Shirokiya was founded in Kyoto by Ômura Hikotarô in the 1650s or so, as a lumber and textiles shop, when he was just 17 or 18 years old. The company counts 350 years, however, from 1662, the year Hikotarô opened his first shop in Edo.

The Edo shop, located on a major boulevard just south of Nihonbashi, was a major site, and its distinctive logo can be seen in Edo period ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The Nihonbashi Shirokiya location was, almost from the start, something akin to a department store in that it did not specialize in just one thing, but sold textiles and a wide variety of sundries and so-called “dry goods.”

By 1901, the Edo period shop, with its wooden architecture and noren curtains, as seen in the woodblock prints, had been replaced by a true department store in the modern sense of the word, housed in a building in a style rather typical of the Meiji period. As seen in photographs and photo postcards, this incarnation of Shirokiya’s main store (本店, honten) was a corner store, several stories tall, which combined the stone(?) facade and structure of a certain style of European architecture with Japanese elements such as curving tiled roofs and kara-hafu overhangs; this so-called Imperial style was quite common and popular for some of the largest or most major buildings of the Meiji period, and can still be seen today, for example, in the Tokyo National Museum’s main building.

The honten was renovated around 1910, but was destroyed in the 1923 Great Kantô Earthquake which ravaged Tokyo. At some point before or after that (I’m not really clear), Shirokiya expanded, opening numerous branches across the country. Rebuilt and reopen, Shirokiya spawned a subsidiary known as Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute, or Tôtsûken kaisha (東通研会社), which developed and sold numerous household electronics and other such goods, including the first ever electric rice cooker. Tôtsûken kaisha later split from Shirokiya, however, pursuing its own fortunes under the name SONY.

Shirokiya was absorbed in the early 1950s by the Tôkyû corporation, another major department store chain and operator of private rail lines. In 1959, Tôkyû opened the first overseas Shirokiya location – the only one which is still open today – in Honolulu’s Ala Moana Shopping Center. Several other Hawaii locations were opened as well, but later closed. In the late 1990s to early 2000s, all Shirokiya branches, including the original 1662/1901/post-1923/post-1945 Nihonbashi location, were closed by the Tôkyû corporation, leaving only the Ala Moana Honolulu location open.

Today, Shirokiya continues to serve the local Honolulu community, with everything from designer cosmetics to sushi, crepes, shave ice, udon & soba, andagi, and groceries, to kimono, tabi and geta. It contains on its two floors a BookOff (used bookstore), a pan’ya (Japanese-style French-style patisserie/boulangerie), travel agency, and a (the?) recording studio of KZOO, the local Honolulu Japanese-language radio channel. I sort of take it for granted now that I’ve been here for a few years, but I am really starting to appreciate how much I am going to miss Shirokiya when I move back to the mainland. Kimono, tabi, zori, Okinawan foods/ingredients, and countless other things will not be so easy to come by back in the mainland.

So, Congratulations to Shirokiya! Best wishes for continued improvements and successes! The store’s already starting to look a lot better, classier, cleaner, nicer just in the last 2~3 years since I first came to Hawaii. I wish I were staying on island, to continue to enjoy the wonderfully easy access you provide to all kinds of Japanese goods.

Characters like these – especially with trees – are generally formed from the combination of very recognizable elements, such as in the example of “holly” (hiiragi) being made up of the kanji for “tree” and “winter” squooshed together into a single character. This makes the kanji for trees, for example, much more directly connected to imagery, I think, and to imaginative etymologies, than other types of characters. So, inspired by the hiiragi comment, I thought I might share the kanji for some other types of trees, and the beautiful, romantic, or just amusing imagery they bring to mind.

*楓 (kaede) – tree 木 + wind　風 = maple. Once (and still?) a very popular name for girls, this is easily among my favorite tree kanji, though I can’t quite say why. I guess just the imagery of maple leaves in brilliant autumn colors.
*桜 (sakura) – tree 木 + well, I can’t seem to find this character that combines “woman 女” with three dots or dashes above it. Though, I could have sworn that was a relatively normal character. In any case, it reminds me of a young woman in an elegant furisode standing next to a cherry tree, as the pink blossoms shower down all around her.
*橘 (tachibana) – a type of orange tree; tiny oranges, not quite the same as mikan, Satsumas or mandarin oranges, but perhaps similar. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen the fruit, actually, unless it is in fact the same as those… This is perhaps another bad example of a kanji, as the right-hand radicals/components literally mean spear or halberd 矛, and clear & bright 冏, and I’m not sure what to say about what that means overall. But, recognizing the character as a whole, I think of orange trees, and that’s a plenty pretty image by itself, no?
*柏 (kashiwa) – tree 木 + white 白 = oak. Why oak should involve the character for “white”, I don’t know.
*桧 (hinoki) – tree 木 + meeting 会 = cypress. The kind of cypress traditional buildings (and crates, chests, barrels, etc etc) are very often made from, and the profusion of which is a major cause of hay fever 花粉症 in Japan today.
*樺 (kaba) – tree 木 + flower 華 = birch. Not just any flower, this character most often appears in the word 中華, meaning “Chinese,” or slightly more literally “the flower of China” or something to that effect. It has an air of elegant, ancient, traditional civilization. What that has to do with birch, though, is beyond me.
*松 (matsu) – tree 木 + lord/public 公 = pine. 「公」 can have many meanings. It can mean “public,” as in 公園 (public park), but I kind of prefer to think that here it has its meaning of “lord”, as in 家康公 (“Lord Ieyasu”), making the pine a noble tree.
*桃 (momo) – tree 木 + trillion 兆 = peach. Seems kind of appropriate, since peaches are generally associated with immortality.
*梅 (ume) – tree 木 + each/every 毎 = plum. This 毎 is the character used to say “every week” 毎週 or “everyday” 毎日, but it is also the right-side part of characters such as 海 (umi – ocean).

I suppose that’s enough for now. What are some of your favorite kanji?

Photo of maple leaves taken myself, at Kôtô-in, a sub-temple of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, 3 June 2010.

In any case, getting to the point, even within the first ten minutes of the first episode, I can tell this much: I have yet to see anything from Mugen, anything about Mugen, that marks him as Ryukyuan in a historically/culturally accurate manner. His clothes, though not necessarily absurdly out of place for the period, do not strictly speaking resemble anything I’d associate with being distinctively Ryukyuan. He has simple bands tattooed around his wrists and ankles, but Okinawan tattoos are generally known to have been worn by women, not by men, and featured certain patterns on the hands. Mugen’s sword is curved like a samurai’s blade, but it has a rather distinctive, or should I say unusual, style of hilt that definitely marks it (and him, by extension) as foreign. But, I actually don’t know what a Ryukyuan sword would look like. More Chinese, like this? Or more similar to the Japanese swords? The myth of Ryukyuan pacifism – and/or the influence of katate – is too pervasive. We don’t see Ryukyuan swords represented all that often. Finally, one last thing which is quite obvious: Mugen does not have an Okinawan accent, nor does he use any distinctively Okinawan words.

Then there’s the use of the word “champloo” (チャンプルー, chanpuruu), an Okinawan word meaning, essentially, “all mixed up.” It’s a word most commonly used to refer to stir-fry dishes, but I suppose it can be used to refer to anything that’s a jumbled up diverse mix. Such as the ethnic makeup of the local Hawaiian community, which is a total jumble of people of Chinese, Japanese, Okinawan, Korean, Filipino, white, and Native Hawaiian descent, many of them containing a jumble of ethnic backgrounds within themselves individually. In this respect, “appropriation” or no, I think the use of the term for this anime seems quite appropriate, referencing the “remixing” aspect of the style and approach of the whole show. It follows three main characters, but is really just a champloo of aspects of Edo period history & culture, from Ryukyuans and ronin to ukiyo-e and Commodore Perry.

None of this is to say that there’s anything wrong with the show. The show is great. It’s easily one of my favorite series. But, even if I were to hypothetically be trying to conceive of a formal academic essay on the (mis)representation of Okinawan culture in this series, I’m not sure I have too much to say. … I guess we’ll see as the series goes on what else comes to mind.

*Let’s start with the sad news that Prof. Karen Brazell passed away this past Wednesday. She was Professor Emeritus at Cornell University, and Director of GloPAC, the Global Performing Arts Consortium, an organization which maintains GloPAD (Global Performing Arts Database), an excellent resource for information on theatre and dance from Japan and around the world.

I never had the privilege of meeting Dr. Brazell, but have quite enjoyed, and made much use of, her book Traditional Japanese Theater, an excellent anthology of Noh, bunraku, kyôgen, and kabuki plays in translation (in English), which I have made much use of.

You can read more about Dr. Brazell and her career at GloPAC’s official announcement on her passing.

*The Gothamist reported yesterday on the a new “travel agency” that has opened in Brooklyn. The Bureau of Unknown Destinations will, for a price, organize a mystery journey for you (within a few hours by train from NYC) to an unknown destination. As the Gothamist (or the Bureau itself?) describes it:

You’ll be presented with a free round trip ticket for a train adventure (along with a notebook and a small, somewhat absurd, task). Begin your day by tearing open a sealed envelope and revealing the mystery of where you will find yourself by noon. Set forth, free of decisions, into the great (or perhaps, in this case, the small) unknown. Test your sense of destiny. Have lunch someplace new.

Sounds wonderfully artsy and maybe just slightly hipster, but in a good way. Seems like the kind of thing some of the professors in the Art Department here at my university would get a real kick out of. I’d be happy to give it a try when I get back to NY…

Though, how cool would it be to get to buy a mystery trip (all expenses paid) to, for example, somewhere in Europe? Assuming it’s not too expensive, I’d love to find myself in Dublin, Prague, Munich, Amsterdam, Leiden, Copenhagen, Nottingham, Edinburgh, York, Caerdydd, Venice, Florence, Rome, Pisa, Padua, Athens, Tallin, Krakow, Warsaw, Paris or Oslo, sent off on an adventure to a city I might not ever get around to going out of my way to visit otherwise. But, then, I guess that’s a whole different thing.

*In archaeology / art world news, the charges against Robert Hecht (above), an American art dealer accused of extensive involvement in the black market of stolen antiquities, have been dropped in Italian court, as the statute of limitations has, apparently, expired.

Looking through my past posts, it looks like I’ve never actually posted about this before, but Google “Robert Hecht”, “Marion True“, or “Giacomo Medici,” or even better, pick up the book “The Medici Conspiracy.” The book reads like a crime thriller, tracing the adventures of Italian Art Squad carabinieri and US authorities in tracking down a string of evidence leading them to some of the biggest black market antiquities dealers active today, and eventually launching a raid on Medici’s warehouse in Geneva’s “Freeport,” loaded with looted antiquities and extensive documentation on his network of looters, buyers, dealers, etc., a network which included Getty Museum curator Marion True, and art dealer Robert Hecht, perhaps most (in)famous for his involvement in the acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum of the Euphronios krater, which has now been returned to Italy.

I am, of course, not the only blogger writing about this development. Chasing Aphrodite is one of a number of blogs more specifically devoted to (and expert on) the subject of antiquities looting which is reporting on the end of Hecht’s trial.

(Incidentally, another excellent book, not directly talking about Hecht or Medici, if I recall, but on a very similar topic, and with equally thrilling narratives, is Stealing History. In it, Roger Atwood shares amazing stories, from crazy stings in a parking lot on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike to catch people smuggling ancient Peruvian gold to discussions of the market in stone Buddhist sculptures literally chainsawed off of monuments in Cambodia.)

*Meanwhile, in the exciting but far less scandalous/controversial world of Japanese archaeology, a few fragments of pottery have been found in Mie prefecture bearing fragments of the famous Iroha poem which contains each kana (syllabic characters such as いろは in contrast to kanji characters such as 伊呂波) exactly once.

See the original Asahi Shimbun article, in Japanese, and in English.

The fragments are believed to date to the 11th or 12th century, and are said to now be the oldest known extant example of hiragana writing the iroha poem being written in hiragana. Frankly, I find this a bit hard to believe, given that it’s been dated to the late Heian period, a period today known for its vibrant traditions of poetry, etc. Considering all the numerous examples of poetry and other writings we have from the Heian period, could it really be possible that this late Heian pottery is the earliest extant example of hiragana writing? If they said it dated to the Asuka or Nara periods (6th-8th centuries), it would seem much more amazing and believable on first impression (kneejerk reaction). But, then, what the hell do I know? If the experts say this is how it is, then, apparently, this is how it is. An important find.

Much thanks to Joseph Ryan of the Ancient Japan blog for pointing out that had I not been so lazy, and had actually read the Japanese, I would have realized/noticed that this new find is not the oldest known extant example of hiragana writing, but only the oldest known extant example of the iroha in hiragana.

*The Asahi has also reported on the discovery of a possible residence of Emperor Shômu in Shiga prefecture. Shômu (r. 724-749) is best known for having established a system of provincial temples, and commissioning the Great Buddha of Tôdai-ji, which remains today the largest bronze Buddha in the country, housed within the largest wooden building in the world. The construction of Tôdai-ji, and especially of the Buddha, was an incredible undertaking, involving a major proportion of the total resources of the Yamato State (i.e. Japan), and a major symbol to the rest of the Buddhist world of Japan’s devotion.

The Asahi article (in Japanese) includes a short video of aerial footage of the site recently uncovered in the city of Kôka (甲賀市) in Shiga prefecture, along with photos of the site, and artists’ renderings of what the buildings may have originally looked like. The remains of pillars sunk into the ground, along with other archaeological evidence, indicate a pair of buildings with the distinctive form of Nara period imperial residences; it is believed this may be the Shigaraki Palace, a set of residences constructed by Emperor Shômu, where his predecessor and aunt Empress Genshô (r. 715-724) would have resided as well.

The two newly discovered structures were found near the center of a much larger archaeological site, in an area of about 500 square meters which local experts have been surveying since September 2010. It lies directly to the north of a previously uncovered chôdô (朝堂, “[Imperial] Court Hall”), an 8th century Imperial Court governmental administrative building. Twenty-eight postholes, each about 1.3-1.5 meters in diameter, have been found, running in a grid six postholes long from north to south. As a result, experts have suggested that the original buildings were roughly 24.9 meters wide and 14.8 meters long.

Similar buildings were found to the west in 2001-02. Since those were not located to the north of the administrative buildings, they were not believed to be Imperial residences; however, these newly discovered structures are believed to be just that.

Image Credits:
*Cover of “Traditional Japanese Theater” from Amazon.jp.
*Photo of rails somewhere in upstate New York taken myself
*Photo of Robert Hecht from ChasingAphrodite.com – if you’d like me to take it down, just say the word.
*Photo of iroha pottery taken by Inoue Shôta of the Asahi Shimbun.
*Photo of Shigaraki-no-miya palace site taken by Yagi Takaharu.
*My thanks to Japanese copyright law, which considers the use of photos to be a “citation” or a “quote”, and not an intellectual property violation.

And then, in the last few years, I began to see more and more blog posts talking about the problems with these depictions, from a feminist point of view. And I said I agreed, and I tried to be supportive… But I still never really saw it. I mean, it’s there for all to see, it’s pretty obvious.

But there’s a difference between knowing, intellectually, that something is inappropriate, and having an emotional or gut reaction to it. For whatever reason, I really don’t know why, all of a sudden, yesterday, I had that gut reaction for the first time. Maybe it’s my new glasses. j/k.

Reading a new comic that just came out in the last week or so, I found myself thinking “how gratuitous and unnecessary. There’s no plot reason whatsoever for this character, every time she appears, to be kneeling over, or sprawled across the couch in that particularly sexy way…” And then, in the next issue, she gets captured, and, as if her costume wasn’t skintight and curves-revealing enough, suddenly, for no apparent reason, they have her stripped down to her undies, and her arms and ankles restrained in, frankly, a fairly titillating position. Meanwhile, Rogue’s breasts seems to get bigger with every panel, and her costume – unzipped further than there’s any real reason for it to be – is barely containing them. And she’s supposed to be a teacher?

This, of course, is no different at all from the vast majority of comics out there. Comics I’ve been reading my entire life. But, for some reason, I honestly don’t know why, I suddenly noticed it, really felt it, really appreciated the gratuitousness of it, for the first time. For a good little while there, I was truly disgusted.

Fortunately, some comics, some illustrators, some issues, and/or some individual panels at least do serve as exceptions. Now that some of the X-men are back in Westchester, running a school, we get to see lots of scenes of them in plainclothes, acting like, well, teachers, and adults, and sometimes just sort of moping around like real people do, rather than constantly being depicted as paragons of sexual fitness in absurdly sexualized costumes.

Of course, that doesn’t stop the students from being depicted in suggestive ways. Sigh.

Images from “Magneto: Not A Hero” issues 2 & 3, “X-men: Legacy” issue 260.1, and “Wolverine & the X-men” issue 4, all published by Marvel Comics with 2012 cover dates. Very small percentage of the total work reproduced, so as to fall within Fair Use. Besides, does blogging count as journalism/review? Maybe?

(1) That is, superhero comics. Obviously, when you get into the realms of indie comics, things are different. Though, not necessarily always.

I’m sure plenty could be written, and has been written, about the socio-cultural discursive impact of a neo-traditional revival movement, and performativity of identity. But, I’d rather not deal with that today. Just some of my favorite bands/artists who you might not learn of or come across otherwise. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Guitar – Naoki

Guitar (ギター), also known as Michael Luckner, is a German music artist based in Germany. I love the koto(?) trills and such in this song. It’s easily my favorite of what I’ve heard of his, but there’s tons more that’s also quite good.

Shanghai Restoration Project – The Bund (instrumental)

The Shanghai Restoration Project is group headed by Chinese-American Dave Liang. Their music, as you can hear, is very modern, using elements of electronica (I guess?, or something along those lines?), but their use of traditional Chinese instruments, and especially their song titles – which include “Bund”, “Nanking Road”, and “MCMXXXVII” – definitely help evoke the idea/aesthetic of 1920s-1930s Shanghai as romanticized in fiction, film, etc. . Personally, I much prefer the instrumental versions of their songs, and am glad for the availability of these, as the vocals are often in English, and too hip-hop or otherwise non-traditional/non-Chinese for my taste. But, anyway, what I like of their stuff, I really like.

Rin’ – Jikuu

Rin’ – Murasaki no yukari, futatabi

RIN’, a trio of young women who graduated Geidai (Tokyo National University of the Arts) together, were only active from 2003 until 2009, when they broke up, but in the intervening time, they put out some really great stuff. Their music employs mainly koto, shakuhachi, and biwa, and includes an album inspired by the Tale of Genji, as well as one entitled “Inland Sea,” in which they collaborated with American vocalists (e.g. Lisa Loeb), producing something that was, I thought, the perfect blend of American mainstream and traditional Japanese – plenty accessible, yet with just enough of a twist to be interesting, novel, new, intriguing, and maybe enough to get American mainstream listeners to try out Japanese music.

I like the first song much better, but the second provides a visual example of the aesthetic of their videos, and indicating, I think, that they’re not about exploiting tradition for the benefit of modern music, but rather quite the opposite. The feeling I get from this video is one of trying to make the traditional more hip, more accessible, and trying to drum up interest in the traditional, showing how dynamic a shamisen can be, how rocking a Noh stage can be, and how cool kimono can be.

HIFANA – Uchi-nan-champloo

HIFANA is a Tokyo-based group mixing very Okinawan sounds with hip-hop/reggae and electronica flavors. This is easily one of my favorite tracks from all the artists I’ve heard who make use of Okinawan folk music sounds. The video for their song WAMONO is pretty awesome too.

Ryukyu Underground – Umaku Kamade

Ryukyu Underground is the duo Keith Gordon and Jon Taylor, from the UK and US respectively, who met in Okinawa, and DJed there for a time, mixing samples of Okinawan folk music with electronica and such. Gaining popularity, they were later able to collaborate directly with prominent Okinawan folk singers to produce original tracks. Many of their tracks are simply named after traditional folk songs that they remix – Tingsagu nu Hana Dub is one of my favorites. Other tracks have more general new age / electronica sort of titles, like “East is East” and “The Spaces Between.” But, then, too, a few, such as “Koza Riot” make it clear that they are familiar with, and are addressing, the complex and dark history of US involvement in Okinawa.

Yoshida Brothers – Modern

Monkey Majik feat. Yoshida Brothers – Change

Finally, we have Yoshida Brothers, who are surely the top, leading, most famous non-traditional shamisen players in Japan. What sets them apart from all these others is that (so far as I know) they don’t use electronica remixing or anything of the sort, but really rely chiefly on the shamisen itself. Their music is so energetic… it really highlights the energy and potential of traditional Japanese music – that there’s no need to think of it as dusty, old, or boring.

Monkey Majik is a pair of brothers from Canada, based now in Sendai, whose music, for the most part, is indistinguishable from that of a mainstream Canadian alternative rock band with no connections to Japan at all. That is to say, they do use some Japanese in their lyrics and song titles, making it pretty clear; but their sound is nothing remarkable to me. Except for this album on which they collaborated with Yoshida Brothers, and created some really incredible, catchy, wonderful stuff. … In any case, like their sound or not, I love their story – the fact that two brothers in Japan teaching English, just regular 20-something white guys, could become this popular and successful, rather than getting stuck still teaching English, or having to move back home, is pretty damn cool.

—-

So, that’s it. A quick romp through a few of my favorite bands/artists reviving (hopefully?) interest in traditional Japanese (or Chinese or Okinawan) sounds. I hope you like some of them; and if you have others you like, please leave a comment, and share it with us.

Happy New Year, everyone! May 2012 bring health and happiness, and hopefully some adventure (of the good kind) as well.

The American “Zen”-influenced artist John Cage apparently is said to have once commented that all of the stones at Ryôan-ji’s rock garden were in just the right place. And that any other arrangement would also be just the right place.¹ Normally I’m not a big fan of American New Age misconceptions of Zen, and the art and philosophy influenced by them, but here Cage actually summarizes very beautifully something I’ve been thinking a bit about. We look at artworks and talk about them as if every single aspect of them is perfectly arranged, perfectly intentional. Sure, as art teachers or art critics we may consider some works more successful than others, more technically proficient, or more aesthetically moving or powerful. But when it comes to those works already judged by history, by scholars, by curators, by general consensus, to be “masterpieces,” we talk about them as if they have no failings, as if every aspect of them is perfectly just as it should be. Consider the works of Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Jackson Pollock, Ni Zan, and how they are typically discussed. Every brushstroke in precisely just the right place. Yet, if it were different, would we talk about that version of it too as being just precisely as it should be?

(1) Stokstad, Marilyn and Michael Cothren. Art History. Fourth Edition. Pearson Prentice Hall, 2011. p816.

Photo of the rock garden at Ryôan-ji taken myself, 18 July 2010.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 33,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 12 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

By a fortunate coincidence, this post is my neat, clean, even 100th post for the year.

Much thanks, どうもありがとう, a great big Mahalo nui loa to everyone for your support this year – for your pageviews, and your comments. Here’s to many great new adventures to write about next year, and the time to write it in. 来年も、よろしくお願いしますね。

I know less about his son, Yanagi Sôri 柳宗理, and would not mean to presume Sôri’s leanings, Orientalist or otherwise, but it seems beautifully fitting that the son should become such a pioneer in Japanese design, combining what is beautiful and romantic about rural handicrafts with a modern design sensibility. I am sure that his influence extends much farther, and deeper, than I know.

And, yet, there is still no Wikipedia article on him. I wonder if the added/renewed attention from his death will lead to that changing.

*Meanwhile, in other news, io9 and WIRED report on a series of studies (or the same study?) which reveal the power of the canon on our appreciation of art. The mythology of art appreciation in the West tells us that the best art, the true masterpieces, speak to us on some subconscious level, that it’s that stroke of genius that makes them so beautiful, so compelling, so much deeper and more meaningful and more powerful than a nearly identical work by a lesser painter. That there is something hidden in the master’s brushstrokes, or his technique or composition otherwise, that makes the work cross some threshold into masterpiece status.¹

Yet, as we might expect, it is not (solely) the beauty or genius of the artwork that speaks to us; the canon, that is, the idea that we know that we are looking at something famous (or by someone famous) and that we ought to recognize it as a cut above, has a powerful impact on our reception of an object as well. Scientists using an fMRI machine to watch people’s brain activity as they were shown images of paintings have now added to the evidence for that phenomenon. Shown pictures by Rembrandt and told they were not by the master and were merely done by his students – or shown works by his students and imitators and told they were by Rembrandt himself – people’s brains lit up less in response to anything intrinsic to the skill or genius of the visuals themselves, responding more to the idea of it being a Rembrandt, or not being a Rembrandt.

Now, the questions and issues surrounding “authenticity” and the concepts of “copies” and “forgeries” are quite popular subjects in the field of art history right now, and I think both of these articles carelessly slip in their word choice here. But, it is my assumption that when they talk about “forgeries” or “copies,” they’re not talking about things produced to deceive, or mechanical or digital reproductions of Rembrandt’s work; they’re talking about genuine, oil-on-canvas, original artworks produced in the Renaissance period by Rembrandt’s students. Not what I would call a “copy” or a “forgery.” … I think it important, and interesting, to note this. But, even so, these findings, if not unexpected, are pretty cool, eh?

It really just helps us call in question all the more so our assumptions about art, about the “genius” of the artist, and about the selection of the canon. We appreciate Rembrandt because we believe we are supposed to, because we have been trained by society, by museums, by art history class, by textbooks, to think that if we don’t see the genius in these works then there is something wrong with us, and not with the artwork. It ties in as well to discourses & social phenomena of cultural capital, and trying to be part of the cultural elite. It may be passé to just stand around and talk about how much you like the Old Masters as if nothing new has come along, and/or as if you don’t have an original thought in your head… it may be “cool” or “hip” to pretend like Michelangelo wasn’t really such a genius after all. But if you tried to argue for that seriously, at a fancy black-tie event in the Metropolitan, with a glass of wine in your hand, well, I don’t know what would happen.

The great masters, and the great masterpieces of history are considered as such because of some superior quality intrinsic to them, absolutely. At the core of every myth, there is a kernel of truth. But, we build up and build up the legends of painters, and of their artworks, appreciating them more for their fame than for their actual content, and being aware of that is a most important step towards revising our individual personal engagement with artworks, if not the entire system.

*Finally, for today, a brief article describing one of the leading book/paper conservation labs in Europe. The Institute of the Pathology of the Book in Rome has handled countless super-famous objects, including pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and objects involved in dramatic historical events – such as a book riddled with bulletholes from a World War II battle, and does very interesting, exciting, and extremely important work.

I’ve commented before on art conservation; I’m just fascinated by it. I think it’s really amazing what these people do.

The article refers vaguely to “a special paper used to ‘reconstruct’ damaged pages” made by a special firm in Japan, making it sound as if this is some super special material developed by this expert firm, when in fact, I suspect, the “special paper” they refer to has less to do with modern technology, and a lot more to do with Japanese craft tradition. Kôzo paper, made not from typical trees as typical paper is, but from a plant known as the “paper mulberry,” or kôzo, has been used in Japan since at least the 17th century, and was quite standard for Edo period prints and books. While I think it might be more absorbent in terms of not repelling the natural oils and sweat from your fingertips, it’s more flexible than today’s white printer paper, less crisp, meaning it doesn’t get creased or crinkled as badly, and it doesn’t tear as easily. Based on my admittedly limited experience visiting two paper conservation labs on opposite sides of the United States, I gather that even outside of conservation labs specializing in Asian materials (e.g. Japanese woodblock prints), the use of kôzo, or other types of traditional Japanese paper (washi 和紙, lit. “Japanese paper”), is really quite standard. So I find it amusing the rather vague way it’s referred to in this article.

What’s not so standard, on the other hand, is the use of “a special ultra-thin plastic film developed in Rome” to affix the Japanese paper. I guess it makes sense, as the right kind of plastic film would be acid-free, totally non-reactive (i.e. so it won’t chemically damage the paper as it ages), and, depending on what they’re actually doing here (the article isn’t clear), if they’re not using any liquid adhesive at all, then even more easily reversible than most techniques. The art & science of museum conservation today stands strongly on the use of reversible techniques, so that conservators in the future, with more advanced insights into material sciences and better conservation technology can undo what we do today, and re-conserve things in a better way. So much damage has been done over the years to artworks by conservators or restorers who, in doing what was cutting-edge at the time, were doing something today seen as destructive or otherwise outdated and not a good idea. Anyway, it’s just interesting that they use some kind of plastic film when the conservators I have spoken to use wheat paste, traditional Japanese methods, or other types of adhesives – generally leaning towards the organic/natural and traditional – to conserve objects. I’m not going to say that one method makes more sense than the other – what do I know, I’m not a materials scientist nor a conservator – but, it’s interesting to learn about a rather different approach.

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(1) Totally incidentally, I recently learned that the word “masterpiece” actually originates from the late medieval guild system, in which the piece one produced in order to graduate from journeyman to “master” was called one’s “masterpiece.” I guess the term is still used sometimes today, when we talk about an artist’s personal growth and development, and how after many years, he produced such-and-such work, his “masterpiece.” But, most of the time, we use this term not to refer to a work in terms of where it fits in an artist’s development, and certainly not in terms of any practical, mundane aspect of guild certification, though I guess we do still have the “Master’s” of Fine Arts, and one’s Master’s Thesis piece, which linguistically doesn’t sound all that far removed from “masterpiece.” Hmm… But still, we do generally use the term “masterpiece” to refer to anything and everything of a certain caliber, regardless of where it fits in a narrative of the artist’s development, right? Interesting, no?, the evolution of terms.

-”Butterfly Stool” designed by Yanagi Sôri, photo by Flickr user Tomislav Medak. Thanks for licensing your photo Creative Commons.
-Self-Portrait age 23, by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1629. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston MA). Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
-A Smithsonian paper conservator working on pages from the Jefferson Bible, 17 November 2011. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The collection of Bible excerpts compiled by Thomas Jefferson himself, painstakingly restored/conserved, is on display now at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC, until May 28 2012.

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