The Splendour of Modernity

Dr. Rosina Buckland has already penned several books on Japanese art history . . . While juggling her current role as curator of the British Museum’s Japanese collections, she has written another, this time examining art made during the Meiji era . . . Buckland’s study looks at how these turbulent changes, along with the adoption of Western cultural ideas, shaped Japanese painting, calligraphy, sculpture, printing, textiles, metalwork and lacquerware. She refutes any idea of artistic decline, or that foreign influence diluted the 'authenticity' of Japanese art, instead highlighting how local practices innovated by incorporating new ideas from overseas. * Christie’s ‘Best Art Books 2024’ *
Buckland’s kaleidoscopic view of Meiji-period artistic production illuminates Japan’s lively and experimental art world, especially the continuities across the divide of 1868. With rigorous and meticulous scholarship, she reclaims the enduring appeal of Sinophile and literati culture, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of Japanese art history during this fascinating time of intense Westernization and nation building. * Gennifer Weisenfeld, Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History, Duke University *
Rosina Buckland merits great thanks from those who wish to explore the complexities of modern Japan. With patient authority she guides us decade by decade, 1865–1915, through dynamic stories of competing creativity: “tradition”, modernity, China, Westernization, imported Orientalism, popular, elite, local, national, international, fine art, art craft. Within new institutional structures, the agency of myriad individual artists is championed. Two hundred eclectic artworks are judiciously analysed. This is the book on Meiji art we have been waiting for. * Timothy T. Clark FBA, Honorary Research Fellow, British Museum *
This book is what the field of modern Japanese art history has long needed: a comprehensive, cogent and meticulously researched historical survey of Meiji-period art. Importantly, Buckland acknowledges the ways Meiji modernity was shaped by the updating of many domestic feudal-era traditional arts and cultural institutions as well as by the introduction of rapid, paradigm-shifting changes from abroad. Profusely illustrated and deftly argued, it clearly contextualizes the key ideas, issues and debates that shaped Japanese artmaking in the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. * John Szostak, Associate Professor of Japanese Art History, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa *