Gods and Monsters, Peace and Prime Ministers
An Early Autumn Round-Up
A warm welcome to new subscribers to IlluminAsia and apologies to existing ones for not having posted in a while. I’m looking forward to resuming my regular posts later this month. In the meantime, I thought I’d share links to some of the writing I’ve done elsewhere over the past weeks.
Fans of Japanese arts and crafts might be interested in this review of a Mingei exhibition - ‘Art Without Heroes’ - at the William Morris Gallery in London. It runs until 22nd September, so there’s still a chance to go and have a look. I also reviewed a wonderful exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. This one is on until 3rd November.
This autumn marks the 70th anniversary of the first Godzilla film, in honour of which I wrote an essay for Engelsberg Ideas about how Japan’s turbulent modern history has helped fuel its apocalyptic imagination.
Original film poster for Gojira in 1954
Going a little further back in time, I put together a piece for History Today about Japan’s delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. It’s a little-known moment in Japan’s history, but an important one: a sense, in Japan, that the big western powers didn’t take their delegation seriously contributed to growing scepticism across the 1920s and beyond that only an assertive foreign policy would help Japan to be taken seriously on the international stage. (You may find that this article is behind a paywall. All the others mentioned here are freely available).
Finally, I’ve ventured into the world of cultural and political commentary. I’ve written about Japanese pacifism, ‘decolonising’ philosophy, the politics of choosing the next Dalai Lama and the reasons why Japan’s premiership seems to change hands so often.
And that’s it! Hopefully something in there will be of interest. More from me later this month. Wishing you all well in the meantime.
Thank you for sharing your writings that have appeared elsewhere on the web.
I particularly enjoyed your essay on the allegory of Godzilla and Japanese science fiction. Done well, science fiction can be a wonderful vehicle for playing out thought experiments while telling a compelling story.
As a big fan of Japanese printmaking, I found your review of the exhibition Yoshida: Three Generations of Printmaking very enlightening. I was not aware that his art became a "family business" and was very intrigued to look into it further.
Also interesting to read your political commentary!
I hope to read more from you - or hear you on a BBC podcast - soon again!