ABSTRACT
Museums play a major role in forming social identities in processes of nation-building (Crinson 2001, Launius 2007). This is especially the case with what Hooper-Greenhill (2000: 16–18) terms ‘modernist museums’ that originated in the nineteenth century and continue to exist today. Recently, with the emergence of new paradigms, ethnographic collections are being revisited by scholars and museum practitioners (Goodnow and Akman 2008, Ashworth et al. 2007). Their studies have mostly dealt with European and multicultural societies, but have also become relevant when analysing museums in Japan, as many have begun to challenge the perception of Japan as ethnically ‘homogeneous’ (Dale 1986, Lie 2001, Siddle 2003, Weiner 2008). In recent years, Japan’s shifting political context has greatly impacted museological practices of museums envisaged, in the words of Clifford (1997), as ‘contact zones’.
