This document introduces the "Re-envisioning Japan" project, which aims to preserve, provide access to, and analyze historical materials related to Japan from the 20th century. The project collects materials from various genres such as educational documents, entertainment media, photographs, films, postcards, and materials related to tourism and travel. These materials will be digitized and hosted online to provide a visual record of places in Japan and how the country was portrayed globally through world expositions and exports of popular culture. The project also discusses how it can re-envision approaches to librarianship and teaching by utilizing new digital tools and shifting priorities to 21st century practices.

1. “INTRODUCING RE-ENVISIONING JAPAN”
Joanne Bernardi
Assoc. Prof. Japanese Studies and Film & Media Studies
Panel: RE-ENVISIONING JAPAN: A FACULTY-DIGITAL HUMANITIES CENTER COLLABORATION
The Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship Colloquium 2014: “Pedagogy & Practices”

2. 1. OVERVIEW
2. PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
3. PEDAGOGY
4. REWARDS, CHALLENGES, FUTURE
PLANS

3. 1. OVERVIEW

4. • PRESERVATION
• ACCESS
• HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

5. EDIFICATION & INFORMATION:
General culture, history, language, social work,
US Occupation (1945-1952), US WW II propaganda

6. LEISURE & ENTERTAINMENT:
Advertising, shopping, World Fairs, Photographs,
Slides, Stereoviews, Literature, Sheet Music

7. FILMS:
16mm, Regular 8mm, Super 8mm,
Archival films

8. POSTCARDS:
actors, children, cities and sites, colonial, illustrated, Great
Kanto Earthquake, Mt. Fuji, Imperial family, Japan in
America, occupational, recreation, war, women, etc.

9. TOURISM & TRAVEL:
Brochures, Guide Books, Hotels, Travel (Air, Land, Sea)

11. 2. BACKGROUND

12. Asakusa
Tokyo’s entertainment district
Tokyo and Yokohama
Benten-dori
main street, Yokohama
Topical postcards as visual record of place,
Particularly urban landscapes, e.g.

13. Global circulation of objects,
images, cultures:
basic units of communication

14. Exposition Universelle 1900 Paris
St. Louis World’s Fair 1904
Japan-British Exhibition 1910 Panama-California Exposition 1915 San Diego

15. Y.M.C.A.
(n.d.)

“For the Rights of Mankind” (1917)
“Today we chin with China, and faraway Japan. . . .”
JAPAN IN THE WORLD ( 1926)
“Japan’s mission
is to harmonize
the
Civilization of the
East and West”
USA ( n.d.)

16. Japan conjured up as amusement park: Japan Gardens,
Wonderland, Revere Beach, Massachusetts (1906-1911)

17. Stereoviews
Tourist
Brochures
Board of Tourist Industry,
Japanese Government Railways
Nippon Yusen Kaisha
(N.Y. K. Shipping Line)

18. Singer Co.
promotional item:
Popular
consumption----
product and
edification
Sheet music: Orientalist
fantasy and entertainment
Images,
objects not
of Japanese
origin

19. Magazines, assorted publications
1923
1935
1916

20. 3. PEDAGOGY

21. 4. REWARDS, CHALLENGES,
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

22. Re-Envisioning
Librarianship

23. Change in Orientation

24. Shift in Priorities

25. Different
Tools

26. 21st Century Practice

27. “Re-envisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in 20th Century
Visual and Material Culture”
http://humanities.lib.rochester.edu/rej/