Promoting Japan as a tourist destination has been on the upswing as the nation prepares for the 2020 Olympics. From January 9 to February 28, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo is featuring an exhibit of posters, pictorial magazines and brochures from the 1920s-1930s inviting tourists to enjoy the landscape and customs of Japan. As is the case for much of the material on this site, these items are remarkable evidence of the first systematic government-sponsored campaign to promote Japan as a sightseeing destination for foreign tourists. Many of the posters in the National Museum of Modern Art exhibit feature illustrations by well-known contemporary artists, including (in Japanese name order of surname, first name) Sugiura Hisui (1876-1965), Takehisa Yumeji (1884-1934), Yoshida Hatsusaburo (1884-1955) and Satomi Munetsugu (1904-1996). Here are a few of the items in the exhibit that accompany the brief announcement of the exhibit on the museum’s website, accessed today (29 Dec. 2015).

“Beautiful Japan” poster published by the Japan Tourist Bureau, Japanese Government Railways

Fanciful illustration advertising Ōsaka Shosen Kaisha (Osaka Mercantile Steamship Co., Ltd.)

Advertisement for Nippon Yūsen Kaisha (N.Y.K., also known as the Japan Mail S.S. Co.)

You can now listen to recordings for 35 items in the Sheet Music and Wartime Propaganda (US, UK) galleries. The recordings were made earlier this year under the direction of Philip C. Carli (piano), with Soloists Isaac Wenger, Lulu Cossich, and Peter Doyle, and (Ensemble) Matthew Adrian, Isaac Assor, Alice Carli, Hannah Kurth, and Cody Muller. Recording Engineer David Dusman, Dusman Audio, Inc., provided the recordings, optimized for presentation here by Joshua Romphf, Digital Humanities Programmer at the Digital Humanities Center, University of Rochester. 46 songs in all were recorded, and the remaining songs will be made available as we receive them from Dusman Audio.

The earliest sheet music in the collection is The Mikado: Gems on Airs from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Opera (for piano and vocal), published in New York in 1885. This item was collected after the recording session earlier this year, so a recording is not available here, but more recording sessions are possible in the future. The Mikado: Gems on Airs was published the same year that the iconic comic opera by Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert opened at the Savoy Theatre in London, where it ran for 672 performances. It is difficult to rein in the vast Mikado universe, even within the Re-Envisioning Japan collection. You will find a sample of the ways in which the opera’s profile was amplified through marketing merchandise, for example, in the Advertisements & Shopping gallery. The opera’s origins coincided with the 1885-1887 Japanese Exhibition in Knightsbridge, and you can peruse postcards from the diverse “Japanese Villages” throughout time in the “Japan in America” section of the Postcards gallery. Examples of such imaginary Japans represented in the collection range from The Japanese Village at Revere Beach, Wonderland Amusement Park, Massachusetts [1906-1911] to the Japanese Village and Deer Park in Buena Park, California (1967-1975). The most recent addition to the collection that can be linked to The Mikado is the late 1950s LP The Coolest Mikado, performed by The Gilbert and Sullivan Jazz Ensemble. The Coolest Mikado is not to be confused with The Cool Mikado, a 1962 British musical directed by Michael Winner set in contemporary Japan (a sound stage) or, for that matter, The Hot Mikado, a 1930s musical theater adaptation with an African-American cast. Just incidentally, The Hot Mikado was preceded by a WPA Federal Theatre Project production, The Swing Mikado (1938), and has its own progeny, Hot Mikado (1986). As you can see, The Mikado‘s footprint looms large in the world of popular “representations” of Japan (in quotes here because representing Japan was not really part of Gilbert and Sullivan’s original plan). The University of Rochester has a significant collection of artifacts related to The Mikado, and items in Re-Envisioning Japan will augment this collection when stewardship of the REJ material collection transitions to the University’s Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation.

The most recent sheet music in the collection (1941-1945) is located in the Wartime Propaganda (US, UK) gallery, and is referred to in a previous post.

You’re a Sap, Mister Jap (1941)

On the eve of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I thought I would post the covers of 2 relevant pieces of 1941 sheet music in the REJ collection. The covers (even “You’re a Sap, Mr. Jap”) are tame compared to the images and slogans on many anti-Japanese postcards, matchbook covers, stickers, and pins in the collection. They provide a stark contrast to the self-referential (and often reverential)

Remember Pearl Harbor (1941)

nationalistic spirit of Japanese propaganda objects in the collection, especially because I’ve focused on things that feature patriotic women on the homefront. (John Dower‘s excellent study, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, highlights the radical contrast between WWII era U.S. and Japanese propaganda.) Alas, current events evoke memories of WWII anti-Japanese racism in the U.S., most notably Roanoke Mayor David Bowers’ comparison between Roosevelt’s decision to “sequester Japanese foreign nationals” and the “threat” of Syrian immigration today. He later apologized, but I hear Donald Trump is planning a Pearl Harbor Day remembrance rally. I hope no one sings.