Transnational Japanisms: Art, Craft, Design

This two-day conference will address the future of the study of art, craft and design in a transnational perspective. This event is held to honour the memory of Toshio Watanabe (1945-2025), late Emeritus Professor of Japanese Arts and Heritage at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, Founding Director of the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) at University of the Arts London, and former President of the Japan Art History Forum.

The conference will be held across two venues – Friday 15 May at the Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS and Saturday 16 May at Chelsea College of Arts, UAL.

The conference will be livestreamed via Zoom across two days. All registrants will be given exclusive access to the Conference Attendee area on Monday 11 May, which includes the full programme, poster contributions and pre-recorded papers which can be viewed online. If you are interested in accessing any of this content, please sign up via the link below.
Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m6NijSzcTSWLnPET9gXfTg

PROGRAMME

FRIDAY 15 MAY

Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS

09:15 DOORS OPEN

09:45 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Welcome to the conference
Simon KANER (Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures)

Introduction from the Embassy
Minister Shuji MAEDA (Embassy of Japan in the UK)

10:00 KEYNOTE

Adaptation, Appropriation, and the Afterlives of Japonisme
Noriko MURAI (Sophia University)

Discussant: Bert WINTHER-TAMAKI (University of California, Irvine)

11:00 BREAK

11:15 TRANSNATIONAL JAPANESE ART

Curatorial Legacies: "Japan and Britain: An Aesthetic Dialogue 1850–1930,” and Ishibashi Kazunori's First Retrospective
Michiko HAYASHI (University of Tsukuba)

Japanism by a Sansei Japanese American artist: Roger Shimomura’s Ukiyo-e Appropriation
Hiroko IKEGAMI (University of Osaka)

The Politics of the Profile: Transnational Ideals and the Reappropriation of Japonisme
Kaoru KOJIMA (Jissen Women’s University)

12:45 LUNCH

A selection of poster presentations will be available to view during lunch

14:00 MINGEI, EXHIBITIONS AND GARDENS

Transnational Japanisms in Japanese Tea Rooms in Rural and Urban America, c. 1880 to 1940
Robert HELLYER (Wake Forest University)

Thoroughly Modern Mingei
Róisín INGLESBY (William Morris Gallery)

Green Legacies of WWII Japan
Amanda KENNELL (University of Notre Dame)

histories in objects / histories beyond japan
Angus LOCKYER (Rhode Island School of Design)

Seeing Rokuon-ji Through Its Garden
Isidora MARKOVIĆ (University of Belgrade)

Craft, Labour, and Religion: Yanagi Sōetsu and William Morris in Transnational Perspective
Satoru SHIMANUKI (Meiji University)

A Japanese Garden at the 1961 Turin International Exhibition: Some reflections on japonisme in Italy and beyond circa 1960
Stefano TURINA (University of Torino)

15:30 BREAK

15:45 JAPANESE ART BEYOND THE MAINLAND

Transpacific Imagination: The Migratory Nihonga of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani
Maki KANEKO (University of Kansas)

Beyond Japan’s Borders: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life
Nozomi NAOI (National University of Singapore)

Toshio Watanabe and Decolonization: Japan, Okinawa and Art History
Ayelet ZOHAR (Tel Aviv University)

17:00 CLOSING REMARKS

17:30 CONFERENCE RECEPTION

Please join us for refreshments in the Paul Webley Wing, SOAS

SATURDAY 16 MAY

Chelsea College of Arts, UAL

09:15 DOORS OPEN

09:45 JAPONISME AND WORLDING THE NATION(S) (I)

Artists in Paris in transnational context 1890s-1940s, with reference to recent Japonisme and Néo-japonisme studies
Shigemi INAGA (International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Nichibunken)

From Japonisme to Heritage: Hokusai and National Art in Poland
Ewa MACHOTKA (University of Zurich)

From Exhibition to Canon: Japonisme and Japan’s National Art Narrative, 1893–1910
Mirjam DÉNES (Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts)

Transnational Japanism in the Work of Ogawa Kazumasa
Karen FRASER (University of San Francisco)

11:15 BREAK

11:30 JAPONISME AND WORLDING THE NATION(S) (II)

Reframing Japonisme through Technique and Transnational Networks: The Reception of Ukiyo-e Woodblock Printmaking and Edmund Dulac’s Colour Printing
Miya ITABASHI (Hosei University)

The Polish dress project by Feliks Jasieński as an embodiment of idea of Japonisme in practice
Aleksandra GÖRLICH (Polish Institute of World Art Studies)

Richard Bergh’s Nordic Summer Evening: A Case Study of Swedish National Art
Katarina WADSTEIN MACLEOD (Stockholm University)

Domestic Subjects, Foreign Approach: Hybrid Japoniste constructs in Polish art of the first half of the 20th century
Piotr SPLAWSKI (Independent scholar)

13:00 LUNCH

A selection of poster presentations will be available to view during lunch

14:15 COLLECTING AND EXHIBITING JAPANESE ART

Pattern Experiments. The Tokyo School of Fine Arts and the Search for the Modern Design during the Taishō Period
Ruri KAWANAMI (Freie Universität Berlin)

Things are closer than they appear: Japanism in Polish art as seen through the Feliks Jasieński collection
Agnieszka KLUCZEWSKA-WÓJCIK (Polish Institute of World Art Studies)

My Journey, Dialogue with UK's Japanese Collections
Yoshi MIKI (National Museum of Japanese History)

Japanese and East Asian inspiration and its role in the transformation of the Czech ceramics, glass and jewellery industry between 1840 and 1940
Filip SUCHOMEL (Museum of Fine Arts, Liberec)

15:15 BREAK

15:30 TRAIN21: TRANSNATIONAL REVISIONS

A panel discussion between members of the TrAIN Research Centre (Transnational Art, Identity & Nation), UAL:

Michael ASBURY (Deputy Director, TrAIN); Paul GOODWIN (Director, TrAIN); Yuko KIKUCHI (TrAIN Associate Fellow); Pratap RUGHANI (London College of Communication (LCC), UAL); Carol TULLOCH (Chelsea, Camberwell, Wimbledon Colleges of Art (CCW), UAL)

17:00 CLOSING KEYNOTE

Title to be confirmed
Ming TIAMPO (Carleton University)

18:00 EVENT CLOSE

Informal drinks at The Morpeth Arms, 58 Millbank, London SW1P 4RW

POSTERS

FRIDAY 15 MAY

Transnational fabric: Contemporary Japanese ‘homespun' practice in Iwate Prefecture
Anika SHAIKH (University of Brighton)

Carving Connections: Nōmin Bijutsu and the Case for Transnational Crafts
Maggie BRYAN (University of Oxford)

From Brush to Lens: Pictorialism and the Transnational Continuity of East Asian Aesthetics
Feiyi WEN (British Library)

(Dis)Locating Images of Meiji Japan by British Artist-Travellers, c.1880-1910
Chenxiao JIN (University of St Andrews)

Modernist Photography and Jewish Refugees in Wartime Japan
Niamh HANRAHAN (University of Manchester)

Bamboo baskets as terrestrial art
Daniel NILES (Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, National Institutes for the Humanities)

The Nitobe Garden in Vancouver as a Transnational Japanese Garden
Richard PEARSON (University of British Columbia Vancouver)

SATURDAY 16 MAY

Iterations of a Japanese Bridge: A Record of Art, Engineering and Disaster
Zoe SHIPLEY (Durham University)

From Sacred Relic to Visual Motif: Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, Atsuta Shrine and Transnational Reinterpretations of Japanese Myth
Irina KARPUKOVA (Independent researcher)

Mokuhanga Beyond Borders: Transnational Aspects of Japanese Woodblock Printing
Monika HINKEL (SOAS & Sainsbury Institute)

“Seeing Through Emptiness: Ma as an Invitational Space in Japanese Ink Painting” (A Practice-Based Approach to Transnational Aesthetics)
Junko HOSOMI (Junshin DOJO – Japanese Cultural Practice & Research)

Prism of the Real: Transnational nature of Japanese art through three cases
Isabella TAM (M+ Museum, Hong Kong)

Animating the Interval: Puppetry and Karakuri as Relational Technics
Charlotte MCGOWAN-GRIFFIN (Central Saint Martins, UAL)

Book Presentation: Gustav Klimt and Japanese Art in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Svitlana SHIELLS (Independent Scholar)

VIDEOS

A selection of pre-recorded papers are available to view for conference attendees on a password protected page on our website: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/transnational-japanisms-art-craft-design

The Adaptation of the Ivy League Style in Japan: From Postwar Fashion to Digital Subcultures
Daria BARBASHINA (Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU))

Vienna Shashin? Baron Raimund von Stillfried’s Missing Japan Portfolio
Sebastian DOBSON (Independent scholar)

Humor and Print Culture in Meiji Japan: Continuity and Transformation
Agnieszka GACH (National Museum in Kraków)

A Study on the Reception of the Rinpa School in British Avant-Garde Art
Mariko KANAME (Atomi University) Shigeru MAEDA (Kyoto Seika University)

Josiah Conder and the Japanese “Landscape” Gardening
Ryosuke KONDO (Tokyo University of the Arts)

Kiln-Building as Translation: Japanese Wood-Firing and Transnational Japanism in La Borne
Yuko NAKAMURA (Kyoto University)

Transcultural exchange between Japan and South Asia: Studying the Japanese Porcelain collection of Salar Jung Museum, India
Rituparna ROY (Independent Researcher)

Book Presentation: Gustav Klimt and Japanese Art in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Svitlana SHIELLS (Independent Scholar)

Crossing Boundaries, Reimagining Identities: Hirayama Ikuo’s Silk Road and Its Circulation
Paride STORTINI (Ghent University)

‘Shakuhachi’ Upside Down: Gesture and the Visual Construction of Masculinity in Edo-Period Ukiyo-e
Wei SUN (University of Heidelberg / Ca’Foscari University of Venice)

https://www.sainsbury-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Transnational-Japanisms-Schedule-1.pdf