Section 7 | History, Politics and International Relations | Session 4A, Panel
Chair and Discussant: Janet Hunter (London School of Economics)
Shibusawa Keizo (1896-1963), who served as the president of the Bank of Japan (1944) and the Minister of Finance (1945), was also a great patron of Japanese folklore studies. In the first half of the 20th century, he collected numerous cultural artifacts including some two thousand nishiki-e (woodblock prints), which convey to us vivid depictions of various aspects of Japan's rapid industrialization during the Meiji era (1868-1912). This collection is remarkable not only for the way it chronicles Japanese modernization but also for the prospective analyses it reveals regarding how Japan transformed itself into the first non-Western nation to attain the status of great power. Inspired by the spirit of this collection, the presentations of this panel utilize material culture to incorporate a grass-root perspective into the analysis of historical processes.
Kusumoto Wakako examines Shibusawa Keizo's role in establishing the study of common people in Japan and his unrealized project of building what he called "Jitsugyo-shi Museum." For Shibusawa, "jitsugyo" meant "actual practices" and, thus, the "Jitsugyo-shi Museum" meant the "Museum of the History of People's Real-Life Practices." Kusumoto explores one man's vision of capturing history from the vantage point of ordinary folks-quite novel at the time-and how such a vision can be analyzed and understood in the context of today's social sciences. The aim of her presentation is to show that individual lives that preceded us, including that of Shibusawa Keizo, continue to interact with us through the layers of memory.
Kayoko Fujita (Ôsaka University)
The aim of Fujita Kayoko's analyzes the effects and repercussions of an international exhibition that was recently put up. This exhibition, "Different Lands/Shared Experiences: The Emergence of Industrial Society in Japan and the United States," organized by the University of Missouri-St. Louis Mercantile Library (St, Louis, MO, USA) and the Shibusawa Memorial Museum (Tôkyô, Japan) strived to show that Japan and the US, though often regarded as polar opposites today, had shared similar experiences in the process of modernization and industrialization. Fujita's presentation attempts to interweave the voices of contemporary people with historical narratives: through interviews and questionnaires, she examines how those who were directly involved in the making of the exhibit viewed their experience and how those who came to see the exhibit responded to what was on display. By way of studying the case of this international exhibition, Fujita analyzes the ways in which people from diverse cultural backgrounds attempt to understand the co mmonality and the individuality of the modernization and industrialization process in the two nations under the same global dynamism of the age.
Kimura Masato (Bunkyô Gakuin University)
Examining the same exhibition as Fujita, Kimura analyzes the roles memorabilia play in deepening our understanding of a specific historical period. He approaches this question by identifying similarities and differences between Japanese and American recollections of their respective industrial modernization. The key issues he is addressing are the following: 1) What kind of recollections have people in Japan and the United States had about the birth of modern industrial society since the middle of the 19th century; and 2) How can we interpret modern industrialization as cultural phenomena? In answering these questions, Kimura finds his evidence in material culture that our predecessors have left us.