Exhibitionist Japan

From the second half of the nineteenth century, Japan has been a particularly enthusiastic user of exhibitions. Large-scale international exhibitions, including Osaka 2025, form only the tip of an iceberg comprising over 1,300 industrial, regional, and local exhibitions held in Japan over the past 150 years. In this unique history, Angus Lockyer explores how and why these events have been used as catalysts of development and arenas for fostering modern industry, empire, and nation. He traces their complicated genesis, realization, and reception, demonstrating that although they rarely achieve their stated aims, this does not undermine their utility – Japanese expos have provided a model subsequently adopted around the world. The history of this enthusiasm provides a more nuanced understanding of development in modern Japan, and emphasizes the shared experiences of global modernity.

'Exhibitions functioned in many ways, as Angus Lockyer argues in this deeply researched and exuberant volume, although they were always splashy, alluring, oddball, capacious, and modern. This versatility explains why these grand spectacles work so well to reveal Japan's fast-changing social histories and self-representations in the wider world.' Laura Hein, author of Post-Fascist Japan: Political Culture in Kamakura after The Second World War
'In this spritely, deeply-researched and refreshingly reflexive history, Angus Lockyer decisively shows how expos, like any complex project, present the aspirations of the people who came together to create them, and how those aspirations will not dictate how people actually experience them. Exhibitionist Japan illuminates what expos in Japan and Japanese exhibits at international expositions promised and delivered for their diverse stakeholders, from politicians and media magnates to entrepreneurs, professional exhibition-makers and visitors. By following the arc of expo-making through Japan's last 150 years, Lockyer provides a rich counterpoint to both existing histories of modern Japan and histories of expos more widely, challenging existing US- and Eurocentric interpretations in the anglophone literature.' Sarah Teasley, author of Designing Modern Japan

Angus Lockyer is an independent historian of modern Japan.

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