TITLE: Modern Japanese Arts and Crafts in Kyoto: From Asai Chu to Yagi Kazuo
SPEAKER: Shigemi Inaga
EVENT DATE: 06/07/2007
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 78 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
Contact with the West transformed art in Japan during the first half of the 20th century, especially in the works of the painter Asai Chu (1856-1907) and the ceramicist and teacher Yagi Kazuo (1918-1979), according to Shigemi Inaga. Inaga, who holds the Chair of Modern Culture at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, gives a lecture titled "Modern Japanese Arts and Crafts in Kyoto: From Asai Chu to Yagi Kazuo" in a program sponsored by the Library's Kluge Center.
Inaga's discussion of Western influence on Japanese art is based on his research conducted at the Library of Congress and on a soon-to-be-published book that he edited, "Rethinking Traditional Arts and Crafts Inside and Outside Kyoto."
Speaker Biography: Shigemi Inaga is a professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan, where he specializes in comparative literature and culture, and the history of cultural exchange. After receiving both his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Tokyo, Inaga was awarded his doctorate from the University of Paris VII (Nouveau Regime). He was then named associate professor at the Faculty of Liberal Arts at the University of Tokyo and later associate professor at Mie University in Japan. Inaga is the author of many books and articles. His publications include "Depiction and Description: Morphology of Modern Visuality and Marketplace in Transition-Methodological Reflections" (2005, special issue of the Korean Art History Forum, No.20, which Inaga edited as guest editor), "Crossing Cultural Borders: Beyond Reciprocal Anthropology" (2001) and "The Orient of the Painting: Orientalism to Japonisme" (1999).
