Napier, Susan J.: From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as FantasyĪnd Fan Cult in the Mind of the West. Work on Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture is a particular highlight, as is the biographical reinterpretation offered of Lafcadio Hearn’s translation of Japanese folklore and fairytales. Particularly good sections of the early chapters include the manner and ways in which traditional Japanese arts have been incorporated into Western art movements, literature and architecture in the past, and indeed, the present times. In doing so Napier supplies some convincing and important new insights into why and how Western scholars and peoples have responded to, and represented, Japan to the rest of the world. Intriguingly, she does so by drawing a dotted, if not continuous, line from early French Impressionist collecting and adapting of Japanese ukiyo-e (floating world) woodblock art prints to contemporary fans for anime and manga. Napier’s new monograph tries once more to tease out some the reasons both for the high regard in which Japanese traditional culture is held by the “West,” and for the rather more cautious approach taken to the contemporary “Japans” that Western countries have encountered since Japan’s forced re-opening to international trade in the 1800s. Such historical encounters between Japan and its Others have formed the source of academic attempts to account for the attraction of Japan to the West for some time now, perhaps most famously in Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1989). Rayna Denison, University of East Anglia, UK Volume 6, Issue 2 (November 2009) Abstract Japan has been a source of fascination and fear in the mind of its Others for well over a thousand years, particularly if Asia’s early encounters with the Japanese are included in the historical mix. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2007). Review: Napier, Susan J.: From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West.
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