January–December 2020

January • February • March • April • June • July • August • September • October • November • December

The following is an archive of past Japanese Art Society of America lectures and special events. Go to JASA-Sponsored Events for our most current schedule.

January

Wednesday, January 15, 6 p.m.

The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Ave., between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, NY

Sacred Journeys and Institutional Rivalries in the Fuji Sankei Mandara

Talia Andrei, Assistant Professor or Art History and East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University, speaks on sankei mandara (pilgrimage mandalas), which are large-scale, boldly colored paintings that depict sacred places and the roads leading to them.

The genre appeared in late-medieval Japan and served as marketing material for temples and shrines in need of financial support after a century of civil wars left the imperial court and the shogunate no longer able to support them. Itinerant monks and nuns used the paintings in narrative recitation performances to encourage pilgrimage and donations to the represented site. These paintings were neither objective travel guides and roadmaps, nor static, generic representations of sacred sites. Instead, they were highly constructed, manipulated images, imbued with a cosmic, numinous view of the landscape. They were also very earthbound—charged with partisan views of the represented site, articulating historically specific institutional claims and perspectives. Through a close study of two versions of the Fuji sankei mandara, this talk will examine how these seemingly incongruent features exist and intertwine in sankei mandara and by what art and artifice painters have achieved these effects.

Professor Andrei is a specialist in medieval and early modern Japanese painting. Her dissertation from Columbia University focused on sankei mandara. She is currently developing a book on this subject. Her publications include “Sankei Mandara: Layered Maps to Sacred Places,” which appeared in a special edition of Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review.

Professor Andrei’s lecture is posted online.

February

Sunday, February 9, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

Pasadena Convention Center
300 E. Green St.
Pasadena, CA

Prints and Illustrated Books in Pasadena

At two arts fairs in Pasadena, JASA members had a special opportunity to view and talk about Japanese prints and Japanese illustrated books (ehon), led by Kendall Brown, professor of Asian Art History at California State University–Long Beach.

At the California International Antiquarian Book Fair in the Pasadena Convention Center, we visited the booths of two renowned Tokyo book dealers, Ohya Shobo and Kagerou Bunko, to view and discuss several interesting examples of top-notch ehon that the dealers have brought from Japan. After that, we visited the Los Angeles Fine Print Fair at the nearby Pasadena Sheraton Hotel, stopping by the booths of Egenolf Gallery and The Tolman Collection for a review and discussion of outstanding examples of ukiyo-e, shin hanga, and modern and contemporary prints.

Wednesday, February 26, 6 p.m.

The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Ave., between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, NY

The Art of Ghibli: Miyazaki, Takahata and the Imagery of Fantasy

Susan Napier, Goldthwaite Professor of Rhetoric at Tufts University, discusses Studio Ghibli and making real the unreal. For more than three decades the Studio Ghibli has created unprecedentedly beautiful and believable fantasy worlds, from the spirit haunted forest of My Neighbor Totoro in the 1980s to The Tale of Princess Kaguya’s achingly beautiful vision of the Japan of a 1000 years ago. This talk explores some of the most important visual expressions of fantasy in the Ghibli oeuvre and also the approaches that its two major directors, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata have taken in the creation of fantastic imagery.

Professor Napier is the author of five books including Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Works of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo, The Fantastic in Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity and Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Her exploration of the impact of Japanese culture on the West, From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West, was named by Choice as one of the “Outstanding Academic Books of 2008”. Her current research interests include power and policy issues, the role of fantasy and trauma in new media, and the exploration of animation as a medium. Most recently, she published Miyazaki World: A Life in Art, about the famous Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, which came out from Yale University Press in 2018.

March

THE ANNUAL JASA MEETING and lecture HAS BEEN cancelled.

Japan Society Auditorium
333 East 47th St.
New York, NY

**LECTURE on Japanese Textiles: New Perspectives and JASA ANNUAL MEETING**

In conjunction with the Japan Society’s exhibition Sustainable Aesthetics: Boro Textiles, JASA hosts a panel discussion on Japanese textiles. Moderator and discussant Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be joined by two panelists, Asiatica co-founder Elizabeth Wilson and author and dealer Thomas Murray. The exhibition will be on display until June 14. The annual meeting of the Japanese Art Society of America will follow the lecture.

April

This event has been cancelled.

Friday, April 24, 5 p.m.

Asia Society
725 Park Ave.
New York, NY

The Art of Impermanence: Japanese Works from the John C. Weber Collection and Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection

Dr. Adriana Proser, John H. Foster Senior Curator for Traditional Asian Art, leads a JASA tour at Asia Society’s new exhibition, “The Art of Impermanence,” which features Japanese works from these collections, with Dr. John C. Weber accompanying the tour. Through masterpieces of calligraphy, painting, sculpture, ceramics, lacquers, and textiles drawn from two of America’s greatest Japanese art collections, this exhibition examines Japan’s unique and nuanced references to transience. Objects span from the Jōmon period to the 20th century.

Over the last 15 years, Dr. Proser, the curator for the current exhibition, has organized and co-organized more than 40 exhibitions featuring diverse works from all over Asia. Prior to joining Asia Society Museum, Proser was Assistant Curator of East Asian Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she worked on many exhibitions, including “The Arts of Hon’ami Koetsu, Japanese Renaissance Master.” Dr. Proser has served as Asia Society’s in-house curator for the exhibitions “Gilded Splendor: Treasures of China’s Liao Empire” and “Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680–1860.” Her publications include Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art (Asia Society Museum and Yale University Press, 2010), for which she served as editor and contributor. She holds a Ph.D. in Chinese art and archaeology from Columbia University.

June

Sunday, June 7, 5 p.m. (EST)

JASA/Japan Society Webinar: Japanese Textiles: A New Perspective

This panel discussion, initially scheduled for JASA’s annual meeting during Asia Week NY on March 15, was rescheduled as a ZoomWebinar. After welcoming remarks by Yukie Kamiya, Director of the Japan Society Gallery and Curator of their Spring 2020 exhibition, Boro Textiles: Sustainable Aesthetics (see virtual tour listing below), and introductory remarks by JASA President Wilson Grabill, the presentation will begin with a historic perspective by Dr. Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator of Japanese Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, followed by Thomas Murray and Elizabeth Fulder Wilson’s presentations from their perspectives.

Webinar posted: View the YouTube recording of Dr. Kamiya‘s lecture Japanese Textiles: A New Perspective.

July

Tuesday, July 28, 6 p.m. EDT

Live Zoom Webinar: Hokusai: Mad About Painting

In our first Live Zoom Webinar, we invited Dr. Frank Feltens, Japan Foundation Assistant Curator of Japanese Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, to introduce the current exhibition Hokusai: Mad About Painting, featuring the renowned works by Hokusai assembled by one of America’s greatest collectors of Asian art, Charles Lang Freer. This exhibition presents a new focus on Hokusai’s work, one based on the collecting criteria of Mr. Freer, and includes paintings, e-hon, preparatory drawings and other ephemera in the collection.

JASA’s new Zoom Tech Host for this and future webinars, Helen Goldenberg, will assist in this presentation. If any of you require information about how to log onto Zoom, we will be happy to help you, but please be reassured that this presentation will be recorded and available later on our website www.japaneseartsoc.org and our YouTube channel.

Webinar posted: View the July 28 JASA-organized Zoom presentation of an exhibition Hokusai: Mad About Painting, with Dr. Feltens. Also view a PDF of Dr. Feltens’ article in Arts of Asia on the exhibition.

August

Wednesday, August 26, 5 p.m. EDT

Stranger in the Shogun’s City

In JASA’s August Zoom session, Dr. Amy Stanley, Professor of Japanese History at Northwestern University, speak sabout her exciting new book, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (Scribner, 2020). This vivid, deeply researched work of history explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo, now known as Tokyo. The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces—and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval—she ran away to make a life for herself in Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak, just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate.

Webinar posted: View the YouTube recording of Dr. Stanley’s lecture Stranger in the Shogun’s City.

September

Tuesday, September 22, 5 p.m. EDT

Kami in Cleveland: Creating the Exhibition Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art

Our September Zoom session presents a special lecture by Dr. Sinéad Vilbar, Curator of Japanese Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Dr. Vilbar curated the exhibition Shinto: Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) April to June 2019. The project officially concluded with a visit of gratitude to Japan by CMA’s director, William Griswold, in late August of 2019. One year on, Vilbar reflects on the process of generating the exhibition and its catalogue with a wide network of contributors, and discusses 10 works of art featured in the exhibition. Dr. Vilbar holds an MA and a PhD from Princeton, a BA from Yale, and studied at Tōhoku University in Sendai, Japan. Recent publications include Shinto: Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art (2019) and “A Celestial Landing: The Seven Stars and the Nine Celestials Descending at Kasuga” in Arts of Asia (2018).

Webinar posted: View Dr. Sinéad Vilbar’s lecture Kami in Cleveland: Creating the Exhibition Discovering the Divine in Japanese Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

October

Thursday, October 22, 5 p.m. EDT

Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan

JASA’s 50th anniversary in 2023 will be celebrated with a special exhibition, and catalog, Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan, an important reevaluation of a seminal era of turmoil, transformation and creativity in Japan spanning the mid-19th to early-20th centuries. The Exhibition Committee, chaired by JASA Vice President Dr. Emily Sano, has appointed two co-curators, Dr. Chelsea Foxwell, Associate Professor of Japanese art history at the University of Chicago, and Dr. Bradley M. Bailey, Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Curator of Asian art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. On our Zoom Webinar, Dr. Sano and our exhibition co-curators discuss the upcoming exhibition content and share a PowerPoint presentation.

November

Thursday, November 19, 5 p.m. EDT

Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956–1965: Japan’s Women Printmakers

Our November live Zoom webinar presented a special lecture on Japan’s women printmakers by Dr. Jeannie Kenmotsu, the Japan Foundation Associate Curator of Japanese Art and Interim Head of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum.

The 1950s and ’60s in Japan saw printmaking thrive as an art form, propelled by a foreign audience’s enthusiasm for Sōsaku Hanga (Creative Prints). But few women were featured in exhibitions, publications or the art societies that provided the critical infrastructure for professionals. Within this context emerged Japan’s first printmaking society for women artists, the Joryū Hanga Kyōkai—the Women’s Print Association.

This exhibition is the first to introduce the work of this society as a collective. It focuses on the work of five of the nine original members: Iwami Reika (1927–2020), Kobayashi Donge (b. 1926), Minami Keiko (1911–2004), Uchima Toshiko (1918–2000) and Yoshida Chizuko (1924–2017), along with several members who joined in later years. This talk will explore the vibrant work of these artists and their pioneering contributions to modern printmaking history, and consider why this important collective has never received the critical attention it deserves. For more details, click on this link to the exhibition webpage: Portland Art Museum Joryū Hanga Kyōkai (with further links to artworks in the show from the permanent collection—about 50 percent of the exhibition).

Webinar posted: View Dr. Kenmotsu’s lecture Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956–1965: Japan’s Women Printmakers.

December

Wednesday, December 16, 5 p.m. EDT

Quelling Demons and Disease in Japanese Art

For our final program of 2020, Dr. John T. Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, talk on Quelling Demons and Disease in Japanese Art. A former JASA Board Member, Dr. Carpenter has chosen, for this occasion in this unusual year, to share his recent scholarly exploration of a most timely subject!

Throughout Japanese history, records show that epidemics of smallpox and other forms of disease brought distress, suffering and death on a frighteningly regular basis. The pestilence associated with muggy summer weather in Kyoto led to the creation of the Gion Festival, which is said to have originated during an epidemic in ancient times as part of a purification ritual to appease the gods, and whose floats and processions of costumed performers were captured in colorful genre paintings. As with all cultures, Japanese have turned to doctors, spiritual healers of all variety, and even to quacks for miracle cures. Moreover, people have prayed to religious deities—whether Yakushi Nyorai (Medicine Master Buddha), or the Shinto god Gozu Tennō —and a complex iconography represented in sculptural and pictorial representations by master artists evolved. Noted painters often took on commissions to create works that were believed to have talismanic effect, especially of Shōki the Demon Queller (Zhong Kui in Chinese). Katsushika Hokusai’s Red Shōki in The Met’s collection, thought to have been created in response to an 1847 smallpox epidemic, is a prime example. This talk will treat these and other artistic manifestations of the talismanic potential of art and performance during a time of pandemic, with the hope that JASA members likewise can find solace during this anxious holiday season.

Because we cannot meet in person for our Annual JASA Holiday Party, we have commissioned mixologist Hilary Tolman to design the Demon Queller, a special cocktail in honor of the lecture subject, for you to enjoy at home. (For those who prefer a nonalcoholic libation, just omit the whiskey.)

Webinar posted: View Dr. Carpenter’s lecture Quelling Demons and Disease in Japanese Art.