ABSTRACT
From the Meiji period to the postwar period It was 2004 when the term ‘public diplomacy’ was officially adopted at Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But the diplomatic approaches that it denotes have a longer history, of course, in Japanese foreign policy. The Tokugawa shogunate and the Satsuma and Nabeshima clans accepted invitations from Napoleon III, for instance, to participate in the Paris Exposition of 1867. They exhibited ceramics, woodblock prints, and other examples of artisanship and industry under the banner of ‘Nippon’. A few years later, the Meiji government allocated 1 per cent of its annual budget to Japan’s participation in the Vienna Exposition of 1873. Japan’s exhibits at the expositions created a sensation, stoking a Japonisme frenzy in Europe’s art world. The fascination with things Japanese proved an enduring phenomenon, as seen in the establishment of museums devoted to Japanese and other Asian art (Matsumura 2002).
