Creative Collaboration: Aesthetic Salons in 18th-19th-century Japan

This long-term project requires a wide range of research skills in order to create an innovative approach to understanding the role of the arts in 18th-19th century Japanese society. This UK-Japan Connections Grant aims to establish a research team to investigate this topic.
Early modern Japan (1600-1868) was relatively isolated from the world. The Tokugawa government instituted and rigorously maintained a rigid hierarchical status system -- in descending order: courtier, samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant and pariah (including actors and sex workers) - aimed at keeping people in their designated class, vocation and locale. Life's path was all too clearly mapped out.
Despite government restraints, however, this period was tremendously innovative and productive for the arts, which the many collections around the world attest to. And despite government policy against interaction across status and regional boundaries, large numbers of men and women from different statuses and regions interacted in vibrant collective creativity, active in poetry, painting and music circles.
The hypothesis of this project is that art and literary salons (yûgei salons) played an essential role socially and culturally in 18th-19th century Japan in allowing and encouraging wide collaboration among men and women of different statuses and regions. In contrast to European salons of the same era, a distinctive aspect of these salons is that they were 'practice' spaces in the sense that participants not only appreciated arts, but also each person took a turn to contribute a poem, painting or performance. Further, individuals usually took an 'art name' (gô) when participating, which gave them an alternative identity distinct from their official 'status', allowing interaction among others within a relatively egalitarian space. For example, Kabuki actors, officially outcasts beneath the official status ranking system, were able to circulate in salons through their sobriquet, engaging with men and women of all statuses.
These salons supported a broad range of artistic production across format and styles. A key focus of the long term project is the important but relatively under-studied collection in the British Museum - works of the inter-connected Maruyama, Shijo, Gan (Kishi), Mori, Ukiyo-e, Literati (bunjinga) and related art lineages in the Kyoto-Osaka region in early modern Japan. This collection comprises well over 1000 paintings and woodblock-printed illustrated books and single sheet prints, both surimono (illustrated records of poetry gatherings; see Ref Image 1) and actor prints, produced in Kyoto and Osaka in the 18th-19th centuries. A long-term aim is to investigate this collection as a whole, a product of collaborative salon culture.
Poetry salons (haiku, kyôka, kanshi, waka) were the key venues for interaction: virtually everyone interested in the arts participated to some extent in these forums. Surimono were produced by salon groups for distribution; they recorded gatherings, including poems with the author's penname, and usually one signed image, as well the hometown of the poet, if they weren't from the site of the gathering. They also sometimes included information on the occasion. Therefore, the thousands of surimono that survive in museums and collections are key sources for understanding artistic networks.
The Connections grant will be used to set up a network to establish a means for photographing and recording the data from surimono for prosopographical analysis. In particular, we want to gain the collaboration of Prof Ryo Akama at the Arts Research Center of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, which is a digital humanities centre focussing on Japanese art.
This Connections grant will be used for workshops in Japan and the UK to present the plans of the long-term project and to discuss the most effective method to collect and analyse art works and data on salons and networks.

The prime beneficiaries of the long-term project will be:
1. Curators of art collections
2. Associations/promoters of the arts and art dealers in Europe and Japan
3. Audiences of the exhibitions and public events in London and Kyoto
4. Teachers and children who visit exhibition from London and SE England
The main means for disseminating the project to have impact will be:
1. Public exhibitions in London and Kyoto
2. Publications, including exhibition catalogues in English and Japanese editions
3. Public events around the exhibitions
4. We will engage the new London 'Japan House' and the Japan Foundation London Office from the outset of the project to explore how the research can be transmitted to the wider public and to the UK schools.
5. Databases of art works (British Museum and two private collections) and an online resource hosted by Arts Research Center, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto
How will the research benefit these groups?
This project addresses a key question about the role of art and literary salons in early modern Japan, examining how salon networks served both as an essential vehicle for socialization across gender, status and region, and as a venue to foster collaboration and artistic creativity. The investigation and documentation of the importance of 'practice of the arts' as a life-long activity and an essential element of social life will be of interest broadly to anyone who works in museums and art/literary associations, at local, national or international level. Why and how did so many men and women participate in artistic activities, and how did these salons support creativity?
A focus of the project is on the products of these salons - paintings, woodblock-printed illustrated books and surimono (illustrated records of poetry gatherings), and the planned exhibitions will be the primary means to communicate the benefits of the research to non-academic audiences.
The London Japan Foundation office has strong links with schools in the UK that teach Japanese. We will work with them to promote this theme of the arts as a means of socializing and learning. Further, we will work with the new Japan House in London to organize events related to the research project
The British Museum and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto will host exhibitions supported by the research project, that will have impact on the audiences who visit the exhibitions and attend the public events that will accompany the shows. Scholarly catalogues will accompany each exhibition. The exhibitions will have the British Museum's collections at their core, contributing to the promotion in Japan of Britain as a dynamic cultural force in the world.
Our investigation of the cultural phenomenon of a diverse collection of a large group of artists that covers a broad range of styles, schools and formats, will be of interest to curators and Japanese art dealers in the UK and around the world. What are the relationships among these works? How do we assess the modern notion of 'professional and amateur' in this context? What did the works mean for the artists and their contemporary audiences? For audiences today? How can we effectively exhibit these works.
The research on artistic salons - which were not only social venues but also practice spaces where all participants took turns composing and performing - will interest groups such as Arts Council England who work in the field of supporting the practice of the arts. The Japanese case, in which participants took on a distinct identity by adopting an 'art-name' and were expected to create art - paint, compose a poem, or perform a musical or dance piece - is a stimulating comparative example of a kind of 'role-playing' for those interested in pursuit and promotion of the arts today. In contemporary Japan, it is still common for Japanese to socialize and take lessons within aesthetic activity groups, in schools and as adults.