Thomas D. Conlan
· 2017
Abstract
In Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability, Morgan Pitelka argues that the accumulation and acquisition of art in a formal, “ritual” context underpinned the social hierarchy and determined political and military dominance in Japan at the turn of the seventeenth century. This process, which Pitelka describes as “spectacular accumulation,” culminated in the hegemony of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616), founder of the Tokugawa shogunate and namesake for an era in Japanese history lasting from 1603 through 1867. Pitelka straddles the disciplines of art history and history, and what makes his account interesting is that the collections he studied included most prominently cherished objects linked to tea ceremonies, known as “famous objects” (meibutsu), which were gifted, recovered from ruined castles, and restored. In addition, manuscripts and seemingly unrelated things such as bodies (hostages) and disembodies (heads) were exchanged as well. These collections and exchanges were “not merely politically significant, but were ritually articulated” (13). Pitelka particularly emphasizes the importance of Tokugawa Ieyasu “as a ruler whose attention to acquisition and spectacle defined a pattern of materialism that would influence social and cultural formations for centuries” (15).