As one of the most prolific participants in world’s fairs large and small starting in the 1860s up to 1940, Japan thrived on building national pavilions that repackaged historical models, types, and styles more so than offering original, up-to-date architecture. As a foreign participant rather than the host country, it played the role of Other in fact and metaphor. This presentation examines serial performances of ideas of a unified nation, culture, and race in Japan’s exhibition architecture. The variety, rather than coherence, of architectural representation during these decades demonstrates the plurality of sources and means for defining Japanese unity. The presentation’s coda offers a long look at Japanese national pavilion design since 1940 to today, noting continuing efforts to materialize Japanese culture, authenticity, and tradition writ large through architecture. The emphasis on producing explicitly “Japanese” architecture overseas and for an unknowing, possibly unsympathetic, audience is a problematic concept born of nineteenth-century exposition culture; nonetheless, to build a national pavilion in the politicized gathering of nations and peoples was and remains a powerful act of autonomy, no matter how mangled the expressions. 

 

Alice Y. Tseng is Professor of History of Art & Architecture and Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Humanities at Boston University. She specializes in the art, architecture, and visual culture of Japan from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries.