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  • Edwardian London through Japanese Eyes: The Art and Writings of Yoshio Markino, 1897–1915. by William S. Rodner
  • Ayako Ono (bio)
Edwardian London through Japanese Eyes: The Art and Writings of Yoshio Markino, 1897–1915. By William S. Rodner. Brill, Leiden, 2012. xvi, 219 pages. €93.00.

Edwardian London through Japanese Eyes by William S. Rodner is an insightful study of Japanese artist and writer Yoshio Markino (1869–1956), who was a prominent figure in the early twentieth century in London.

Markino was born in Komoro, now Toyota City, as a son of a samurai. In 1893, at the age of 24, he took a ship from Yokohama to San Francisco. This was the start of his life abroad which lasted for about half a century until his return to Japan in 1942. (Although his original surname was Makino, he changed the spelling to Markino so that English speakers could pronounce it more easily.) It also marked the beginning of his professional artistic career. Although Markino, in his childhood, practiced bunjinga (literati painting) under local painter Tamegaki Chikkō and also Western-style drawing technique with Nozaki Kanekiyo and Mizuno Manji, the training was not for the purpose of becoming an artist but for becoming accomplished in art. It was only after his arrival in San Francisco that he started to study art seriously. This was one of the reasons that he did not have close contact with the contemporary Japanese art world and remained an unknown artist in his native country in spite of his success in early twentieth-century London. In addition, many of his original paintings were destroyed during World War II in London, making it difficult to evaluate his works. As Rodner points out, [End Page 410] Sammy Ikuo Tsunematsu is a pioneer in the revaluation of Markino’s career. Tsunematsu has not only collected Markino’s surviving works but has also published books on Markino and republished Markino’s writings. His native city, Toyota, is engaged in collecting works and cataloguing Markino documents. The Toyota Municipal Museum of Art holds the largest collection of his original paintings and drawings: 42 oil paintings, 38 watercolors, and 4 prints. Exhibitions on Markino were held in 1984 at the Toyota City Local Museum and in 2008 at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.

Edwardian London through Japanese Eyes is a new achievement in Markino studies. This book is important as a comprehensive study of Markino; the author examines both Markino’s writings and his paintings and details Markino’s career during the Edwardian period. In addition, Rodner places Markino in the context of the historical development of British interest in Japan and in its culture and art. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Japanese art greatly influenced European art and was an important stimulus to many artists. They assimilated elements of Japanese art, and from these they formed their own style. This is now widely recognized as a phenomenon or movement called Japonisme. Rodner examines British interest in Japanese art and shows how Markino’s popularity nearly parallels the rise and decline of British interest in Japan. It is also noteworthy that Rodner analyzes the Japanese view of Edwardian London and reveals complex crosscultural artistic exchange. From Rodner’s study, Markino emerges as a figure who understood both British and Japanese culture and survived playing the role of a spokesman of Japan, blending cultural and artistic characteristics.

After Japan was opened to the rest of the world in 1854, diplomats, travelers, traders, artists, and others visited Japan and brought back a broad knowledge of Japanese life and culture to their native countries. After their return home, they published books and articles to describe Japanese customs, the social system, culture, and art and to introduce a different view of the world from that of Europe. Numerous books and articles were published from the middle of the nineteenth century to satisfy people’s curiosity of the unknown country. Quoting various discourses, Rodner discusses British interest in Japan and its culture and art, and he analyzes how the British understood and viewed Japanese art and culture. He examines numerous articles written by Markino’s contemporaries and emphasizes the increase...

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