The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

In 1888, the renowned department-store retailer and importer of Asian
wares, Arthur Lasenby Liberty (of Liberty & Co., The House of Liberty,
Liberty’s of London), visited Japan accompanied by the designer,
Christopher Dresser; and Charles Holme, Dresser’s business partner at
Dresser & Holme, importers of Japanese manufactures. During this trip in
1889, Liberty gave a lecture at the Tokyo National Museum of Japan, titled
Art Productions of Japan, which demonstrated the impact that Japanese art and
design had had on, particularly, European decorative arts and crafts, textiles,
ceramics and printing, and highlighted the recent cross-cultural interrelations
between Japan and the West. This was followed up on his return to London
in 1890 with an historic presentation at the Society of Arts on The Industrial
Arts and Manufactures of Japan for which he was awarded a Silver Medal.
There is evidence to show, however, that Japanese artists and designers
had been influenced by Western art even prior to the opening of their ports
in the 1850s. For example, Shiba Kōkan (c. 1738 – 1818) * is said to have
been a Japanese “pioneer in Western-style oil painting”. 21 Having also
“introduced many aspects of Western culture” to the Japanese people, he
was “the first to produce copperplate etching[s]” as well. 22 This contradicts
the still widely held belief that until the later 1800s the medieval woodblock
method had been the only tool for printing in Japan.
* Also known as Shiba Shun and by the pseudonym Kungaku. Often simply referred to as Kōkan,
his actual name was Andō Katsusaburō.
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