First of all, I would like to thank Professor Naylor for her kind introduction, and also for supporting my application to this sabbatical period in Britain pursuing my researches into design history from the nineteenth century up to the present day. Secondly, thanks are due to Dr Jan Marsh, who kindly read through the text and made useful comments on it. Lastly, I wish to thank your former President Ray Watkinson for arranging this opportunity for me to speak here in the Kelmscott House coach-house to the William Morris Society. Last time my wife and I were in Britain we met many friends of William Morris whose acquaintance we look forward to renewing and extending.
The title of my talk today is: The Impact of William Morris in Japan, 1904-1994.
and in it I would like to trace the development of studies on William Morris in Japan by taking three approaches. The first approach is to roughly divide the history of studies on Morris into three periods, and to clarify the general features of the studies in each period. The second is to consider the implications of each Morris study in relation to the particular social and cultural contexts in Japan during the period when it was made. The third is to compare the image of Morris in Japan with that in Britain, and to recognise the differences between the two. From these perspectives, I would like to examine how studies of William Morris in Japan have developed up to the present day.
The first part of my talk concerns the flourishing interest in Morris from 1904 to 1940.
In 1976 ‘A Bibliography of William Morris Studies in Japan’, edited by Kazuhiko Makino and Tsutomu Shinagawa, was published. It listed 316 bibliographies of William Morris which were published between 1891 and 1975. Of these, 272 appeared before the Second World War. Judging solely from the volume of work, studies of Morris appear to have reached a peak before the war, and to have declined somewhat after it.
As early as 1904, News from Nowhere was partly translated into Japanese and introduced by Toshihiko Sakai, a socialist. However, it was not until the 1920s that Morris's work was more widely introduced and studied. During this period, Hopes and Fears for Art and The Earthly Paradise were translated, and a few books on William Morris were published in Japan. As the 1920’s progressed, the thoughts and ideas of William Morris gained wider acceptance among Japanese intellectuals.
The influence of the growing interest in the social movement, and the emergence of a popular culture should not be overlooked. The 1920s in Japan was an era of widespread economic depression, and one in which monopolistic and financial capital were all-powerful. One of the peaks of the labour movement in Japan was in the early 1920s, and there were major industrial disputes in the steel and shipbuilding industries. In 1920, various socialist movements united, and the Japanese Socialist League was founded. In 1922, the Japan Communist Party was founded as a branch of Communist International. In these ways, socialist and communist thinking spread rapidly during this period.
In terms of culture, this period saw a great increase in the circulation of newspapers and magazines, and radio broadcasting began in Tokyo and in Osaka in 1925. In addition, facilities for higher education organizations were also increased, and these produced many intellectuals, who acted as disseminators, spreading the culture of this period. This was the social and cultural climate of the 1920s, in which intellectuals began to draw attention to the thought of William Morris as a socialist.
1927 saw the publication of Ruskin and Morris as Social Thinkers by the economist Nobuyuki Okuma. In this book, he vividly describes how William Morris was receptive to the thoughts of John Ruskin, and became a socialist artistic craftsman. He says of the purpose of his book:
This book is a study of only one side of John Ruskin and William Morris. I have not yet considered Ruskin as the writer of Modern Painters, nor Morris as the author of The Earthly Paradise. I have touched on both as social thinkers. Of course, there is a need for studies on Ruskin as a commentator on art, and on Morris as a poet, but these things are beyond my reach. What I can do is to make clear the extent to which the labour theory of William Morris, a socialist decorative artist, depended on the thoughts of John Ruskin. . . . I think the theory that Art embodies an Ideal that should be included in the system of socialism is very interesting.
Three important points are implied in these words of Nobuyuki Okuma. First, he emphasises Morris as a successor to Ruskin. This tendency to regard Ruskin and Morris as a pair was deep-rooted, and continued until some time after the War. Second, he does not discuss to Morris as a poet. As modernism gained importance in this period, poetry drawing on a symbolic world and utopian romances, was already becoming out of date in Japan as well as in Europe. Third, he takes note of a view of labour based on an organic relationship between art and society. At that time in Japan, a special term was used for Morris's standpoint of social thought, the term ‘artistic socialism’, which can be considered to have occupied a unique position.
Interest in Morris continued to flourish into the 1930s. A peak of activity occurred in 1934 when, in celebration of his centenary, an exhibition of William Morris was held at Maruzen, Tokyo. The main display was composed of Morris’s own publications and other works relevant to Morris. In the preface to the exhibition catalogue, Kenji Otsuki expresses his gratitude to the library of the Imperial University of Tokyo for ‘showing generosity in providing the Kelmscott Chaucer, a rare book worthy of being called a national guest, even if displayed for only a day.’ Then, he states that his ‘only regret was that the exhibition included few original works of Morris's art and craft.’ This implies that, while most of Morris's written work published in London had arrived in Japan quickly, most of his tapestries, furniture, and wall papers could be seen only in photographs in those days. For this reason, the catalogue of the exhibition included Morris's bibliographies, but did not include his art and craft work.
Newspapers and magazines made much of the celebration of Morris’s centenary, and a book, Essays in Celebration of William Morris's Centennial Birthday was published in 1934. This book includes several excellent papers by Morris researchers, for example, ‘Morris: the man and his thoughts’ by Daikichi Kitano, ‘Morris of the Earthly Paradise’ by Masaru Shiga, and ‘Morris as a book craftsman’ by Bunsho Jugaku. The last work begins as follows:
Our purpose in celebrating Morris’s centenary is to examine and look back on the enterprises of this giant who was gifted with a talent which appears to exist very rarely in modern society. . . . When we look back on the general movement in craft, which has lasted since the beginning of Morris’s activities as a craftsman until the present day, we are amazed by the extent of his influence. Needless to say, the craft movements: ‘Art Nouveau’ which arose in Paris at the end of the last century, and ‘Secession’ which occurred in the same period in Vienna, were directly stimulated by Morris. . . . The craft movement,‘Bauhaus’, which was founded at Weimar in 1919, by the architect, Gropius, as its leader, was a direct successor to Morris as it tried to bring all the crafts together into ‘architecture’. . . . Since Morris devoted his later passion to book craft . . . it had a direct effect and influence which other craft did not have. . . . Thus, to talk of Morris as a book craftsman . . . would also result in our admiring his greatness as a craftsman.
So, as early as 1934, the extent of Morris's influence on Art Nouveau and Bauhaus, and his passion in his later years for the work at the Kelmscott Press, were already appreciated. Later, Bunsho Jugaku combined his articles on book art, and published Collected Writings on the Book. As you may know, we in Japan have long placed a high value on book art.
Also in Japan during this period, a movement similar to the British Arts and Crafts movement occurred. It was called the People’s Craft Movement and its founder was Muneyoshi Yanagi. In 1910 when he was still an undergraduate student, he was involved in launching a new magazine called Shirakaba, which means White Birch, and became a member of the Shirakaba Circle. The members of the Circle were more interested in the contradictions of society, and the problem of self, than in the nation. The content of this magazine was not only literary, also partly an art magazine, which introduced western art since Post-Impressionism. In 1926, Muneyoshi Yanagi founded the Japanese People's Craft Society, and through the close interchange with Shoji Hamada and Kanjiro Kawai, he developed the People's Craft Movement. Bernard Leach, the famous British potter, was included in its membership. Yanagi insisted that his idea was original and was not derived from Ruskin and Morris at all. However, it is clear that his thought and ideas were very similar to those of Morris. He stated his idea about craft as follows:
I recognise the direction of material culture, in the development from art culture into craft culture. It never means a denial of art. I think that the direction of beauty exists in combination with daily life. . . . When beauty and life are combined, the culture of craft appears and beauty becomes sound. Beauty which is not based on everyday life cannot be called true beauty. There must be a means for beauty to become ever more beautiful by its being combined with daily life. Shouldn't it be the duty of aesthetics to explain truth in this way in the future?
Muneyoshi Yanagi called things which were made to be used in everyday life‘minshu-teki kogei’ or sometimes ‘seikatsu-kogei’. These terms can be translated as ‘people’s crafts’ or ‘life crafts’. Another term used is ‘mingei’, which is a compound made from ‘min', which means ‘people’ and ‘gei’ which means ‘craft’. The People’s Craft Movement which was developed by Yanagi and his colleagues, found beauty, not in ‘aristocratic crafts, nor in ‘machine crafts’, but in handicrafts made by people and used by people in their everyday lives, and pursued a culture based on those handicrafts.
In the late 1930s, the ideas of William Morris also influenced education althought in Japan. In 1934, to celebrate Morris's centenary, a collection of writings in praise of Morris was published by the Walthamstow Antiquarians. Morris's daughter, May, wrote a preface to the booklet, which was entitled ‘Some appreciations of William Morris’, and G. W. H. Cole, J. W. Mackail, Herbert Read, and Bernard Shaw were among the contributors. The educationist Tatsuo Morito, who read this booklet, acutely pointed out that ‘not one of the 28 contributors refers to “Morris as an educator” which is our theme,’ and then he gave the following analysis of the relationship between Morris and education:
The fact that Morris was not what is called an educator . . . does not mean that he had no contact with education at all. On the contrary, he interacted with education in various ways.
Tatsuo Morito cited the following sentences from News from Nowhere, to prove that Morris had an interest in ‘education’ in the new society. They are spoken by the character Old Hammond, who says:
. . . you expected to see the children thrust into schools when they had reached an age conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like disregard to facts to be subjected to a certain conventional course of ‘learning’. My friend, can’t you see that such proceeding means ignoring the fact of growth, bodily and mental?
Morito also gleaned Morris’s views on education from Hopes and Fears for Art and Signs of Change. He made it clear that Morris was confident of the importance of education in future society, and that Morris advanced liberal education, which is quite the opposite view to mechanical and narrow knowledge-based education. Citing Morris's works, Morito clearly demonstrates that Morris was a unique educator, and claims that this was because he was an artistic socialist.
Certainly, as one can see from his testimony to the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, William Morris was not interested in craft and design under the general education system. But he recognised that ‘social reform’ and ‘educational reform’ were inseparable, and this was the reason that Morito was interested in Morris's thoughts on education. In 1938 when his book Owen and Morris was published, reform of the educational system was also needed in Japan. Morito tried to present his socialist views of education, which were contrary to the predominantly nationalistic view of the time. However, in Japan in those days, there was considerable control of thought and speech, and oppression of democratic and liberal learning occurred over and over again. Therefore, Morito's new and advanced view of education was virtually unacceptable to Japanese society at that time.
The second part of my talk concerns a lull in studies of Morris, and some results from 1941 to 1972.
For two decades during and after the Second World War, there was very little activity in the study of William Morris in Japan. It is perhaps not surprising that a society for which modernism had become the dominant ideology would feel little need for the thoughts of Morris. After all, Morris's ideal was the society of the Middle Ages, and he dreamed of a revival of handicrafts.
However, in the 1950s some Japanese translations that gave valuable insight into Morris's philosophy and design practice, were published. In particular, Pioneers of Modern Design by Nikolaus Pevsner had a major influence on researchers who were interested in the Modern Movement in architecture and design. It is well-known that Pevsner regarded Morris as a pioneer of the Modern Movement. As he wrote:
. . . the phase between Morris and Gropius is an historical unit. Morris laid the foundation of the modern style; with Gropius its character was ultimately determined.
This image of William Morris drawn by Pevsner, as a father of the Modern Movement, has endured among historians of architecture and design in Japan. However, at the time most of them tended to be more interested in the development of Continental European Modern Movements, such as Deutscher Werkbund, Bauhaus, and the Purist Movement, than in the Arts and Crafts Movement of Morris. They must have agreed that ‘Morris’s notion of art . . . is part and parcel of nineteenth-century “historicism”,’ as Pevsner stated. Moreover, Morris’s hatred of modern industrial methods, must have been a difficult attitude for Japanese society to accept during the period after the war, when what people wanted was economic recovery. However, in spite of this state of affairs, Morris occupied an important position in the history of design. Here I would like to quote a passage from a paper entitled Ruskin and Morris; The Arts and Crafts Movement, which was written in 1966 by the theorist of craft and design, Yasuji Maeda:
In considering the stream of modern design and its sources, the thoughts of Ruskin and Morris are of great importance. Even though Ruskin and Morris respected medieval architecture, and discussed it extensively, and even though the old-fashioned aspect of Morris’s designs may make them seem contradictory to the newness of modern style, I would still regard these two as the starting point of modern design.
In considering Ruskin and Morris together, Maeda follows the tradition set by Ruskin and Morris as social thinkers by Nobuyuki Okuma. The view of ‘these two as the starting point of modern design’ clearly owed much to Pevsner. Continuing, Maeda states that:
The distortions brought to society by industrialisation did not end with the era of Ruskin and Morris. These distortions are still a cause for concern and criticism in society today. Most theories which criticize industry do not deny it completely, as Ruskin and Morris did, but seek to prevent humans from becoming the slaves of industry. This thinking seems to be more or less influenced by Ruskin and Morris. . . . Mingei Undo (the People’s Crafts Movement), which confronts industrial civilisation in a part of modern society . . . is part of the same stream of the thought as that of Ruskin and Morris, and represents a further stage of development. The more industrialised a society is on the one hand, the more the beauty of hand crafts of former times is respected on the other. However, there is a limit to this, and the danger that Mingei taste will become a kind of aristocratic taste beyond daily life. This is . . . a contradiction which Morris's Arts and Crafts Movement also contains.
In modern society, one of whose ideals was that all should be equally able to enjoy culture, reversion from the industrialised world to the handicraft world had already become an impossible proposition. However, it was also true that industry deprived people of the pleasure of their own labour, and that it tended to provide only standardised goods which lacked individual character. Although in this period it was very effective to take William Morris’s thoughts on the theory of design as a principle from which to criticise the distortions of society brought by industry, it also involved the risk of strengthening a revival of aristocratic taste. Yasuji Maeda regarded this ambivalence of Morris’s thought as ‘a contradiction which Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement also contains.’
As you know, since the time when the Design and Industries Association was founded, departing from the Arts and Crafts Movement, British theorists and practitioners of design have hotly disputed the relationship between industry, art and labour, time and time again. C. R. Ashbee who was a key-person in the Guild and School of Handicrafts asserted that: ‘Modern civilisation rests on machinery, and no system for the teaching of art can be sound that does not recognise this'. Then, W. R. Lethaby, who was one of the founding members of the Design and Industries Association advocated ‘A New Body with New Aims’, but repeatedly demanded that ‘the machine must be controlled’. And at almost the same time as Yasuji Maeda wrote Ruskin and Morris, Professor Misha Black of the Royal College of Art made the following assertion in a lecture in Australia:
‘What business have we with art at all’, asked William Morris in the 1850s, 'unless all can share it?' But it was still a universal application of art which was his goal, not a new discipline which might spring fully fledged in its own right from the industrial revolution.
In fact, the problem of ‘machine and art' has been transferred to the arena of ‘art and labour’, or even ‘labour and society’, and has been a major point of contention in Japan for some time. Therefore, to investigate the point at issue, not only theories of art and design, but also those of social science, have had to be considered.
As you may well know, when the Second World War was over, the process of democratisation began in Japan, and advanced rapidly. Hence, political parties were reinstated and various trade unions were organised. Furthermore, control over freedom of thought and speech was removed, authorities were no longer regarded as absolute, as they had been in the past, and a large current of thought based around the freedom of the individual, and the democratisation of institutions, was formed.
In this post-war political, social and ideological climate of Japan, in the late 1950s, the economist Masami Kimura, took up Morris’s political thoughts and ideas of utopia in a series of papers. He published ‘A new stage in the interpretation of William Morris’ in 1957, ‘The policy of romantic revolt: the case of William Morris’ in 1962, and ‘The nature of William Morris’s thoughts on utopia: chiefly on his view of the essence of labour’ in 1963.
In the first paper, Kimura points out that ‘whatever the conclusion is, the level of Morris studies entered into an epoch-making stage in the terms of its logic and problem-grasping’. In this he is referring to the book William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary by E. P. Thompson, which was published in 1955, but regrettably not published in Japanese. Kimura shows his agreement with Thompson's interpretation that regards ‘Morris as a creative practitioner of scientific socialism who was supported by a romantic rebellious spirit’. In the next paper, following Fritzsche’s Morris studies, he proves that while Morris changed from social reformist political thought to socialist political thought, the political notion of ‘education’ for him developed from ‘increasing the people’s consciousness and dissatisfaction about the loss of “pleasure of the labour”’ into ‘producing socialists.’ In the last paper, comparing Morris's News from Nowhere with Looking Backward 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy, Kimura goes on to examine Morris’s thoughts on utopia, and his view of labour from the viewpoint of historical social thought. Following E. P. Thompson’s view, this series of Morris studies by Masami Kimura revised the image of Morris which had been formed, of a dreamy decorative artist, or a visionary socialist. Instead he presented an image of Morris as a scientific socialist. In Japan in this period, Morris studies, although they were rather few in number, entered a new stage.
From the 50s to the 60s, in addition to Kimura’s work, there were some precious harvests from the field of social science, which were indirectly related to studies on Morris in Japan. One of them was the translation of the writings of G. D. H. Cole and E. J. Hobsbawm on the history of the British labour movement. From these, the position of William Morris in the history of British labour movement came to be more precisely understood. The other was that Japanese editions were published of the writings of E. P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, who belonged to, what you call, ‘the New Left’. These translations, rightly or not, provided the grounds to criticise the socialist ideology of the time, which was still dragging along the old constitution.
Another harvest came from the field of politics, although the source was quite unusual, as the result of translations on the history of the British labour movement and responses to the New Left’s account of their political stand point. For example, in this period, the political scientist Hidekazu Kawai published a paper entitled ‘The formation of English socialism', in which he gives a clear and precise account of Morris's political role in the process.
These studies in social science and politics shed new light on Morris during the 1960s. Although they provide only fragmentary references to him, they allow a clear and real image of Morris as a revolutionary socialist to be constructed.
The theme of the final part of my talk is: Searching for a new image of Morris from 1973 to 1994.
It goes without saying that Morris’s activities covered many fields. He has been given the title of poet, designer, and socialist. However, from before the war until the 1960s the work of Japanese researchers usually elucidated only a single aspect of his work. For example, as we have seen, Nobuyuki Okuma and Masami Kimura were interested in Morris as a social thinker; Bunsho Jugaku and Yasuji Maeda focused on Morris as a craftsman; and for Tatsuo Morito, Morris was of interest as an educator. Naturally, Morris did not divide his activities discretely into poetry as a poet, arts and crafts as a designer, and politics as a socialist. In view of this, an essential theme for reaching a complete understanding of Morris is identification of the greater spirit which penetrates all three aspects of his work. A book which responded to this challenge was William Morris: Radical Design Thoughts by Jiro Ono. In this book, Ono pointed out the importance of Morris’s activities as follows:
. . . activity in each [of Morris’s three fields] has an importance which is not dependent on the others. Thus, it is natural that he should be given successive titles. This does not simply mean that he was a genius who had successive or simultaneous achievements in those fields, however. The more remarkable his achievements in each field are, the more convinced we should be of the existence of single spirit and the form of its movement . . . which penetrates them.
This study of William Morris by Jiro Ono had the aim of combining the results of Morris studies from different fields, which had previously been considered in isolation from one another; based on the supposition of the ‘existence of a single spirit and the form of its movement’ which permeates all of Morris’s activities; and in this way to approach a complete image of Morris. Prior to this work, Ono had already written a criticism of culture under capitalism, following the critical thoughts of Morris. In that book too, it was necessary for him to describe the details of Morris's spirit, as this was a central point of his criticism. In a postscript to that book, he states that ‘. . . I want to share the fascination of Morris with others, and will never cease to try to do so. In this respect, I am not only a researcher of Morris, but also an advocate.’
The basic axis of Jiro Ono’s cultural criticism was a new principle, which necessarily penetrated the mechanism of production, labour structure, creation of the living environment, and the systematic principle of group formation as a whole. In accordance with this principle reformation of the ‘quality of life’ could be achieved. According to his understanding, ‘it was Morris that showed that the new principle had to be a principle of imagination, by his way of life.’ The significance of Jiro Ono’s study of Morris was that, by drawing the outline of the whole spiritual image on which Morris’s activities were based as a dynamic one, it presented a new point of view from which to criticise culture under capitalism, which had previously served only to realise individual desire.
Apart from the writings of Jiro Ono, research on Morris from the end of the 60s through the 70s was characterised by the vigorous translation and publication of Morris's writings into Japanese. For a while during and after the war, Morris had almost been forgotten, except by a small number of researchers. He came to be read again through this series of translations. As a background to this, I should draw your attention to unstable state of Japanese society and stagnated state of culture at that time. Rapid economic growth after the war had brought great changes to the lifestyles of Japanese people. On the one hand, consumption of clothes, foods, and household electrical appliances rapidly increased, in what has been called the ‘Consumption Revolution', and high-rise buildings came to stand side by side in cities. On the other hand, there were serious problems associated with urban life, such as housing, traffic congestion, environmental problems, such as air and water pollution, and the destruction of nature that development involved. Action by city dwellers against such problems increased. Under these social circumstances, people came to think about ‘quality of life’ and, perhaps were able to meet with Morris there. So, interests in Morris did not weaken, but succeeded into the 80s.
If we think of the 70s as the period when the writings of Morris himself were actively translated, then we could refer to the 80s as the period when studies relating to Morris were enthusiastically translated and introduced. Since the results of studies in Britain were translated into Japanese and introduced quite rapidly, Japanese research on Morris gained new knowledge and developed still further, especially in the field of design history. To take two examples, in the book entitled Studies in Art, Architecture and Design, volume 2, Pevsner compares Morris with the Henry Cole circle, while Noel Carrington, the author of Industrial Design in Britain, describes how the Modern Movement developed in Britain after parting from the Arts and Crafts Movement. Furthermore, through the translations of William Morris as Designer by Ray Watkinson, and William Morris Textiles by Linda Parry, details of Morris's activities in design were introduced, and Utopian Craftsmen by Lionel Lambourne provided us with further information on the role of Morris in the Arts and Crafts Movement.
The positive attitude towards learning the result of Morris studies in Britain through the publication of translations has accelerated greatly from the late 80s to the present day. In particular, the biography by Philip Henderson, which reconstructed Morris's life, was based on newly available information. This work was important in that it drew a life-size image of Morris, updating the ‘non-worldly' image of Morris drawn by J. W. Mackail. In 1991, it was 100 years since the founding of the Kelmscott Press, and this centenary aroused considerable interest in Japan in the book arts of Morris. In this year, not only was there an exhibition of Morris's book art, but also the work by William S. Peterson was translated, which was eventually published in 1994. Since the late 1980s, strong interest in the history of art and literature of the Pre-Raphaelites has developed and, the relationship between the Arts and Crafts Movement and Morris, and also the relationship between the Pre-Raphaelites and Morris has come to draw attention. What is more, Jane and May Morris by Jan Marsh introduced a new feminist viewpoint of Morris studies.
These enthusiastic introductions of British studies of Morris to Japan naturally led to exhibitions. The ‘William Morris' exhibition held in Tokyo and Osaka in 1989 provided the first opportunity to view many of the actual works of Morris in Japan, because the exhibition in 1934 had displayed only his publications for the most part. Prior to this, in 1985 an exhibition entitled ‘The Pre-Raphaelites and their Times’ was held, and in 1990 there was the ‘Rossetti’ exhibition, so many people were able to enjoy Victorian arts in earnest.
So how has this enthusiastic acceptance of Morris, through the translations and the exhibitions from the 80s to date, influenced Morris researchers in Japan? Generally speaking, as in Britain, the 80s was a time when the academic framework in Japan was beginning to shake. This was caused, in part, by the impact of Post-modernism. Perhaps such changes of thought, social, and cultural climates must have an influence on Morris studies, and might be related to the strengthening of interest in Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites. As I have discussed these factors already, I would like to examine future questions for Morris studies in Japan from various points of view.
First of all, we should discuss the place of Morris in design history. To date, Morris’s position as a pioneer of Modern Movement in design has been stressed, because of his contribution to the emergence of Art Nouveau and the practice of Bauhaus. However, when you think about the death of the Modern Movement, and new movement of craft revival, it seems that Morris's role was greater than this. He should not only be regarded as a father of the Modern Movement on the Continent, as Pevsner drew him, but he should also be re-positioned as a pioneer of Crafts Movement in Britain, from the nineteenth century until the present day. I am not sure yet whether a series of movements of art crafts or decorative arts, which has continued from Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement, through the ‘Omega Workshops’, the crafts revival in 70s, and to recent ‘Green design’, exists as a continuous history in Britain. However, if it has been overlooked in the shadow of the Modern Movement, historians of crafts and design should pay attention to this point. It would be fundamental work, essential for a precise understanding of modernism in Britain. Moreover, in describing such a history, it would not be enough to use only modern approaches, such as feminism, structuralism, and psychoanalysis, it is also important to examine it in the light of the social, political, and cultural context of the time. In general, the tastes which have dominated studies of arts and crafts have tended to be too conservative, and this may have been a factor which has prevented us from an accurate understanding and interpretation.
On the other hand, Morris’s poetry and romances have been evaluated rather negatively as escapist literature, full of decorative factors, in an era when modern realism was main stream in literature. As to the reason why ‘Morris’s romance has not correctly been treated’, Yasuo Kawabata pointed out that ‘those who were themselves accustomed to the descriptive method of modern literature could not understand the symbolic world specific to romance, nor the language of symbolism which created that world.’ Recently, as general trend, many people have come to be very interested in the symbolic world which modern literature cannot express, and this surely provides adequate scope for studies in the future. However, as far as Morris is concerned, we should not treat the symbolic world expressed in his literature in isolation. It is important rather to interpret it in an organic manner, that is, in relation to the visual expression which Morris used in his decorative art. Furthermore, in the case of such an interpretation, we should necessarily include an examination of the strong conception and form of his ideas, which were essential to his involvement in the early development of socialism, because both Morris’s decorative art and romance would have the same structure, at least for himself, and both the power to produce these forms, and to plan socialism would emanate from the same non-specialised single life. In other words, I conjecture that the power creating a real art, and the power constructing a new society, might come from the same source and origin, and that as an instrument to prevent the two powers from being divided, by factors such as capital and authority and to keep the two powers always connected, the form of romance might have been very important for Morris. Anyway, Morris’s symbolic world expressed through the form of literature should come to receive more attention from researchers in the future.
Incidentally, looking at the present academic world, both literature and art seem to have strong interests in the symbolic world. By contrast, history, in Japan as in Britain, tends to have interests in the history of people, or in an integrated approach. It might thus also be productive tore-examine Morris’s practices from the new viewpoint of ‘social history’, in other words in the context of Victorian people's lives. For instance, we might hope to see in Japan studies along the lines of William Morris: Design and enterprise in Victorian Britain, by Charles Harvey and Jon Press, which was published in 1991. However, such studies would naturally be faced with the difficulty of getting first-hand information.
In addition to the thriving field of social history, recently in Japan a new field called cultural economics has come into being, and it has involved some re-appreciation of Ruskin and Morris. Jun Ikegami who is an advocate of this new field concludes that ‘. . . by returning Morris and Ruskin from the art world to the world of economics, one could tackle some of the problems of the improvement of life which present Japanese society is confronted with’.
When Japanese ask themselves about their own lives, it is usual to find Morris there. This has been so in the past, it is so now and it will not change in the future. Next year, it will have been 100 years since Morris’s death. What kind of Morris will we be able to meet with then? The more eagerly we ask for Morris, the more he will smile back, without disappointing us. I am already looking forward to seeing Morris's smile next year here in London.
Thank you for your attention. As Gillian Naylor already said, I don’t feel able to answer specific questions just yet. But I am interested to hear your comments and observations and if there are any simple questions about Morris and Japan, I'll do my best, with assistance, to respond.
You can also read an article shown below as the written version of this talk; Shuichi Nakayama, ‘The Impact of William Morris in Japan: 1904 to the Present’, Journal of Design History, vol. 9, no. 4, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 273-283.
fig. 1 Visual Information on the talk held at Kelmscott House on Saturday 26 August 1995, designed by Lionel Selwyn.
fig. 2 Professor Gillian Naylor who is introducing the talker Shuichi Nakayama to the audience.
fig. 3 Gillian Naylor (left), Shuichi Nakayama (centre) and Jan Marsh (right) after the talk.
fig. 4 Jan Marsh and Shuichi Nakayama at the entrance to the William Morris Society (the basement of the Kelmscott House).
fig. 5 The Kelmscott House: a view from the Thames.
