ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of how representative Japanese intellectuals, artists, critics, and scholars since the Meiji era to the current day have perceived Japonisme. It focuses on those pioneering Japanese who traveled to the West, such as Hayashi Tadamasa and Asai Chu, and witnessed the unfolding of Japonisme firsthand around the turn of the twentieth century. The Japanese who spent time in Europe at this time were more concerned about how to reform their own art, and they carefully observed the Western interest in Japanese art. In contemporary Japan, Japonisme is sometimes a nationalistic celebration as Japan’s unique contribution to modern Western art, but this chapter demonstrates that Japanese responses to Japonisme were historically more hesitant, ambivalent, and varied.
