Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan: Materials, Makers, and Mastery, by Christine M.E. Guth

Abstract

Any new publication by the senior Japanese art scholar Christine Guth is on my must-read list as she is such an original thinker and fine writer. This deceptively small book does not disappoint. It focuses on ‘craft culture’ (the author’s term) in Japan between the late sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Guth draws upon recent scholarship in material culture studies and craft production of early modern Europe to bring new understanding not only to early modern Japanese art studies but also to the fields of material culture and early modern studies globally. She takes as a starting point for thinking about the topic the premisses that Japanese crafts are exceptional, highly regarded worldwide; that early modern society developed in Japan differently than elsewhere in the world; and that crafts production in Japan is distinguished and best understood by discussing the inter-related and co-operative networks of creators, distributors and consumers which enabled it to flourish.