Abstract
“Beginnings of Friendship: Revisiting the Smithsonian Collections from Commodore Matthew Perry’s Japan Expedition, 1853-1854 [ArcGIS Story map]” is an ArcGIS Story map written and published in 2023, by Paul Michael Taylor and Robert Pontsioen, as part of our partnership with Meiji University, funded by a grant from the U.S. Embassy Tokyo. This publication was developed for, and is being used in, courses taught at Meiji University. The ArcGIS software produces a 15-page PDF which has been uploaded here, recounting the story of Matthew Perry’s expedition to japan and some of the artifacts he brought back to the Smithsonian. The full ArcGIS story map is available at: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/07df33217d4240e9b8595abe116501f4
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Acta Orientalia Vilnensia
Vilnius UniversityThis article discusses the problem of the research expeditions to foreign lands during the period of national seclusion in Japan. Each historical period has its specific geographical perspective. The geographical thinking in Tokugawa Japan was influenced by a policy of self-isolation. In the Tokugawa period, Japan was more interested in protecting the boundaries than expanding its geographical horizons. There were, nevertheless, several expeditionary ventures launched by the government.This article presents the background of research expeditions dispatched by the shogunate and then moves to a discussion of the mechanism of these official expeditions and motivation behind them, as well as the nature of the political statements implied by the explorations and their results. The Japanese expeditions to the Pacific islands and northern region were mostly limited to scientific observation, mapping, and geographical survey, and the reasons for expeditionary ventures were…
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Keeping Ourselves Collected: Culture Labs Confront the Smithsonian’s Imperial Legacy
Journal of Museum Education, 2022
The Smithsonian Institution’s public narrative often glosses over the United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842), the historic endeavor led by Charles Wilkes that seized over 4000 specimens, artifacts, and human remains throughout Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the western coasts of the Americas, which later became the foundation of the Smithsonian’s collections. Today, the Smithsonian is revered for holding one of the world’s most expansive collections, a world-class resource for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” Yet, the framework of the Smithsonian as a flagship for American exceptionalism is in growing tension with campaigns to highlight communities of color which are increasingly intersectional, fluid, and diasporic. The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center has met these challenges by introducing Culture Labs to instill emerging practices and community principles. This paper investigates the history and implications of museum programming and education practices that engage and transmute the imperial legacies of institutions.
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For more than 200 years Japan lived under a self-isolated order, which allowed them to boost stability and unity in the country and prevented them from being colonized by the colonial powers of the “West”. When Commodore Perry arrived at the Bay of Uraga near Edo(Tokyo), the destiny of the country started to change rapidly.
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Discovery and Wonder: The Harry F. Bruning Collection at Brigham Young University
Discovery and Wonder: The Harry F. Bruning Collection at Brigham Young University compressed, 2022
“Wow, look at that!” “The detail, the color–it’s just amazing.” Such are the reactions–sometimes audible–as visitors explore the extraordinary Harry F. Bruning Collection of Japanese books, scrolls, maps and prints at Brigham Young University. It is an experience defined by discovery and wonder. This book highlights some of the most outstanding items in the collection and includes a complete holdings list. It also offers an introductory essay about the why and the how of Bruning’s collecting. But this is not all–this book also shares our journey of discovery about particular moments in Japan’s past and Bruning’s past, and their wider historical and cultural contexts. This journey was possible through collaborative research as well as undergraduate student experiential learning contributions. Without our students, this project would not have come to fruition. As you peruse its pages, we hope you ponder, as we have, “How did something so valuable make its way to BYU? What can we learn from it?” We hope you are filled with the same sense of awe and curiosity that filled us. The items may be inanimate, but their history is animated by many intriguing human lives which can be discovered and appreciated in the pages of this book.
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A Collector and His Museum: William Louis Abbott (1860-1936) and the Smithsonian
Chapter 10 [in:] Treasure Hunting? The Collectors and the Collecting of Indonesian Artefacts. (Reimar Schefold and Han Vermeulen, eds.) Leiden: Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), University of Leiden., 2002
Chapter 10 [in:] Treasure Hunting? The Collectors and the Collecting of Indonesian Artefacts. (Reimar Schefold and Han Vermeulen, eds.) Leiden: Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), University of Leiden. Mededelingen van het Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, no. 30, pages 221-239. This chapter offers one reading of the Smithsonian’s collections assembled by William Louis Abbott (1860-1936), focusing especially on Abbott’s motivation as a collector, and the dialectic that developed between the collector (Abbott) and the collecting institution (Smithsonian). By drawing upon correspondence between Abbott and museum scientists, and upon Abbott’s letters to his family, a portrait emerges of Abbott’s self-imposed mission, his methods and criteria for selection, and the extent to which they corresponded to the needs and desires of a collecting institution. By placing Abbott and his collections in the context of museum (especially Smithsonian) anthropology from the 1890s to today, we discover why Abbott’s collecting activity was so important to turn-of-the-century Smithsonian anthropologists. Yet we also find that his ethnological collections were later relatively neglected, due to the decline in the importance of material culture studies from which anthropology suffered until quite recently.
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The Exploration of the Bonin Archipelago (Ogasawara Islands) by Japan in 1675
Terrae Incognitae, 2019
The remote Bonin Archipelago in the Western Pacific was first surveyed in 1675 by a skilled captain and master shipwright named Shimaya Ichizaemon during Japan’s so-called period of national seclusion (sakoku). For weeks, Shimaya and his crew explored the islands and collected exotic wildlife to show their countrymen back home. The expedition was a success by any measure. It remains one of the most significant events in the history of Japanese exploration, albeit one of the least well known, and a noteworthy maritime accomplishment. This article examines Shimaya’s 1675 overseas voyage of discovery, which challenges commonly held notions about Japanese political will and technical ability during the Edo period (1603-1867). It is also a retelling of a largely misunderstood event in Bonin history.
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This article argues that it is useful to see historical exhibitions as both responses and contributors to narratives about science that are circulating in the public sphere. It uses the example of the 1876 Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus (which was the immediate predecessor of the Science Museum in London). The article demonstrates how, in promoting this huge exhibition and fighting for the necessary support and resources, leading scientific, cultural and political figures engaged with two rather different public interpretations of science’s past, present and future. One dealt with science as a vigorous part of culture with a fascinating and under-appreciated past and a dynamic future coming, internationally, to the fore. The other concerned the threat to Britain’s international economic ascendancy by countries with equal ingenuity and better education that could lead Britain into a decline reminiscent of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. According to this second narrative, science would be the vaccine that would prevent this disease afflicting Britain. In the aftermath of the exhibition, the narratives were drawn upon again to form and sustain a permanent display that was known from 1885 as the Science Museum. While the memory of the Loan Collection itself was obscured in the 1920s during the Museum’s early life as a separate administrative body fighting for resources, the author suggests that continuity can be shown in the narrative arguments used by the creators of the two projects. A greater significance should therefore be given to this exhibition in the story of the development of the Science Museum.
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That Extensive Enterprise : HMS Herald’s North Pacific Survey, 1845-1851
Pacific Science, 1998
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The Prussian Expedition to Japan and its Photographic Activity in Nagasaki in 1861
2009
International Conference on Research of Old Japanese Photographs "International Exchange Depicted in Old Photographs": November 16th-17th 2007, Nagasaki University (2F Multipurpose Hall, General Education and Reserch Building)
