In 1904 a group of eight Ainu were brought from Hokkaido to St. Louis to constitute, along with other Native people from throughout the world, a "living group" exhibit in the Department of Anthropology at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Prof. W. J. McGee, chief of the department, secured the services of the Ainu through the assistance of Professor Frederick Starr from the University of Chicago; Starr made the trip to Japan for the purpose.
In Rydell's All the Worlds a Fair, he argues that the world's fairs in America from 1876-1916 were a material vision of political, business, and intellectuals to promote their vision of racial dominance. According to Rydell's book the world fairs portrayed a sinister agenda. And the ideas of American progress were related to scientific racism. He also states that the world fair's organizers utilized the Fair in a "scientific" manner to racially segregate members of the American population and the world.
Moreover Anna carol Christ's' The Sole Guardians of the Art Inheritance of Asia": Japan at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, echoes Rydell points. In her article she focus on how the Japanese used their exhibits in the St. Louis's World's Fair, to take advantage of China's vulnerability. Both historians' accounts rises intriguing points onto the subject of the St. Louis Worlds Fair exhibits. The Ainu exhibit in the anthropology department and the "Japan Fair" seemed to connect on the same principles both historians mentioned but fagot to discuss which this paper will try to expand upon.
This paper looks at the role of Department of Anthropology at St. Louis Fair in exhibiting the Ainu group. This display of the Ainu served the general agenda of World's Fair and that of Japan. Also this paper will look at how the Imperial Japanese Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition used its exhibits designed in Western style for self-promotional purposes, by the use of display, journalism, and literature. The Commission wanted to disassociates it self from anything that is uncivil on the Fair's grounds.
I will begin with a brief overview of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair Anthropology Department at the Fair and its Ainu exhibit. Next I will look at the Japanese Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition's "Fair Japan" exhibits related materials and publications produced in English for the Fair's audience.
In 1899 ninety delegates representing states and territories of the Louisiana Purchase met in St. Louis. Their meeting was to figure out how to memorialize the centennial acquisition of the Louisiana territory. After extensive discussions it was generally agreed on that the celebration would be best accomplished by creating an international exposition held in St. Louis, hence The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904
[1].
As the with World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, anthropology had a significant role in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. According to the president of the St. Louis’s Fair David R. Francis, "the Anthropology reservation will carry representatives of upward of thirty living groups are to be seen in nature dress, living in houses of their own construction, cooking and eating the food to which they are accustomed at home, and practicing those simple arts and industries, which they themselves developed." to do the job Francis sought the help of Prof. W.J. McGee.
Prof. W. J. McGee was the head of the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, D.C. was appointed chief of the Department of Anthropology at the Exposition in the summer of 1903. Prof. W. J. McGee was considered then as the leading authority on anything anthropology. Especially during his tenure at the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, D.C. and prior to his appointment as chief of the Department of Anthropology St. Louis Fair, according to Rydell Prof. McGee was charged with financial irregularity, which forced him to resign the Washington position.
In Prof. McGee's early speeches in preparing for the Fair he assured the audience of mainly Fairs organizers that “the aim of the Department of Anthropology at the World's Fair will be to present human progress from the dark prime to the highest enlightenment; from savagery to civic organization, from egoism to altruism. The method will be to use living peoples in their accustomed avocations as great object lessons; failing these in some cases, we shall use human products to illustrate human progress".
[2]Prof. McGee created the most extensive anthropology exhibits of any world's fair before or since
[3]. Although the Department of Anthropology featured traditional museum, or "still." exhibits in a building on the camps of Washington University, the main emphasis, as McGee had promised, was on "living peoples," outdoor ethnographic exhibits located on an extensive "anthropology reservation" where representatives of up-ward to thirty living groups are to he seen in native dress, living in houses of their own construction, cooking and eating the food to which they are accustomed at home, and practicing those simple arts and industries, which they have. Themselves developed"
[4].
According to Vanstone living groups, or "out-of-doors exhibits" as it was labeled by concessionaires, had been used for the first time in U.S. in the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. And in a way Prof. McGee was trying to equal Prof. F. W. Putnam efforts in displaying anthropology to the public. Moreover the anthropology reserve was not the only place where Native peoples were to be exhibited as "living peoples". Another popular feature of the Exposition was "The Pike".
The Pike was described by David Francis, as a "living color page of the world." And it ranged as mile long amusement adjunct, and it was referred to as St. Louis's equivalent to Chicago's Midway of 1893. On the Pike food, beverages, rides, shows, souvenirs, and the living groups were displayed along each other. Here the various anthropological concessions exhibits were set up. The exhibits included a Chinese village a Moorish palace and according to Vanstone the Pikes' most popular the Esquimaux village concession
[5]. Also Native American Indians concessions were built, the "Cliff Dwellers," where the Hopi and Zuni Indians tribes form Colorado displayed hand made crafts and danced for the fairgoers.
For the Pike visitors paid different admission fee every time they wanted to visit an exhibit along The Pike, the fees in return went to each exhibits' concessionaire
[6]. Visitors to the Anthropology exhibits had the opportunity to watch the primitives from all around the world. First visitors watched the natives pursuing daily activities on the reserved land for anthropology, and then on the more a commercialized concession exhibits. The emphasis on the later one was theatrical display and entertainment.
To represent a living group from Japan, McGee and Exposition officials picked the Ainu of Hokkaido Island. Ainu have long been the subject of academic debate. And in actuality it was not the first time American had heard of them. the Ainu were particularly noted for their hairy bodies in The Atlantic Monthly, article titled In a Quest of a Shadow by Todd Loomis in September 1897.As Loomis referred to them as "Hairy Ainu". And perhaps it was for their controversial background that McGee felt that Ainu had to be present at the World Fair.
During Tokugawa (Edo) Period (1603 - 1867) the Ainu population on Main Island Japan has been reduced and moved farther north Japanese isle to Hokkaido. Under the Matsumae domain grants and permissions were given to wealthy Tokyo and Osaka merchant to utilize the land and its fishery. This domain continued its commercializing plans, and demand for fishery labor eventually lead to the Ainu's subjugation militarily
[7].
According to David Howell "trade originating in this medieval period and, the proto-industrial production that eventually evolved out of it, made the Ainu dependent for their subsistence upon the Matsumae domain and its agents, particularly the established concept of contract-fishery operation which the Matsumae Domain had brought to Hokkaido." by the end of the Tokugawa period labor in the commercial fishery the Matsumae domain had created, according to Howell "was at least as important to the Ainu economy as traditional hunting and gathering activities."
[8]During Meiji period commonly known as Meiji Restoration period that lasted from 1868 to 1912, Ainu culture and society witnessed tremendous decline. This is important because the restoration that the Meiji brought was heavily concentrated on westernizing Japan by democratizing and industrializing the island. The Restoration the Meiji introduced made new and aggressive policies of assimilation. To the Ainu the Restoration came in the form of deculturation, which sought to eliminate everything from their language and other manifestations of Ainu's native culture. The policies were devastatingly effective.
On January 18 1904 McGee wrote instructing Starr for his trip to Japan, " You are to secure the voluntary attendance at the Exposition of eight or ten Ainu tribesmen, preferably comprising one or two families, with such appurtenances as may be required to permit them to live in their accustomed way throughout the period of the Exposition, in a habitation or habitations erected by themselves on the Exposition grounds."
[9] Also Starr was given a letter of introduction from President Francis to the Commissioner General of the Imperial Japanese Commission for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Tokyo.
Starr arrived at a time when Meiji Japan was preparing for war with Russia. And apparently Starr was surprised to how the Japanese officials accommodation to his mission went peacefully, even though war was brewing. Starr noted his experience about that time stating " But, through this period of stress and preparation, of dispatching troops and moving war equipment, we were never disrupted or delayed in our mission; those officials, whom we were obliged to meet, received us with the same courtesy and attended to our requests with same care and promptness, as if it were a time of complete peace."
[10]When Starr reached Hokkaido he was advised to meet Rev. John Batchelor in his house on outskirts of Sapporo city. According to Starr "The Rev. John Batchelor came to Yezo in I879, a young man of twenty-four years. He has lived here ever since- more than half his lifetime. A clergyman of the Church of England and a missionary of the Church Missionary Society, he labors among both Japanese and Ainu, but considers himself particularly called to be 'the Apostle to the Ainu'. He knows this people as no other stranger, Japanese or "foreigner," does. He has visited their villages in all parts of the island; he speaks their language more perfectly than their own young people do; he has studied their life, and thought, and fancies. He is their friend and adviser in need and trouble.
While his converts among them may number nine hundred, his acquaintance and influence extends to thousands. He has actually lived for years in their villages, especially Piratori and Horobets. He has written a Dictionary and a Grammar of the Ainu language and has translated the Psalms, the New Testament, several Bible narratives, he is the author of the two best books upon their life and thought The Ainu of Japan and The Ainu and Their Folk-lore."
[11] While Starr stay with the Rev. saw his first Ainu.
With Rev. John Bachelors' help Starr was able to obtain the Ainu group he came for. His group consisted of two couples in their mid fifties Sangea Hirmura husband, and his wife Santukno. Two younger couples Kutoroge Hiramura husband and his wife Shutratek and their two young girls Kin and Kiku; and slightly younger couple, Yazo Osawa husband, age twenty-three, and his wife Shirake, age eighteen; and a twenty-six years old Main Land native Coro Bete for translation
[12].
According to David R. Francis President of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, who was shared the views of McGee, "the Ainu were selected to illustrate industries connected with body ward movement, a primitive agriculture which has produced a distinctive Corm of millet, specialized architecture befitting a trying climate, A most primitive musical system and a bear-cult; and in the hope of acquainting the world for the first time with the full law and faith of a little-known primitive people".
The Ainu group eventually arrived to St. Louis and was brought to St. Louis Worlds Fair grounds. Materials for the construction of the Ainu house were brought on May 11, and the Ainu were "astonishingly prompt"
[13] in erecting their house (Fig1). The Ainu worked on their house in the present of a group of invited guests, which included W. J. McGee and George A. Dorsey, curator of anthropology at the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago. According to Vanstone Prof. Frederick Starr was teaching his class in Chicago and couldn't come to the meeting.
The Ainu group eventually arrived to St. Louis and was brought to St. Louis Worlds Fair grounds. Materials for the construction of the Ainu house were brought on May 11, and the Ainu were "astonishingly prompt"
[14] in erecting their house (Fig1). The Ainu worked on their house in the present of a group of invited guests, which included W. J. McGee and George A. Dorsey, curator of anthropology at the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago. According to Vanstone Prof. Frederick Starr was teaching his class in Chicago and couldn't come to the meeting.
Prof. McGee provided the necessary building materials for the Ainu, and they according Vanstone were a prompt in using the materials to build their house for the six-month period of the Fair. Surprisingly Ainu were familiar with building material, because in one picture from the Fair, the Ainu appeared as if they were in an actual village-house that Starr had found them in.
An interpreter provided by the Japanese Commission to Fair, Mr. Inagaki, presided over traditional ceremonies with a Christian dedication scheduled for the following Sunday
[15]. During their stay at the Exposition the Ainu surprised the visitors by holding Christian religious services and, on several occasions, attending services at a nearby Episcopal church.
All the living groups at the Exposition a subject matter of lectures by students and scientists. The Ainu were measured, questioned, and they faced ethnology classes while professors lectured on their customs, religion, and ceremonies. According to J. Stone "Frederick Starr taught a three-week course, beginning on September 1, entitled 'The Louisiana Purchase Exposition Class in Ethnology,' for which students Could receive credits in their major subjects. It attracted about 30 students from the University of Chicago and some St. Louis schoolteachers."
Starr's lectured on the Ainu was between 9 to 10:00 am, titled the physical characteristics of race. The Ainu, like the other living groups, were tolerant of questions asked to them sometimes through the interpreter. Hanson for his Official History of the World's Fair wrote about this "Pertinent and impertinent, about themselves without asking return information respecting the white people who were studying them". One enthusiastic writer referred to the Ainu as "mysterious little Japanese primitives" and noted that visitors were impressed by their cleanliness and polite manners, but somewhat disappointed that they were not "man-eaters, dog eaters or wild men"
[16]August marked "Anthropology Days", which were Olympic type contests and activities in the Exposition. The contests involved the members of the living groups in sport competitions. The sports ranged from running, high jumping, archery and, spear throwing. The Ainu, Patagonians, Eskimos, Native Americans, Philippine and African groups were all competing. For example the Ainu and Patagonians tribe from Argentina competed in archery contests. The winners were given American flags instead of gold medals.
The Ainu group elicited particular interest because they were the first of their people to come to the United States; they were not well known even in their own country. It is noteworthy that of the more than 600 persons in the Japanese entourage at the Exposition, only one person had previously seen an Ainu
[17].
The Department of Anthropology was credited with great success in presenting the world's peoples "true to life." including, of course, the Ainu. Visitors and Exposition personnel agreed, "Ethnology was never so truthfully represented as at the Universal Exposition of 1904."
[18]The Exposition administrators must have been pleased, because according to Van Stone, on October 17. 1904, about six weeks before the Exposition was to close. McGee notified Star that, for the Ainu group, he was awarded a "Grand Prize", supplemented by a silver medal for Mr. Y. Inagaki. These prizes were awarded in the Ethnology, United States, Depart mental Exhibits category. The Ainu group's "primitive culture" which Prof. Starr exhibited at the St. Louis's World's Fair, centuries prior to his arrival had endured cultural transformations and economic dependency.
"On July 10, 1903, an imperial ordinance for the organization of the imperial Japanese commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition was issued by the Mikado to the effect that the imperial commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition should be under the supervision of the minister of state for agriculture and commerce, and should deal with all the matters relating to the participation of the Japanese Empire in the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition;"
[19]At the beginning of the 20th century, a global movement made by industrial nations and nation-state alike in attempt to farther modernize, industrialize, and militarize for purpose of expansionism. Asian countries particularly China with the exception of Japan experienced throughout the end of the 19th century exploitations and colonization largely made by Western states.
On this era which St. Louis's World's Fair of 1904 coincided with, Anna Christ writes," This was an era of international arm-wrestling in which losing countries were eclipsed, and China had been losing for some time".
[20] After the Opium Wars, Great Britain, France, and Russia, followed by the United States had great economical power in East Asia. Japan understood Western intentions in the East, and Japanese tired to emerge from this aggressively imperialist period as much stronger nation than China by equating it self with the West.
The First Sino–Japanese War (1894 - 1895) was a war fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan over the control of Korea
[21]. The Sino-Japanese War symbolized the degeneration and weakness of the Qing dynasty and demonstrated to the Meiji Japan how successful westernization and modernization had been in Japan since the Restoration. After the war Japan took possession of Chinese territory and Formosa current day Taiwan.
According to Christ "Japanese were threatened by the U.S. seizure of the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. In 1900, when Japanese troops entered Peking with the Western powers in response to the Boxer Rebellion, it was apparent that the Japanese sought to measure up on the Western scale."
[22]The principal results from these events in East Asia, was a shift in regional power and dominance from China to Japan; from Chinese traditions of the Qing Dynasty to Emperor Meiji's Restoration.
Japan at the time of the World's Fair tired to raise its international status from defamed "Oriental" to a respected colonial power. The Japanese understood the World's Fair environment very well. And by 1904 Japan was an accomplished exposition participant and a promoter of its state and culture. Since the international exposition in Vienna in 1873,to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Japan has participated in twenty-seven world's fairs.
[23]The Japanese, in views of accomplished St. Louis Fair cessionaries, were successful exhibitors on the Fairs' grounds. Because Japan along with Western nations was a model of “modern representational order” from East Asia, in which neither the Chinese nor the Ainu were. The Japanese official Commission to the fair sized the opportunity of the St. Louis Fair as a way to strengthen its dominant position in the Far East. According to Stevens," Her (Japan) participation in the exposition at St. Louis was more memorable in many respects than at any preceding exposition. In the first place, the exhibits never before occupied such an extensive area. It was three times as large as that occupied by Japan at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the Paris Exposition of 1900, respectively."
[24]Notwithstanding the fact that there was only a short period of nine months between Japan's decision to participate and the opening of the fair, and that in the course of that comparatively short period the rupture of friendly relations between Russia and Japan greatly handicapped the latter's endeavors concerning the exposition, the officials and exhibitors pursued their preconceived plan without an interruption. In view of such disadvantages, the promptness and accuracy with which articles were brought into their destination, arranged, and displayed seasonably in proper form may well be regarded as remarkable.
The Official Commission to the Fair participated in almost each department of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Displays on an especially elaborate scale, however, could be found in the following eleven palaces, namely: Palaces of Education and Social Economy, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, Manufactures, Varied Industries, Transportation, Mines, Forestry, Fish, and Game, Electricity, and Agriculture. The total area of space of the Japanese sections totaled 129,457
[25] Square feet.
The Japanese sent “a fine collection” of decorative arts to the St.Louis fair.
According to Christ this was due to “political changes” giving “a new turn” to Japanese foreign policy. These changes surely led to the 1868 Meiji Restoration. The Vienna Exposition of 1873 marked the beginning of a more aggressive style of participation with which the Japanese announced their capabilities. The Meiji government spent three years planning the exhibit and another year choosing materials. From 1873 forward, Japanese governmental agencies staged exhibits in most international fairs
[26].
Japan’s newly earned status as imperialist nation ensured its entry into St. Louis’s fine arts palace current day St. Louis Art museum. And just like the World's Fair founders, Japanese bureaucrats and businessmen made up the Japanese Official Commission to the Fair. According to Christ these officials persuaded Halsey Ives head of the Art building, for more space for more than two years prior to the fair.
They constantly requested more gallery space and held a juried event in Tokyo to choose the works to be sent to St. Louis. Shugio sent Ives a proposed gallery plan many months in advance and ended up with seven spacious galleries on which he spent an unusually large amount of money and attention, sending Japanese artists to St. Louis to paint friezes directly on the walls. The representative value of fine art was so high that Japan included an artist’s studio in its pavilion, a feature that no other nation offered. In addition to many other publications about their exhibits, the Japanese produced an elaborate fine arts catalog complete with artists’ names and a full array of photographs.
Japanese writers publishing in English during the era championed Japanese nationalism as they depicted a broken and dependent China. In Awakening of Japan Okakura proclaimed that Japan stood “alone against the world” without “the benefit of a living art in China.” In Ideals of the East he called Japan a “museum of Asiatic civilization” where “Chinese and Indian ideals” were preserved because “they were long since cast away by the hands that created them.
In Book of Tea, published the year following the St. Louis fair, Okakura described the Chinese as “old and disenchanted.” Hoshi had put the West on notice several years earlier by depicting Japan in a paternalistic stance, a common posture for colonial powers: “The nations of the West shall not be allowed to transform the soul of [the Chinese] people, no matter how much they may hack and cut at their flesh.” He also asserted that Japan had, "the same cause to uphold in China and the same interests to protect as other civilized nations." which reflected Western imperialist notion of ac-quiring Asian lands. And in another article Takahira expressed Japan’s determination to stop Russia from "acquiring any part of China’s territory."
Another example was Nitobe Inaz¯o’s book Bushido: The Soul of Japan published in 1901 and it was sold it in the Fair. In this book Nitobe tried to familiarize foreign readers with Japan, and also to demonstrate a parallel in Japanese and Western traditions. He effectively portrayed Japan as the moral equivalent of the Western powers in Asia because according to Anna Christ Nitobe heard that President Theodore Roosevelt actually had read Bushido.
St. Louis's Fair exhibition ordering helped Japan alternate the reading of Japan’s colonial position. By assigning Japan the title of imperial nation and colonial power: the protector of Chinese territory and the inheritor of Chinese culture. The Japanese Ainu exhibit was located closely to the U.S. Philippine and Native American exhibits at the Anthropology Department. And for the Ainu, Japan actually did collaborate with McGee's Anthropology Department to exhibit the Ainu as inferior to the people at the Fair. The eight Ainu "specimens" were considered inferior several stages to the Japanese in the claimed scientific poster titled "Types and Development of Man" at the Department.
To disassociate themselves from the Ainu, the Commission listed them primitive race. Ironically the Ainu were considered "simple barbarians" incapable of "civilization". Even though since the Ainu's arrival, the Ainu had built their houses cooked their food, competed in sports and, answered Fair gores questions.
It seemed apparent that Department of Anthropology at World's Fair categorization of the Ainu seemed to legitimize Japans' colonial venture in China.
According to Rydell the confusion surrounding the Ainu exhibit, made visitors think of the Ainu as spoils of japans' colony in the Far East. Those eight Ainu were the first of their people to come to the United States. Before the Fair according to Francis only one person out of 600 or more members of the Official Japanese Commission to the Fair had claimed to previously seen an Ainu.
The game of colonial competition on St. Louis World’s Fair is was part of a global colonial phenomenon. The McGee's Anthropology underplayed the Ainu's civilization, by displaying them as objects for study and experiments.
4 Francis David Rowland, 1850-1927."The Universal Exposition of 1904 / by David R. Francis." St. Louis, Mo.: Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, 1913.
[2] 1903 the Exposition Concessionaires' Association. World’s Fair Bulletin 4912):34-35
[3] Rydell, Robert W.
[4] Frederick Starr The Ainu Group at the Saint-Louis Exposition.( Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company.1904)
[5] Van Stone, James W
[6] Anonymous1903~34-35; Mac Mechen 1904:Zl
[7] “Making Useful Citizens OF Ainu Subjects in Early Twentieth-Century Japan”.
[8] David L. Howell, Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) 5.
[9] Vanstone p.3
[10] Frederick Starr. The Ainu Group at the Saint-Louis Exposition (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company.1904) 4
[11] Frederick Starr p.12
10 Frederick Starr p.15
[13] Starr p.12
[14] Starr p.12
[15] The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday. May 22. 1904
[16] (Hanson 1904:385, 393).
[17] Francis.
[18] Stevens, Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission.
[19] Walter B. Stevens 1904 p.8
[20] Anna C. Christ. "Japan's Seven Acres: Politics and Aesthetics at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition." (Durham: Duke University Press,1996): 2.
[21] Reischauer East Asia Tradition and Transformation
[22] Anna C. Christ p.2
[23] Walter B. Stevens p.273
[24] Walter B. Stevens
[25][26] Alcock Rutherford, Art and Art Industries in Japan (London: Virtue, 1878), 5.
