Research
Professor Toshio Watanabe
Director: Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) Research Centre
Peer Esteem (recent)
Places on committees and selection panels
Present:
2005 Member of RAE Panel 64 - Art History.
2004 Member, AHRB Peer Review College.
2003 Member, AHRB Diaspora, Migration and Identity Working Group.
2002 Jury member, Chino Kaori memorial essay prize.
2002 Reviewer, J. Paul Getty postdoctoral fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities.
2002 Member of British national committee, Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art.
Past:
2002-03 Independent evaluator, AHRB.
Membership of professional bodies and other external activities
Present:
2003 Membre titulaire, Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art.
2002 Member of the court, Oxford Brookes University.
2002 Member, Tate Britain council.
Past:
2002-05 Member, Tate Britain council.
1998-01 Chair of the Association of Art Historians
1999-01 Member, Board of Historians of British Art (USA).
Editorial positions
Present:
2003 Member of the Editorial Advisory Board, Design History Japan (Japan).
2002 Member of editorial board, Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education.
2002 Member of advisory board, Journal of Design History.
2002 Member of editorial advisory board, Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide.
Book referee: Curzon Press, Blackwell, University of California Press, University of Hawai'i Press.
Past:
1998 - 2001 Chair of the Editorial Board, Art History.
1996 - 2001 Editorial Associate, 'The Art Book', Association of Art Historians.
External Examination
Research Degrees:
2007 Japanese Studies PhD, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
2006 Museum Studies PhD, University of Leicester.
2005 Art History PhD, University of East Anglia.
2004 History of Art PhD, Manchester University.
2004 Art History PhD, University of Melbourne, Australia.
2002 Oriental studies Ph.D, University of Oxford.
2002 Fine Art Ph.D, University of Plymouth.
2001 External Examiner, M.Phil. upgrading (Art History), University of East Anglia.
Postgraduate and Undergraduate:
2005-09 BA, MA. Art History, University of Hong Kong.
2002-05 MA East Asian Art, Sotheby's Institute of Art.
Involvement in key seminars and conferences
2005 Organised Studies of Japanese Arts and Culture workshop on Anglo Japanese Visual Culture, with Sainsbury's Institute.
2004 'The Construction of Japanese Art History', Department of History of Art, the University of Reading.
2004 Panel Chair of Session 'Visual landscapes' at the, Conference Re-Imagining Culture in the Russo-Japanese War, London.
2004 Organiser and Chair of the International Conference 'Nation, Identity and Modernity: Visual Culture of India, Japan and Mexico 1860s - 1940s', V&A, London.
2003 'Practice-based PhD in Art and Design: Britain and Japan' seminar, Culture and Creativity: Education and Training in the Arts, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, London.
2002 Organiser and Chair: 'Manga and Art: Contemporary Visual Culture in Japan', international symposium.
2001 Organised two international workshops: 'Modernity and National Identity', Brighton.
2001 Day long workshop presentation to the Japanese government sponsored research group Research on Overseas Study of Modern Japanese Art, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
2001 Keynote address: 'Art as Research: PhD and staff research at British art colleges' at The Integration of Art Practice, Theory and Education, organised by the Tohoku Society for Art and Culture.
Current Research
The main focus of my current research is transnational interactions of art with an emphasis on the issue of modernity and identity. I am particularly interested in exploring this not just in bilateral but in multilateral relationships, such as those between, Japan, China, Taiwan, India, Britain or the USA within the time span between 1850 and 1950.
My interest in transnational relationships covers all media, but particularly architecture, garden design, watercolour painting, photography and popular graphics. Particular emphasis is put on the consumption of these art forms locally and globally.
Projects being undertaken include following themes: the theory of modern landscape and imperial architecture in Japan, 1880s - 1940s; history and reception of modern Japanese garden; construction of Japanese Art History; British Japonisme.
Key Projects
2007 - 2010 Principal Investigator: 'Forgotten Japonisme' - major three year research project funded by the AHRC, exploring a previously neglected period in the study of Western attitudes towards Japanese art: from the 1920s to the 1950s. [view]
2001 - 2005 Principal Investigator: AHRB Research Project 'Modernity and Identity in Art: India, Japan and Mexico 1860s-1940s.' [view]
Selected Research Outputs
2007 'Loss of historicity as Identity: The Theory of Japanese Garden by Josiah Conder' at Traditional Arts and Crafts in the 21st Century: Reconsidering the Future from an International Perspective, International Research Centre for Japanese Studies.
2007 'Japanese Landscape Painting and Taiwan: Modernity, Colonialism and National Identity' in 'Refracted Colonial Modernity: Taiwanese Art and Design', University of Hawai'i Press.
2006 'Japanese Imperial Architecture: From Thomas Roger Smith to Itô Chûta' in 'Challenging Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art', University of Hawai'i Press.
2005 'The Debate Surrounding mid-19th Century Urbanisation and the Identity of Hamburg: The Commissioning of Nikolaikirche, the Town Hall and the Waterworks', paper for international conference Lifestyles and Environment in the Human Ecosystem, Tohoku Bunka Gakuen University, Sendai, Japan.
2004 'Britain: From Gothic Revival to Japanese Gardens', in Society for the Study of Japonisme (ed.), Introduction to Japonisme, revised edition (1st ed. 2000), Shibunkaku Shuppan: Kyoto, pp69-89.
2003 '19th and 20th Century History of the Reception of the Japanese Garden - its Spirituality and Peacefulness', in Minoru Saito (ed.), Kunst und Design Für Frieden und Eintracht, Der 3. Gemeinsame Publikation der Städtischen Universität Hiroshima mit der Fachhochschule Hannover und Anderen, Hiroshima: Rijo, pp117-127, pp275-290
2002 'The British scholarship of the history of Japanese modern art: Its context and current state' Research on Overseas Study of Modern Japanese Art, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo: Tokyo, pp37-56
2002 'Art Practice as Research: Its implications in British Art Colleges', Toeingam Srisubut, Bangkok University Art Gallery: Bangkok.
2002 With Yuko Kikuchi 'The British Discovery of Japanese Art', G. Daniels & C. Tsuzuki (eds.) The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations 1600-2000, vol.5, Social and Cultural Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke and New York, 2002, 146-170
2001 'The reception of Japanese art at the 1862 London International Exhibition' in 'Bijutsushi', Journal of the Japan Art History Society, 150.
2001 'The British Scholarship of the History of Japanese Modern Art: its context and current state', Japanese government Research Project # 11691045.
2001 'Japonsime' in 'Crafts', Crafts Council, London,173.
Current Research Students
Michael Archer: Space and the Interpretation of art: The Art of Ina Hamilton Finlay.
Alexandra Handal: Locating the Self: Palestine, diaspora, geographies and body in contemporary art.
Christopher Jordan: Ernest Marsh: a study of private collecting in England in the early 20th Century.
Fabiola Martinez-Rodriguez: Civilising the prehispanic: Constructions of the Nation via neo-prehispanic imagery during the Porfirian regime.
Natasha Mrdalj: In search for a home: a Serbian identity, the art of exile and the representation of otherness.
Sue Wilson: The Nineteenth Century English 'Swiss' Cottage.
Nicolas Cambridge: The relationship between the British - Japanese Fashion Systems.
Piotr Splawski: A penchant for Japan: British and Polish Japonisme in the pictorial arts of the interwar period (1918-1939).
Ajaykumar: "The being of a space": an ontological investigation with reference to the rock cut edifices of Ellora and Tadao Ando's Water Temple.
Nicola Stylianou: Producing and Collecting for Imperial Britain: The African textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum 1850-1950.
Helena Capkova: Japaneseness Over Here: The forgotten appeal of a distinctive Japanese quality in art, design and architecture, 1920s-1930s.
Completed Research Students
Yuko Kikuchi: Mingei Theory and Japanese Modernisation: Cultural Nationalism and 'Oriental Orientalism'.
Francesca Vanke: Ming-huang Lin: (RCA)Sonia Ashmore: Liberty's Orient: Taste and Trade in the Decorative Arts in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain.
Sally Rynn:
Gabriela Vaz Pingeiro: Art from Place: The Expression of Cultural Memory in the Urban Environment and in Place-Specific Art Interventions.
Kiyoko Mitsuyama Wdowiak: The Critical Reception of Contemporary Japanese Art Exhibitions held in the West between 1945-1995 (MPhil).
Hsin-tien Liao: The Formation of Local Identity: Issues of 'Discovering & Representing Taiwan' in Colonial Taiwanese Landscape Paintings (UEA).
Michael Asbury: Hélio Oiticica: The Politics of Ambivalence.
Maria Mencia: from Visual Poetry to Digital Art: Convergent Media and the development of New Media Languages.
Anna Basham: The Denial of influence: Japanese and British Design 1919-1939.
Colin Okashimo: The notion of "place-being" with reference to Isamu Noguchi's sited works and its contemporary applications through practice-based research.
Toeingam Guptabutra: Giving shape to implicit time in Thai contemporary art with reference to video art: An investigation into mixed media installation.
Kaoru Kojima: The Image of Woman in Modern Japanese Art 1890-1945.
Paul Sutcliffe: Contemporary Art in Japan and Cuteness in Japanese Popular Culture.
John Tran: From Yokohama to Manchuria: a photography-based investigation of nostalgia in the creation of Japanese landscape.
