Abstract
Reviewed by: The Curious Case of the Camel in Modern Japan: (De)Colonialism, Orientalism, and Imagining Asia by Ayelet Zohar Asato Ikeda The Curious Case of the Camel in Modern Japan: (De)Colonialism, Orientalism, and Imagining Asia. By Ayelet Zohar. Leiden: Brill, 2022. 186 pages. ISBN: 9789004504653 (hardcover; also available as e-book). In this book Ayelet Zohar adopts a unique methodology to examine Japanese art from the ancient to the contemporary period: through images of camels, which are not native to Japan. She demonstrates that while this animal was a recurring subject [End Page 289] its meaning differed depending on historical context and, further, that throughout Japanese history the camel—both the Bactrian double-humped and the dromedary single-humped varieties—functioned as a metonym for foreignness, the "Other," continental Asia, and whatever Japan was not. In the introduction to this extensively illustrated volume, Zohar explains her use of the word "metonymy," building on work by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Roman Jackson, Karatani Kōjin, Michel de Certeau, and Homi K. Bhabha, and traces images of camels in Japan to the Nara period, when a biwa lute bearing a depiction in mother-of-pearl inlay was brought from China. She states that the book's purpose is to examine the camel's "shifting modes of signification" (p. 10) in Japanese art as well as to contextualize "some of the curious cases of camel depictions in Japan's rich visual culture and [demonstrate] the diversity of forms and styles" (p. 12). The first of the book's four main chapters is relatively short. Titled "Early Modern Encounters: Portuguese and Dutch Influences," it examines the camel depicted on a nanban screen by Kanō Naizen, a Kanō-school artist from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth century, and Sō Shiseki's drawings of the animal from the 1770s. The latter, though most likely based on engravings (possibly by Albrecht Dürer) imported from the Netherlands, were also informed by the Nanpin school of Chinese-style art, which later produced the prominent artist Shiba Kōkan. The second chapter, "Entering Closed Doors: The Arrival of the First Pair in Nagasaki and Their Depiction in the Late Edo Period (1821–1868)," looks at images produced after 1821, the year the first camels—a female and a male dromedary brought from the Netherlands to Dejima, Nagasaki—were brought to Japan. Their arrival gave rise to a plethora of images in a range of styles including the Takaki Workshop's drawings emphasizing scientific empiricism and accuracy; Nagasaki-e's exoticizing depictions of camels and Indonesian servants; ukiyo-e artists' humorous and parodic renderings; and the Maruyama school's works of realism inspired by the idea of shashin, here meaning not photographs but "true copies." The real-life camels were shown in the carnivalesque misemono exhibitions as objects of curiosity, becoming part of Edo-period entertainment. People lined up to see them and participated in the camel craze by purchasing camel-themed products such as toys, combs, kites, and kimono. Western Orientalist images of camels also entered Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. The third chapter, "Modernity and Nationalism, Race and Empire: The Meiji, Taishō, and Early Shōwa Periods (1868–1945)," discusses how the camel came to represent the Asian continent amid Japan's growing imperialism and militarism. Here Zohar aptly employs Edward Said's notion of "Orientalism" and Stefan Tanaka's notion of "Japan's Orient" to examine Nihonga (Japanese-style paintings) and photographs. Camels were placed in the Ueno Zoo, newly established in 1882 as part of the national project of modernization. They were increasingly associated with the Asian continent—which was seen not only as foreign but as barbaric and uncivilized—and contrasted with horses, a noble animal linked to the imperial family. Camels also played an important role in the wartime visual culture of the 1930s [End Page 290] and early 1940s as an animal indispensable to Japan's advancement into Manchuria and Mongolia. The fourth chapter, "Camels in the Global World: The Postwar Period (1945–2009)," focuses largely on two artists, the Nihonga painter Hirayama Ikuo and the contemporary photographer Noguchi Rika. Zohar argues that even modern and contemporary representations are...