Scholar’s Day: In Love and War

In this event, five internationally acclaimed scholars within Japanese art history and visual culture will shed light on various aspects of the exhibition In Love & War.

Held in conjunction with the exhibition In Love & War at Designmuseum Danmark, Scholar’s Day presents the public with a rare opportunity to learn more about topics covered in the exhibition. It highlights the constructed nature of visual culture that advertised prostitutes and justified the nation’s imperial agenda.

The exhibition features woodblock prints from the museum collection, focusing on the images of beautiful women from the Edo period (1603-1868) and soldiers and battles of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars from the Meiji period (1868-1912). How do we appreciate “Japanese woodblock prints from the Edo period,” when some are modern reproductions? How do we read early modern and modern Japanese images of men, women, and those who belonged to a different category? How was wartime violence depicted or not depicted, and why?

Ryoko Matsuba will speak about how to appreciate modern reproductions of woodblock prints. Joshua S. Mostow will examine male same-sex desires as they were practised and visualized during the Edo period. Mio Wakita will scrutinize representations of women in early Japanese photography. Judith Vitale will focus on images produced during the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars (1894-1895; 1904-1905). Lulu Xinyue Yuan will discuss the images of women produced in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).

The event is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation for Art History Research.

The event is free, and everyone is welcome to join. However, there is a limited number of seats available.