CJS Noon Lecture Series: Hokusai's Manga and France's Descriptive Turn: Reading the Japanese Book in 1860s Paris

Emily Eastgate Brink received her PhD in Art History from Stanford University and is a Visiting Scholar with the Center for Japanese Studies.  Her work addresses issues of materiality and globalization in nineteenth-century European art, with an emphasis on the cultural exchange between France and Japan.

Abstract:

This talk will explore the early interpretation and popularity of Hokusai’s Manga in nineteenth-century France.  A multi-volume series of print illustrations, the Manga appealed to French audiences as both a collectible and visual encyclopedia of Japan’s distant land and foreign culture.   This paper will focus on the material specificity of the Manga as an informational, illustrated book and examine how Hokusai’s volumes participated in the shifting literary and commodity culture of Second-Empire Paris.  Celebrated by naturalist writers and artists in Paris as a source for all things Japanese, the Manga shaped the earliest visions and descriptions of Japan in France.