Edo Outsiders: Ainu and Ryukyuan Art
Fri 4/19/2024 • 10AM - 5PM PDT
UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The third conference in the Center & Clark's 2023-24 Core Program, Open Edo: Diverse, Ecological, and Global Perspectives on Japanese Art, 1603–1868, focuses on two groups who are often marginalized if not absent in narratives of early modern Japanese art: the Ryukyuans, whose Kingdom of Ryukyu was reduced in the Edo period to a vassal state, and the Ainu, an indigenous society progressively dispossessed of its lands throughout Japanese history. Recent anniversaries—the 150th anniversary of settler colonialism in Hokkaido and the fiftieth anniversary of the reversion of the Ryukyus from the USA to Japan—have brought renewed critical attention to the art of these two groups. While much scholarship on Ryukyuan and Ainu art has focused on modernity, this conference seeks to shift the focus deeper in the archive, to the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries.
The conference is free to attend with advance registration. Please see the event website for full details and the registration form.