In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • On the Contributors

Ignacio Adriasola is assistant professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, at The University of British Columbia. A historian of modern and contemporary art in Japan, his work has appeared in the journals positions, October, and Archives of Asian Art (forthcoming fall 2017). He is currently finishing a book on experimental art and politics in the aftermath of the protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty of 1960. (ignacio.adriasola@ubc.ca)

Sarah Teasley, Ph.D., University of Tokyo, is Head of Programme for History of Design at the Royal College of Art, and a historian of design, technology and society in modern and contemporary Japan. Her current research explores relationships between wood manufacturing communities and industrial policy in twentieth-century Japan, with particular emphasis on material factors in policy implementation and how local industries adapt to change. Her publications include Global Design History (Routledge, 2011). She is an active advocate of public-facing, practice-based history through design and material culture, and of history that contributes to design practice, policy-making and society at large. (sarah.teasley@rca.ac.uk)

Jilly Traganou is associate professor of Spatial Design Studies at Parsons School of Design. She is the author of Designing the Olympics: Representation, Participation, Contestation (Routledge, 2016) and The Tokaido Road: Traveling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), and co-editor with Miodrag Mitrasinovic of Travel, Space, Architecture (Ashgate, 2009). She guest edited "Design Histories of the Olympics" (Journal of Design History, 2012), and together with Artemis Yagou, [End Page 297] "Visual Communication Design in the Balkans" (The Design Journal, 2015). Her current research focuses on design and dissent. (traganog@newschool.edu)

Reiko Tomii is an independent art historian and curator who investigates post-1945 Japanese art in global and local contexts for the narration of a world art history of modernisms. Her research encompasses the topics of "international contemporaneity," collectivism, and conceptualism in 1960s art, as demonstrated by her contribution to Global Conceptualism (Queens Museum of Art, 1999), Century City (Tate Modern, 2001), and Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art (Getty Research Institute, 2007). She has worked closely with numerous artists including Kusama Yayoi, Xu Bing, and Ushio Shinohara. Her latest publication is Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan (MIT Press, 2016), which has received the 2017 Robert Motherwell Book Award. She is co-founder/co-director of PoNJA-GenKon, a scholarly listserv (www.ponja-genkon.net). (rtomii.js@gmail.com)

Yoko Akama is an associate professor in design in the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia. Her Japanese heritage has instilled a Zen-informed reflexive approach to her practice of carving a "tao" (path) in human-centered design. Her practice addresses complex "wicked problems" and is shaped by working with regional communities in Australia and strengthening their resilience for disaster preparedness and working with Indigenous Nations to enact their sovereignty and self-determination. She is an Adjunct Fellow of an ecosystem innovation studio, Re:public Inc., and Visiting Fellow at the Centre of Excellence in Media Practice, Bournemouth University. She is the recipient of several major research grants in Australia and the UK and winner of the prestigious Good Design Australia Award (2014). (yoko.akama@rmit.edu.au)

Ory Bartal is the head of the Department of History and Theory in Bezalel, Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. His research covers contemporary Japanese visual culture, including advertising design, Japanese avant-garde fashion, industrial design, manga and visual communication in Japan. His research explores the connection between aesthetics and the sociology of consumption. His recent publications include "Rei Kawakubo Meets Marie Antoinette in Down-Town Tokyo: Feminist Ideologies in Post-Modern Japanese Fashion" (A Stitch in Time - Fashion and Ideology, 2014) and "Text as Image in Japanese Advertising" (Design Issues, 2013). His book Postmodern Advertising in Japan: Seduction, Persuasion and the Tokyo Art Directors Club was [End Page 298] published in 2015. He is currently working on a book about critical design in Japan. (orybartal@bezalel.ac.il)

Helena Čapková is an assistant professor teaching art history in the School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo. She received her...

pdf