In the Shadow of Empire

“This marvelous book succeeds in transforming Japanese art of the American occupation (1945–1952) from what once seemed like the nadir of twentieth-century Japanese art history into the key that unlocks some of the most important patterns of its development. This compelling narrative scrutinizes a wide selection of little-studied archival materials to generate a fascinating panorama of diverse media and contentious debates in the troubled years immediately following war defeat.” -- Bert Winther-Tamaki, professor of Art History and Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine “Volk’s work is wholly original, providing new and creative interpretations of a wide array of Japanese artworks produced under the Allied occupation and calling attention to transwar continuities. Volk completely revises previous interpretations that have treated this period as static and largely unproductive, instead revealing a lively and compelling narrative about contested identities negotiated through art. In the Shadow of Empire builds on an important scholarly trajectory, and it will make a major contribution to the field.” -- Gennifer Weisenfeld, Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, Duke University “A rich and revealing account of Japanese visual arts in the decade after the end of World War II, this strongly argued study follows artists as they navigated their own, often sudden, transition from war to peace in the double shadow of the defeated Japanese and ascendant American empires. Focusing on figures frequently neglected in the West-inflected art-historical narrative, the book contributes a fresh perspective both to art history and to postwar Japanese history as a whole. Fascinating.” -- Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor Emerita of History, Columbia University “In the Shadow of Empire elegantly foregrounds visual art as a way to understand the two central dilemmas for postwar Japanese: how to come to terms with their complicated feelings about participation in the disastrous war and how to build a better society from its ruins. Doing so meant choosing what to repudiate, what to keep, and what to refashion from the recent past. It also meant navigating the equally politically compromised terrain of the US-led occupation and the Cold War. In this creative and sensitive analysis of shrewdly selected painters, printmakers, and sculptors, Volk shows the varied ways that artists debated how to make art that appropriately responded to these urgent questions, producing images that have profoundly shaped postwar Japanese—and global—culture through today.”   -- Laura Hein, Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of History, Northwestern University