustrerad Tidning.

As most budding artists of the 19th century at one point did, Larsson and his friend Ernst Josephson eventually travelled to Paris in 1877, hoping to learn from the flourishing community of impressionists and other nascent artistic circles there. 89 Though Larsson did not manage to establish himself as an artist in Parisian circles, this is likely where he first came into extensive contact with Japanese art, as this was around the same time that Siegfried Bing’s trade in Japanese prints was flourishing, and French impressionists had already been incorporating Japanese aesthetic elements and themes into their works for several years at that point.90 At the time that Larsson was residing in Paris, in 1878, another Exposition Universelle was organised. Here, once again, the Japanese government was represented, this time in an even more ambitious fashion than had been the case at the exposition of 1867, as the now Imperial government was eager to promote its culture in the West.91 Whether Larsson attended the exhibition is unknown; he makes no mention of it in his autobiography nor in any of his remaining letters. However, as he spent much of his time in Paris with other, particularly Scandinavian, artists, it is hard to imagine that exposition and Japanese art at large were not discussed. A letter from fellow artist, the Finnish Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905), provides an image of Scandinavian artists’ society in Paris in a letter to his mother, written in 1878:

“The other evening, I was at a Scandinavian artists’ soirée at Ross [Christian Meyer Ross, a Norwegian painter] —ah, how dreary it was. I can’t stand Ross. He is so horribly educated and polite and well-mannered. They sat and sang Heinrich Heine’s songs all evening, so that we all became depressed. Me and Holger Drachmann [Danish poet and painter] went out into the other room to laugh at their never-ending poetry and weltschmerz every once in a while. I can’t deny that

88 Ibid., p. 20. 89 Carl Larsson-gården. (n.d.) Carl Larsson – en av Sveriges mest älskade konstnärer genom tiderna. Retrieved from http://www.carllarsson.se/carl-och-karin/carl/. 90 Examples are Manet’s Portrait de Émile Zola, finished in 1868, as well as Monet’s Madame Monet en costume japonais, finished in 1875. 91 Hirano, K. (1993). The state and cultural transformation: perspectives from East Asia. p. 137.

the Swede’s, Larsson’s, facetious jokes, which now and then interrupted the musical entertainment, were truly refreshing.”92

Given his inability to establish himself as an artist in the French capital, Larsson eventually returned to his native Sweden after merely a year’s residence in Paris, yet wound up returning to France only two years later, in 1881, to a small village by the name of Grez-sur-Loing in the Seine-et-Marne department of Paris. Grez-sur-Loing at this point in time had grown into a so-called ‘artists’ colony’, in particular for Swedish and Scandinavian artists. Especially common in the 18th and early 20th centuries, these colonies were the result of artists moving away from Europe’s urban centres and into the countryside in yearning for renewed inspiration from nature. Grez-sur-Loing grew to be among the most famous of these artists’ colonies, with many prominent artists of the late 19th century residing there at some point in their careers.93 In fact, Grez had only shortly after Larsson’s stay been home to Japanese painter and politician Kuroda Seiki 黒田精機 (1866-1924), a prominent figure in the Japanese yōga 洋画 or Western-style painting movement. Larsson himself spent nearly a decade in Grez-sur-Loing, meeting his second wife Karin Bergöö along the way. There, his style fully matured as he switched from oil paints to the light, plein air-esque watercolours that defined his later work.94

It appears that, while his stay in Paris surely introduced Larsson to Japan and its art, his time in Grez-sur-Loing solidified it. Grez’s proximity to Paris as well as its nature as an artists’ colony meant that Larsson could still easily be surrounded by Japanese art and other japonists; he would most likely still have Fig. 12 – a group of artists, including the Swedish playwright August been influenced by Le Japon Artistique, Strindberg (1849–1912), dine at the Laurent hotel in Grez-sur-Loing. Illustration by Carl Larsson from the 1884 edition of magazine Svea. for example. 95 It was during his time

92 Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland r.f. (2014). Albert Edelfelts brev. Maria Vainio-Kurtakko, Henrika Tandefelt & Elisabeth Stubb, Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland. Retrieved from http://edelfelt.sls.fi/brev/350/paris-d-4-juni-1878/. Own translation from Swedish. 93 Houe, P., & Rossel, S. H. (eds.). (1997). Documentarism in Scandinavian literature (vol. 18). Rodopi. p. 153. 94 Linde, B. (n.d.) ”Carl O Larsson”. Svenskt biografiskt lexicon. Retrieved from https://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/artikel/11035. 95 Stavenow-Hidemark, Elisabet. (2001). ”Japonismen i Sverige”, Fjärrannära, Bert Edström & Ingvar Svanberg ed., s. 80–9.

there, in 1885, that he wrote the following in a letter to then-publisher of the Svea Folkkalender, a popular literary periodical which was published yearly and featured all manner of essays and articles related to culture and history, and which would feature Larsson’s letter in its 1886 edition:

”[...] Thus, as an artist, Japan is my motherland. At this moment, the Japanese are the world’s only true artists. Among us Europeans, art is something pretentious, forced, and snobby–whereas among them, artistry is inherent, giving a tasteful flair to all that they do, no matter how insignificant. They are in our time what the Greeks were in theirs. But the art of the Japanese, bizarre though it may appear to us, has even greater potential to flourish, because they do not–unlike the Greeks–merely look for so-called beauty, but allow that which one might call ugliness (that is, beings’ and things’ outward nature) to “play along”, as well.” 96

In this paragraph, there is no mistaking Larsson’s admiration for Japan’s artistry, comparing the Japanese to the ancient Greeks and deeming their art superior to the art produced in the West due to its—according to Larsson—unpretentious nature and admiration for not only the beautiful, but the ugly, as well. His admiration for Japan was not limited merely to the artistic realm, however, as can be read in the next paragraph:

“And if uncle had ever seen how beautifully and intelligently a Japanese smiles, and how divinely a Japanese girl’s gait can be! And so, moreover, had learned from their history of their bravery (compared to which ours—that is, our ancestors’—is Fig. 13 – Lilla Suzanne (1885) by Carl merely rubbish), then uncle would understand why, in time, I Larsson. Larsson’s one-year old daughter Suzanne is pictures, held by would like to arouse Suzanne’s [Larsson’s daughter, aged one her mother Karin. The format of the at the time of this letter] love and admiration for the almond- painting is reminiscent of a Japanese scroll painting or kakemono 掛物 in its length. However, the clearest reference to Japanese art here is the ichimatsu doll on the foreground. Image courtesy of Göteborgs Konstmuseum.

96 Larsson, C. (1885). ”Ur ett bref till Sveas utgifvare af Carl Larsson, med en afbildning af Carl Larssons tafla Lilla Suzanne.” Svea Folkkalender för 1886. p. 169.

eyed nation. But—please—do not confuse those fine Japanese with China’s hideous rabble!” 97

The way in which Carl Larsson here speaks of Japan illustrates some interesting patterns of orientalism, which will be discussed more in-depth in the next chapter of this thesis. The reason for this passage of the letter, which otherwise was an ordinary correspondence where Larsson spoke of minute happenings in his life, was that Larsson had included a print of his most recent painting, a portrait of his daughter aptly named Lilla Suzanne, “little Suzanne”, which he had finished that same year. Though one could easily overlook it, a small detail of the oil painting reveals Larsson’s ties to the japonisme movement: at the feet of his infant daughter Suzanne lies a Japanese doll (fig. 13), more specifically what looks to be an ichimatsu doll 市松人形, a dress-up doll which resembles a child and was traditionally made out of wood, with a body of stuffed cloth—these were also commonly imported from Japan, and due to their popularity as children’s toys inspired the designs of European dolls, as well—for example the French bisque doll.98 Particularly in the earlier stages of the movement, this was a common method for artists to allude to Japan in their works. Likewise, the use of fans, kimono, and other japonaiseries can be found in the works of several French and British japonists.99

A similar method appears in Larsson’s 1888 Fürstenberg Triptych, named for the Swedish family who commissioned the work. Finished in Paris per Larsson’s own request, the triptych—a painting made up of three panels each depicting a different scene— consists of paintings respectively titled Renaissance, Rococo, and Nutida konst or contemporary art. In the panel Nutida konst (fig. 14), several images are used which, at the time that the painting was finished, Fig. 14 – Nutida konst (1888) from Carl Larsson’s would have been easily recognisable as symbols for Fürstenberg Triptych. A Japanese man can be seen behind the window on the left-hand side. modernity. In the background on the righthand side, Image courtesy of Göteborgs Konstmuseum. for example, we can vaguely see the Eiffel Tower

97 Ibid., p. 170. 98 Miyazaki, Y. (2007). “Kyōiku, asobi, ningyō: Berumēru-Bataiyu ni okeru media to shite no ningyō/ningen [研究論文] 教育・遊び・人形: ベルメール-バタイユにおけるメディアとしての人形/人間.” Rinshō kyōiku ningen-gaku 臨床教育人間学, 8: 35-44. p. 36.

under construction, to be finished in time for the 1889 World Expo in Paris. That is not the most striking element to this panel, however; to the left, we can see a European man in the company of a Japanese man,100 clearly distinguishable by the chonmage 丁髷 hairstyle associated with the samurai class. It is not unreasonable to argue that Larsson including this in the panel is telling of the importance Larsson gives to Japan’s place in the modern artistic world.

Finally, a Japanese influence can be noticed in Larsson’s later work, however in a more subtle sense as Japanese style elements and aesthetics are applied: much of the work he painted in his home Lilla Hyttnäs in Sundborn, in the Swedish province of Dalarna, shows clear influence from Japanese woodblock prints or ukiyo-e. Larsson himself collected a fair amount of these prints, the majority of which are still displayed at his home, which has since been turned into a museum.101 One work where the aesthetic influence of Japanese woodblock prints is clearly visible is the watercolour painting Brita vid pianot or Brita at the piano (fig. 15), finished in 1908. The painting depicts Carl’s then-15-year old daughter Brita practicing the piano, and contains several style elements reminiscent of woodblock prints; the use of bright and clear colours—common particularly in contemporary Fig. 15 – Brita vid pianot (1908). Note the use of woodblock prints—as well as the use of empty space, empty space, particularly in the foreground of the painting; the colouring technique as well as the in particular, feature prominently in this work. composition overall are in this picture reminiscent of the work of Kawase Hasui (1883 – 1957), for example. This work is currently part of a private Finally, in the later years of Carlsson’s life it appears collection. that the Japanese influence did not affect Carl Larsson alone—Carl’s wife, Karin, is known to have incorporated Japanese motifs into her textile work, taking inspiration from the kimono alongside Swedish traditional clothing and creating what has

100 Linde, B. (n.d.) ”Carl O Larsson”. 101 Drotkiewicz, A., translated by Figiel, J. (2019). “Carl and Karin Larsson’s Arcadia.” Przekrój. Retrieved from https://przekroj.pl/en/culture/lilla-hyttnas-agnieszka-drotkiewicz

been called “a simpler kimono”.102 It is overall clear that Japan and its art had a lasting influence on the Larssons. This, along with the Larssons’ prominence as Swedish cultural heritage, means that they are among the most important figures to discuss in relation to the Swedish iteration of japonisme.

ii. ALBERT EDELFELT (1854-1905)

Albert Edelfelt was born in 1854 in Porvoo, in the south of what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland. Contrary to Larsson, Edelfelt was born into an aristocratic family part of the Swedish- speaking minority of Finland, so-called Fennoswedes or Finlandssvenskar. Edelfelt’s father died when he was young, but despite the family’s status, he left behind a considerable pile of debt. Notwithstanding the financial limitations of Edelfelt’s childhood, his family managed to offer young Albert an education in languages and history at the Imperial University in Helsinki, during which time he received art tutoring as well. He quickly found the Finnish manner of teaching art to be backwards, and in 1873 gave up his education in Finland to instead enrol in the Antwerp Academy of Art, where he studied historical painting for about half a year before eventually moving to Paris with the intent to develop his artistry.

As had been the case for Carl Larsson, it is most likely in Paris that Edelfelt first learned about Japanese art, more specifically during his second stay in the French capital. That is, in 1875—about a year after first having moved there—Edelfelt temporarily returned to Finland where he painted a number of portraits, among others a portrait of his younger sister Ellen, shortly before she died of tuberculosis. He returned to Paris in 1876 in order to Fig. 16 – Rida ranka (1877). The title is continue his studies, and while Edelfelt travelled around a derived from a nursery rhyme and translates to “ride a rocking horse”. In the nursery rhyme, fair bit, he ultimately spent about fifteen years of his life in the horse’s name is Blanka, the Swedish 103 version of queen Blanche’s name. Image the French capital. He gained fame and success in the courtesy of the Finnish National Gallery.

102 Gunnarsson, E. S. (2017). I min trädgård vill jag vara Karin: En praktisk trädgårdsberättelse från Sundborn. p. 64. 103 Reitala, A., translated by Fletcher, R. (n.d.) Edelfelt, Albert (1854 – 1905). Retrieved from Biografiakeskus, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. https://kansallisbiografia.fi/kansallisbiografia/henkilo/3217

Parisian salon in 1877 with a painting titled Rida ranka (fig. 16), a portrait of queen Blanche of Namur, a historical figure of the 14th century. The painting clearly reflected his training as a historical painter.

Arriving from a place as far in the periphery of Europe as Finland, relocating to what was widely considered the centre of Europe, may have played a role in the development of Edelfelt’s infatuation with Japan. Scholar and art historian Anna Kortelainen argues that “working in Paris was like being released from a distant, peripheral island kingdom on to a wide-open continent. It implied arrival at the centre, casting off the role of an extra, and achieving the sovereignty of the great white hunter. The artist of that era was not burdened by the notion of political correctness; he was unabashedly and self-consciously trustful of the superiority of the West, which was merely emphasized and refined in a fresh way by distant ‘primitive cultures’.”104 As such, it can be said that Edelfelt’s position as a displaced alien in the centre of the artistic world served as an ideal precondition for the development of a fetishization of foreign cultures, the most en vogue of which at the time of Edelfelt’s arrival in Paris was, of course, Japan.

As far as the manifestation of Edelfelt’s japonisme is concerned, we are able to pinpoint the first signs of an infatuation with Japan after the 1878 World Expo in Paris, which—like its 1867 predecessor—prominently featured Japanese imported goods and artwork. Edelfelt attended the exposition together with his colleague painter and friend Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904). Of the Japanese exhibition, Edelfelt writes the following in a letter to his mother from the same year:

“Throughout the entire exposition run columns of facades from all countries. Belgium has the largest and most beautiful one, in black marble from the Flemish renaissance, as do Italy, China, and Japan. It is nevertheless peculiar that we Europeans, as far as the finer industries such as bronzework, ceramics, etc. should stand below these children of the Far East…”105

The World Expo comes up in another letter to his mother written about a month later, and he writes: ”Japan, I am obsessed with, and admire [the Japanese] as true artists. […] Jean-Léon Gérôme told me that we [Europeans] have much to learn from them. And he was right.”106

104 Kortelainen, A. (2016). “‘Only the Useless is Beautiful’. Those Wonderful Ladies in their Kimonos.” In Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875–1918, ed. Gabriel Weisberg et al. p. 107. 105 Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland r.f. (2014). Retrieved from http://edelfelt.sls.fi/brev/338/cafe-de-la- regence-d-14-april-78/#6882. Own translation from Swedish. 106 Ibid., retrieved from http://www.edelfelt.sls.fi/fi/brev/346/paris-d-20-maj-1878/. Own translation from Swedish.

It is clear from the wording of these letter excerpts that the Meiji government’s presence at the World Expo greatly affected Edelfelt, who in his own words cultivated an obsession with the nation after visiting the exhibition. It is around the same time that a shift in Edelfelt’s artistic style can be noticed: having abandoned the historical painting of his education, he slowly turned to other techniques, for example the then-emerging plein air or open air method of painting. 107 As has been mentioned before in this thesis, a few of the portraits painted by Edelfelt after Fig. 17 – Sketch for Rödharig modell med en having visited the japansk solfjäder or Redhaired model with a Japanese fan (1879). Though not as distinct in 1878 World Expo this preliminary sketch, the model Anna Törnblom is depicted holding an uchiwa in her fall into the theme right hand, close to her body. Image courtesy of depicting an of Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland. upper-class Parisian woman either wearing Japanese traditional garments, or surrounded by Japanese items. Perhaps the earliest trace of Japanese influence in Edelfelt’s art is in a 1879 portrait of the Swedish seamstress Anna Törnblom, whom Edelfelt painted while she was in Paris as a model. Edelfelt, along with fellow Finnish expatriate artist Gunnar Berndtson (1854-1895), painted a study of her holding a Japanese uchiwa 団扇 fan (fig. 17) This type of fan, as opposed to the more widely known Japanese folding fan sensu 扇子 Fig. 18 – Under the birches (1881). The or , is round in shape and rigid. The work, fittingly, Japanese umbrella draws much attention was given the name “Redhaired model with a Japanese fan”. in this portrait, particularly against the washed-out background colours and the model’s white dress, making for a less- Another particularly striking example is the 1881 work Under than-subtle reference to Japan. Part of a private collection. björkarna, or Under the birches (fig. 18) . The painting depicts a finely dressed Finnish woman in the gardens of Haiko mansion in Porvoo; prominently featured by the woman’s side is a brightly coloured Japanese oil-paper umbrella or wagasa 和傘, recognisable by its bamboo frame and patterned oil-paper.

107 Reitala (n.d.).

Later again, Japanese items are displayed in another of Edelfelt’s paintings completed around the same time as Under the birches, namely a work titled Chez l’Artiste or Les Gravures (fig. 19). This painting, most probably painted in Paris, depicts Edelfelt’s mistress Virginie at his own studio. Dressed according to the latest Parisian fashion at the time, the woman bemusedly looks through a collection of prints. In her left hand, like Edelfelt’s previous model Törnblom, Virginie is holding a Japanese paper fan or uchiwa 団扇. A less obvious, yet nevertheless noteworthy nudge to japonisme can be found in the background; the contours are vague, but behind a row of canvases can be seen what are either Fig. 18 – Chez l’Artiste or Les Gravures (ca. 1881). Note the fan resting on Virginie’s lap in two Japanese woodblock prints, or a hand painted shōji her left hand, and the Japanese prints of women in kimono in the background. Part of a private 障子 room divider. collection, image retrieved from Wikigallery.

Regardless, these two paintings alone show us that Edelfelt was clearly inspired by the japonisme movement during his time in Paris, and these are but a few of the works that showcase japonaiseries in some or other way, as quite a few of Edelfelt’s works from this era, particularly the ones depicting his mistress Virginie, contain references to Japanese artworks, such as for example Virginie (1883) and Dam med solfjäder or Lady with a fan (1886). It is also clear from letters to his mother in Finland that, at this point, Edelfelt had started collecting Japanese paintings and woodblock prints. In 1883, he writes: “Just the other day, I bought a few Japanese paintings on silk to hang up in Haiko [mansion in Finland]. With Haiko and Mamma’s home in Helsinki in mind, I wanted to buy everything I saw. Just wait—in a few years, Mamma will have nothing to want for!”108 As this letter suggests, he did not merely collect Japanese artworks and japonaiseries for himself, but sent a great deal of them to his family in Finland, as well. He began doing this the moment he first arrived in Paris, as is evident from a letter he wrote home in 1877:

108 Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland r.f. (2014). Retrieved from http://edelfelt.sls.fi/brev/16808/paris-d- 28-juli-1882/. Own translation from Swedish.

”I’ve ran around the whole of Paris to find a Japanese doll for Butti [i.e. Berta, Albert’s sister], one of those that were fashionable here last winter. Extraordinarily well-made little Japanese, with mirror glass eyes and moveable limbs—but they are all sold out. Perhaps I’ll still find one in the chinoiserie shop at Rue Vivienne, where I’ll go this evening.”109

And the subject of sending Japanese imported items from Paris back to Finland comes up once more in a letter written nearly a decade later:

“Furthermore, I sent the girls’ corsets as well as two tablecloths for Mamma, a Japanese inkwell and ditto wooden tray for those who would want these knick-knacks (aunt Gadd or the girls), as well as some Japanese sketchbooks for lady Etter. Imagine that all the good crépons [i.e. so- called chirimen-gami 縮緬紙, crinkled paper or “crêpe” paper prints] and albums are totally sold out in Paris, and it seems in Japan as well. Those birds I have, for example, are impossible to get one’s hands on now.”110

Overall, the extensive correspondence between Edelfelt and his mother Alexandra—which stretches across several decades, until his mother’s death in 1901—provides a valuable insight into Edelfelt’s life, and equally into the extent to which Japan impacted his artistry and view of the world. Throughout the 1880s and ‘90s, Japan is mentioned often in his letters. In 1883, for instance, he writes about his impressions of different countries’ representatives, and particularly of the girls accompanying them, at the president’s ball:

“[…] The Chinese embassy with ladies in grand, authentic Chinese costumes, was quite amusing to see. Two petite Japanese ladies in full modern costume looked truly pretty, despite their cheekbones.”111

The appearance of Japanese girls and women comes up yet again when recounting a visit he paid to Konni Zilliacus (1855-1924), a Finnish author and politician who had lived in Japan for several years in the 1890s, and then returned to Europe to settle in Paris.

109 Ibid., retrieved from http://edelfelt.sls.fi/brev/280/paris-d-11-juli-77/#6048. Own translation from Swedish. 110 Ibid., retrieved from http://edelfelt.sls.fi/brev/35460/fredag-d-14-jan-1887/#13150. Own translation from Swedish. 111 Ibid., retrieved from http://edelfelt.sls.fi/brev/35287/paris-d-23-febr-83/#10245. Own translation from Swedish.

“On Sunday, I spent the entire day at Konni’s house in Suresnes with Juhani Aho. Their Japanese elderly nanny looked so much like a Japanese doll that Juhani found it entirely frightful when she spoke and laughed.”112

The manner in which he speaks of Japanese women, especially in this latter example, is telling of a certain fetishization common in an Orientalist worldview—again, this example will be reintroduced in a more in-depth discussion in the next chapter of this thesis.

The early influence of the japonisme movement on Edelfelt’s work has already been discussed and illustrated with a few examples. However, as was the case for Carl Larsson, Edelfelt’s japonisme eventually matured into a more subtle incorporation of Japanese aesthetics and style elements into his work, as opposed to his earlier method of showcasing Japanese goods as details in his paintings. Arguably the height of this matured japonisme is Kaukola ås i solnedgång or Kaukola ridge at sunset, painted by Edelfelt in 1889 (fig. 19). Edelfelt painted this work while staying at Saari manor in the southern Finnish region of Tammela, on a hill overlooking Kaukolanharju or Kaukola Ridge,113 and, while the work belongs to the realism school, it contains a number of style elements that can be attributed to Fig. 19 – Kaukola ridge at sunset (1889). Image influences from Japanese art. Immediately noticeable courtesy of the Finnish National Gallery. are the dimensions, with the work standing upright. A feature also used by Carl Larsson to allude to Japanese woodblock prints, these dimensions had at that time become rather popular among japonists.114 Further japonistic elements are the high horizon as well as the rather subdued colours, which are especially typical of older Japanese

112 Ibid., retrieved from http://edelfelt.sls.fi/brev/35833/paris-11-maj-1897/#22037. Own translation from Swedish. 113 Marjomaa, U. (ed.), (2000.) 100 Faces from Finland: A Biographical kaleidoscope. p. 82. 114 Melchior, S. and Becker, I. (eds.) (2002). Now the Light Comes from the North: Art Nouveau in Finland. p. 39.

woodblock prints. Similarly, the detailed sapling and exposed twisted root in the foreground may be interpreted as odes to Japanese ornamentation.115

Many of Edelfelt’s later landscape paintings, of which Kaukola ridge at sunset is by far the most famous, contain these subtle references to Japanese stylistic elements. For example, his work Paris in the snow (fig. 20), which he painted two years prior to Kaukola ridge at sunset contains many of the same japonistic style elements we find in the latter. Edelfelt’s nigh constant interaction with Japan and its art throughout his career, and his ready acceptance of japonisme into his art is ultimately what marks him historically as one of Finland’s foremost japonists, and an important figure for this thesis.

Fig. 20 – Paris in the snow (1887). Here again, note the vertical dimensions and high horizon of the work, as well as the relative flatness in terms of perspective. Image courtesy of the Finnish National Gallery.

iii. KARL MADSEN (1855-1938)

The Danish Karl Madsen was born in 1855 in Copenhagen into a family of painters. His father, army officer Andreas Peter Madsen (1822-1911), worked as a landscape painter, and his mother Sophie Madsen (née Thorsøe, 1826-1856), primarily painted flowers and still lives. As the scion of an artistic family, it was nigh inevitable that he would follow in his parents’ footsteps, and as such he began his studies at the Royal Danish Art Academy from the age of 17, staying there until the age of 21. At the academy, he met Michael Ancher (1849-1927), whom he befriended and who convinced him to travel with him to the northern Danish village of Skagen. There, in a budding artists’ colony, he became one of the first Skagensmalere or Skagen painters. Much like many other artists at the time, these Skagen painters, comprised of primarily Danish, but also Norwegian

115 "Kaukola Ridge at Sunset." Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved from https://artsandculture.google.com.

and Swedish painters, were drawn to the impressionistic idea of plein air painting, and looked to the Danish countryside for inspiration.116

While he was by all means a talented artist and a key painter among the Skagensmalere, arguably his most interesting works date back to Madsen’s time in Paris, from 1876 until 1879. There, he came under the influence of young French artistic movements such as impressionism as well as the school of Barbizon, a realist school of plein air Fig. 21 – Gadeparti i Skagen vesterby or Street in Skagen’s west painters whose focus was sober town (1879). The dark colours and sobriety in subject matter is clearly reminiscent of the Barbizon school. Image courtesy of landscape painting, primarily as a Skagen Museum. reaction to the romantics. Madsen took a great deal of inspiration from the Barbizon school, which he combined with what he had learned in Skagen, as can be seen in his work Street in Skagen’s west town, which he painted upon his return from Paris in 1879 (fig. 21).

Note that it was during his stay in Paris, that the 1878 World Fair was organised. Karl Madsen attended the fair, but the main impression that the exhibition had left on him was reportedly the humiliation that Danish art had in his eyes suffered at the exhibition,117 as Danish applied arts had received a comparatively poor reception. His presence at the World Fair, however, indicates that in all likelihood, Madsen had come into contact with Japanese art and crafts to at least some extent there, although there is no evidence for this. Regardless, it is known that Madsen did have a collection of Japanese woodblock prints as was common among the social elite of the time. Records show a gift of a 19th-century kakemono 掛物 or scroll painting featuring peacocks gifted to Madsen by Siegfried Bing, for example.118 Many of the woodblock prints and other Japanese artworks were later sold to the National Museum of Denmark, where they are now still on display.119

116 Mortensen, E. (n.d.) “Karl Madsen“. Kunstindeks Danmark & Weilbachs Kunstnerleksikon. Kulturministeriet, Slots- og Kulturstyrelsen. 117 Schultz, S. (n.d.) “Karl Madsen – maler”. Dansk Biografisk Leksikon. Retrieved from lex.dk. 118 Borggreen (2016). p. 182. 119 Poulsen, J. (2017). “Præget fra japansk malerkunst.“ Arbejderen. Retrieved from arbejderen.dk.

Among the cases presented for this thesis, Karl Madsen can be seen as an outlier—that is, Madsen’s personal interest in Japan and its art never truly came to fruition in his artworks, which was, however, arguably a conscious decision, as will become clear later on. He acknowledged, while among the Skagen painters, that his paintings did not bear the same virtuosity he saw in some of his peers; this realisation, combined with the fact that Madsen was facing financial struggle, led to Madsen painting less and less and instead focusing his energy on writing.120 He began writing primarily as an art critic, and his writing efforts ultimately culminated in the publication of his first book, Japansk malerkunst or Japanese painting, in 1885 (fig. 22). The book was an enormous success among the social elite, and received such a positive reception that Madsen’s book is Fig. 22 – The first edition of Japansk malerkunst, published by Philipsens in 1885. now credited with being a major catalyst for the Image courtesy of the Danish National Art development of a Danish iteration of japonisme. 121 It is Library. evident while reading the book that in the years prior, Madsen must have fostered an intense infatuation with Japan: before even discussing the topic of Japanese art as such, Madsen delves into topics such as the events of the Meiji Restoration, the different religions of Japan, and even Japanese folk history. Despite never having travelled to Japan himself, his knowledge about the country is impressive; the extensive nature of the subject matter discussed in Japansk malerkunst allows for a deep insight into Madsen’s view of the country, its art, and its people, and, given the scope of the book’s influence on Danish japonisme, into the kind of narrative that may have been common among later Danish japonists.

Before moving on to the analysis of excerpts from the book, a note should be made: this written source, though still a primary one, should be approached from a slightly different perspective than the ones presented in this thesis until this point. This book, of course, was written with the intention of appealing to a wider public, which means that the contents of this book is of a much less personal and intimate nature than the letters that have been analysed in this dissertation thusfar. Nevertheless, much of what is discussed in Japansk malerkunst is undeniably coloured by

120 Posselt, G. (n.d). “Karl Madsen “. Den Store Danske. Retrieved from lex.dk. 121 Nagashima, Y. (2006). Dødens købmand. Gyldendal A/S. p. 211.

Madsen’s own perception of Japan. As such, this source still contains valuable material for the purpose of this thesis.

In fact, the approach taken by Madsen in his book provides us with the opportunity to broaden our understanding of japonistic thought from what we have seen so far. That is, Madsen almost entirely flips the narrative from the letters analysed so far, and he does this already early on in his book:

“Europe for its own, and Japan for its own! Blended together, they do not make a good dish for discerning palates. Much has arrived from Europe in Japan, as vice versa. In the olden days, they [the Japanese] have viewed our art as odd curiosities, but now they suddenly have opened their eyes to our culture’s superiority and learned to admire the barbarians’ art, and they do so in a stupid, prostrated, self-renouncing admiration of everything we shove down their throats. But they have already realised that, in the heat of the first moments, they rather too willingly sent their old works of art, lacquerware, and metal- and ivory wares into exile.122

As is immediately noticeable from the phrasing of this excerpt, Madsen’s perception of the Japanese—at least insofar as he expresses it—is rather different from what we find, for example, in Larsson’s letters. Madsen immediately establishes the West’s superiority vis-à-vis Japan and proceeds to speak of the Japanese reception of Western art in a manner that nearly breathes contempt. Were this excerpt taken from its context, it would be hard to imagine Karl Madsen held any admiration for Japan and its art, especially as this tone of contempt seems to recur on several occasions throughout the book. However, Madsen himself gives one explanation as to the origin of his contempt towards Japan:

“They were given our houses, and furniture; our manner of dress and high hats, our uniforms, guns and canons, our medicine and our law, our machines, our telegraphs, our railroads and steam boats. All these wonders impressed them so much, that they quickly developed an unreasonable contempt for their own old civilisation, for their art, which had been the nation’s pride and joy; for their art industry, which in technical refinement is the most consummate that human hands have ever created.”123

In this passage, it becomes clear that Madsen does have an admiration for the culture of Japan, but that his contempt for contemporary Japan comes from a—in his eyes—overt willingness on the

122 Madsen, K. (1885). Japansk Malerkunst. Med talrige illustrationes i traesnit. Philipsen. p. 10. Own translation from Danish. 123 Ibid., p. 5. Own translation from Danish.

Japanese’ part to cast away their own culture, especially their classic art and crafts, in favour of that of the West. Madsen’s perception of Japan becomes a great deal clearer here; while he admires Japan for its perfect, consummate sense of artistry, his contempt is aimed at Japan’s lack of national pride—even though Madsen himself upholds that the culture of the West is superior to Japan’s. This offers an interesting nuance on japonisme, given that of much of the remainder of the book expresses an admiration for Japanese art similar to what we have seen so far. Particularly the Japanese proximity to nature and their ability to portray it astounds Madsen, as he writes:

“It is in the creation of plants, birds and small animals that the Japanese painters are at their best. Here they are perfect, unique and second-to-none masters.”124

Madsen writes not only of nature as depicted in Japanese art, but similarly alludes to the Japanese admiration and near worship of nature, and their closeness to it—he notes:

“In Japanese literature, one meets the glorification of nature everywhere. Even in the bloodiest samurai novels, there are hymns to nature’s beauty,”125 and to the Japanese, “nature is the ultimate beauty ideal”. 126 Several times, Madsen emphasises the Japanese’ closeness to nature and Japanese artists’ tradition of depicting it: “Japanese artists have observed nature, observed it with love and care—there is no question about that. They have created variations of old motifs and invented new ones, but they have seen nature through the same coloured glasses, which have been passed from fathers to their sons”.127 As Van Gogh, Madsen evokes through this emphasis an image of the Japanese as Rousseau’s bon sauvage, the noble savage who lives closely to nature and has not been corrupted by modern society—this will be discussed more in—depth in the final chapter of this dissertation.

Furthermore, he similarly maintains that the Japanese “have made a decoration which as none other is ardent and witty, rich on clever and delightful ideas, inexhaustible on amusing and splendid surprises”.128 With this in mind, we can argue that Madsen’s view of Japan is as two sides to the same coin. While he is appreciative and even laudative of Japan’s artistic achievements, his contempt of Japan’s attitude and sense of Western superiority dominates especially the earlier

124 Borggreen (2016). p. 182. 125 Madsen (1885). p. 28. 126 Ibid. p. 29. 127 Ibid., p. 59. 128 Borggreen (2016). p. 182.

pages of his work. However, as one reads through the book, the double nature of his infatuation with the island nation is further explained.

“Japan’s national art of painting, in certain aspects the flower of the whole Orient’s visual artistry, is dead—and the future scarcely makes it seem like it will be brought back to life. The very conditions for its existence have descended into the grave. Young Japan’s artists paint fruitlessly after its antiquity, and the most talented among them study in Paris under Bonnat [Léon Bonnat (1833-1922), painter and professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts at the time].”129

This passage provides us with an explanation as to how Madsen’s view of Japan can possibly be as contradictory as it at first glance may appear. Madsen champions classical Japanese art above all, where he maintains the soul of Japan and its art come to full expression. At the same time, he despises Japan’s modern art—its willing adoption of Western motifs and art styles in favour for its native artistic “perfection”, which it freely casts away, and at once also the perceived lack of respect Japan has for its own artistic, and cultural, heritage. In doing so, Madsen adopts a historicistic view of the island nation, one of a primitivistic and purist utopia that Western influence and modernisation has sullied. It is a view that became, after the publication of Japansk malerkunst, prevalent in Danish japonisme, as fin-de-siècle Danish japonisme became a movement rife with contradictions. On one hand, Madsen’s overt admiration for classical and traditional Japanese art influenced the tastes of Danish japonists, yet at the same time there existed a prevalent disdain for Japan’s acceptance of westernisation and modernisation.130

Overall, despite the difference in source intention between Madsen’s book and the letters analysed thusfar, Madsen’s own description of his perception of Japan and its art provide us with a different perspective of Nordic japonisme and japonisme at large. Most of the cases presented thusfar have consisted primarily of praise for Japan in general as well as its art, whereas the view harboured by Karl Madsen is more nuanced, perhaps in part due to the extensive nature of the text in this case. Nevertheless, many of the views expressed by Madsen in these excerpts are typical of orientalist thought, including his overt expression of Western supremacy and the aesthetic idolisation of classical Japanese art. As with the other cases, the implications of Madsen’s words insofar as their

129 Madsen (1885). p. 155. Own translation from Danish. 130 Borggreen, G. (n.d.) “Kulturudveksling: Japan og Danmark. “ Dansk Kunsthistorikerforening. Retrieved from kunsthistoriker.dk.

relevance to orientalism is concerned will be further elaborated upon in the next chapter of the thesis.

iv. A NOTE ON THE ABSENCE OF NORWEGIAN AND ICELANDIC CASE STUDIES

As mentioned before, no Icelandic or Norwegian cases of japonisme are presented for analysis in this dissertation. In both the case of Iceland and Norway, the reason for this exclusion lies in a lack of source material. However, this absence of source material can be explained differently for either nation.

Insofar Iceland is concerned, there are no cases for Icelandic japonisme simply because it is hard to make an argument for the existence of japonisme in Iceland. Historically, due to its geographic location, Iceland has been far more isolated than the other Nordic countries. As a society far removed from the mainland and predominantly built on fishing and farming for survival, it wasn’t until the second Industrial Revolution that Iceland began the process of urbanisation, and as such the island was not to the same extent integrated into European society as its other Nordic brethren. In fact, there did not exist much of an artistic tradition in Iceland at all when the japonisme movement began to emerge among the European social elite—Ásgrímur Jónsson (1876–1958), a landscape painter, was the first Icelander to ever make a professional living out of his art.131 Equally, the 2016 exhibition Japanomania in the North 1875–1918 did not include any entries from Iceland, presumably due to a lack of source material as well. Hence, Iceland has in this thesis been omitted.

131 Somervill, B. A. (2003). Iceland. Children’s Press. p. 109.

The case for Norway in this thesis is rather more complicated. While Norway has also been omitted due to a lack of source material, contrary to Iceland, the lack of relevant source material on Norwegian japonisme is not due to an absence of Norwegian japonisme altogether. Japanese art seems to have influenced Norwegian fin—de—siècle artists to about the same extent as it did Swedish, Finnish, and Danish artists, as is visible in the works of several Norwegian artists. Yet, contrary to the cases presented thusfar, no Norwegian artists mention Japan to any notable extent in the primary sources available to us. Of course, this begs the question of whether this lack of primary sources is to be attributed to Norwegian artists simply not mentioning japonisme in letters to their peers–hence implying a potential lack of japonist social circles in Norway–or whether letters and writings mentioning Japan or japonisme did at some point exist, but have not been preserved for posteriority.

Either way, an argument can certainly be made for the existence of japonisme in Norway. For example, Japanese influence pervades a number of the artworks of Thorolf Holmboe (1866-1935), who spent some time studying at Fernand Cormon’s (1845-1924) private studio in Paris from 1889 onwards. As has been the case for our other case studies, this Fig. 23 – Cover of Det Nye Norges was most likely where Holmboe Malerkunst or Painting of the New Norway (1904). The cover illustration by Fig. 24 – Autumn, sketch for a first came into contact with the Holmboe shows clear Japanese book cover (ca. 1900). Image influence, noticeable particularly in the courtesy of the National Museum japonisme movement, as in the simplicity and lack of perspective in the of Norway. image, as well as the use of the decade afterwards, Holmboe common motif of birds in Japanese art. began to incorporate Japanese style elements into his art. In Image courtesy of the National Museum of Norway. his book Painting of the New Norway, published in 1904, art critic Andreas Aubert (1851-1913) writes of Holmboe that he “takes motifs from Europe’s common heritage of new decorative thought, as they have formed in Japanese and British art.”132 Holmboe was also commissioned to create the cover illustration for this very book, which—despite the book’s

132 Aubert, A. (1908). Det nye Norges malerkunst 1814-1900: Kunsthistorie i grundlinjer. p. 98. Own translation from Norwegian.

focus being the essence of Norwegian art—is clearly inspired by Japanese woodblock prints (fig. 23). Author Vilhelm Krag (1871–1933) also makes mention of Holmboe’s contact with Japanese art in Paris in an article for the first edition of the periodical Art: Organ for Literary and Artistic Interests in Denmark and Norway, published in 1899: “After Holmboe had studied under Gude [Hans Gude (1825–1903)], he travelled to Paris, where he chose Cormon for his teacher. But what, in that city, undoubtedly had the strongest influence on his later development, was the Japanese art that he got to know for the first time there.”133

Even more striking similarities with woodblock prints can be seen in a sketch Holmboe made in preparation for yet another book cover illustration a few years prior (fig. 24). Particularly in this image, note the complete absence in depth both in use of perspective and in use of colour. The colours here are flat, and every visual element of the print is stacked atop one another rather than introducing perspective. In the distance, a vague impression of a landscape is given with watercolour. Finally, the woman sits under what looks like a Japanese maple tree as the momiji or red maple leaves fall around her and onto the bench she is sitting on—a common motif in Japanese art and poetry meant to evoke associations with the arrival of autumn, and fittingly also the title given to this sketch. The overall image, in terms of composition and overall theme, is heavily reminiscent of a mid-19th-century woodblock print by Suzuki Harunobu 鈴木春信 (1724–1770) titled Sechū aiaigasa 雪中相合傘 or Lovers Walking in the Snow (fig. 25). Yet, for all the evidence we find of Japanese influence in what Holmboe’s Fig. 25 – Sechū aiaigasa 雪中相合傘 or peers wrote of his artistry, and the evidence that Holmboe’s Lovers Walking in the Snow (1764 – 72). Image courtesy of the Metropolitan art itself gives us of his interest in Japanese art and style Museum of Art. elements, Thorolf Holmboe never once mentions Japan, or even Asia in general, in his letters or other writings.134

A second artist commonly named among the Norwegian painters most influenced by Japan and its art is Nikolai Astrup (1880-1929). Like Holmboe, he spent some time in Paris studying under fellow

133 Vilhelm Krag (1899). Kunst: organ for litterære og kunstneriske Interesser i Danmark og Norge. nr. 1: 2. 134 Hansen, V. W. (2018). ”Thorolf Holmboe og japonismen. ” Kunst og Kultur, 101(01-02), p. 74.

Norwegian artist Christian Krohg (1852–1925), who was himself known to have studied Japanese woodblock prints.135 There, Astrup himself also came in contact with ukiyo-e, and was immediately fascinated by them; in a letter to fellow painter Henrik Lund (1879–1935) he later writes: “I have done nothing this summer, only dabbed at something that I am no good at—I have been influenced by Ravensberg, I believe, or perhaps it is Hokúsai, who has turned my head.”136

In another letter to sculptor Hans Jacob Meyer (1872–1941), he mentions woodblock prints once again:

“I am not sure if they have heard of “modern woodblock printing” — “colour woodblock printing” and “black-and- white woodblock printing” —it is an art which very much interests me; it originally came from Japan, but has in Europe taken on a slightly different form, which is more suited to our art.”137

As is visible from these letters, as well as a considerable number of sketches, Astrup spent quite some time studying the Japanese tradition of woodblock printing, attempting to familiarise himself with the different techniques and motifs used therein. Fig. 26 – Utkast til den store bølgen or Draft On a few occasions, he sketched imitations of well- for the Great Wave (date unknown). Image courtesy of the Sogn og Fjordane known Japanese woodblock prints, such as Utagawa Kunstmuseum. Hiroshige’s depictions of flying cranes as well as Katsushika Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa (fig. 26). Astrup also habitually made notes in his sketchbook, trying to understand the techniques behind woodblock print production, composition, and common motifs. On one occasion, he notes the Japanese’ use of emerald green in otherwise monochromatic colour schemes in order to evoke the arrival of spring in a snowy landscape.138

135 Morton, M. (2017). Max Klinger and Wilhelmine Culture: On the Threshold of German Modernism. p. 190. 136 KODE Kunstmuseene I Bergen (n.d.) Nikolai Astrup: Letter to Henrik Lund, date unknown (before 1907). Retrieved from nikolai-astrup.no. 137 Loge, Ø., & Astrup, N. (1986). Gartneren under regnbuen: hjemstavnskunstneren Nikolai Astrup. Dreyer. p. 261. 138 The sketch in question can be found in the collection of the Sogn og Fjordane Kunstmuseum, retrievable via digitaltmuseum.no under the name “Japanernes brug af vert emeraude…”.

Astrup’s studies of Japanese woodcut prints ultimately led him to not only incorporating Japanese style elements into his works, but even employing the same technique as the one used for woodblock prints, now often referred to as xylography, namely the carving of an image into a wooden block, and using this woodcut to print an image onto paper. He used the technique extensively, which is noticeable in a number of his works, for example his 1916 print Fiskeren or The Fisherman (fig. 27); many of the woodcuts used to produce the prints are now in the possession of the Sogn og Fjordane Kunstmuseum, Astrup’s native province.

It can be concluded from a look at these two artists’ works, then, that an argument certainly can be made for the existence of a japonisme movement in Norway. However, even though the case of Nikolai Astrup provides us with a few mentions of Japanese woodblock prints in his letters, this cannot be considered relevant material for the argument that this thesis makes, as Astrup never makes mention of his own personal views of Japan. Of course, one could present the Fig. 27 – Fiskeren or The Fisherman (1916). Image courtesy of the Sogn og Fjordane Kunstmuseum. argument that given the similarities with the previously discussed cases—i.e. residencies in Paris during the height of the japonisme movement, and the appearance of visible Japanese influence in each respective artist’s work after these residencies—similar japonistic thought may have existed among Norwegian artists as well. However, given the lack of sources to corroborate this hypothesis, this is purely speculation and will not be held for evident in this dissertation.

V. A SOCIO-CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF NORDIC JAPONISME

This final chapter intends to give meaning to the case studies discussed in the previous section of this thesis by placing them within the existing theoretical framework on the topic of Orientalism, and in doing so pleading the case for japonisme as Orientalism. Of course, this chapter heavily references the work of Edward Said, literature scientist and founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies–the definitions he offers in his work will be the ones primarily relied on for further reference; the same is true for any further concepts and theories surrounding Orientalist thought discussed within this chapter. Though the ultimate intent is to identify japonisme as an Orientalist phenomenon in its totality, this chapter equally goes into detail about the implications of japonisme and Orientalism specifically in the case of the Nordic countries—namely in relation to the nineteenth-century development of the Nordic countries’ respective national identities, as well as its significance in a centre-periphery discourse.

i. DEFINING ORIENTALISM

Firstly, a proper definition of the Orientalism phenomenon ought to be given here–Said, in the introduction to Orientalism, offers three separate definitions of the term Orientalism based on the context in which it is used. The first definition is as follows:

“Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient—and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist——either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism. Compared with Oriental studies or area studies, it is true that the term Orientalism is less preferred by specialists today, both because it is too vague and general and because it connotes the high-handed executive attitude of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century European colonialism.”139

As Said already mentions, this definition is rather outdated both given that researchers within the field of Asian studies no longer apply the term Orientalism to their academic field, and because of the considerable changes that the field has gone through since the publication of Said’s work. The second definition is already much more of an approximation to the way the term will be used throughout this chapter; Said defines Orientalism as a style of thought based upon distinctions between “the Orient” and “the Occident”. 140 Here we first see Said allude to the concept of

139 Said (1979). Orientalism. Vintage. p. 2. 140 Ibid.

“othering”, which will become clearer as the earlier case studies are reintroduced. Finally, Said gives a third definition of Orientalism as a historical and material phenomenon:

“Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and analysed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. […] European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate, and even underground self.”141

In other words, Orientalism is defined as the Western fabrication of perceptions and images of the Orient in a way that embodies Western imperialist and colonialist tendencies, hence “producing” the cultural Other. Originally, Said applies Orientalism primarily to the Near East. However, Orientalism is nothing if not a regionally focused case study for the larger phenomenon of Western ethnocentrism. This means that the arguments made by Said for the Western perception of the Near East can similarly be made for other cultural spheres which have historically been considered in the Western view as being “Other”–and as such, these can be applied to the case of post-kaikoku Japan, as well.

ii. THE DEBATE ON JAPONISME AS ORIENTALISM

Japan has, on a few occasions, been discussed by scholars in the context of Orientalism–most notably by Richard H. Minear, former professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In his article Orientalism and the Study of Japan, Minear discovers patterns of Orientalist thought among some of the prominent figures of nineteenth century Japanese studies. Minear notes, for example, the manner in which Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935), professor of Japanese, spoke of Japan in relation to the West not only in his works, such as his self-proclaimed guide for Westerners titled Things Japanese, 142 but equally in letters sent to his peers. Bar Chamberlain’s continuous use of an “us” versus “the other” discourse, a sense of Western superiority vis-à-vis Japan is noticeable in his writings, as well—despite an affinity for select aspects of Japan and its culture.143 Note, for example, the following striking excerpt taken from an 1891

141 Ibid., p. 3. 142 Chamberlain, B. H. (1905). Things Japanese: being notes on various subjects connected with Japan for the use of travellers and others. 143 Minear, R. (1980). “Orientalism and the Study of Japan”. The Journal of Asian Studies, 39(3), p. 508-9.

letter from Chamberlain to Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), likewise a prominent figure in the field of Japanese studies:

“I have myself gone through many phases of opinion, but the net result is that they appear to me far inferior to the European race—at once less profound, less tender, and less imaginative. Much of what strikes one as originality at first is only, so to say, a relative originality as compared with Europe; after a time one finds out either that the thing, whatever it may be, was borrowed from China, or else perhaps that, though superficially pretty, it is not really worth so much as the corresponding thing in the West.”144

Particularly of note in Minear’s work, however, is that while he recognises similar patterns in the late nineteenth century Western perceptions of Japan and Said’s definition of Orientalism, he also makes note of a few key differences between the Near East discussed by Said in his work and the case of Japan. Said’s definition of the Orient, for example, goes as follows:

“The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other.”145

Minear notes here that, contrary to the Orient that Said speaks of, Japan has historically been the remotest segment of the Orient—and did not see its first encounter with Europeans until the sixteenth century AD. Furthermore, the most notable difference between the two is perhaps the fact that, while many nations both of the Near and Far East were at some point colonies to European powers, Japan has never found itself in the position of a colony. This leads us to an issue similarly alluded to by Minear: since, given its prominence within the field of postcolonial studies, Orientalism and colonialism are so closely tied together, can then still apply the term Orientalism to the nineteenth century Western set of ideas attached to Japan? The fact that Japan was never a de facto Western colony is overall relevant to the resulting dynamics between Japan and the West, to be sure—but even though Japan is an outlier in this regard, I would like to argue that despite this fact, the events that led to the opening of Japanese borders in the mid-nineteenth century aided significantly in shaping later Western views of Japan. That is, Japan had, during the events of kaikoku—as has been alluded to in previous chapters—been placed in a disadvantaged position from the very beginning. Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s request for the Tokugawa

144 Ibid., p. 509. 145 Said (1979), p. 1.

government to open Japanese borders to trade with the West was not so much a request as it was an ultimatum;146 Japan had borne witness to what had happened to China only a few years prior to the arrival of the American fleet, and knew well enough that the same fate would befall them should they not cooperate. As such, I here make the argument that despite Japan never having been a Western colony, the power imbalance brought about by the events of kaikoku very likely engendered a dynamic not altogether different from the common view vis-à-vis the Near East at the time we situate the emergence of the japonisme movement—that is, one of the dominant West, and the submissive, inferior East. Shared patterns, for example—as discussed by Minear as well— are a distinct sense of superiority on the Western part, a sense of mysticism associated with the “Other”, and a drive to study, define, and, as Said puts it, “produce” this Other.147 The case studies presented in the previous chapter serve to corroborate this, as well.

In another argument against japonisme as Orientalism, Widar Halén, director of Design and Decorative Arts at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo as well as co- curator of the Japanomania in the North 1875–1918 exhibition, is reported to have made the remark that Nordic japonisme could not be perceived as Orientalism, as they—that is, the artists influenced by the japonisme movement— “all loved Japanese art”.148 This is a remark I would like to challenge in this dissertation. While Japanese art of course formed the catalyst for many Nordic artists’ interest in Japan and by all means held a central position in shaping their image of Japan, it is easily visibly from the cases presented in this dissertation that the artists’ fascination with Japan extended beyond the artistic realm and that some of the expressions brought to the fore here are near textbook representations of Orientalist views. Note, for instance, the degree to which Carl Larsson idolises Japan as a construct in only one paragraph of a letter—common patterns in nearly all the cases discussed in the previous chapter include statements on the Japanese mind, Japanese people, Japanese culture, and Japanese history; hence, to dismiss their infatuation with Japan as being fuelled solely by, and concentrated solely on, their interest in the Japanese artistic tradition would be dismissive of the statements made in the primary sources presented in this dissertation.

Equally Orientalist is the manner in which the different artists discussed—and this applies particularly to Karl Madsen, given the nature of his work as being both public as well as having pedagogic intent—take control of the narrative surrounding Japan, leaving little to no room for this

146 Walker, B. L. (2015). A concise history of Japan. p. 145. 147 Minear (1980). p. 507-8. 148 Borggreen (2016). p. 172.

“Other” to define or represent itself. This bears similarities to Said’s comment on author Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) and his encounter with the Other in the form of an Egyptian woman:

“The Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be "Oriental" in all those ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be—that is, submitted to being—made Oriental. There is very little consent to be found, for example, in the fact that Flaubert's encounter with an Egyptian courtesan produced a widely influential model of the Oriental woman; she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak for her and tell his readers in what way she was "typically Oriental."”149

In the same way that Flaubert did with the courtesan Kuchuk Hanem, we see the artists presented in this dissertation—again, particularly Karl Madsen—presenting themselves as authorities or experts on Japanese art and, by extent, Japan at large. By representing Japan in its stead and essentialising it, these artists ultimately submit the country into being Orientalised, made Oriental. As Erica Warren, associate curator of Textiles at the Art Institute of Chicago put it, “the imagined Japan became the domain of those who imagined it”.150

Overall, I argue here that japonist thought among the late nineteenth-century artists is, in fact, a manifestation of Orientalism; this despite Japan never having been a Western colony, and despite the narrative surrounding Japan being predominantly centred around its art. In the remainder of this chapter, I will solidify this argument by explaining why the Orientalist dimension of japonisme is particularly relevant in the context of the Nordic countries, and how the primary sources presented earlier tie into Orientalist theory.

iii. ‘CULTURAL OTHERING’ IN THE NINETEENTH—CENTURY NORDIC CONTEXT

Touched upon by a few scholars, including Japanomania in the North 1875—1918 co-curator Widar Halén, has been the relevance of the japonisme movement in the late nineteenth-century development of Scandinavian national identity. This was particularly so for the case of Russian-

149 Said (1979). p. 5-6. 150 Warren, E. (2014). Gerhard Munthe's Folktale Tapestries: Designing a Norwegian National Narrative in the Nineteenth Century. p. 147.

ruled Finland, and Norway, a country then finding itself partially independent after over four centuries of dependency on Denmark, and struggling to assert a distinct national identity in the wake of the triumph of the European nation-state. In this search for a distinctly Norwegian identity emerged at the end of the nineteenth century the Dragestil or “Dragon style”, a revival of Viking age art and architecture named for the dragon heads often found on the gables of Viking era stave churches. 151 The movement emerged as a variant of Norwegian national romanticism, and contemporarily to the height of the japonisme movement. Halén notes the importance of the convergence of these two movements in the context of national identity building, with the emerging Japan craze in Europe providing the Norwegian nationalism movement with an exotic, remote Other from which to build its Self.152 This concept of the East as a mirror for the West is similarly brought up by Edward Said when initially defining Orientalism; the Other can be used as a method for the West to strengthen its own identity, a way for the West to “set itself off against the Orient as a surrogate and even underground self.”153

The Norwegian perception of Japan as the Other is, however, rather more nuanced than the Orient in Said’s discourse; that is, the ability of the West to define what it is by that which the Orient is not. Interestingly, Norwegian artists of the late nineteenth century found in Japan not merely an Other from which a Norwegian national identity could be set off, but beyond Said’s Self-Other dichotomy also a “Similar”, if you will, in the importance placed on national myths, folk tales, and fairy tales and—even more importantly—in the struggle for national identity. 154 After the opening of its borders, Japan was equally a country looking to find its position in the world, and the way in which Japan’s image had been formed in the Western perception (predominantly through imported items, curiosities, and the Japanese presence at major exhibitions in Europe) spoke to Norwegian nationalists of the importance of “displaying the nation”—one being, for example, the artist Gerhard Munthe (1849-1929).155 He writes:

“It is precisely an artist’s national perspective that attracts and has meaning for us when we see something that we recognize as art, whether it be from a foreign country or from our own... the

151 Norberg-Schulz, C. (1997). Nightlands: Nordic Building. p. 127. 152 Johnson, A. K. (2016). An Aesthetic Experience: Japonisme in the North” Framing Japanomania: Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 1875–1918. Journal of Japonisme, 1(2). p. 217. 153 Said (1979). p. 3. 154 Borggreen (2016). p. 184. 155 Warren (2014). p. 148.

artistic conceptualization of the Japanese is the most national force that has found its way into art in recent times.”156

This brings us to a rather nuanced, layered understanding of the way in which Norway as a budding nation—state saw in Japan this Other; one of both juxtaposition and similarity—at once distant and relatable, and insofar the production of a national identity was concerned, an example for Norway to follow. Yet, there is a third dimension to the significance of the imagined Japan as the “Other” in the context of Nordic national identity—namely that of the japonisme movement as an opportunity for Nordic artists to pull themselves out of the periphery of Europe.

As discussed earlier, this is precisely how Anna Kortelainen describes Albert Edelfelt’s arrival in Paris; for him, moving in Parisian artistic circles was an opportunity to move from the periphery into the centre, and engaging in the same cultural othering that Parisians did—through their infatuation with their imagined Japan—would have provided a way for Edelfelt to more easily align himself with the artistic centre of Europe.157 Arguably, this sentiment is indicative of a larger pattern visible in late nineteenth—century Scandinavian cosmopolitan culture. Literary scholar Elizabeth Oxfeldt, in her study of nineteenth century Danish and Norwegian literature, makes the argument that the othering of the Orient in the Nordics did not serve the purpose of juxtaposing the Self with the Oriental Other—first the Arabic world, later China and Japan—so much as it did to align the Self with politically prominent states such as France and Great Britain, which we will henceforth refer to as central Europe. Oxfeldt points out that Said’s Self-Other dichotomy is particularly complex in the case of the Nordic countries, who throughout the nineteenth century struggled to position themselves in the world and, “[…] in the case of Denmark and Norway, imported Oriental imagery to position themselves not against their colonial Other but rather in relation to central European nations.”158

While this dimension most certainly played a prominent role in the reason behind the Nordics’ othering of the Orient in the context of national identity, I here disagree with the notion that the juxtaposition between the Self and the Oriental Other did not play a role in Nordic Orientalism whatsoever, but would instead argue that all three dimensions of Nordic cultural othering mentioned hitherto are to be taken into account when forming an image of the role of Orientalism in the nineteenth century Nordics’ struggle for national identity. That is, the role of Orientalism in Nordic

156 Munthe, G. (1919). Minder og meninger fra 1850-aarene til nu. (Marion Nelson, trans.) p. 66-77. 157 Kortelainen (2016). p. 107. 158 Oxfeldt, E. (2005). Nordic Orientalism: Paris and the Cosmopolitan Imagination 1800-1900. p. 13.

national identity should not be understood as having emerged from a single motivation. We should instead understand the Nordic manifestation of cultural othering at once as an effort on the Nordics’ part to align themselves with the cultural centre of Europe, as a way for the Nordic countries to define what they are by contrast with what the Orient is not—the original definition of the Self in the context of Said’s Orientalism—and finally as a way for the Nordic countries to relate to the Orient (here specifically Japan) as nations grasping for a sense of national identity, and viewing Japan as an example to follow in this regard. In this sense, while nevertheless agreeing with Said’s definition of othering, this dissertation proposes a more nuanced understanding of the motivation behind the phenomenon of cultural othering. The complex, multifaceted nature of Nordic Orientalism and, by extension, Nordic japonisme, should as such be kept in mind in the next section, where the primary sources previously discussed will be analysed within the theoretical framework of Orientalism.

iv. PATTERNS OF ORIENTALISM IN THE WRITINGS OF NORDIC ARTISTS

This final part of this dissertation serves to further strengthen the argument this thesis endeavours to make regarding the connection between the japonisme movement, and particularly its Nordic iteration, and Orientalist thought, as defined by Edward Said. As has already been clarified, this section will use the primary sources discussed in chapter four to highlight previously defined patterns of Orientalism—those defined by Said as well as those proposed by other scholars—and strengthen the connection between the japonisme movement and Orientalist thought in the multi- layered way in which it expressed itself in the Nordic region.

On the features of Orientalist projection—particularly those realised in Description de l’Égypte,159 an extensive recount of Napoleon Bonaparte’s expeditions to Egypt from 1798 to 1801—Said writes the following: “To restore a region from its present barbarism to its former classical greatness […] to make out of every observable detail a generalisation and out of every generalisation an immutable law about the Oriental nature, temperament, mentality, custom, or type; and, above all, to transmute living reality into the stuff of texts, to possess (or think one possesses) actuality mainly because nothing in the Orient seems to resist one's powers.”160

While Said in this excerpt makes mention of multiple features of Orientalism which I will discuss, that which immediately establishes a connection between our case studies and Orientalist theory is Said’s mention of generalisation. The letters and other primary sources featured in this

159 Néret, G., Miller, C., & Blumenberg, B. (1994). Description de l’Égypte. 160 Said (1979). p. 86.

dissertation are, after all, rife with generalisations—generalisations which serve to strengthen ideas held about “the Japanese”. Carl Larsson, for example, writes that “the Japanese are the world’s only true artists”, and that in them, “artistry is inherent”.161 We see the same iteration made by Albert Edelfelt, who “admires [the Japanese] as true artists”.162 Both native Swedish speakers, they choose a different phrasing for “true artists”—“verkliga artister” in Larsson’s case, as opposed to “riktiga artister” in Edelfelt’s letter—yet the nuance remains the same. Larsson in his letter even reduces, though poetically, the entire Japanese people to a single outward trait—“the almond— eyed nation”.163 Many of Madsen’s statements in his book Japansk malerkunst equally rely on generalisations, for examples when he poses that “it is in the creation of plants, birds and small animals that the Japanese painters are at their best” 164 and that “young Japan’s artists paint fruitlessly after its antiquity”.165 These few examples are the most explicit generalisations in the excerpts shown in this thesis, the others being more subtle—but overall, none of the Nordic japonists discussed in this dissertation leave much room for nuance in their writings, making generalised statements to further build their Western—imagined Japan and, particularly in Madsen’s case, exercise authority over the presentation of Japan in the West.

Note, as well, that the majority of generalising statements found here bestow upon Japan traits which are somehow in opposition to the West—e.g. Larsson pointing out that artistry in the Japanese is inherent, as opposed to in Westerners, to whom art is something which is forced; Madsen alluding to the modern and superior West as opposed to the old, inferior Japan, etc. This is in line with how Timothy Mitchell, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University, identifies the features of Orientalism in Said’s work: “Three features define this Orientalist reality: it is understood as the product of unchanging racial and cultural essences; these essential characteristics are in each case the polar opposite of the West (passive rather than active, static rather than mobile, emotional rather than rational, chaotic rather than ordered); and the Oriental opposite or Other is, therefore, marked by a series of fundamental absences (of movement, reason, order, meaning, and so on).”166 We have, of course, already established that particularly in the Nordic context, Orientalism is not solely reliant on opposition, but also similarity. Nevertheless, the

161 Larsson (1885). p. 169. 162 Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland r.f. (2014). Retrieved from http://edelfelt.sls.fi/brev/338/cafe-de-la- regence-d-14-april-78/#6882. 163 Larsson (1885). p. 169. 164 Madsen (1885). p. 182. 165 Madsen (1885). p. 155. 166 Timothy, M. (2004). Dirks, N. (ed.) Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order. Colonialism and Culture, p. 289.

features summed up by Mitchell can certainly be to an extent observed in all discussed excerpts, yet while Larsson and Edelfelt allude to Japanese culture as an old but most importantly static and unchanging one, Mitchell’s observation is most glaringly obvious in Madsen’s perception of the Japanese. We have already established earlier on that Madsen’s imagined Japan is a static entity, as Madsen admired older Japanese art but in his writing remained at best disdainful at Meiji Japan’s efforts to modernise, Japan’s kaikoku having led to an “unreasonable contempt for their own old civilisation, which had been the nation’s pride and joy”.167 Madsen’s disdain is also aimed in part at modern Japanese artists—in his eyes—grasping to achieve the art of their nation’s own antiquity, or instead forsaking Japanese artistic heritage and painting in the Western fashion. I would argue that Larsson similarly imagines Japan through its historical image rather than Japanese modernity, alluding in his letter to Japan’s “history of bravery”—which in all likelihood refers to the samurai, then widely seen not only by the West as a symbol for “old Japan”, but similarly used by the Meiji government in constructing a national identity.168

This static imagined Japan speaks in the Nordic japonists of a near fetish for what they perceive to be Japan’s former glory, which returns us to the excerpt from Said’s Orientalism, where he identifies in Orientalists the desire “to restore a region from its present barbarism to its former classical greatness”.169 The artists’ obsession with classical Japan—and the symbols which represent it— is, of course, applicable here as well. Larsson, for example, compares Japanese culture to Greek civilisation,170 and Madsen calls the Japanese artistic tradition “in technical refinement the most consummate that human hands have ever created”.171 Given that Albert Edelfelt primarily mentions Japan in the context of collecting imported goods and hardly makes any statements about Japan as a whole, it is difficult to determine whether this sentiment was shared by Edelfelt; it is however precisely Edelfelt’s fixation on collecting Japanese historical goods that, I argue, suggests a similar obsession with Japan’s “classical greatness”.

So far, we have identified two features of Orientalism in the case studies presented in this dissertation: first, a tendency to make generalisations and essentialising statements about the Other, and secondly, the tendency to imagine the Other as a static entity, whose defining traits are a reflection of an unchanging, essentialised, often historical version of itself. The imagination of

167 Madsen (1885). p. 10. 168 Narroway, L. (2008). Symbols of state ideology: the samurai in modern Japan. New Voices, 2(4), p. 64. 169 Said (1979). p. 86. 170 Larsson (1885). p. 169. 171 Madsen (1885). p. 5.

Japan as being unsullied by modernity also harkens back to the idea of the bon sauvage, a concept which has already been brought up earlier in this dissertation. The noble savage, though most thoroughly defined in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), far predates Rousseau—the idea can be found, for example, in Roman historical accounts of the Germanic tribes, most notably in Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico—but saw a revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, coinciding with early Orientalism.172 The idea of the noble savage alludes to the man of nature, the third feature of Orientalist thought I will discuss here. The man of nature paints the image of an Other who embodies an innate simplicity and connection with nature, and who has not been tainted by society or modern civilisation. This view, as mentioned, has historically been common when imagining the Other, and is in our case studies corroborated by Madsen’s perception of the Japanese connection with nature. The Japanese artistic tradition of depicting elements from nature and the Japanese’ closeness to nature, as has been mentioned earlier, is emphasised several times by Madsen throughout his work, writing that for the Japanese, “art is the ultimate beauty ideal”,173 and that the Japanese have historically “observed nature with love and care”.174 Of the Nordic japonists discussed in this dissertation, Madsen is the only one to mention nature in his writing, particularly to the extent that he does—yet, the emphasis Madsen puts on nature in the Japanese mindset and in Japanese art is nevertheless significant, as it should be kept in mind that Madsen’s work was quite influential in later Danish—and Nordic—japonisme.

Of course, it should be noted that by themselves, the statements made by Madsen on the Japanese as being inherently closer to nature than the West cannot be said to paint the Japanese as savages. Yet, it is important to consider these statements in the wider context of Karl Madsen’s extensive work; from other excerpts previously brought to the fore, it is clear that Madsen has a clear idea of the Japanese people as being inferior, even verbatim referring to Western culture as superior vis- à-vis that of Japan.175 Hence, while Madsen’s statements on the Japanese connection to nature are not sufficient to draw a conclusion, when placed in the context of Madsen’s wider view of Japanese culture in relation to the West we are given a clearer indication that Madsen viewed the Japanese—at least to a degree—as savages. Using the terminology developed by Lois Tyson, professor of English at Grand Valley State University, the imagined Japanese then fall under the archetype of the “exotic savage”; Tyson argues that in cultural othering, the imagined savage is

172 Bowler, K. A. (2006). The Noble Savage from Amerindian to Arab: Continuities in French Perceptions of the Other. p. 1. 173 Madsen (1885)., p. 29. 174 Ibid., p. 59. 175 Ibid., p. 10.

subject to a dichotomy—either the savage is evil and inferior, or he is exotic, possessing a “primitive beauty or nobility born of a closeness to nature”.176 Tyson also argues that, regardless of which form the savage takes on in the Orientalist imagination, he is nevertheless still Other and, as such, not fully human.177

Finally, following Tyson’s argument, I would like to elaborate on the idea of the Other as “not fully human”, and dehumanisation as a feature of Orientalism—however, some nuance should be made here. While I argue for the views of artists within the late nineteenth-century japonisme movement as being Orientalist, the topic of dehumanisation is a sensitive one. Although we recognise in the case studies statements which carry an undertone of dehumanisation, the intent is not to imply that dehumanisation occurred in the japonisme movement to the same extent that different “Others” have been subjected to and are subjected to even in modern times, as is the case for the Arab world, for example.178 To clarify, a distinction should also be made, I would argue, between on one hand the active dehumanisation of the Other with the intention of furthering a relation between the Self and the Other as being one of superiority and inferiority, and on the other hand dehumanisation resulting from previously defined features of Othering which have resulted in an imagination of the Other as an essentialised, static group, and ultimately an inability on the Orientalist’s part to view the Other as fully human.179 In this case, I argue that the dehumanisation I speak of in the case of the Nordic japonists is of the latter persuasion. That is, the dehumanising statements made in this dissertation’s case studies are quite subtle in nature, and for the most part do not appear to have been written with the explicit intent of depriving the Japanese of positive human traits, as is the commonly accepted definition of dehumanisation.180 One example I would like to bring to the fore is in the letter Albert Edelfelt wrote to his mother on his visit to Konni Zilliacus’ house in Suresnes, noting how “their Japanese elderly nanny looked so much like a Japanese doll that Juhani found it entirely frightful when she spoke and laughed.”181 Innocent though the remark may be, it is striking that Edelfelt chooses to compare the Japanese woman in front of him and his friend to a doll—the men in their minds reducing her to an ornament, in essence dehumanising her to such an extent that to see the woman laugh and speak became frightful. Dehumanising speech can be found in

176 Tyson, L. (2014). Critical theory today: A user-friendly guide. p. 420. 177 Ibid. 178 Said (1979). p. 27. 179 Ibid., p. 108. 180 Pearsall, J. (2001). The Concise Oxford Dictionary. p. 377. 181 Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland r.f. (2014). Retrieved from http://edelfelt.sls.fi/brev/35833/paris-11- maj-1897/#22037

the other case studies, as well; Larsson reducing the Japanese to a single trait by referring to them as “the almond-eyed nation” can be seen, for example, as dehumanisation.

Ultimately, we can easily argue that the mere act of cultural othering is where the process of dehumanisation begins—we can interpret the relation between the two as either being overlapping phenomena, or as a causal one where cultural othering facilitates the process of dehumanisation. Regardless, by claiming authority over a culture’s narrative and creating an imagined version of Japan which is essentialised and ultimately reduced to an ethnic typology, Orientalism makes of the Other an object, which easily proceeds towards dehumanisation and racism, 182 as this process of Othering detaches the observer from the humanity of the Other. As Said writes, “in having to take up a position of irreducible opposition to a region of the world it considered alien to its own, Orientalism failed to identify with human experience, failed also to see it as a human experience.” 183

Let us summarise what we have discussed in this final chapter. The main argument that this chapter intended to make, is that the notion that the nineteenth-century japonisme movement existed in a vacuum as a phenomenon driven solely by artistic interest in the newly-opened Japan—such as suggested by Widar Halén184—is dismissive of the context in which the movement emerged. That is, japonisme came into being as the result, or perhaps even as a symptom of an underlying, far broader phenomenon prevalent in contemporary Europe—namely Western imperialism. Succeeding its previous infatuations with the Arab world and China, the West found in Japan an Other, a narrative which it could claim authority over, and an opportunity to define itself through the process of cultural othering. The Nordic countries, as well, had an incentive to participate in this othering, given the Nordic countries’ struggle for a national identity. For the Nordics, and particularly for Norway, this cultural othering provided a way for the Nordic region to define itself and claim its position on the international stage—at once by defining itself in opposition to the Other, in relation to the Other, and by using the Other to align itself with the central European countries. The Nordics’ participation in the process of cultural othering was corroborated by an analysis of the previously presented case studies, which were approached with theories of Orientalism in mind—particularly the work of Edward Said. This chapter then identified several features of Orientalism in the aforementioned case studies. Examples hereof are a tendency to generalise and essentialise; the construction of an image of the Other as historical, a-historical, and unchanging; and the idea of

182 Said (1979). p. 97. 183 Ibid., p. 328. 184 Borggreen (2016). p. 172.

the Other as savage, and not fully human. Overall, quite contrary to the argument that japonisme could not be perceived as Orientalism, we have established that the japonisme movement of the late nineteenth century is a clear manifestation of Orientalism—which allows us to move on to the final conclusion of this dissertation.

CONCLUSION

The most ambitious and most complete project on japonisme in Northern Europe thusfar, the 2016 exhibition Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875-1918 and the research surrounding it proved the existence of Nordic japonisme as a totality, and provided much in the way of future research on the topic. Inspired by, and in an effort to contribute to this research, the case study presented in this thesis was conducted in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the emergence of the japonisme movement both in general, as well as in the case of Nordic artists specifically. The case study brought to the fore excerpts from a number of primary sources written by significant artists within the japonisme movement—Carl Larsson, Albert Edelfelt, and Karl Madsen—in an effort to identify common patterns in japonistic thought, and thus better understand the emergence of japonisme in its historical, as well as socio-cultural, context. We hence keep in mind the findings presented throughout this thesis to now provide an answer to the main research question: what do the writings of different Nordic japonists of the late nineteenth century tell us about the nature of japonisme as an socio-cultural phenomenon?

First, we have established throughout this dissertation that the historical context in which we situate our case studies provided the ideal environment for the emergence of a movement like japonisme. On one hand, Japan and its artistic tradition both underwent an immense evolution during the two centuries prior to the opening of Japanese borders to trade with the West. Under the Tokugawa administration, Japan saw a long era of peace after nearly a century of domestic political unrest, the stability of peace bringing with it the opportunity for the newly unified country to modernise— political reforms and subsequent urbanisation led to the emergence of a merchant class; this, in turn, led to the development of a rich urban culture, which flourished into some of Japan’s most iconic artistic heritage. All of this occurred, no less, against the backdrop of a Japan that had mostly secluded itself from the West—fearing growing influence from Europe, the Tokugawa administration had severely limited foreign trade in the early seventeenth century. For the Japanese arts, this translated into two centuries of development and evolution with minimal outside influence. This did not only allow for the emergence of new art forms, but equally a further Japanification of traditional Chinese art forms, bringing about an artistic tradition which has been described as “purely Japanese”. When the country’s era of seclusion finally came to an end and the opening of the country’s borders was unilaterally effected by the fleet of Commodore Perry, Japanese art and other imported goods were introduced to the West on a massive scale. Europe, then in the throes of imperialism and colonialism, found in the newly opened Japan an Other, a mystical place that

could be imagined through the imported goods which had found their way to the West. In this convergence of circumstances, we situate the emergence of the artistic japonisme movement.

Given the historical context of the emergence of the japonisme movement, the decision was then made to approach the primary sources in this dissertation from the theoretical framework of Orientalism. That is, when placing the case studies here presented pertaining to the Nordic iteration of japonisme in the historical context of post-kaikoku Japan as well as late nineteenth-century Europe, research illustrates that the late nineteenth-century japonisme movement emerged against the background of a much broader set of ideas than a simple admiration for Japanese art. Concepts such as imperialism and colonialism, both prevalent in Europe at the time japonisme came into being, should thus be kept in mind when researching the movement—they, along with the concept of Othering, are fundamental in Said’s Orientalism, and as such this was a most appropriate framework from which to approach the socio-cultural dimension of Nordic japonisme. With this context in mind, the case studies presented in this thesis—while in no way exhaustive—have shed light on the japonisme movement as being Orientalist in nature. In the letters and writings of Nordic artists of the late nineteenth century, this thesis has identified several features of Orientalist thought—in the mind of the japonist, the imagined Japan is a realm of generalisations, essentialisations, and altogether traits which reduce Japan to an ethnic typology, an “Other”. In japonisme, Japan becomes the artist’s playground, free to be imagined and reimagined, free to be known, even owned—yet no matter what, the essence of the japonist’s view of Japan is that it is, always, Other. In the Nordic context, the Othering of Japan in the late nineteenth century takes on a particularly complex form. As we have previously affirmed, Japan’s status as an Other is, for Nordic japonisme, three-dimensional; it is at once an Other in the classic manner as identified by Edward Said, an opposite from which the West may set off its own identity; it is also a “Similar”, which the Nordics can relate to in their shared struggle for a national identity; and finally, it is a way for the Nordic countries to affirm their own position within Europe by attempting to align themselves with the centre of Europe, and pulling themselves away from the periphery.

We can thus conclude, finally, that the artistic japonisme movement did not exist in a vacuum as being driven purely by artistic interest, a frivolous world of japonaiseries, but instead developed against the backdrop of a much broader structure of Western supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, and ultimately Orientalism. In this sense, we may view japonisme not as merely a movement, but rather as a symptom, if you will, of the dominant mode of thinking in the time period in which it occurred. This is true for the Nordic countries, the region this thesis focused on—but equally so for

japonisme elsewhere in the West. As such, while the research presented in this dissertation hopes in the first place to add to the existing research on Nordic japonisme, the arguments brought to the fore may also be applied to japonisme and Orientalism in a broader sense. All in all, japonisme research is far from exhausted, and rather than providing a conclusive statement on the relation between japonisme and Orientalism, this thesis’ findings intend foremost to offer room for further discussion, as well as a basis for further exploration of japonisme as an Orientalist phenomenon.

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