The United States and Cultural Heritage Protection in Japan (1945-1952)

8 ASIAN HISTORY Azimi in Japan (1945-1952) Protection Heritage Cultural and States United The Nassrine Azimi The United States and Cultural Heritage Protection in Japan (1945-1952) FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS The United States and Cultural Heritage Protection in Japan (1945-1952) FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Asian History The aim of the series is to offer a forum for writers of monographs and occasionally anthologies on Asian history. The Asian History series focuses on cultural and historical studies of politics and intellectual ideas and crosscuts the disciplines of history, political science, sociology and cultural studies. Series Editor Hans Hägerdal, Linnaeus University, Sweden Editorial Board Members Roger Greatrex, Lund University David Henley, Leiden University Angela Schottenhammer, University of Salzburg Deborah Sutton, Lancaster University FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS The United States and Cultural Heritage Protection in Japan (1945-1952) Nassrine Azimi Amsterdam University Press FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Cover illustration: George Leslie Stout, Langdon Warner and Japanese officials at Nishi Honganji temple in Kyoto, Japan, May 29, 1946 / unidentified photographer Source: George Leslie Stout Papers, 1855, 1897-1978; Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 132 5 e-isbn 978 90 4855 010 4 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463721325 nur 680 © Nassrine Azimi / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS They say the cup in Shōsō-in was brought to Japan from Persia by way of China and Korea. Inoue Yasushi, The Opaline Cup, Translation by James T. Araki A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive. Plaque at the entrance of the National Museum of Afghanistan These are the memories of mankind, and they are lost forever. Donny George Youkhanna, former Director-General of Iraq Museums FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS I dedicate this book to my late father H.P. Azimi and to my mother, A.J. Azimi, whose deep feelings for beauty have kept alive our cultural heritage, even in exile; and to scholars, craftsmen, conservators, museum curators and all who strive to protect cultural and historical treasures in times of war, violence and ignorance. FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Table of Contents Acknowledgements 11 Foreword 15 Preface 17 Introduction 21 Occupation is not war I Japan’s culture and cultural institutions before the war Bridges with the United States More than 36 views of Mount Fuji 29 Encounters with the West 35 Cultural fruits and frictions of the Meiji Restoration: The Iwakura Embassy 39 Indispensable friendships at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 44 Ernest Fenollosa – the Boston-Japan bridge 46 Okakura Tenshin – Teacher and Mentor 49 Culture, the foundational stone? 53 II Prerequisites for occupation Planning the U.S. post-war policies for Japan Building towards the Arts and Monuments Division 55 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s America and the New Dealers 56 The American Defense-Harvard Group 60 The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) 62 The American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (The Roberts Commission) 65 The Civil Affairs Training Schools (CATS) 76 III ‘Understanding Japan’ The specialists Scholarship influencing policy and the bureaucracy? 85 Joseph C. Grew – contested Dean of the ‘Japan Crowd’ 89 George B. Sansom – supreme diplomat and supreme scholar 94 Ruth Benedict – the enemy, too, is human 98 Scholars and the Pacific War 101 FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS IV The shape of an occupation A league unto its own 107 SCAP, its leadership and structure 110 Culture under the Occupation 119 V The arts and monuments division Culture within the Civil Information and Education (CIE) Section 127 George L. Stout – Father of MFAA, Founder of A&M 140 Langdon Warner – An idol returns 144 Sherman E. Lee – How it all worked 153 Expecting the worst, getting the best? 160 VI Conclusions Rethinking the 1950 Law for the Protection of Cultural Property 163 Quo Vadis? 167 Imaginable consequences 171 Illustrations 1 Okakura Tenshin, circa 1901 179 Courtesy of Tenshin Memorial Museum of Art, Ibaraki, Japan 2 Langdon Warner in Kara Khoto, Silk Road, circa 1923-1924 179 Courtesy of Special Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University 3 George Sansom, Shigeru Nambara and Hugh Borton at Columbia University 180 Courtesy of Weatherhead, East Asian Library 4 Bust of Langdon Warner in Izura, Ibaraki Prefecture 180 Photo by Nassrine Azimi 5 Howard Hollis and Sherman Lee at Residence of Masuda Takashi, Odawara, 1947 181 Courtesy of Cleveland Museum of Art Archives 6 Memorandum to Chief of Arts and Monuments, September 17, 1946, Draft reports on inspections of public collections 181 Sherman Emery and Ruth Ward Lee Personal Papers, Courtesy of Cleveland Museum of Art Archives 7 Laurence Sickman, circa 1944 182 Lawrence Sickman Papers, Mss 001, Courtesy of The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, Missouri FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS 8 Arts and Monuments Division organogram, date unknown 182 National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) 9 Memo of December 4, 1945, Arts and Monuments Personnel 183 National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) 10 Memo of January 25, 1946 from George L. Stout 184 National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) 11 Memo of March 1946 from George L. Stout 185 National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) References 187 Index 201 FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Acknowledgements This book took forever to write. Without the people listed below it would certainly have taken longer still. My gratitude first to Nunokawa Hiroshi, for his guidance on the original research as my committee chair at Hiroshima University. An inspiring historian of contemporary Japan and specialist of Hiroshima’s reconstruc- tion, Professor Nunokawa was for three years an unwavering source of ideas, encouragement and humor. Edgar Porter and Frederiek de Vlaming walked with me every step of the way – editing, commenting, encouraging, discouraging. I am indebted to them, as much for their intellectual solidarity as for their seemingly endless well of friendship, and especially patience. Fukui Haruhiro, Marcel Boisard, Miyagawa Shigeru and Carol Rinnert were pillars of support and sounding boards all along, at times so (welcom- ingly) tough – it has been my privilege, to know and learn from them. It was my good fortune to read early on the excellent 2003 article by Geoffrey R. Scott, of Pennsylvania State University, on the role of cultural experts at SCAP. I am indebted to him for unstinting, collegial support and for that most admirable quality – intellectual generosity. The friendship and help of Otsuka Bannai Masako, Okahata Michiko, Tashiro Akira, Nishikiori Akio, Roger Buckley, Kristin Newton, Faezeh Mahichi and Ann Sherif with everything, including painstaking translations of Japanese documents, has been precious. Laura Levy Merage has been my pillar for all things art over more than four decades. Kanameda Keiji and Kuwajima Hideki kept my research focussed and disciplined. Librarians and archivists hold a special place in my life: I thank in particular the outstanding Hayashi Rie and all the dedicated librarians at the beautiful International House of Japan in Tokyo, for constant, and constantly cheerful, assistance. Librarians at Hiroshima University’s Chuo Library, the Higashi Senda Library, the Hiroshima Shudo University, the Hiroshima International Conference Center and the Prefectural Museum of Art, as well as the able staff at the National Diet Library in Tokyo, all have my gratitude. A special thanks to the curators at the Yamamoto Yūzō Memorial Museum in Mitaka, and all those who have kept his evocative house in such good conditions. In the United States the knowledgable archivists at the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) at College Park, Maryland as well as at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (AAA) in Washington were FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS 12 THE UNITED STATES AND CULtuRAL HERITAGE PROTEctION IN JAPAn (1945-1952) invaluable, as were the wonderful archivists at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas. For their able assistance I thank Tomoko Bialock at UCLA’s East Asian Library, Tatsumi Yukako, curator at the Gordon W. Prange Collection of the University of Maryland and the staff of the Houghton Library at Harvard University. At the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), a special thanks to the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies and its staff, notably Deputy Director Noel Shimizu, for my appointment as visiting scholar from 2016 to 2018. It was a time of struggle with the endless book revisions – but this felt less of a hardship at the beautiful Music Library. Two lectures I gave at UCLA, too, greatly helped to clarify ideas and to receive inputs at a critical time. At Amsterdam University Press, my appreciation to Saskia Gieling, Mike Sanders and the rest of the team – for so ably and efficiently shepherding this project to completion.

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