Ewa Machotka – författare

This multidisciplinary book analyses the contradictory coexistence of consumerism and environmentalism in contemporary Japan. It focuses on the dilemma that the diffusion of the concepts of sustainability and recycling has posed for everyday consumption practices, and on how these concepts have affected, and were affected by, the production and consumption of art. Special attention is paid to the changes in consumption practices and environmental consciousness among the Japanese public that have occurred since the 1990s and in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters of March 2011.

Visual Genesis of Japanese National Identity offers an entirely new perspective on the concept of constructing nation-states. The book explores the nature of national identity constructs produced in pre-modern Japan by examining two aspects of its cultural production, the sphere of fine arts and the sphere of literature intertwined with a genre of poetry pictorialization. The discussion is centered on the artistic practice of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and contextualizes his woodblock print series entitled Hyakunin isshu uba ga etoki in a wider perspective of Japanese historical, political, social, cultural and artistic phenomena emerging prior to the birth of the modern Japanese nation. Hokusai’s work, oscillating between the domain of text and the domain of image, transposes the classical Japanese poetry into late Edo period (1603-1868) popular culture. Machotka argues that in the process of text/image translation Hokusai projected a new image of «Japaneseness», thereby contributing to the development of national identity prior to the emergence of Japan as a modern nation-state.