In this inaugural post, we describe our initial reasons for starting this project and how we became involved.
Kevin: My interest in this topic starts with dissatisfaction about art history and the way I have been practicing it. By 2015, I had been teaching my “survey” of Japanese art history for about a decade. I would always preface the class by noting that “Japan” was a constructed and negotiated category that was neither “natural” or given. Often, I would note that most introductions to premodern “Japanese art” often barely stray beyond the painting, sculpture, and architecture of the elites of the Yamato court and warriors of Honshū and Kyūshū, and they don’t even mention certain cultural groups (especially Ainu and Ryūkyūan/Okinawan)… and then I would proceed to ignore most of these marginalized groups and objects for the remainder of the semester. In 2018, I decided that I simply had no excuse to continue in this way and resolved to give only two 80-minute lectures, one on the visual and material cultures of Ainu lands and the other concerning the Ryūkyū Archipelago. It turned out to be much more work than I had anticipated and the resulting lectures were sub par. Never having had any training in these topics, it was a challenge just tracking down good-quality images, understanding their basic contexts, and making sense of the available bibliography, let alone locating relevant primary sources in translation or more in-depth supporting material like maps and timelines. Thinking about how to help people like me take baby steps to start decentering Japanese art historical practice and pedagogy, I came up with the idea for an open-access website that would be focused on materials and regions usually not included in the traditional canon. But first, I needed a lot of help…
Dana: Emily, a friend from grad school, introduced me to Kevin. I was interested in designing a web presence based on Indigenous access and use protocols. After hearing Kevin pitch his idea, I led the project planning stages to outline what kind of website we wanted to produce and what we wanted it to do.
Natsu: I was actually first interviewed by the DJAH team, and that was how I got to know about the project. We talked about Ainu and Okinawan objects in the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s collection, and I was intrigued by the prospect that the DJAH website could be very useful for museum professionals like me. Now, I am a member of the core team, and try to bring a curator’s perspective to the project. Many American museums (like ours) have only one curator dealing with Asian art, and it is sometimes overwhelming to incorporate non-canonical works of art into exhibitions or permanent gallery displays. If there is a one-stop website that offers well-researched information and visual resources, that process would be much easier. American museums are at crossroads right now, urged to reevaluate exhibitions and permanent collection galleries towards anti-racist, anti-colonialist direction. I think this project could greatly contribute to the effort.
Susan: I remember this project in the very early stages—perhaps before it was even a “project”—years ago when Kevin was just starting to conceptualize it and I was his graduate student advisee. For years, we’d had conversations about teaching and intention (stemming from what he characterizes above as dissatisfaction), but over time it grew and Kevin brought his graduate students into all of these discussions. Once he pitched his open-access website idea for funding, it organically grew to include his students. And from the very beginning it felt very collaborative, shaped by our notions of productive, collective scholarship and a desire to decenter in so many ways—decentering the art historical canon (by expanding it), but also decentering traditional notions of hierarchy and intellectual gatekeeping.
Emily: In 2018 I worked as Kevin’s teaching assistant for his survey of Japanese art history class. This iteration of the class included his first lectures dedicated to the visual culture of Ainu peoples and of the Ryūkyū Islands. Even in the lead up to these lectures, I remember having many discussions about pedagogy, canon, and historical narrative construction during our course planning meetings. Kevin and I expressed many shared values around learning and our role as educators including presenting old material in new ways, and the responsible presentation of Indigenous visual cultures. The latter discussions centered heavily on Kevin’s lecture on Ainu visual culture. He asked me for feedback about his lecture on Ainu and Ryūkyū visual culture. I had questions like: Why no mention of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous peoples and Japan’s extremely recent recognition of that document? Why did he not connect his lecture to the kind of historiography and collections histories that framed the beginning of the course? What about anthropology and art history and the ways those disciplines divided the world between the “West” and “non-West” and the lasting impact of that division both in terms of education but also perceptions of Indigenous cultures like the Ainu? Kevin took my questions and criticisms in stride and the conversations we had as co-instructors for this class influenced his application for a seed grant to fund this project a year later. Several years out from this moment, despite many challenges including a global pandemic, collaboration and dedication to co-learning remain at the core of DJAH and its team.
Soyoon: I joined DJAH in the summer of 2021 after teaching a class with Kevin on contemporary Japanese visual culture. Teaching the class and rethinking a syllabus led me to explore artists and creative collectives who are active in Japan but yet to be discussed in a university setting. Our questions revolved around the “how” as much as the “who” – how do we talk about, and along with, artists and their communities? How do we write together? How do we create a space where teaching becomes co-learning? Being a researcher and an artist myself, I thought asking these practice-led, reflexive questions could be another starting point of decentering art history. Here in DJAH, I am excited to develop these questions further and help create a platform where Indigenous community members, artists, researchers, and students can learn from one another and produce collaborative work.