The Dreamlife of Imperialism

Abstract

Empire came alive at the zoo. Beginning in 1897, when the Imperial Household Ministry ordered the construction of exhibits for “live-animal war trophies,” the drama of Japan’s imperial expansion was made real in the bodies of the zoo’s animals. These popular displays sparked a cycle of growth. The Ueno Zoo was soon publicized as “the most popular zoo in the world.” Located at the center of a growing network of colonial zoos and collectors, the zoo’s collection expanded with the nation’s overseas reach, offering visitors an increasingly elaborate figuration of Japan’s imperial project. Administrators sponsored what I call the “dreamlife of imperialism,” projecting animal figures of wild, untamed nature outward into the colonies even as they reimagined wild nature as the locus of a lost, more authentic humanity. As yet unconquered by civilization, authentic nature—the zoo suggested—could still be found at the edges of empire. It was there that visitors were urged to look as they sought solace from the dislocations of modern life.