Japanese children, Japanese clothes, Japanese dolls with Japanese clothes. I love these type of dolls since they were some of the ones that were meant to be dressed and undressed as part of play. More often, Westerners concentrate on kokeshi meant for display and Kyoto dolls. Back to the image, rather than to just contrast between the Japanese children and Western children, the dolls and the children seem very alike. WE view the Japanese children as doll-like, an icon rather than people.
From an image depicting Girl's Day, vaguely we move onto the more concrete Boy's Day. It is unsurprising the photographer took note of this, being that the large display is a spectacle in itself, without being viewed in a lens. There is a great interest in these holidays amungst Westerners. As well as it being an exotic coming of age related ordeal, the small boys and girls are dressed up, once again, like dolls. The dolls that accompany these holidays further the foreign eye's comparison.
The boys day fish windsocks are an icon of their own: a bright colorful representation of an asian strange custom.
Finally, because I could not resist, the wonderful picture of the toy store. I wonder why it was so interesting for the photographer? Then again, Disney has quite a similar layout in a little cart at their Tokyo Pavilion in EPCOT... Perhaps the purpose was to demonstrate the "strange" toys the children play with, coupled with the outdoor venue?
Taking, for a moment, the shoes of the European travler, one thought occurs to me: Wouldn't people with children be intrigued by 'foreign' children as a curiousity, partly a refelction of their own (distant at the time of their travel) lives? What sort of relationship did European or American etc etc travelers have with children in a high-class society? Many of these kids would have been distant to them, tutored and raised a step removed because of status quo and all that goodness, but then again, there's always this fascination with what is mirrored yet 'different'. Children are an easy subject, because there is already a paternal nature to the view of the 'European Civilization' towards the unenlightened 'Other', and the child allows this feeling to be expressed in a natural way...
ReplyDeleteAll the children here are of a careful age. Teenagers are viewed from a distance as school girls; here we see just young children at play.
In the first image, we see a line of children in Western Clothes, at a Western Table, with Western Cups. Would this have been amusing to view for a European audience--all the trappings of Westernization with Japanese children's faces? Or is this part of the changing times for them, a view into the new generation growing up into a 'proper' society?
The two girls with the dolls may be connected to the hinamatsui piccture, because I can't imagine the normal child at play wearing kimono. Kids get grimy and dirty and these are carefully constructed images of these polite girls who mirror their perfectly coiffed dolls, reinforcing the idea that these constructed images in the dolls match the constructed image of the photo, and that the doll--which could be owned--is a valid artefact of Japan. It is very interesting that this is not the girls with 'traditional' dolls meant for display, but then, they wouldn't be allowed dolls would they...maybe the visual metaphor here is what is important, between the children and the dolls.
Then you have the windsocks,a s you rightly point out are part of a 'strange foreign custom' made quaint because it's focused on boys and male culture. Do the viewers of the slide necessarily know the connection to male children? Perhaps. It's a mark of one of the strange, out of place and uniquely "Japanese" holidays in Japan, as well as visually striking--a combination surely hard to resist for the collector trying to build a portfolio of things to useto explain his Japanese journey.
I would love to see the toy shop placed next to the same kind of vendor but in European style... if you study the image closely, it looks like someone selling a lot of the kyoto and kokeshi-like dolls, and these stalls are aimed at--tourists! So this is a tourist stop, perhaps one that would be familiar with the traveler, and then could be used to explain the event to a very captive audience in a parlour.
What is interesting at the images of children seems to be these are some of the few int he collection that "allow" Japanese individuals to wear "modern" clothing...is this because the discourse of Japanese 'children' is different then the alreayd stratified discourse of the 'kimono clad, elegant, Japanese woman' and the 'samurai man'? Is this discourse not as heavily ingrained, leaving something of an open spot for a different discourse to be formed by the traveler while in Japan? Yet of course this idea can't be taken too far--we have the childern in kimono, etc--but I wonder where it might go with analysis.
For some reason, the tone of the kindergarten picture didn't seem to be one of amusement. For some reason what I see from it is this:
ReplyDeleteLook! We've SAVED these children. They dress and eat like civilized NORMAL people do now. Isn't that great? Aren't we awesome?
On the Japanese's part, at this time period, there must have been an interesting push between the generations. The smallest children don't have much of a choice in what they wear. So it was the adults that chose to dress them like Europeans. Was there protests from the children's grandparents? When they became older, did they wish they could dress like their mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers?
Were the children with the dolls actually -happy- to be in kimono, or was it formal, stuffy, old?
But everything else you've said: Yes. Very yes.
And I only just now noticed the uniformity of the girls and boy's haircuts in the kindergarten. Perhaps without this, to a foreign eye, it wouldn't seem so "Japanese".
ReplyDeleteBecca, I don't know if I would agree with you about the idea that we "saved" these children and that the photos reflected that. Remember, photography was a new technology in Japan. They probably didn't know that they were "supposed" to smile. Or maybe they were instructed to not smile...
ReplyDeleteWho knows...
The two girls in the kimonos honestly look bored out of their minds. The bright colors (especially on their bows) seem to be trying to distract us from their faces.
I really can't add anything else to this discussion. Everything has already been stated. But, I think it is a really good album.
One thing that I will say. I disagree with the idea that the photos of the houses and teenage girls were taken from far away to make them seem "isolated." A cultural anthropologist would try to include everything in their pictures that they could so that it could all be preserved. I don't think there was any alternative motive to the composition of these pictures.