Daily Archives: March 10, 2015

Court Ladies or Pin-Up Girls: Choose One of the Above

Report on a cultural event

The exhibit, “Court Ladies or Pin-Up Girls?” was in Gallery 178 of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Even before checking the map, I could visualize where it would be. In many museums in the U.S., there is an Africa, Asia, Oceania section (often dimly lit) where all “ethnic” art is crammed in while Europe gets the run of the rest of the museum. And this is where Gallery 178 was. I immediately started to get worried.
“Court Ladies or Pin-Up Girls?” is centered around a piece in the MFA called Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk. When the viewer walks into the exhibit, the piece is on a table at waist-level in a glass case. It’s a colorful piece depicting four women holding a long, white piece of silk with two other women siting on a pale green mat, while others pound silk on the right edge of the painting. This exhibit had been inspired by more recent interpretations of the piece arguing that the piece has sexual undertones due to the piece’s actual title: Picture of Pounding Silk– a common metaphor for desire. Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk was what inspired the exhibit, but the big question, at least according to the exhibit’s title, seemed to be what exactly Chinese women were supposed to be– court ladies or pin-up girls.
As I moved towards the left, navigating the space clockwise, I confronted the wall text introducing the exhibit. Part of it stated that, “In a sense, this exhibition is not about women, but about men. How men imagined or desired women to be.” While that was a thoughtful idea to acknowledge in the context of this exhibit, I rolled my eyes. Of course it’s about how men imagined or desired women to be. Isn’t that all art is?
On the first two left walls, there were domestic scenes from the southern Song dynasty with intricately detailed backgrounds. These paintings were subtly suggestive, inviting the reader to pay attention to small actions. Here, a hand on the knee, very little personal space between two figures, or Buddha hand citrons hinted at an erotic undertone.

When I turned the corner to the back of the exhibit, I initially didn’t fully take in the content of this set of paintings on the back wall. They were parts of a 12-page album created by Meng Lu Jushi during the late 18th or early 19th century. Many of them had a muted greyness to them, and all I could see from a distance was that there were women. As I got a bit closer, I was able to see that the scene wasn’t quite as conservative as it seemed from a distance. Small dots of pink turned out to be nipples, and I realized that unlike Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, the sensuality of this series was more pronounced.
I paused for a moment. Something felt strange about all of this. East Asian women are often sexualized in the Western imagination, and it was hard not to feel uneasy about erotic paintings of Chinese women being located in the back. It felt like stepping to the back of a 90s video store where the “adult” videos were hidden. Perhaps the curators meant to keep certain body parts away from the gaze of curious museum-going children. But something about putting the erotic pieces on the back wall and in a small alcove initially hidden from view felt needlessly prudish.

I turned towards the alcove where the paintings were even more explicit, with several nude and partially nude couples having sex. They were stunning, composed of thin lines, fine details and vivid colors. And it was these paintings that made me reconsider the exhibit as a whole. Seeing those paintings and the title of the exhibit in a Boston art museum initially made me think that I was just seeing another instance where East Asian women were eroticized.

But that conclusion does not do justice to the subjects. Regardless of what the wall text said, this exhibit is about women. Several of the paintings included women in loving embraces (sometimes with one another) and even being given a sex toy by an older woman. In other words, these women were exercising erotic autonomy. Just because a subject is erotic does not necessarily mean that it’s eroticized.

Nor does that mean that the exhibit is without its problems. Part of the issue, I later realized, is the title. While it’s empowering to see instances where women are acting on their desires, the fact that the title includes “pin-up girl” seems to trivialize these works. Pin-up girls are almost exclusively for male consumption, and it’s problematic not to notice the issue with making images of East Asian women available for mass consumption by a Western audience, even if it’s in a museum. When they’re the subject of the painting, they feel like agents, but in the context of a museum exhibit with a title that includes “pin-up girls,” it makes them seem more like objects. Additionally, the court lady and pin-up girl dichotomy is extremely limiting, and that entire question feels a bit silly. The question invites the viewer to only consider women as part of one of two categories, an exercise that’s neither provocative or productive. The exhibit doesn’t do a particularly good job of answering its own question, though perhaps that’s for the best since it’s a shallow one anyway.

The Future of Japanese Culture at Wellesley College

Report on a cultural event

As two women and two young girls, done up in beautiful coiffures and wearing kimonos of rich pale silk, plucked their koto, a traditional Japanese instrument, a respectful hush settled over the crowd at Yuki Matsuri.

This year with fingers crossed, the Japan Club welcomed a very special performance for Yuki Matsuri, or Snow Festival. They had managed to book professional koto players. The koto is a traditional stringed instrument that looks like an enlarged bridge of a cello with an extra nine strings and is laid on the ground. It’s the national instrument of Japan and it’s difficult to learn and to play. It’s a repetition of single strums producing a single sound. Each pluck of a string sends a forlorn twang into the ether. Often used in nagauta, long songs that accompanied kabuki theatre. For me, the sounds evoke the traditional Japan we often see in samurai films with geisha in beautiful silk kimonos looking out across a lake, watching a sakura blossom’s descent. However, the traditional sound can be disconcerting –anachronistic even—for unsophisticated audiences unfamiliar with Eastern music and instruments.

I looked out at the audience from backstage as the koto players continued. Their eyes were fixated on the performers. With each pluck of the koto, a single note resonated in the air. After ten minutes the saga of sounds slowly faded into silence, and the audience applauded. The performers paused, and the audience prepared for the next act to come on stage, but instead the performers began their second song. Another ten minutes passed, and several students began to shift impatiently in their seats on the floor. Some even got up to get more food, talking loudly to their friends and turning their backs to the stage. Japan Club members turned to each other and frowned: “Everyone’s leaving.”

It was true. Half the audience was picking up their plates, throwing them in to the trash, and walking out the doors of the performance room. This was only the second act of Yuki Matsuri. Veteran Japan Club members explained to me that it’s not unusual at long events like Yuki Matsuri for audience members to get up and explore the booths lining the walls during intermission. The great offense came from the fact that they were leaving in the middle of a performance. Although the koto players continued to play for their full time allotment, when they left the stage, they brusquely bowed to the Japan Club e-board members, gathered their instruments and quickly left. Their refusal to stay for the rest of the festival was the Japanese way of saying, “We’ve been utterly insulted by our treatment.”

This was the eleventh time Wellesley Japan Club hosted Yuki Matsuri. Every year, over 200 students attend in order to see the various performances ranging from a traditional sōranbushi, a fisherman’s shanty, to a Japanese Pop music medley. Along the walls of the Tishman Commons are booths that feature games like origami and delicious Japanese food such as oden, wheat noodles in a soy broth. Yuki Matsuri is a great way to expose Wellesley students to Japanese culture without having to host a lecture. Unfortunately, this event doesn’t receive the appreciation it deserves.

There is a lot of work that goes into planning a cultural event of this large scale. Japan Club Executive Board members start planning all the way in September and don’t stop until February. Their job description sounds simple enough, except people outside of Japan Club E-board don’t realize the painstaking details involved. People who don’t speak English very well perform many of the traditional acts that are brought in for Yuki Matsuri. As a result, most of the communications received from outside participants are written in keigo, or the formal Japanese used when addressing elders or superiors. This profound politeness is a reflection of the complex social hierarchy embedded in Japanese culture. Disregarding the cultural significance of formal correspondence signals to the performers a lack of respect.

Although the preparations for Yuki Matsuri are intense, the hardest part is getting Wellesley students to actually attend. The joke on campus—even amongst professors—is that all one needs to attract Wellesley students is free food.It makes a lot of sense. What could poor college students want more than a stimulating lecture?

Okonomiyaki, Japanese catchall pancakes.

It’s no wonder that the Japan Club, which orders over a thousand dollars worth of sushi, soba, katsudon, and gyoza, gets 300 guests from on- and off-campus. They come for the food, and the Japan Club members hope the students stay to watch the acts that their fellow students have spent half a year perfecting. Yet by the end of the night, maybe 100 to as few as 50 students have actually stayed till the end.

Although many audience members left during the koto performance, the event was still a success. The rest of the acts, including Mount Holyoke’s OdotteMita, a J-pop dance group, were able to perform their pieces without any audience members leaving. In fact many of the students excitedly waited until after intermission for Wellesley’s Taiko, a Japanese drum club. The loud banging of the large drums contrasted with the subtle long notes of the koto. The traditional music of the koto, often associated with the courtly life of Japan, was perhaps not ideally suited for a college crowd; most of who are not used the sounds of Eastern music.

Personally, I was angry that many of my fellow students had left the performance room without really giving the koto players a chance. Blame bad timing or short attention spans, but the majority of the audience members that night missed not only great performances, but also the point of a cultural show, exposure to a unique culture. Discovery and adventure require some effort and persistence. The disinterested students may out number the interested, but the interested students are learning a lot about Japan’s culture from the minimal effort to eat good food and listen quietly to performances.