How was knowledge, ranging from the scientific, pious, entrepreneurial, and artistic, to the preposterous, transmitted through the historic movement of print and manuscript material in and around Japan?
Setting out to tackle this question in Spring 2025, students in the University of Kansas History of Art Department Japanese art history seminar “Manuscripts, Maps, and Illustrated Books” had the opportunity to curate this exhibition, working with materials from The Kenneth Spencer Research Library collection. Selected works range from 1646 to 1936, including detailed cartography, woodblock-printed imagery, and religious paraphernalia. Journeying from Japan to the West and back again, this exhibition spans three centuries and five intersecting themes.
- Mapping and Conceptions of Space demonstrates that while overseas travel remained restricted during 17th to 19th centuries, Japan’s expanding awareness of domestic and global geographies incorporated both traditional Japanese mapmaking and novel observations from Western travelers.
- Tourism and Movement of People illustrates changing conceptions of travel during the 17th to 19th century, from symbolic displays of authority to strategic assertions of national identity.
- Pilgrimage and Movement of Religions reflects on the spread of foreign faiths to Japan, as well as the pivotal role of bodily and spiritual journeys within religious beliefs and practices.
- Trade and Movement of Goods offers a window into the commercial world of Japan and the global trade networks that developed from the movement of goods.
- Virtual Travel and Fantasies of Asia reveals exciting cultural encounters between East and West, offering visions of Japan and its environs in which curiosity, exoticization, and national identity collide.
The treasures that traveled out of The Kenneth Spencer Research Library stacks into this exhibition represent but a fraction of the library’s holdings of Asian material, which are all available upon patron request. Notably, several of the items included were collected by Kate Hansen (1879–1968), a Kansan who lived in Japan as a missionary and music teacher during 1907–1941 and 1947–1951. We hope that these displays will move viewers to appreciate how people of the past sought creative strategies that blended image with text to excite and inspire the transmission of knowledge in and around Japan.
This is an online version of a physical exhibit that was on display in Kenneth Spencer Research Library from September 2025 through January 2026.
Student curators: Yuan-Hsi Chao, Brady Cullen, Aria Diao, Shangyi Lyu, Olivia Song, Emma Smith, Rebekah Staton, Heeryun Suh, Eli Troen, and Morgan Williamson
Faculty advisor: Sherry Fowler, Professor of Japanese Art History, History of Art, University of Kansas
Library advisor: Eve Wolynes, Special Collections Curator, University of Kansas Libraries
