Studies in Asian Art and Archaeology Japanese Transcultural Perspectives

This volume offers fresh, challenging perspectives on Japanese art using the transcultural as an analytical framework. Its twenty-two case studies bring to light the transformative agency of multi-directional cultural flows in the creation, circulation, and interpretation of Japanese art from ancient to modern times. The transcultural approach to Japanese art history embraced by the contributors to this volume centers on the dynamic aesthetic, artistic, and conceptual negotiations across cultural, temporal, and spatial boundaries. It not only acknowledges material objects, people, and technologies as agents, but also intangible practices such as knowledge and concepts as vital agencies of interaction in transcultural processes. With its premise on connectivity, trans-territoriality, networks, and their transformative potential, this research destabilizes categorical configurations such as “center vs. periphery” and “high vs. low,” calling into question the classical canon of Japanese art history.