What unknown stories are to be found as we peel back the layers of tradition and culture?

Shanghai-based book planner and translator Tang Shi introduces Japanese culture to Chinese audiences. After studying at Hokkaido University, Tang began working for a publisher in Shanghai, where she translated and published Japanese books in Chinese on subjects ranging from literature to art.

Now a freelancer, Tang has planned, edited, and translated titles including Hana o tateru (Arranging Flowers; published by Shinchosha/Seika no Kai, 2021) by Kawase Toshiro, Boku no bijutsucho (Mon cahier d’arts; Misuzu Shobo, 2019) by Harada Osamu, and Chogeijutsu tomason (Hyperart “Thomassons”; Chikuma Shobo, 1987) by Akasegawa Genpei published in Chinese. It was a fortuitous encounter with a book that ignited her interest in Japanese crafts, which she writes about for the Chinese public.　

唐詩 Tang Shi

Editor and translator based in Shanghai. Born 1991 in Zhejiang province. After graduating from Heilongjiang University, she attended graduate school at Hokkaido University, specializing in visual art and expression culture theory . Returning to China in 2016, she took a job with a Shanghai publisher, where she translated and published works starting with Iizawa Kotaro’s Shi shashin ron (A Study of the ‘I-photo’; Chikuma Shobo, 2000) and moved on to a series of literary works by Terayama Shuji and Shibusawa Tatsuhiko, the novel Anarogu (Analog; Shinchosha, 2017) by Beat Takeshi, and collected interviews with artist Nara Yoshitomo. Went freelance in 2022.

Our First Meeting

I was introduced to Tang by Paris-based artist Onodera Yuki. Onodera, recipient of the Nicéphore Niépce Prize, France’s most prestigious prize for photography, and whose principal work is the series Furugi no potoreito (Portrait of Second-hand Clothes; 1994), became acquainted with Tang after exhibiting her works in Shanghai. One autumn day in 2018, Tang came to my office, then located in the 3331 Arts Chiyoda building. To my great surprise, Tang had written to me about her visit, and conversed with me, in virtually perfect Japanese. I asked her where she had learned Japanese. With no contact with the Japanese language until graduation from her university in China, Tang said she learned the language during the three years she spent as a foreign student at Hokkaido University’s graduate school, where she had studied the “I-photo.” She related that thanks to her fluency in Japanese, her employer assigned her to translate and publish Japanese works and handle product planning as part of her editorial job in Shanghai. We got along well at our meeting, and Tang has become a respected friend.

Treasures of the Tokyo National Museum Published in Chinese

Right around that time, I was in the final stages of preparing Tokyo Kokuritsu Bijutsukan no shiho (Treasures of the Tokyo National Museum; Bookend Publishing Co., Ltd., 2020), a project I had worked on for seven years. The publication of the book, a collection of 150 photos principally of the museum’s national treasures and important cultural properties selected by photographer Muda Tomohiro, was timed to coincide with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Intended to introduce non-Japanese visitors to the allure of Japanese crafts, editions in Japanese and English were planned and the book design was done in Paris. After my meeting with Tang, it was decided to also publish the book in Chinese.

By chance, the publisher where Tang was working at the time focused on translating and publishing works on Japanese crafts. Tang also had extensive experience in book production and broad knowledge thanks to her contacts with writers, so I asked her to act as a go-between with a respected art book publisher in Shanghai and concluded a copyright agreement with that company. From that point on, she handled everything from editing to delivery with competence and efficiency, and the Chinese edition came out without any difficulties.

But due to the Covid-19 pandemic-triggered recession, Tang’s employer had to cut its work force and reorient its focus. As a result, planned projects related to Japanese culture that Tang had hoped to work on were cancelled. Nonetheless, the company piled work on her and she was having to work two or three times harder than before, so in 2022 she decided to go freelance. Now her days are filled with translation projects, as well as editing, interpreting, and writing. In September 2023, once Chinese were able to resume travel abroad, I interviewed her when she came to Japan after a three-year absence.

What brought about your interest in Japanese crafts?

After completing graduate studies at Hokkaido University, I took a job in publishing in Shanghai. I was assigned to produce books on Akagi Akito, Mitani Ryuji, and other artisans as my main work, so I gradually picked up more knowledge about Japanese crafts.

My interest grew even stronger after I met Sauser Miho, author of Zao wu de wen du (The Temperature of Handmade Things; Purui Culture, 2020). Sauser had been interviewing Japanese artisans for decades and publishing her writings in Chinese magazines. The Temperature of Handmade Things was a collection of her articles written over several years compiled in book form, and it was through editing that volume that I became fascinated by Japanese crafts.

Through introductions by Sauser, I went on to translate the official website for Kiryu textiles and Yondai Tanabe Chikuunsai: Shu-ha-ri (Chikuunsai Tanabe IV: Shu Ha Ri), published by Bijutsu Shuppan-sha in 2021, featuring the works of the renowned bamboo artist, adding to my experience translating about Japanese crafts. My knowledge benefited further from acting as interpreter for Japanese artisans invited to Shanghai for exhibitions and two-day talk shows by Qianjiang Culture, a Shanghai gallery selling Japanese crafts.

What do you think are some differences between Chinese and Japanese crafts?

Japanese crafts are diverse, extending from the making of tools and implements of daily life to ornaments and decoration. The artisans who create them are particular about materials and techniques. They do not simply make an article; they imbue it with their own thinking. In particular, they always keep users in mind, creating articles that are durable and adaptable to modern life. As expressions of Japanese aesthetics, their creations are beautiful as well as practical.

There are also people, not only artisans but also leading cultural figures and others who think deeply about the concept of craft, so compared to China, Japan offers a favorable environment for crafts. In addition, many shops selling crafts are long-established businesses knowledgeable about the history and techniques of their wares. They are trustworthy dealers who offer many reasonably priced items.

What are conditions like for craftwork in China today?

In China, meanwhile, some fine crafts were costly items intended for emperors and royal palaces, placing them out of reach of ordinary people. Today, the same is true of some designer art and brand products; they occupy a rarefied space having nothing to do with the lives of the majority.

Meanwhile, the crafts of making items for daily life have not developed. The absence of younger people to carry on traditional skills also means that crafts do not become better known and slowly die out. Ceramics is the only craft of items of everyday use that flourishes nowadays, especially for ware in connection with China’s culture of tea. Jingdezhen, long known for its production of porcelain, has become a popular tourist destination over the past few years. Many art school graduates have settled there too, breathing new life into the craft. The number of brands selling porcelain in pop-inspired designs to young people has also increased.

Many of China’s traditional crafts were made in state-run workshops. For ceramics, the state-run kilns, created to produce ceramics for the rulers of the country, were the most prominent example. As such, unlike Japan’s mingei folk crafts, which were made as part of ordinary people’s daily lives, China’s were quite different. The craft items made reflected the personal aesthetics of the emperors rather than the tastes of the populace. They were not created to be easy to use but were intended to symbolize luxury and project the power of the Chinese empire. Artisans were given no space to exercise their own thinking or taste; they had to submit to the dictates of the emperor.

Changes in government have a major impact on craft industries and can even lead to the loss of technologies. Artists and artisans are employed by the state to practice their crafts. When they can no longer work, many of them return to their villages and become farmers. They do not enjoy a recognized status in society, as do their counterparts in Japan, that allows them to pass on their culture and techniques, and I would say that is why China lacks long-established shops or lineages of artisans specializing in traditional crafts.

China does have innumerable folk handcrafts which continue to be made, particularly outside major cities and in the traditions of ethnic minority peoples. But these have a strong regional character, which makes broadening the market for them difficult, and they are always in danger of disappearing. Such factors may explain why interest in passing on or propagating crafts is weak in China compared to Japan.

How interested are young Chinese in crafts?

Most craftworks in China, including ceramics by noted artists, are prohibitively expensive, so young people have little interest in them. (laughs)

In cities like Jinhua and Dongyang in Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai where I live, the craft of woodcarving is more than ten centuries old. The two cities are famous for elaborately carved craftworks and furniture, but such items no longer exert much appeal in the lifestyle of the younger generation. Nowadays, they are only seen in the homes of the wealthy or in hotels or restaurants. Few efforts are being made, moreover, to pass on craft techniques or to spread information about them, and examples of Dongyang wood carving, which is also an important cultural property, have literally become museum pieces.

On the other hand, more and more people are starting to buy handmade trinkets. Markets for such handcrafted goods are quite lively, and while young people may feel that traditional art crafts are not part of their lives, they are attracted by the notion of things made by hand.

In terms of trends, art school students who have studied abroad, or young people well versed in what is going on abroad, have awakened to the appeal of crafts, and many of them want to work as artisans. But rather than having an interest in the traditional art crafts and folk crafts of China, they seem to be making artistic pieces in the field of crafts or simply pursuing art. Many of their works show little traditional or regional flavor, but I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. Working in crafts means that you first have to learn about materials and techniques, which can help pass down and propagate those crafts.

What are some of the difficulties you have encountered in Japanese-to-Chinese translation?

Japan has been heir to and adapted Chinese influences in many areas in addition to crafts. But although Japanese crafts may bear names indicating Chinese provenance, there are subtle differences, and one difficulty with translation is how to convey those differences appropriately. When I first started working as a translator, I believed it was better to use existing Chinese terms so as to make the content relatable to ordinary people and not just to experts in the field. But I realize now that this was not the right approach, so nowadays I often use Japanese terms for objects or ideas and supplement them with copious footnotes.

Take tokonoma (床の間), the recessed alcove found in traditional Japanese rooms. The standard translation for this in Chinese is bikan (壁龕), which in China refers to a recess in a wall for housing a Buddhist statue or image. Nowadays, however, it is used as the word for the niche in a shower stall to hold shampoo and so forth. Tokonoma, on the other hand, is a feature found only in Japanese architecture, so I believe it is incorrect to use bikan as the equivalent, as that word refers to something completely different. In such a case, I retain the kanji/phonetic letter combination for tokonoma and provide an explanation in a footnote.

Here is another language-related difficulty. Words in Japanese can be written with kanji only, a combination of kanji and the hiragana phonetic alphabet, or hiragana alone. Using one or another of these forms can yield words with completely different meanings. But Chinese uses only kanji, so it is very difficult to transfer the distinctions expressed by the Japanese orthography. I recently translated Kawase Toshiro’s Hana o tateru, mentioned above. Words like tatehana たてはな, rikka 立花 or hana o tateru はなをたてる—all meaning arranging flowers—appear in the work. Since all are rendered in Chinese as 立花, I had to be creative in explaining the different words so that Chinese readers would understand correctly.

Fortunately, books on crafts usually contain many photos or other visual images, so those can be used to supplement the text. China and Japan also share similar aesthetics, and in many cases, photos can communicate the intended meaning of the words.

What is your personal favorite quality of Japanese crafts?

What I like best about Japanese crafts is how they add an element of enjoyment to daily life, for example, making food or drink look more appealing, or created with a specific situation of use in mind.

I once sipped Japanese sake in a small guinomi drinking cup created by lacquerware artist Yamagishi Shodo. Made entirely of lacquer, the cup felt soft in my hand and enhanced the sake’s flavor. That sensation brought me happiness and made a strong impression on me that differed from anything I have experienced before.

What unknown stories are to be found as we peel back the layers of tradition and culture?

I interviewed London-based art historian Sophie Richard, author of The Art Lover’s Guide to Japanese Museums (2014 and 2019). Visiting Japan regularly from 2004, she has been steadily visiting art and other kinds of museums and cultural facilities to explore their character and attractions.

Sophie Richard

Born in Provence, France, and educated at the École du Louvre and the Sorbonne in Paris, Sophie Richard is an art historian and art writer, currently residing in London. Since 2004 she has visited Japan frequently for research about its art and other museums as well as cultural facilities. Through her The Art Lover’s Guide to Japanese Museums and other books and articles, she has worked to transmit information about the attractions of Japan’s museums to the world.

In 2014, Sophie Richard published her book The Art Lover’s Guide to Japanese Museums (Japan Society) to share her research and experiences with overseas visitors. Introduced by the Wall Street Journal as a comprehensive guide for “educated art enthusiasts with little to no knowledge of Japanese,” it has been widely discussed and appreciated.

Encounter with Sophie

I first met Sophie (as I call her) in October 2012, more than 10 years ago. A curator friend contacted me, telling me there was a French researcher who wanted to publish a book on Japan’s art museums. We met at our company’s office in Jinbocho, Tokyo at that time.

My first impression was of a woman of very refined manner, who said little and listened intently to what I had to say. But as soon as our conversation turned to Japanese art museums, she began to speak enthusiastically, her expression lively and full of the passion she feels for her subject.

“Japan has many large and small art and other museums—quite a remarkable number compared to other countries. But there is very little information about them available in English, so except for a few famous art museums, they are not well known overseas. I’ve made up my mind that I will write a guidebook for overseas visitors. I plan to publish it in London a year from now.”

Sophie wanted to learn how she might best market her book in Japan. I explained the ins and outs of Japan’s complex distribution system, but I wasn’t sure that she really understood. Still, not only was I curious to know what kind of book she would produce, but much impressed with her personally, so I asked her to send me a review copy as soon as proofs were ready.

The PDF I received a year later showed a very stylishly designed volume introducing 50 art and other museums in Japan. There were plentiful photographs, interior and exterior shots as well as examples of works in each museum. As one might expect of a guidebook, it was rich in content, full of information and advice about how to visit the museums, and all of it was “living information,” because she had gained it through her own footwork and research. We quickly arranged the necessary contracts for sales in Japan through the Japan Society, the original publisher, and in May 2014 Sophie’s plan to sell in Japan was fulfilled.

Savoring Museums with the Five Senses

Sophie’s book, the first English-language guide to Japan’s museums to be published in 30 years, drew considerable attention in Japan as well as overseas. As mentioned above, it was designed for foreign visitors to Japan, including things to keep in mind when preparing to visit (for example, that the famous Irises screens at the Nezu Museum are on exhibit only during certain periods), it covers access, the history and architecture of the museum, main works in the collection, and notes about the surroundings, along with detailed information about the outstanding features of each individual museum.

The theme of “savoring museums with the five senses” runs through the book, alerting visitors to pay attention to how it feels to remove one’s shoes and walk on tatami mats, to enjoy the fragrance of rooms perfumed with incense, observe how a folding screen looks within a dimly lit room, and turn one’s ear to the sounds of the wind and trees while in a gallery. As a visitor from overseas herself, Sophie chose to center her book on the facets of experience that travelers will remember.

For example, on the pages covering the Kyu Asakura House (Shibuya, Tokyo) she writes: “Once visitors have removed their shoes, they can enter the two-storey wooden building and walk the tatami-covered rooms freely…. Here visitors must sit down on the floor to enjoy the scenery. The apertures, uniting the architecture and the garden, frame ideal views of the trees and showcase the subtle calculated balance between a tended garden and nature left free” (p. 38). Regarding Kawai Kanjiro’s House in Kyoto, she writes: “The [Kawai] family lovingly runs the museum and keeps Kawai’s spirit alive. Visitors are free to sit on chairs and touch the furniture,” her commentary bringing the reader a sense of immediacy as would a reporter doing a live-broadcast. And at the end, it does not fail to add information on the surroundings: “The Kyoto National Museum is a short walk away” (p. 104).

Probably the greatest attraction of this book is that you can vicariously experience the places that Sophie visited even if you are elsewhere entirely.

Later the book was translated into Japanese, and in 2016 it was published as Furansujin ga tokimeita Nihon no bijutsukan (The Japanese Museums that Captured the Imagination of a French Art Historian). In 2018, when the satellite channel BS11 began an art program of the same title, Sophie herself served as host (the program continued until September 2019). During that same period, she continued her energetic research on more art and other museums around the country.

The driving force behind this work was in part the messages of thanks Sophie had been receiving from readers who had actually visited the museums after reading her book, and at the same time there was a groundswell of demand for more information about art museums in local areas. In response to that demand, and with her eye on her next book, Sophie went into action. In the autumn of 2019, a revised and expanded edition of her book was published.

The original guide listed 50 museums, but the 2019 edition (published by Modern Art Press) was enlarged to cover 112 museums all over the country from Hokkaido to Okinawa. Soon after that, of course, the coronavirus pandemic hit, and tourists visiting Japan dropped off sharply; for about three years, it seemed there was no chance for the revised, expanded edition.

In October 2022, Sophie joined commissioner of the Agency for Cultural Affairs Tokura Shun’ichi in talks while walking around the Tokyo National Museum and the Kyoto National Museum, and the videos of those talks, titled “Invitation to Japanese Beauty,” are available on the Agency for Cultural Affairs website.

I asked Sophie to talk about cultural tourism in Japan today, as visitors from overseas are returning to Japan and activities are returning to the way they were before the pandemic.

—What was it that made you want to write a guidebook?

I first came to Japan in 2004. I visited Kinosaki and stayed in a ryokan inn. I got dressed up in a yukata and strolled around the town. I toured the various hot springs . . . It was an immensely exciting trip, as I was able to go to the Inland Sea island of Naoshima and see the museums there and also to see Zen gardens in Kyoto. A Japanese friend accompanied me, introducing me to all sorts of things as we traveled and really making that first experience of Japan go very smoothly for me.

After that I came back to Japan many more times and I did what I do wherever I travel; I visited museums. I found, however, that it was quite difficult to obtain accurate information about art museums and topics related to them, and even once I made it to a museum, the amount of material available in English was extremely limited.

The number of museums in Japan is astonishingly large, and when I realized how little known they are outside Japan I thought I’d like to investigate them and make their content known to people in other countries.

First I tried writing a number of articles, but there was such a wealth of material that I knew it would easily make a book. I could make known how numerous Japan’s museums are, and I thought I could also introduce the ones that I myself would select as especially worth visiting.

In addition, I would explain the purpose of each museum and who had founded it; I could describe the size of the collection and the building. I wanted to introduce to readers the individual stories of each one.

—Other than your guidebook, you have been helping to make local culture better known by bringing attention to Japan’s small museums, haven’t you?

A few years ago, I participated in a project to promote a local network of museums in the Izumo region of Shimane prefecture.

Izumo Heritage Museums: https://izumomuseums.org/

Each one of this group of small museums is really outstanding, but especially for overseas visitors, not much information was available, so their existence is hardly known at all outside of Japan. So we networked them under the distinctive theme of “private museums exhibiting the historical heritage,” and we created a site to provide high-quality information in five languages (Japanese, English, French, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese).

I think this project is significant in that it can shine the spotlight on small museums that are located some distance from metropolitan areas and richly reflect the local culture of their area.

These museums are important because they transmit the attractions of specific locales, but also because overseas tourists are keenly interested in discoveries and experiences that are off the beaten track of well-known tourist attractions.

—It was in autumn 2022 that you participated in the Agency for Cultural Affairs project mentioned earlier.

In October 2022 I was invited by the Agency to participate in the video series “Invitation to Japanese Beauty,” and the videos of my talks with Commissioner Tokura in Kyoto and Tokyo are available on YouTube.

I was very honored to have been able to appear in the first two videos of that project, which is aimed at people all over the world.

As in the case of the network of small museums in the Izumo region, through participating in projects to promote Japan, I hope to help clarify the kinds of expectations overseas visitors have of Japan, what they are interested in, and what they would like to know or find difficult or unpleasant.

For that purpose, I try to write, not so much as a journalist specializing in art, but mobilizing as much as possible my perspective as someone from outside.

To establish connections with different cultures and gain understanding of each other is extremely important. And that is why I try—while doing my best to be sensitive—to not only articulate my ideas but also to maintain a critical view as well.

—As a person who plans tours of Japan for art lovers from Europe and the Americas, what are some of the things you think Japan’s museums could do to improve?

The most important thing is to make available high-quality translations of up-to-date information.

In a museum in the West, the availability of plentiful information about works in the galleries is simply taken for granted. I find that visitors from Europe and the Americas expect to be able to obtain more information from panels or captions and commentaries on works.

Another issue is that stereotypes about Japanese culture should be avoided as much as possible. Unfortunately, such expressions still dominate many pamphlets and other texts.

For example, when mentioning a historical figure in a text, it is not enough to simply describe the person alone. For visitors from abroad who do not know the history of the country, it is necessary to supplement the texts with reference information that will help them understand the background or by explaining specialized terms (for example, about the culture of tea or the special post-town inns called honjin).

Book information

The Art Lover’s Guide to Japanese Museums, expanded edition, 2019

Sophie Richard

Publisher: Modern Art Press (London)

Distributor in Japan: Bookend Publishing Co. Ltd. (Tokyo)