Authors: Tarô, Okamoto; Reynolds, Jonathan M.

Source: Art In Translation, Volume 1, Number 1, March 2009 , pp. 49-60(12)

Publisher: Berg Publishers

Abstract:

Okamoto Tarô is one the most prominent intellectuals and artists of postwar Japan. His “On Jômon Ceramics” marks the beginning of his engagement with prehistoric Japanese culture. Published in 1952 in the Japanese journal Mizue, the article was highly controversial as it challenged the common view that traced Japanese culture to the achievements and the refined ceramic tradition of the prehistoric Yayoi people and ascribed elegance and understatement to Japanese aesthetics. Okamoto, however, argued that the earlier Jômon culture, a hunting-gathering economy with a dynamically different ceramic tradition, was an equally important influence. Okamoto's vision of Japanese culture as rough, explosive and even “surreal” anticipates an alternative understanding of what modernist artists, architects and the general public would subsequently consider as authentically “Japanese.”

Keywords: Japan; ethnography; Jômon culture; ceramics; tradition; decoration; hunting; magic

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/175613109787307645

Publication date: 2009-03-01

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• Art in Translation has been awarded a Highly Commended Certificate in the 2009 ALPSP Award for Best New Journal.

  Global in scope and extensively illustrated, this unique and innovative new e-journal demonstrates the vitality of art historical and visual culture scholarship undertaken outside English-speaking territories and cultures. Offering high quality English language translations of seminal works presently available only in their source language, Art in Translation offers a fresh perspective on global art practices, history and theory. It covers all areas of the visual arts including painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, design, and electronic media.

  Supported by generous funding from The Getty Foundation.

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