The Imperial Museums of Meiji Japan. Architecture and the Art of the Nation

Abstract

In pre-modern Japan there was no museum, not even a word or concept for ‘museum’. Many collections of what now we call works of art existed, but were in the hands of private individuals and temples. The first Japanese museum, today's Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park, did not grow, like many of its European counterparts, out of a wish or need to house and display to the public an already formed collection. Set up in 1871 in the early Meiji era (1868-1912), this museum building and collection resulted instead from the efforts of a few officials. During their travels in Europe in the 1860s they had recognized the importance of cultural institutions like museums and industrial exhibitions for their country's future, and they made the construction of a museum a priority for their new government. Initially, the museum in Ueno was expected to grow into a non-governmental institution like the British Museum or the South Kensington Museum, with independent funding and collections. Thirty years later, however, it came to belong to the imperial house. This jurisdictional change developed gradually from 1886, starting with the transfer of the museum's administration to the Imperial Household Ministry, a department soon to be detached from the constitutional government system and increasingly dedicated to the direct service of the emperor and his household. In 1889, it was named the Imperial Museum (Teikoku Hakubutsukan), although the government still owned the museum building and collection. And, in 1900 that name gave way to the Imperial Household (Teishitsu) Museum. Thus, ‘the Imperial Museums’ of Alice Tseng's monograph in strictly jurisdictional terms existed only from 1889 to 1900, a decade when the Imperial Household as the Museum's administrator constructed two satellite Imperial Museums on its own land in the ancient capitals, Kyoto and Nara.