Articles crafted from lacquer, silk, cotton, paper, ceramics, and iron were central to daily life in early modern Japan. They were powerful carriers of knowledge, sociality, and identity, and their facture was a matter of serious concern among makers and consumers alike. In this innovative study, Christine M. E. Guth offers a holistic framework for appreciating the crafts produced in the city and countryside, by celebrity and unknown makers, between the late sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Her study throws into relief the confluence of often overlooked forces that contributed to Japan’s diverse, dynamic, and aesthetically sophisticated artifactual culture. By bringing into dialogue key issues such as natural resources and their management, media representations, gender and workshop organization, embodied knowledge, and innovation, she invites readers to think about Japanese crafts as emerging from cooperative yet competitive expressive environments involving both human and nonhuman forces. A focus on the material, sociological, physiological, and technical aspects of making practices adds to our understanding of early modern crafts by revealing underlying patterns of thought and action within the wider culture of the times.
Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan Materials, Makers, and Mastery
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Publication of this book was supported in part by a grant from The Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies.
About the Book
Reviews
"This is a book that brings the past into conversation with the present, inspiring the reader with its insights into possibilities for the future."—Monumenta Nipponica
"This is lavish for a such a concise book, and enables the argument to be carried forward by the visual materials. Overall, the study should become essential reading for scholars of early modern Japan and of Japanese art and culture, as well as historians of science and technology in East Asia."—H-Net
"The precise descriptions and accessible prose of this book bely the painstaking research of the material, visual, and textual archives, not to mention the author’s deep knowledge of craft theory and the practices of each regional craft for which Japan is famous: carpentry, lacquerware, papermaking, ramie, silk, and cotton textiles, ceramics, and swordsmithy."—Revista de Libros
"By virtue of both its contents and its form, the book is a welcome addition to the field of early modern Japanese art history that constitutes an original and invaluable resource for scholars and students alike."—Project Muse
"Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan transports readers to the realities of the women, men, and groups dedicated to craft in its manifold iterations in the dynamic early modern Japanese world."—The Journal of Modern Craft
"This book is very well conceived so that each chapter introduces a different aspect of how craft culture functioned in society. The writing is clear and jargon-free; packed with insights and information useful for both specialists and non-specialists."—The English Historical Review"Christine Guth offers a brilliant new perspective on early modern Japanese craft. She shatters the myth of unchanging traditions by demonstrating how craft communities were innovative, well networked, and responsive to sustainability. This astute and engaging study shifts the focus from elite patrons to bring clarity to the networks, materials, and processes of craftmakers."—Sherry Fowler, Professor of Japanese Art History, University of Kansas
"This is a field-shifting work. It reflects the author’s immense expertise in the historical study of Japanese visual and material cultures and gives us a richer and more multivalent and multisensory understanding of the often essentialized category of 'craft.'"—Gregory Levine, Professor of Art History, University of California, Berkeley
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
1. Natural Resources
2. Picturing the Early Modern Craftscape
3. Craft Organizations and Operations
4. Tacit Knowledge
5. Technology, Innovation, and Craft Mastery
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
Media
Christine Guth discusses her book for the Japan Society
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