Conflicts of Interest ─ Art and War in Modern Japan

This fascinating publication showcases the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection of Japanese military prints and related materials—one of the largest collections of such works in the world. The 1,400 objects in the collection are mostly color woodblock prints, but the holdings also include paintings, lithographs, photographs, stereographs, books, magazines, maps, game boards, textiles, ceramics, toys, sketchbooks, and commemorative materials. This extraordinary body of visual works chronicles Japan’s rise as a modern nation from the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 through the aftermath of Pearl Harbor in 1942, with a focus on the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. Conflicts of Interest will bring to light an important aspect of Japan’s visual culture and the narratives it circulated for its citizens, allies, and enemies on the world stage.

Philip Hu is associate curator of Asian art at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Rhiannon Paget is the A. W. Mellon Fellow for Japanese art at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Sebastian Dobson is an independent scholar based in London and Antwerp. Sonja Hotwagner is an independent scholar based in Vienna, Austria. Maki Kaneko is associate professor of Japanese art at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Andreas Marks is the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art and Director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.