Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao by Michael Lucken

Abstract

Reviewed by: Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao by Michael Lucken Meghen Jones (bio) Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao. By Michael Lucken; translated by Francesca Simkin. Columbia University Press, New York, 2016. vi, 248 pages. $60.00, cloth; $59.99, E-book. The subject of imitation in Japanese arts is well-trodden scholarly ground. Various significant publications in recent years have explored the premodern histories of copying (utsushi), physical reproductions (mosha), and imitation (mohō) within Japanese culture more generally.1 Not confined to issues of pedagogy or artistic transfer, Michael Lucken’s Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao challenges fundamental assumptions, over time, about the nature of Japanese imitation and creativity in order to define key characteristics of modern Japanese art and visual culture. In confronting head-on the notion of the Japanese as imitative, Lucken unravels the complex discourse of imitation and creativity to reveal much more than a mere refutation of the stereotype. The premise of the book is that the dialectic of imitation and creativity is a by-product of enlightenment and colonialist paradigms. That established, Lucken describes the field of modern Japanese visual art as having a plasticity with which [End Page 117] imitation and creativity are pursued, a quality distinct from the Western polarity of imitation and creativity. He argues that modern Japanese visual arts occupy an ontological space eschewing pure subjectivity in favor of leaving “residual components,” and the book explores this aspect within the modern mediums of oil painting, film, photography, and animation. Michael Lucken’s contributions to scholarship on twentieth-century Japanese art, visual culture, and critical theory are well established. Professor and director of the Center for Japanese Studies at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO), one of the eight higher education institutions comprising Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, his publications have addressed a variety of issues relevant to the interpretation and analysis of modern Japanese art and visual culture.2 Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao is Lucken’s long-awaited first single-authored book in English.3 It is a translation and modification of Les fleurs artificielles: création, imitation et logique de domination (Presses de l’Inalco, 2012Presses de l’Inalco, 2016). Like his previous studies, it concerns a topic of relevance to virtually all scholars of modern Japan and presents a compelling method of interpretation, thus its readership will be wide. Considering the substantial attention that has been given to the subject of imitation in Japan, and the rebuking of it, some may wonder if the perception of Japanese arts as imitative still looms. Lucken acknowledges that, today, many outsiders see Japan as not a center of imitation but rather a source of intense creativity in the form of manga and anime, and that Japanologists routinely critique the stereotype of Japan as a nation of imitators. But, he asserts, “among the petty bourgeoisie and general public” the stereotype persists (p. 15). Lucken also cites Western influences on Japanese art as the cause of the relative lack of modern Japanese art in major European and U.S. public museum collections, where he describes it as “rarely to be seen and seldom highly valued” (p. 33). This statement deserves discussion; for example, permanent exhibition rooms of Japanese art at the British Museum have recently featured art and material culture from prehistory to the present, including twentieth-century manga. Furthermore, institutional stances decrying the value of modern Japanese arts as mere imitations of [End Page 118] Western art no longer serve to narrow, as they once did, the foci of scholarly inquiry. On the contrary, according to the most recent College Art Association listings available, at U.S. and Canadian institutions in 2015 there were in progress or completed 29 dissertations on Japanese art history topics—12 on ancient to premodern Japanese art history subjects, and 17 on Meiji-era to contemporary subjects.4 Thus, a significant gap exists between popular perception and current scholarship on modern Japanese art and imitation. This book serves not simply to sustain or...