THE CULTURE OF COPYING IN JAPAN: Critical and Historical Perspectives | Edited by Rupert Cox

London and New York: Routledge, 2008. xii, 275 pp. (Tables, figures, B&W photos.) US$150.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-30752-9.

The Culture of Copying in Japan: Critical and Historical Perspectives is a useful scholarly endeavour in a field of research that has not received as much attention in Japan Studies as comparable work in European or American studies. The book follows earlier publications on this topic, notably John Singleton’s edited Learning in Likely Places: Varieties of Apprenticeship in Japan (1998) and Brenda G. Jordan and Victoria Weston’s edited Copying the Master and Stealing His Secrets: Talent and Training in Japanese Painting (2003). The Culture of Copying in Japan builds on this and other research, contributing not only new material, but an approach that specifically addresses negative Western perceptions about Japanese ways of copying.

This collection of papers is based on a Japan Anthropology Workshop Series and provides historical context on Japan’s practices of copying, challenging the notion of a “devious Japan that mimics and exploits the best that others have invented” (preface). As the editor Rupert Cox writes, one question that the essays address “is why the West has had such a fascination for the adeptness with which the Japanese apparently assimilate all things foreign and a fear of their skill at artificially remaking and automating the world around them” (4). The chapters in the volume use case studies that deal with concrete examples of copying, examples that give us both the details and nuances to the practice of copying in Japan over a span of centuries. In doing so, the authors of these chapters argue for an examination of the concept of copying itself.

The introduction to the book provides a summary of “various assumptions and historical conditions behind the Western idea of Japanese copying.” This gives the reader perspective on the following chapters, which counter with what Japanese may understand by the practice of copying, how that practice operates in various situations and historical contexts, and expanding the range of meanings of “to copy” in Japan. In doing so, the authors also challenge the basic assumptions about copying in the West.

Part 1, “Original encounters,” is a group of essays that question the importance of the original and what is meant by an original. Irit Averbuch discusses “Body-to-body transmission: the copying tradition of Kagura.” Jane Marie Law follows with “A spectrum of copies: ritual puppetry in Japan” and Keiko Clarence-Smith completes this section with “Copying in Japanese magazines: unashamed copiers.” One theme that emerges between and within essays is the necessity of not only identifying an “original” but also confronting the ideas about originality in Japan.

Thus, in part 2, “Arts of citation,” the authors discuss originality and creativity of the copy, identifying processes and particular persons involved in those processes. They demonstrate that creativity in copying is the result of the individual character of practitioners as well as the kinds of materials and techniques employed. We learn about “The originality of the ‘copy’: mimesis and subversion in Hanegawa Töei’s Chösenjin Ukie” from Ronald P. Toby. Alexandra Curvelo follows with “Copy to convert: Jesuits’ missionary practice in Japan.” Morgan Pitelka takes us “Back to the fundamentals: ‘reproducing’ Rikyü and Chöjirö in Japanese tea culture.” Rein Raud follows with “An investigation of the conditions of literary borrowings in late Heian and early Kamakura Japan” and John T. Carpenter provides the final chapter in this series of essays with “Chinese calligraphic models in Heian Japan: copying practices and stylistic transmission.”

The chapters in part 3, “Modern exchanges,” argue that we can understand what might count as a copy better by knowing more for whom it is produced and for what purpose. Within the modern context of international exhibitions, manufacturing, cultural preservation and marketing, ideas about the “original,” “tradition” and the reproductive process may all be redefined. William H. Coaldrake begins the section with “Beyond mimesis: Japanese architectural models at the Vienna Exhibition and 1910 Japan British Exhibition.” “Copying Kyoto: the legitimacy of imitation in Kyoto’s townscape debate” by Christoph Brumann is the next chapter, followed by Christopher Madeley’s “Copying cars: forgotten licensing agreements.” Rupert Cox, who provided the detailed framework in the introduction, completes this section with “Hungry visions: the material life of Japanese food samples.”

I have written elsewhere that compilations such as this are increasingly difficult to publish with academic presses yet they continue to serve useful purposes for those of us in Japan studies as well as other fields. A book such as this presents a wide range of scholarship and topics under a thematic umbrella, enabling readers to expand their knowledge and understanding of Japan and Japan’s place in the world by sampling, as it were, the scholarship of numerous specialists. One of the most appropriate things one can say to a Japanese teacher is “I learned a lot,” after a class or lecture. Indeed, I did learn a great deal from this book.