ABSTRACT
Since the late nineteenth century, Japan has been deeply implicated in the global circulation of ideas. Its political structure, legal system, society, and culture have all been strongly influenced by ideas imported from Europe, Asia and America. Architecture is another aspect of Japan’s contemporary status as a cultural superpower. Public statuary emerged in Japan in the late nineteenth century. Mirroring developments in Europe and North America, it enabled the creation of a pantheon of national heroes and spurred the dissemination of a national history among the populace. The statues built in modern Japan were influenced by the public statuary of Europe in a variety of ways, including style, location, and function. In Europe, the expansion of public statuary had already slowed following World War I. The “political art” of the nation’s public statuary thus remains outside the global circulation of ideas in twenty-first-century Japan.
