Asian Self-Representation at World's Fairs 9789048536788

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Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs

Asian Visual Cultures This series focuses on visual cultures that are produced, distributed and consumed in Asia and by Asian communities worldwide. Visual cultures have been implicated in creative policies of the state and in global cultural networks (such as the art world, film festivals and the Internet), particularly since the emergence of digital technologies. Asia is home to some of the major film, television and video industries in the world, while Asian contemporary artists are selling their works for record prices at the international art markets. Visual communication and innovation is also thriving in transnational networks and communities at the grass-roots level. Asian Visual Cultures seeks to explore how the texts and contexts of Asian visual cultures shape, express and negotiate new forms of creativity, subjectivity and cultural politics. It specifically aims to probe into the political, commercial and digital contexts in which visual cultures emerge and circulate, and to trace the potential of these cultures for political or social critique. It welcomes scholarly monographs and edited volumes in English by both established and early-career researchers. Series Editors Jeroen de Kloet, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Edwin Jurriëns, The University of Melbourne, Australia Editorial Board Gaik Cheng Khoo, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Simon Fraser University, Canada Larissa Hjorth, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Amanda Rath, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany Anthony Fung, Chinese University of Hong Kong Lotte Hoek, Edinburgh University, United Kingdom Yoshitaka Mori, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Japan

Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs

William Peterson

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Expo ’88 Hebei Acrobatic Troupe combining lion dancing with an extraordinary balancing routine, October 1988 Source: Queensland State Archives Item ID299135, Photographic material Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6298 563 6 e-isbn 978 90 4853 678 8 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789462985636 nur 640 © William Peterson / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

To my students, from whom I continue to learn



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

11

Note on Works Cited

13

Note on Asian Names

14

1 Introduction

15

Setting the Stage

From the Exhibitionary Order to the Performative Order Methodology and Scope Organisation and Overview 2 The Master of the Form

Japan at San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition

Japan in San Francisco The Performance of Diplomacy: Sites of Encounter Site 1: Japanese Pavilions and Gardens: The Performing Spectator Site 2: Japan Beautiful: Authenticity and Girls, Maids, and Geisha Site 3: Consuming Japan All Over the Place Site 4: Japanese Fine Arts Japan as America Wants to See It 3 The New China and Chinese-Americanness

China at San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition

America in China; China in America Chinatown Goes to the Expo Male Labour: Queer Clothing, Queer Food National Self-Representation China on Display: The Old China Trade, The New China Trade ‘Underground Chinatown’ and Chinese-American Identity 4 Performing Japan in the ‘World of Tomorrow’ Japan at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair

Diplomatic Performances of the Love-Fest Narrative The Japanese Pavilion and the Feminine Face of Japan

20 28 31 39 42 46 50 60 70 74 76 79 82 88 91 93 96 107 113 116 118

Japan Day, 1939 and 1940 Performing Japan: Silk-Spinning Maidens and the Takarazuka Revue 5 From ‘Panda Diplomacy’ to Acrobat Diplomacy China at the Brisbane’s Expo ’88

Expo ’88: Free Enterprise and ‘Leisure in the Age of Technology’ China in Australia The China Pavilion Acrobat Diplomacy The Road to Tiananmen 6 Fashion, Dance, and Representing the Filipina

The Philippines at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair

125 128 139 142 145 149 156 162 167

Breaking Ground: Filipiniana Fashion and the President’s Daughter 171 The Pavilion: Performance of Hospitality 178 Philippine Week 1964: Fashion and Dance Collide 188 7 Performing Modernity under Sukarno’s ‘Roving Eye’ Indonesia at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair

Wayang Kulit, Dance and National Identity A Modernist Pavilion: Tradition, and Girls, Girls, Girls Dancing the Traditional in the Modern and the Modern in the Traditional ‘Girl Watching’ and the Legacy of the Indonesian Pavilion

195 199 207 211 223

8 Maximizing Affect, Minimizing Impact with Hansik

227

Setting the Stage: Soft Power, Foodways, and Milan Hansik and the Pavilion Experience Korea Rocks Milan

230 234 250

South Korea at the 2015 Milan International Exposition

9 Hard and Soft Power in the Thai Pavilion

The Spectral Presence of King Bhumibol at the 2015 Milan Exposition

Soft and Hard Power in the ‘Kitchen to the World’ Site 1: Encountering the ‘Golden Land’ Site 2: Corporatized Food Production Site 3: Encountering the Farmer King On Power and Exiting though the Giftshop

255 257 263 267 270 275

10 Conclusion

279

Works Cited

295

Index

311

The Future of Asian Self-Representation at the International Exposition

List of Figures Figure 1 Logo from “Loving Cup” dedicated to the Japanese Emperor48 Figure 2 Imperial Japanese Pavilion and gardens, PPIE, 191551 Figure 3 Kimono-clad woman in garden of Japanese concession56 Figure 4 Bain family in the Japanese Garden58 Figure 5 Women posing in the Japanese Garden60 Figure 6 Schoolgirls at the groundbreaking of ‘Japan Beautiful’62 Figure 7 Japanese Tea House with Mt. Fuji67 Figure 8 Young women in kimonos in front of tea house68 Figure 9 Max Wassman’s photo of two “Maids of Japan”70 Figure 10 Japanese decorative items on display at PPIE73 Figure 11 Chinese officials at dedication of the Chinese Pavilion85 Figure 12 Two young women at groundbreaking of the Chinese Village90 Figure 13 Chinese government entrance from The Esplanade95 Figure 14 Main pavilion on the Chinese government site96 Figure 15 Hall of Audience, Chinese government site97 Figure 16 Chinatown Guide Book, 1939/40 New York World’s Fair111 Figure 17 Rendering of the Japanese Pavilion120 Figure 18 Mikimoto Pearls brochure122 Figure 19 Flame of Friendship at World’s Fair126 Figure 20 Haru Higa at the World’s Fair130 Figure 21 Chinese Gate at Expo ’88150 Figure 22 China pavilion stamp in Expo ’88 passport152 Figure 23 Hebei Acrobatic Troupe161 Figure 24 Governor Poletti at groundbreaking of Philippines pavilion173 Figure 25 Reception following groundbreaking of Philippines Pavilion175

Figure 26 Gloria Macapagal at fair function177 Figure 27 Postcard of the Philippines Pavilion179 Figure 28 Annabelle Jeves “in native dress”185 Figure 29 Folk dancing at the Philippines Pavilion187 Figure 30 Model of the Indonesian Pavilion209 Figure 31 Dance in the Indonesian Pavilion: Arjun vs. Buta Cakil216 Figure 32 Spectators watching dance in the Indonesian Pavilion217 Figure 33 Balinese kebyar terompong dance in the Indonesian Pavilion220 Figure 34 Republic of Korea Pavilion at Milan Expo236 Figure 35 Ascending the steps, Korea Pavilion238 Figure 36 Obese man, Korea Pavilion239 Figure 37 Emaciated child, Korea Pavilion240 Figure 38 Hand-activated tabletop, Korea Pavilion245 Figure 39 Fermentation gallery, Korea Pavilion247 Figure 40 Exterior, Thailand Pavilion, Milan Expo264 Figure 41 Rich food resources, Thailand Pavilion267 Figure 42 Iconic food dishes, Thailand Pavilion269 Figure 43 Teacher talking to girl, Thailand Pavilion272 Figure 44 King Bhumibol working tirelessly, Thailand Pavilion273 Figure 45 Wall of microwaves, Thailand Pavilion276 Figure 46 Vista of shifting lights, China Pavilion, Milan Expo283 Figure 47 President Xi Jinping, China Pavilion284 Figure 48 Animated cartoon, China Pavilion285 Figure 49 Live dancers, China Pavilion287

Acknowledgements My love of World’s Fairs began in 1965 when my family moved from the American Midwest to a New York City suburb on Long Island. Two things made New York loom large in my imagination: the recently-opened Verrazano Narrows Bridge, still the longest suspension bridge in the Northern Hemisphere, and the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, one of the most attended of such gatherings in history. Though I can’t remember every detail of my time at the fair in 1965, family photos show that like many Americans, I went with my family, which included my younger brother, my parents, and my grandparents. Writing now during the time of COVID-19, many months after the book was completed, what I recall most strongly was the feeling that the whole world was in New York in 1965, that the future was being revealed through the fair’s pavilions and exhibitions, and that the future would be a wonderful and glorious place. New York in 1965 felt like a time of great optimism and hope, one in which the power of humans to build a better future seemed unlimited. Today, the Anthropocene has answered back. In such times, my first debt of gratitude is to my parents, Rozanne and Bill, who throughout my childhood supported and encouraged what were often the very unusual interests of a very serious-minded young boy, one whose favorite outing by age ten was to do yet another tour of the United Nations Building whenever family and friends came to visit. To have had the good fortune to have lived a transnational – or what we used to call an international – life, one in which I have been able to marry my interest and training in the performing arts with history and politics, is due to the examples set by the brilliant, inquisitive, passionate professors I had while pursuing my undergraduate degree at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. I thank especially Professors Patty Curry, Father Frank Fadner, S.J., Father Paul Cioffi, S.J., and Father Thomas King, S.J. for showing me what it means to pursue interests and ideas for their own sake. This book happened because eight years ago I had a conversation with my ex-Monash University and now Flinders University colleague, Professor Maryrose Casey, in which we shared our mutual enthusiasm for these fairs. We later put together a proposal for an unsuccessful Australia Research Council grant that was the basis for the foundational thinking that guided this project. Without Maryrose’s early encouragement and incisive feedback, I would have never had the confidence to believe that a book this crazily ambitious was possible.

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Talented and generous archivists have given me access to the materials that support much of this book, notably those in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, the Queensland State Archives, the Queensland State Library, the Bancroft Library Special Collections at the University of California, Berkeley, and the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library. Among the many superb archivists who have assisted me was Christina Moretta, Photo Curator at the San Francisco History Centre, who miraculously materialized and shared with me the private photos collections of the Bain Family, Max Wassman, and the gorgeous album created by Sadie Davenport. We both revealed our respective secret crushes on the long-dead Sadie, whose photos of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco spoke directly to us a century after they were taken. At such times, those who do archival research are overcome by the awesome power of the archives, not only for how the dead reach out and connect with us, but because of the obligation we have as researchers to tell their story both accurately and with heart. If we get it wrong, restless souls may come back to haunt us. If we get it right, their lives become forever entwined with our own. The research and writing of this book have been generously supported by my employer, Flinders University, with an internal research grant, research support, and study leave in the first half of 2018. My colleagues in the Creativity Research theme in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Flinders, which I have the privilege of leading, have over the last year helped build a strong research culture that has been the bedrock on which I now stand. Finally, I want to thank the staff and research fellows at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) at the University of Leiden, where I had the good fortune to be based as a Visiting Research Fellow in the first half of 2018. There were so many wonderful conversations big and small, formal and informal with colleagues there that enriched this book, among them chats with Willem Vogelsang and photo genius and porcelain expert Sandra Dehue and others that took place while hanging out with the best bunch of internationally-minded scholars ever assembled in one place in human history, notably Manpreet Janeja, Sandra Verstappen, Eva Ambos, Kunthea Chhom, Carola Erika Lorea, Rosni Sengupta, Tang-Fai Yu, Bindu Menon, Melinda Fodor, Song Xiaosen, Charlotte Marchina, Bal Gopal Shrestha, and Philippe Peycam. William Peterson April 2020



Note on Works Cited

Because this work relies almost equally on archival, newspaper, and scholarly resources, types of resources will not be set out in separate categories in the Works Cited section. This is also necessary inasmuch as many of the newspaper columnists whose work is cited in this book were considered leading authorities in a particular part of the field and it is my wish for the reader to be able to easily link a particular view or assertion directly to the author. Whenever a source has an individual or corporate author and can be located by researchers outside an archive, it will be listed by the author’s name. Where works can only be found within a particular archive and where it would be either cumbersome or imprecise to set out a full reference in the Works Cited section, footnotes will be used to direct the reader to the original source. In the case of newspaper articles without designated authors, particularly those from newspapers in the first half of the twentieth century that are not available via internet sources (as, for instance, the San Francisco newspapers or the many smaller New York City metropolitan papers), the name of the newspaper, date, and page number will be provided in-text in a parenthetical reference. Attribution of images sourced from archival sources will follow the institutional requirements of the relevant archives or copyright requirements of the original rights holders. In some cases, subsequent use of images from the same archival source does not require full attribution. Whenever this is the case, the text linking the image to a source may be abbreviated or truncated.



Note on Asian Names

American newspapers in the f irst half of the twentieth century were frequently inconsistent in their spelling of Chinese and Japanese names. At the time of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, it appears that journalists often wrote down Asian names as they sounded to their ears or relied on transcriptions of names provided by the non-native speaker themselves or their handlers. Even business cards of some of the key Asian players at that expo found in the official fair archives used spellings that could not always be matched with news reports. In the case of Chinese names, the situation is further complicated by the inconsistent use of the Wade-Giles transcription system which has subsequently been replaced with Pinyin. A further difficulty is when Cantonese names are turned into Mandarin ones, a practice that would not be followed in the same way today. Where Chinese names connected with the 1915 Expo used the Wade-Giles system, that will be preserved, with the Pinyin version in parentheses whenever possible. As this book focuses on how Asians represented themselves in the West, I will endeavour to present their names as they circulated in archival and press accounts at the time. This is so that individuals can be tracked more easily across a range of historical sources in English. Where individuals are Asian-American (Jim Wong) or known in the fair context by their initials and a family name (e.g. T.C. Chu), that manner of representation will be preserved so they can be tracked more easily against existing and future scholarship. And where spellings found in archival and media sources differ from the historical record, their historically accurate name will appear along with a parenthetical indicating how that individual’s name appeared in the press and official writings. Especially when Chinese or Japanese characters cannot be readily matched to any version of a particular name, it may not be possible to absolutely verify identity. In such cases, a footnote will set out the possible variations.

1 Introduction Setting the Stage Abstract The chapter sets out the rationale for and structure for this inquiry into Asian self-representation at World’s Fairs, or international expositions. Using a case-studies approach, the book will consider how independent Asian nations have sought to shape and control the ways in which they were represented at these events. China and Japan at the San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915 are the focus of the first two chapters, followed by Japan in at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair, and China at Expo ’88 in Brisbane. Other fairs and nations examined in the 100-year span of this inquiry include the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair (the Philippines and Indonesia) and the 2015 Milan International Exposition (Thailand and Korea). Keywords: exhibition, exposition, performativity, representation

International expositions remain the largest and most important stage on which millions of humans routinely gather to experience, express, and respond to cultural difference. The London Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, regarded as the first of what later became known as ‘world fairs,’ evidenced features that were later to become standard, and was largely a national trade show, with Asia represented primarily through the display of objects, chiefly from British-colonized India. By the time of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle and the 1893 Chicago Exposition, these mass events presented opportunities for fairgoers not just to look at objects, but to gaze upon humans from far-flung, colonized lands, as foreign bodies increasingly constituted a key audience attraction. During the ‘golden age’ of the exposition which lasted until World War I, these human encounters, many of them staged in virtual villages such as the Cairo Street at the 1889 Paris Exposition or the Philippines Reservation at the 1904 Saint Louis Exposition, were presented

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch01

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Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs

as authentic reproductions of life ‘back home,’ making villagers available to fairgoers to be scrutinized, evaluated, and judged as they carried out the activities of daily life. Numerous studies (Benedict 1982; Parezo and Fowler 2007; Greenhalgh 1988; Hinsley 1991; Delmendo 2005) have set out how the display of colonized peoples constituted an integral component of the imperial project, providing domestic audiences with a narrative designed to justify colonization in order to pacify and civilize foreign bodies; at the same time, these vast swathes of the colonized earth extended the landmass of relatively tiny European nations, while the raw materials extracted from the colonies fueled their economies and contributed to the twin narratives of Empire and Progress. This book seeks to turn the lens around by focusing on the agency evidenced in Asian self-representation at selected international expositions in the West over a one hundred-year period from the end of ‘golden age’ of the grand exhibition, starting with San Francisco’s Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915, and ending with the 2015 Milan Exposition. Throughout this period, Japan, the acknowledged early master of the exposition form, and to a more modest extent Thailand, were arguably the only two Asian nations that consistently offered fairgoers at European and American expositions representations of Asian peoples and cultures that were not largely mediated, curated, or presented by Western imperial powers themselves. Thus, the story of an empowered, self-conscious Asian self-representation at these events begins when Japan is joined by China, which at the time of San Francisco’s 1915 Panama Pacif ic International Exposition (PPIE) had just emerged two and a half centuries of Manchu rule under the Qing Dynasty. While Europe was engulfed in a war that would become global, in San Francisco peace prevailed, and it was here, as events were taking place elsewhere that would doom the imperial project and put an end to the exposition as a site for the display of one’s imperial conquests, that for the first time Asian self-representation shifted markedly from the largely one-way exchange between West and East where Asia’s means of self-representation assumed significantly greater agency. And unlike the expositions in Europe, it was in San Francisco, with its sizable communities of Chinese and Japanese residents, where for the first time Asian self-representation had to consider and respond to the needs and concerns of local Asian communities, marking the beginnings of what would become over the next century increasingly transnational Asian identities. ‘Asia’ in the context of this study is both the artificial creation of the West, the projection of an orient to counter an Occident in the ways identified and critiqued by Edward Said (1978; 1993), and also a geographic region

Introduc tion

17

spanning continents and archipelagic formations in which individual states as actors have increasingly sought to control their self-representation. The wider context is a world that at the time this analysis starts was very much skewed, with the West in the driver’s seat, and Asian nations – including Southeast Asia and South Asia – responding as the colonized or economically weaker nation. Indeed, as Timothy Mitchell observes, by the early twentieth century, the international exposition was the means through which the manufactured images of Asia as a place of ‘otherness’ was most widely disseminated: ‘The new apparatus of representation, particularly the world exhibitions, gave a central place to the representation of the non-western world,’ a site where ‘the construction of otherness,’ a key feature of ‘the colonial project’ (1992, p. 290) found its fullest expression. While this book can offer no overarching claims about the nature of any essential ‘Asian self-representation,’ it seeks to demonstrate how political, business, and cultural leaders in individual Asian nations responded creativity and strategically over time to Western hegemony in the context of these mass events. As such, it looks at self-representation in ways roughly parallel to those set out by Aiwa Ong, who has sought to tease out ‘the cultural logics that inform and structure border crossings as well as state strategies’ (1999, p. 5). This book will look both at the border crossings of those responsible for the planning, design, and running of national pavilions, but also at the ways in which the transnational bodies inside individual pavilions reflect and respond to the strategies of the state. In this respect, the ‘Asia’ of this inquiry also follows the more recent formulation of ‘Asia as method’ as set out by Chen Kuan-Hsing. Chen talks back to the work of Said, crediting him with demonstrating that ‘cultural discourse, together with cultural practices and politics, produces a system of domination that extends throughout the space of the cultural imaginary, shaping the parameters of thought and defining the categories of the dominant and the dominated’ (2010, p. 25). Within the reality of a Western-dominated world, one that the recent rapid rise of China is now poised to radically shift, the work of ‘Asia as method’ is partially the task of what he terms ‘deimperialization.’ As Chen observes, ‘Asia as method recognizes the need to keep a critical distance from uninterrogated notions of Asia, just as one has to maintain a critical distance from uninterrogated notions of the nation-state. It sees Asia as a product of history, and realizes that Asia has been an active participant in historical processes’ (2010, p. 215). This book then looks at Asia as both a product of history, as a creation of the West, but as individual sites from which self-representation might reflect active participation in historical processes in the ways identified by Chen.

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As the premiere global site for national self-expression, one where a country’s message, its cultural, prowess, and economic and political muscle might find expression and reach the greatest number of individuals directly, this study is largely devoted to the ways in which selected, emerging Asian nations have sought to craft the form and content of their self-representation. A nation’s participation, particularly during the hundred-year period from which the studies in this book are drawn, was, as we shall see, shaped primarily by state actors, often with the support and active consultation of businesses keen on stimulating overseas markets for domestically produced consumer items. The terms of representation were driven by the state, typically through a series of government ministries, and then filtered through the national committee in charge of the country pavilion and displays in international themed pavilions. Thus, the locus of Asian self-representation is primarily the state – or rather particular Asian nations – what they generate, display, and export at international expositions, and how this cultural labour is reported on and received in the West. While it is beyond the scope of this book to interrogate Asian notions of nation or nationalism, at times we will see clearly how national myths – the stories a nation tells itself about itself – are reflected in the content and manner of presentation inside national pavilions. Indeed, it was in the late nineteenth century, just as the exposition form emerged as the dominant locus for intercultural exchange between Asia and the West that Ernst Rehan set out his famous formulation of the ways in which nations define themselves by virtue of being in possession of a common soul: A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form. (1882; 1990, p. 19)

Memories and what they mean at the level of national consciousness are frequently constructions by the state (Anderson 1983, 2006; Bhabha 1983; Gellner 1983; Smith 1999) that are manipulated for its own ends. Anderson’s work on the imaginative component of what comes to be known as a nation identifies ‘the attachment that peoples feel for the inventions of their imagination,’ (Anderson 1983, 2006, p. 141), attachments that may blind them as to how others on the outside may perceive such inventions. Those constructs that citizens have to which they are the most attached, those that prop up and constitute a nation

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and that are projected externally as key elements of national identity are frequently the objects being examined and interpreted in this study. While the focus may be on the state as actor, a comprehensive survey of Asian national self-representation at all officially recognized international expositions is not possible. Thus, this book offers a selected case studies approach, which in addition to San Francisco and Milan expositions, considers Asian self-representation at the two large New York Expositions of 1939-1940 and 1964-1965 as well as Brisbane’s Expo ’88. The story of the unstoppable rise of Japan and America’s love affair with all things Japanese begins and ends with the San Francisco and first New York expositions, while the rise and fall and subsequent rise of China is the backdrop for their participation in the San Francisco exposition and their resurrection from the ashes of history in 1988 at the Brisbane exposition, where they connected with Australian bodies through what I term ‘acrobat diplomacy.’ The New York World’s Fair of 1964-1965, though not an ‘official’ international exposition, offered newly independent Southeast Asian nations such as the Philippines and Indonesia a unique and valued opportunity to connect with millions of Americans through traditional dance and the visual arts at an historical moment when it felt that modernity and democratic values were spreading around the globe, and when New York was the international centre of modernity and cool. The final set of case studies, drawn from the 2015 Milan Exposition, contrasts the self-representations of South Korea, with a focus on youth culture, high tech expertise, and clever solutions to global challenges in food production, with Thailand, which offered Italian consumers food products in which they showed no interest while dramatizing their own internal national psycho-drama at a moment when their beloved King was heading toward the final days of life. As we shall see, the one hundred-year period from 1915 to 2015 brings us to the end of a cycle in which the importance of a unified, coordinated, state-sponsored self-representation by Asian nations at expositions in the West has diminished, if only because the international exposition as a form appears to be increasingly economically unviable for host countries in the West. The Milan Exposition is being followed by expositions in Dubai (2020) and Osaka (2025), both future-oriented in theme,1 and where non-state actors such as corporations are taking on an increasingly important role. Thus a future inquiry might well look at how selected Western nations have sought to self-represent in the ‘old Oriental’ 1 The theme of the Dubai 2020 Expo is ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future,’ while the 2025 Osaka Expo is to run under the theme, ‘Designing future society for our lives’ (Japan Times 2018)

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of the Middle East or at expositions in Asia, notably Shanghai (2010)2 and the 2025 Osaka Exposition.

From the Exhibitionary Order to the Performative Order The so-called ‘golden age’ of the exposition was one in which these fairs ceased to be merely places where products and new inventions might be exhibited, but when they became truly international. This was a time when commissions formed by national governments, often working in conjunction with the captains of industry, were increasingly placed in charge of a nation’s self-representation. As Greenhalgh, a foundational scholar of the field, observes: Expos are a quintessentially modern invention, the physical manifestation of material progress, and their rationale can be found in the need for money and national cohesion. That is why government and the private sector have invested in them, and why they were often created on gargantuan scales. They were the most effective peaceable way to wage war. (2015, p. 4)

As the Western world industrialized, the human and material resources of far-flung colonies increasingly exploited, and international trade between nations expanded, the importance of these events as cultural, political, and economic tools grew. The earliest major fairs, notably the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, and the first large world’s fair in the US, the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia, retained the designation of ‘exhibition,’ reflecting the origins of these events as outgrowths of trade fairs, as places where the latest inventions might be displayed and demonstrated, and where objects for the home might be displayed. The shift to the use of the widespread use of the term ‘exposition’ in part follows the French use of the term to characterize a succession of increasingly massive and monumental Paris expositions in 1878, 1889, and 1900. The Bureau Internationale des Expositions (BIE), the international regulatory body governing these events, was formed in 1928, and thereafter the term became used for all officially sanctioned international expositions. While in the English-speaking world the words ‘exhibition’ and ‘exposition’ have frequently elided, it bears noting that the shift in what these events have been called runs parallel to the historical movement away from the mere 2

For an analysis of French self-representation in Shanghai see Peterson 2012.

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exhibition of manufactured goods, artefacts and artistic products, and the display of exotic peoples before an audience of curious Westerners, to one in which nations created and performed a more discursive narrative of nationhood. This shift to a more holistic, narrative-driven approach to self-representation is one that I will argue in the context of Asian modernity increasingly expressed itself through a performative turn at these events, where human actors in and around the country pavilions of Asian nations became the means through which to push back against objectification and placement of the Asian other into the Orientalist framework that earlier exhibitions fostered. Facilitating this discursive shift was the appearance of country pavilions run by national governments and often designed in a distinctive national architectural style, which increasingly provided the physical setting in which national self-representation could be created and staged before audiences. From as early as the 1867 Paris Exposition (Benedict 1982, p. 20), these dedicated country pavilions become an increasingly important feature of world’s fairs, sometimes working in tandem with needs of businessmen and those in the import/export trade wishing to display products and inventions in a bid to expand sales into overseas markets. In the twentieth century these increasingly interactive spaces became the key environments in which Asian self-representation could be expressed while offering encounters between peoples. After the Paris expositions of 1889 and 1900 in particular, it was in these spaces along with exposition-run art pavilions, where art objects and fine crafts were displayed, an increasingly important means of projecting a nation’s identity and right to claim or expand their geopolitical power. From the last half of the twentieth century and into the present, pavilions have also offered nations a way of setting forth and responding to the fair’s theme in a more expository fashion. As expos in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have increasingly been organized around themes, the need to be able to set forth, explain, and interpret a particular position with respect to themes such as urban sustainability (Shanghai, 2010) or ‘feeding the planet’ (Milan, 2015) within the context of a country pavilion has become paramount. While objects are still on display in country pavilions today, the ‘ethnographic turn’ that underpinned the display of exotic foreign bodies which took off most spectacularly from the time of Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 has increasingly meant that the mode of communication within pavilions has shifted from the static to the performative, to the shared encounter with other human bodies in space and time. And as we shall see in the final two chapters on the 2015 Milan Exposition, in the digital age, such encounters may extend into virtual fields and immersive environments as well.

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The rise of Asia as reflected at expositions from 1915 reflects the movement from what Timothy Mitchell (2003) has called the ‘exhibitionary order’ to what I term the ‘performative order.’ Performance at the grand colonial expositions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was largely about display, about showing and being looked at, and with respect to Asia, apart from Japan, what was displayed was not an empowered subject, but rather a colonized one, arranged for the colonial gaze of the white metropole and for their education and edification. As Mitchell observes, ‘[t]he world exhibitions of the second half of the [nineteenth] century offered the visitor exactly this educational encounter, with native and their artefacts arranged to provide the direct experience of a colonized object-world’ (499). In so doing, it ‘reduced the world to a system of objects’ that ‘enabled them to evoke some larger meaning, such as History or Empire of Progress’ (499500). Yet by the time of the time of San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, two increasingly powerful Asian nations – Japan as a long-time expo player, and China, both largely controlled their own means of self-representation. And increasingly the mode through which an empowered self-representation before fairgoers in the West took place was performance, even as what was being sought was external validation by the West. This was famously the case when in 1958 the fledgling national folk dance company from the Philippines, Bayanihan, was rapturously received by a European audience at the Brussels International Exposition. From this key moment of self-representation through the presentation of a highly theatricalized programme of folk dances, Bayanihan then took to the world stage, becoming one the most toured companies in the world over the next decade, ultimately also becoming emblematic of the Philippines in the minds of many. Performance has three primary modes of operation in the case studies of Asian self-representation that appear in the chapters to follow. Operating in the most readily identifiable and traditional mode are the many performances featuring Asian bodies engaged in choreographed, rehearsed practices before audiences, particularly dance and to some extent, formal, ritualized practices such as the ever-popular Japanese ‘tea ceremony.’ These performances were presented on or around the pavilion grounds, in dedicated entertainment zones, and are of set duration and presented before audiences of a regulated size, in suitable, often purpose-built venues. These are the types of ‘cultural shows’ one often expects to see at such fairs, ones that require skilled, trained performers to present a brief show that entertains and is seen to offer some insights into a ‘foreign’ culture.

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A second mode of performance is that which is undertaken by country pavilion ‘natives’ who are typically selected on the basis of specific, desired criteria, trained for specif ic duties, and placed in and around country pavilions for all or a significant portion of the fair. Often categorized as ‘guides,’ these are performers undertaking a highly prescribed and sometimes extremely regimented social performance which turns into a believable cultural performance when in situ in the country pavilions. Here I draw from Jeffrey Alexander’s formulation of the relationship between the two, one that he sets out by considering the relationship between a strong collective organization and the differentiation of its parts: The more simple the collective organization, the less its social and cultural parts are segmented and differentiated, the more the elements of social performances are fused. The more complex, segmented, and differentiated the collectivity, the more these elements of social performance become de-fused. To be effective in a society of increasing complexity, social performance must engage in a project of re-fusion. (Alexander 2005, p. 32)

It is this process of ‘re-fusion’ that constitutes the cultural labour of these guides. What is necessary for a foreign audience is a presentation that appears ‘fused,’ one that generates for fairgoers an overall impression as they are guided down a particular pathway into an understanding of guest country’s culture, enabling them to leave the pavilion grounds with something tangible, one sparked by the generation of affect; for example in an encounter with guides in a Thai pavilion at the 2015 expo in Milan, one might leave a lingering feeling that Thailand is indeed ‘the land of smiles.’ The social performance presented in the pavilion thus becomes a cultural performance for others, in this study constituted by fairgoers in the West, to experience the quality of being Japanese or Thai, for example. As Alexander observes, Cultural performance is the social process by which actors, individually or in concert, display for other the meaning of their social situation. This meaning may or may not be one to which they themselves subjectively adhere; it is the meaning that they, as social actors, consciously or unconsciously wish to have others believe. (2005, p. 32)

What matters most in these controlled and staged encounters is that the experience rings true and is persuasive in terms of meeting the initiating group’s overall objectives. As Alexander observes, ‘Successful performance

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depends on the ability of convince others that one’s performance is true, with all the ambiguities that the notion of aesthetic truth implies’ (2005, p. 32). While it will often prove difficult to fully go behind the scenes and detect motives guiding the form and content of Asian self-representation at some of the older fairs, in Chapters Two through Seven in particular, we will see how data from internal documents, press releases, and news and media stories reflect a particular sense of how these actors in and around these pavilions were perceived and what meanings and beliefs were taken away by spectators from these encounters. By calling the world into being through the expository statements and acts within the context of Asian country pavilions, the performative becomes the dominant mode for communicating directly with and imprinting on the bodies of spectator/participants. The site of the encounter is thus the space in which cultural gaps can be set out and bridged or inadvertently widened through the aesthetic, human, and material means that collectively contribute to cross-cultural communication. Increasingly affect and affective encounters, the stickiness of the encounter within and around the precinct of country pavilions, becomes a key experiential element, a line of inquiry that will be taken in Chapters Eight and Nine, which draw from my encounter with the pavilions of Thailand and Korea at the 2015 Milan Exposition. The third mode of performance is generated by the great, seemingly unstoppable engine of contemporary neoliberalism driven by the gods of market forces which has increasingly taken over the public sphere while increasingly finding expression in our private lives. Long before the so-called ‘performative turn’ began to inform humanities scholarship, reducing human labour to outputs based on metrics tied to ‘performance’ had been a practice in the corporate world. Our concept of ourselves as productive units engaged in performances that are quantified and judged by our employers, educational institutions, and even our potential online dating partners, is encapsulated by Jon McKenzie’s assertion that ‘performance will be to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries what discipline was to the eighteenth and nineteenth, that is, an onto-historical formation of power and knowledge (italics original, 2001, p. 18). Not surprisingly, Asian nations have increasingly presented themselves as highly productive and successful performers, as highly capable and successfully problem solvers, offering a model for other nations. This impulse to demonstrate performance at the highest levels of achievement is reflected most notably in the final two case studies, that of Korea and Thailand at the 2010 food-oriented Milan Exposition; here Korea in particular might have received a mark of A++ for productively responding to the fair’s theme, making them the most outstanding of performers.

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Asian bodies, the placement of bodies in their real and virtual dimensions, and the opportunities for bodies to connect across cultures both virtually and in real time within these pavilions are key points of entry in each case study. It is also necessary to continually interrogate who is performing for whom. Audiences within these pavilions, particularly within built environments that offer multiple possibilities for interactivity and to see and be seen, are themselves performing and can be seen as performers, as for instance, when I observed young Chinese fairgoers in the France country pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo using their phones to record images and short videos of themselves in front of enormous video installations of the streets of Paris (Peterson 2012). In such situations, the spectator becomes an actor in the space and a potential co-creator of a new work, one with a life that may extend into the future through social media. Such environments increasingly offer a strong sensorial component in the exchange, while sophisticated video installations may activate multiple modes of sensation, creating a synaesthetic response to what it offered in the pavilion. Where the ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ encounter exists becomes increasingly slippery when experience is not contained within the walls of a pavilion and where it may have various, even infinitely numbered afterlives. Performance is not limited to the areas in and around the pavilions, something we will see most dramatically in the two chapters considering Japanese and Chinese self-representation at the 1915 San Francisco exposition. The spectacular f inancial success of the ‘Midway’3 entertainment zone at the Chicago Columbian Exposition (1893) resulted in expanding the size and scale of such dedicated areas at expos, offering additional opportunities outside the context of country pavilions to immerse one’s self into exotic, foreign cultures. The Chicago exposition was also noteworthy for the ways in which ‘anthropology went to the fair’ (Parezo and Fowler 2007, p. 4); here colonized native peoples were placed on display in dedicated areas, not just in the Midways alongside freak shows, but as objects of serious display in faux-ethnographic encounters. The most infamous of these was the so-called Philippines Reservation at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis which advanced the American colonial enterprise in the Philippines through the display of as many as 1,200 imported natives in villages meant to represent each of the country’s ethnic and cultural groups, with from the highest level of cultural assimilation to the lowest. The Hispanicised lowlanders, with 3 Originally known as the ‘Midway Pleasance,’ the term ‘Midway’ came to denote any entertainment area at an American fair.

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their guitars and Spanish-inflected dances represented the most civilized, while the primitive were famously embodied by the scantily clad warriors of the Cordillera region in northern Luzon who were accused by locals of emptying the neighbourhoods near the fair of its canine population to satisfy their taste for dog meat. 4 Fairgoers wandered through these mini-villages, believing they were witnessing ‘authentic’ scenes of actual village life taking place in and around them, curated by W.J. McGee, head of the fair’s anthropology department (Delmendo 2005, p. 51). By the time of the San Francisco fair in 1915, the more exotic and commercially lucrative of the foreign elements had moved into the entertainment area, though as we shall see, fair organizers maintained significant oversight of these commercial operations, lest they turn into low-life, honky-tonk styles of display. These areas were popular with spectators – promoted as places for ‘fun’ – as they brought the exotic, native people into a space where they could be encountered, and, as fairgoers were led to believe, understood. This impulse to provide fairgoers with the real thing, an authentic experience, had by 1915 become increasingly important. As Asian countries have increasingly used pavilions and adjacent area as performative spaces in which to exercise agency, Asian bodies have presented and represented themselves on their own terms rather than through the mandate of a colonizing power. Yet this is not to say that Asian countries have been immune from self-exoticism when it might suit or advance national or commercial needs. Further, internal ethnic and cultural diversity has at times been used through cultural representations – and dance in particular – as a way of advancing a nation’s celebratory ‘unity in diversity’ trope, as we shall see in the case of the Philippines and Indonesia at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and more recently with China at the 2010 Milan Expo. And where colonization has been external to the boundaries of the state, as for instance with Imperial Japan’s colonization of Taiwan and parts of China prior to World War II, the national narrative ran parallel to that used by the colonizing powers in the West; colonized peoples were presented as in need of protection from a stronger, more civilized ‘big brother,’ the fundamental underpinning of Japan’s so-called ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.’ Indeed, Imperial Japan’s self-representation at key expos rested on justifications for colonization remarkably similar to those that underpinned the great colonial expositions of the early modern era. By seeking admission into the club of powerful nations with vast overseas empires relatively late in the game as it were, Japan was in fact one of the 4

For a detailed historical account of the Philippines Reservation at that fair see Fermin (2004).

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last to incorporate the artefacts, narratives, and products from colonized lands into the fabric of their country pavilions.5 In framing the fairgoer’s experience, seeking to connect it with the intentions of those responsible for organizing and curating national spaces, this book will also consider the performance of diplomacy, drawing from archival files and newspaper accounts which offer the backdrop to participation. There is typically a highly gendered dimension to these performances, with women are generally represented as objects, things of beauty, or repositories of visual culture, while the men act with gravity and, in the words of George Keenan, ‘conduct foreign policy histrionically’ (1971, p. 29). Also considered are public performances inside and around the pavilion, including those associated with special days, notably the pavilion’s opening ceremonies and events in later fairs connected with a dedicated ‘country week’ in which the nation is given a special focus at the fair. At the 2015 Milan International Exposition, for instance, Korean performance cultures literally exploded from stages around the city of Milan at night during ‘Korea Week,’ bringing Korean B-boying, K-Pop, and Taekwondo to an audience far removed geographically from the exposition precinct. Occasions such as these reasonably call into question the objectives, whether articulately publicly or not, of the pavilion’s organizing committee, ones that are often controlled by the country’s political or business leaders. Regardless of whether or not a nation’s intentions were realized, what is performed is often a microcosm, a snapshot of a particular socio-political moment, as for instance it was a the same fair when Thailand scrapped plans to create an intensely performative environment within their country pavilion, replacing it with a series of videos, the last of which glorified their King at the very moment when he had absented himself from public view due to illness. On such occasions, one could argue that the pressures of a nation’s internal politics make it impossible for pavilions to perform anything other than their own domestic socio-political psychodrama, even while pavilion organizers may believe they are offering up a meaningful encounter with their country and its culture. Often country pavilions appear to fail to connect with actual bodies or to communicate across cultural divides. This was most likely the case, I will 5 Japan however was not the last. Perhaps the last spectacular export of colonized peoples to an exposition was after World War II, when at the 1958 Brussels International Exposition, Belgium brought nearly 600 Congolese from their Central African colony to staff the fair. Many were exhibited in virtual ‘human zoos’ with a live display of black men, women, and children in ‘native conditions’ (Boffey 2018).

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argue in Chapter Eight, with Korean attempts to win over Italian converts to the healthy, fermentation-heavy hansik diet at the Milan Expo. Frequently, what pavilions do instead is to show us more about themselves than what they want from others or what they want others to see of themselves. Sometimes what is presented is not recognized at all on the new audience, even though it may have been set out in great earnestness, as what is offered is inconsistent with the way the foreign nation’s culture is viewed from the outside. In Chapter Four, we will see how this was the case with Japanese participation at the 1939-1940 New York Exposition, where even on the eve of war, America was so invested in the view of Japan as the land of cherry blossoms and willowy maidens, that even the leading dance critic of the time failed to recognize the gender-bending Takarazuka Revue as a reflection of Japan’s genius at cultural fusion, a distinctively Japanese modernist project quite at odds with the prevailing American view of Japan’s cultural greatness being expressed through ‘classical’ performance forms such as Kabuki or Nō. This example also points to the historical situatedness of these pavilions, how whatever the intent behind it, its content, reception, and afterlife is influenced by events that take place after the pavilion was conceptualized, planned, and built. Political events at home may in fact completely hijack the content of the pavilion and the people on display within it. Such was the case in the Philippines country pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Exhibition when a brief power vacuum corresponding with a change in government made the pavilion rife for hijacking by powerful business leaders who wished to use it to further their own pecuniary interests in China (Peterson 2018). Thus this book, though focusing largely on the visual and performative, on the embodied encounter between Asia and the West in the interactive environment of the country pavilion, is always bounded by time and place and rooted in a particular historical and political moment, offering readers an opportunity to better understand and make sense of complex intercultural transactions between Asia and the West over the last one hundred years at some of the world’s most well-attended events.

Methodology and Scope The research methodology supporting this inquiry blends ethnographic and archival research. For fairs prior to the 21st Century, I rely heavily on the archives associated with the relevant fair which typically contain framing and administrative documents, press materials, official fair promotional materials, speeches, photos, films, and press clippings, generally in English.

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This includes the official archives of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), held at the University of California Berkeley Library, and related materials, some generated by the PPIE, held in the San Francisco History Collection at the San Francisco Public Library. The State Library of Queensland and the Special Collections Department at the Queensland State Library contained invaluable material on Chinese and Japanese participation Expo ‘88, while the official documents of the corporations running the New York World’s Fairs of 1939-1940 and 1964-1965, held in the Archives and Manuscripts Division of the New York Public Library, offered detailed information on virtually all aspects of the planning, operation, and reception to those two fairs. I rely too on the rich scholarship on individual fairs and particularly those studies that focus on material culture. A necessary limitation of this inquiry is that it relies on English-language resources and does not delve into materials in the many potentially useful archives of those nations participating in these fairs. To identify these archival holdings and make productive use of them would have required advanced language skills in multiple Asian languages as well as a vast team of researchers. The archives set out above that hold the official documents connected with the fairs are themselves vast, and what they do reflect is how at least in the off icial record, Asian nations sought to articulate and control the nature of their self-representation. In that respect, they offer important, foundational insights, even if the fuller story might be traced back at some future point to relevant archives in each individual nation. One of the consequences of examining English-language sources, particularly when off icial press releases are then compared with what appeared in many English-language news sources that covered the American fairs in particular, is that we can track how intended self-representation was interpreted, reinterpreted, and at times highjacked by those crafting the narratives in American newspapers and magazines. Whenever possible, I have sought to incorporate relevant scholarship in English that relies upon sources in Asian languages. For instance, Japan scholars writing in English, particularly those focused on the export of Japanese visual arts, material culture and the manufacturing and distribution of decorative objects in the first half of the twentieth century, have produced a wealth of material that support key points made in this study. To the fullest extent possible, I have sought to triangulate my findings with theirs, placing my results into a conversation with their work. This study cannot fully enter into the minds and reveal the intentions of all key individuals from each nation who were ultimately responsible

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for the ways in which their countries were represented. But as we shall see, particularly for the American fairs in San Francisco and New York, because official fair corporation documents include virtually all significant correspondence between the respective national fair commissions organizing participation and all key offices connected with the fair itself, including publicity and promotion, it is often possible to gain a reasonably accurate view into the ways in which countries sought to self-represent. Particularly with the New York fairs of 1939-1940 and 1964-1965, where the business of public relations (PR) was already quite advanced and even entrenched, it is possible to see how PR firms crafted a nation’s message working alongside the nation’s official exposition commission to effectively ‘sell’ it to an American audience. For the final fair under consideration, the Milan Exposition of 2015, research methods include fieldwork, drawing on personal observations, interviews with pavilion guides, evaluations of still and moving images as well as sound files, as well as the vast range of ancillary materials, many of them electronically generated. The other obvious limitation of this study is that it takes the position and importance of the international exposition as a given. This study is not intended to critique what international expositions can and have done. It is abundantly clear that in many cases the construction of these vast precincts in and around some of the world’s largest cities has destroyed the social fabric of established neighbourhoods by essentially obliterating them and forcing people to move, most famously the case for the 2010 Shanghai Exposition. Massive infrastructure is built for these fairs, often with the promise of future redevelopment of such sites and the repurposing of structures by the fair corporation when they plan and sell these events to cities and municipalities, while those promises have all too frequently been forgotten, particularly at expositions in the twentieth century, which have become increasingly corporatized affairs. The veritable wasteland left behind by the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair Corporation in Flushing, New York, is legendary, with vast swathes of the old site still looking like film locations for a post-apocalyptic disaster film. And finally, while I will examine the role of Asian labour at every fair, and in particular, cultural labour, at the five fairs under consideration, it is beyond the scope of this study to consider fully the conditions under which that labour was recruited, trained, housed at the fair, and further, what their lives and subsequent careers were like upon return to their home countries. Though such a study would be all but impossible for the fairs prior to the 1960s, to do this for the three fairs for which participants would still be alive today (New York, Brisbane, Milan) would again require

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huge research budgets, considerable time in numerous countries, a team of researchers, and advanced language skills in multiple Asian languages. What this title can do however, is focus on what was presented and how it was received, as intentions are often set out either explicitly or implicitly in official fair corporation records, ones that are remarkably complete for the fairs chosen for this study. Also possible is an examination of scrapbooks and other ephemera left behind by fair enthusiasts, useful resources that provide ballast for the observations about audience responses to the 1915 San Francisco and 1988 Brisbane expositions in particular. In addition to fair catalogues and the scholarship in art history and material culture which provide further data on what was exhibited, contemporary news reports are invaluable in identifying patterns both in the reporting of Asian self-representation, and in projecting how audiences responded to what they saw. At the time of the New York fair of 1964-1965 there were nearly a dozen major daily newspapers in the New York Metropolitan area. The publicity office of the fair corporation went through each of them daily, assembling, organizing, and cataloguing every print item that appeared on any aspect of the fair. Such a resource is invaluable, offering an effective and useful way of identifying and tracking how prevailing tropes governing the reception of Asian self-representation were generated and disseminated. In many cases too, press releases are largely reprinted in local newspapers, giving the PR firms engaged by the respective country commissions considerable power in shaping and containing the narrative of self-representation. Collectively, and with a particular focus on the visual and performative, this study then seeks to consider what Lockyer argues for as the work of an Exhibition, ‘what an exhibition does; what people, given these possibilities and constraints, try to do at exhibitions, and how this is related to the contemporary context’ (2000, p. 26).

Organisation and Overview In turning the lens around on an energized, activated Asia, one seeking to communicate on the global stage on an equal footing with the West, this book will largely follow a case studies approach, with chapters primarily devoted to Asian self-representation in the context of country pavilions at selected fairs in the West. Apart from the 1988 Brisbane and 2015 Milan expositions, three of these expositions were in the United States. This is not to minimize the importance of scale of Asian representation at fairs in Europe, but a reflection of the need to bound this inquiry so that it is not

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just the story of Japan at international expositions; Japan dominated Asian self-representation at European fairs and much has already been written about Japan their mastery of the form. And more fundamentally, as we shall see, in a century in which an increasing number of Asian nations were in a position to represent themselves, there was simply more to be gained by them through actively participating in the three American fairs, the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Francisco, and the two New York World’s Fairs of 1939-1940 and 1964-1965. The San Francisco exposition was occasioned by the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, which connected the east coast of the US to the growing population and economic power of the country’s west. The movement toward a global economy based on the exchange of manufactured goods, one that integrates Asia into the West, takes off from this point, leading to an explosion of trade between Japan and the US in the years prior to World War II. The sheer fact of a shared ocean marks the 1915 San Francisco exposition as more profoundly Asia-focused that earlier ones in Europe or the US, making it a useful and significant starting point for this inquiry. San Francisco, the most Asian city in the Western world at the time, was also the site, as was California more broadly, where the Asian imprint on culture was already the strongest, and where relatively sophisticated cross-cultural interactions were undercut by strong anti-Asian sentiments from a large segment of the majority white population who hung on to well-established, negative cultural stereotypes. Both the Chinese, and to a lesser extent, the Japanese communities with a foothold in the San Francisco Bay Area, were a force to be reckoned with, and actively contributed to how their ancestral lands were represented. Writing of San Francisco’s Chinese community that began forming in the mid-nineteenth century, one numerically and culturally significant by the end of the century, Yong Chen observes that theirs is ‘a story about the emergence and development of a Pacific Rim community’ (2000, p. 7). Thus, the first two chapters which focus on Japanese and Chinese participation respectively, contribute to the earliest stories of the emergence of Pacific Rim Asian identities. For their part, the governments of Japan and China both had a profound understanding of what was at stake in San Francisco; as will be demonstrated, they controlled their representation in ways that brought the active spectator into a closer, deeper, more embodied encounter with their culture, its art, and consumer products. Both countries projected themselves publicly in ways that suggested they understood their future was inextricably linked to that of the West, and particularly to the Asia-facing West coast of the US. The second and fourth chapters are largely about rise and rise of Japan, the acknowledged master of the exposition form, bookended by chapters

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setting out China’s corresponding attempts to achieve what Japan had, notably its export markets, its cultural cachet, and respect in the wider world. Because Japanese modernity was so inextricably linked to its presence and self-representation at international exposition from the very start of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 when it began to enthusiastically embrace industrialization while expanding trade and diplomatic ties with the West, by the time of San Francisco’s Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), Japan had already demonstrated mastery of the exposition form. Post-Qing dynasty China, by contrast, a fledgling independent nation by 1915 with parts of it occupied by Japan, was, in the eyes of the West, only just emerging from ‘oriental despotism,’ while the position of actual Chinese in California, where they lived in greater number than elsewhere in the Western world at the time, was precarious indeed, as we shall see. In many ways, the story of Asian agency at these expos, one which Japan was not the only major player, begins in San Francisco. Indeed, throughout much of following 100 years, and until other Asian nations found themselves on a firmer footing politically and economically vis-à-vis the West, the two Asian nations competing most strongly for recognition from fairgoers and the public at large were China and Japan. Japan’s apogee in terms of self-representation was surely the New York 1939-1940 World Fair. Thus, Chapter Four examines the seeming disjuncture between the public performances of diplomats and politicians and the highly aestheticized performances of young, attractive, kimono-clad Japanese women within their country pavilion at the same fair. Using archival materials and newspaper accounts, a rich performance history of this East-West encounter is analysed, concluding that ultimately Americans were largely unable and unwilling to accept Japan’s attempt to present itself as a modern country, capable of fusing traditional and contemporary cultural expressions through new hybrid performance forms. While Japan was seducing American fairgoers with performances of maidens spinning silk and serving tea within their country pavilion, ultimately the only encounter with Chinese culture fairgoers were offered largely a self-guided tour through New York City’s Chinatown with the aid of a brochure. Chapter Five completes the story of the rise of Japan and China, concluding with the inevitable rise of China by looking ahead two generations to the presence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at Brisbane’s 1988 Exposition, a watershed moment in post-Mao China, a year before the Tiananmen Square protests when the country appeared to be moving rapidly toward freer expression domestically while opening up to the West. By the late 1980s what had started with small ripples had turned into a tidal

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wave of reform as Deng Xiaoping steered the country in the direction of economic liberalization while still paying lip service to the precepts of Maoist socialism. There has been little scholarship on this exposition, one that also opened up Australia to Asia in ways that have had lasting significance. Even though the Brisbane Exposition of 1988 was never going to draw the attendance numbers of a fair in Europe or the US, both China and Japan recognized the importance of making a strong connection with Australians in their shared corner of the world. For post-Mao China, self-representation in Brisbane, regarded as a relatively backward city at the time, was taken very seriously because, though small in population, Australia was rich in the raw materials needed to rapidly modernize China’s economy. While Japan was at the top of its game as a high-tech economic powerhouse and appeared to hold all of the economic and cultural cards, China had spent the better part of the prior decade enhancing people-to-people contacts with Australia, particularly in the performing arts, and played their cards in ways that paid off well in terms of establishing positive future relations with a strategically significant Western country in the Asia-Pacific region. Thus, China’s success in building on existing cultural links with Australians at that fair mark the Brisbane Expo as an important end point in the story of Chinese and Japanese self-representation. Chapters Six and Seven talk back to one another in much the same way as the first two sets of chapters. Under examination here are the complex political and cultural performances of two newly-independent Southeast Asian countries at the 1964-1965 New York World Fair: America’s former de-facto colony and important ally, the Philippines, and an Indonesia led by the fiercely independent President Sukarno who famously told US President Lyndon Baines Johnson to ‘Go to hell with your aid’ rather than support America’s geo-political objectives in the region. By the mid-1960s, a time when the exposition no longer mattered all that much to the most seasoned and powerful players in the international order, countries such as Indonesia and Philippines that had long been on the periphery sought to claim a place in the spotlight. It matters little that the New York fair was considered by many to be largely a commercial enterprise, frequently derided as a vulgar celebration of the triumph of American consumer culture. For the Philippines and Indonesia, two of the first countries to sign on to that fair, seeing and being seen in New York, the most glamourous and powerful city in the world at the time, mattered greatly. At a time when the US was about to ramp up the war in Vietnam using the Philippines as its key regional military base, the Philippines used its pavilion to display its human qualities. From the shape of the pavilion,

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designed to resemble a traditional wide-brimmed salakot hat, to the dance performances inside the pavilion’s 500-seat outdoor amphitheatre, the pavilion experience offered participants a warm, human encounter with hand-made artefacts and graceful Filipino bodies in motion. Chapter Six will map out the performative encounters shaped by and contained within the country pavilion and its adjacent grounds, while pointing to the confluence and disjunction between these performances and those staged in the official public sphere, notably the diplomatic encounters between Filipino and American political leaders. Relations between Indonesia and the West, already troubled by the time the fair started, reached a breaking point when in 1965 President Sukarno withdrew his country from the United Nations and the pavilion that he himself had a strong hand in designing was boarded up for the duration of the fair. Like the Philippines pavilion, live performance was a key element in the exchange between visitors and host country residents, and the interplay between what was presented for consumption by fairgoers and what transpired outside the fairground was complex; in both cases, a dialogue exists between attempts at positive self-representation at the fair and the public pronouncements of politicians at a time when incontrollable, uncontainable forces would eventually throw Indonesia into a civil war and turn the Philippines into a vassal state for American military exploits in Vietnam, rendering the fair’s theme, ‘Peace through Understanding,’ deeply ironic. Since the 1970s, international expositions have increasingly relied upon overarching themes as the means through which participating nations might justify their participation, particularly given the escalating costs of conceiving, designing, building and running country pavilions, the less-than-obvious returns on investment, and the increasing criticism of resource use at these expos. Thus, the final two chapters before the conclusion look at two vastly different Asian responses – that of Thailand and Korea – to the 2015 Milan International Exposition’s theme, ‘Feeding the Planet: Energy for Life.’ Organizers of the Milan Exposition sought to create ‘an Expo in which content and container, signifier and signified, are therefore no longer separated but become a single whole.’ Here the tone and methodologies employed shift from the earlier chapters; in the absence of historical fair archives and because this fair is a recent one, these chapters instead seek to offer readers a peripatetic journey through these two pavilions, one that seeks less to describe and analyse the context behind the contents of the pavilion, as much as it endeavours to map out the possible experiential and affective nature of the experience of moving

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through it, to map out its ‘sensuous geographies’ (Rodaway 1994). Thus, the tone is far more descriptive, and the analysis necessarily more speculative and personal in expression. I have previously undertaken similar analyses of the French and Philippines pavilions (Peterson 2012; 2018), assuming at times the role of the emancipated spectator or flâneur (Rancière 2009) to enter the space of ‘the imagination as a social practice’ (Appadurai 1996, p. 31). Rather than a lessening of analytical rigour, this constitutes a shift toward an ‘anthropology of perception’ (Csordas 1990), invoking the phenomenology of perception (Merleau-Ponty 1962), offering the reader an affective encounter with the pavilion to sit alongside the analysis of its contents and larger cultural and socio-political context. Possibly no country took Milan fair’s food brief as seriously as the Republic of Korea, with their ambitious theme, ‘Hansik, Food for the Future: You Are What You Eat.’ Hansik, Korea’s vegetable-heavy cuisine featuring fermentation, was set out as a solution to the problems of world hunger, obesity, and scarce resources. Thus, Chapter Eight considers how the energy harnessed by the interactive installations and an army of attractive, young Korean hosts in the pavilion appeared to maximize the possibilities for affect. A bold assertion of an attractive Korean modernity, responding rigorously to the fair’s theme with playfulness, energy, creativity, and a tightly controlled vision, offered a remarkable contrast to the consumerist and relatively backward-looking Thai pavilion. Whether Korea’s efforts at the fair were successful in changing Italian or European eating habits is uncertain. In Milan Korea had presented itself under its own terms, as a hip, sophisticated, high-tech, modern Asian nation with an ancient food culture and vibrant, contemporary performance forms that spread throughout the city during ‘Korea week.’ The form and manner of representation was no longer traditional or modern, Eastern or Western, but a deeply Korean cultural fusion. Korea was not an abject, an outlier, a place resembling some other place, but was instead proudly its own unique thing, its own place with its own culture, people, land, and traditions, its own take on modernity. In Milan, Thailand sought to project itself as ‘the Golden Land,’ a nation in a unique position to feed the planet due to the blessings of a fertile land enhanced by corporatized food production and under the divine guidance of the country’s beloved ‘Farmer King’ and ‘Royal Rainmaker,’ the then-ailing King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thus Chapter Nine considers how power was exercised both at home in Thailand and inside the pavilion, while describing the fairgoer’s experiential encounter with the divinized King in the pavilion’s three chambers where a series of rapidly-fired images and dazzling videos celebrated the human capacity of Thailand, evoked wonder and delight in

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its food, and clear sought to strike a tone of reverential admiration for the man behind it all, the Thai King. Yet there is perhaps little to celebrate in this final case study, as the corporatist and heavy-handed way with which Thailand represented itself through high-tech, impactful video presentations reflects the retreat of democracy throughout so much of Asia, a trend that has accelerated since Donald Trump became President of United States in 2017. As the final two chapters will suggest, the ways in which the visual, particularly through powerful, repetitive images and spectacle in the service of the corporatized, neoliberal state, can contribute to the creation of a docile and compliant consumer culture and citizenry can be ignored only at our collective peril.

2

The Master of the Form Japan at San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition Abstract By the early 20th century, Japan was the master of the international exhibition format. With over fifty years of experience at world’s fairs in the West, Japan knew how to market its culture and products in a manner appealing to the Western consumer of both high art and decorative objects. The 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition provided the country with a unique opportunity to create a strong and lasting imprint on American bodies in the country pavilion site with its famed gardens and exotic, kimono-clad women. As the epicenter of Asian migration, San Francisco also offered unique opportunities to further the power of Japonisme in the arts, while politicians in both countries used the event to champion Japanese-American relations. Keywords: Japanese aesthetics, Japanese femininity, consuming Japan

As Europe was rushing headlong into war, the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Francisco sought to embrace peace from the Pacific coast of an isolationist America. Despite the sinking of the passenger liner, the Lusitania, by German U-Boats with the loss of 128 American lives just a few months after the fair’s opening,1 the American public and its political leaders were in no mood for war. The San Francisco exposition, which ran from 20 February to 4 December 1915, celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal, seen as the key to future economic prosperity through enhanced sea connections between the US and Asia as well as America’s two coasts, with San Francisco, the financial centre and 1 The Lusitania, bound from New York to Liverpool, was sunk off the coast of Ireland on 7 May 1915, with 1,198 casualties.

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch02

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largest city on the American Pacific coast, taking a leading role. For San Franciscans, the fair was an opportunity to show off their glittering city, one that had been brought to its knees by the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fires that destroyed vast swathes of the ‘City by the Bay.’ The Japanese, like their American friends, viewed peace in the Pacific as a necessary counterbalance to the war enveloping Europe. At a diplomatic function in San Francisco immediately prior to the exposition opening, Admiral Baron Shigetō Dewa,2 one of Japan’s most senior military commanders, enthusiastically proclaimed the PPIE a ‘Congress of International Peace,’ articulating the widely-held view that the canal would bring ‘increasing communication and intercourse among the peoples of the world,’ and provide ‘a real contribution to the cause of peace’ (San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Feb. 1915, p. 9). For both Japan and America, two equally ambitious nations intent on consolidating their geopolitical and economic power, the stakes were high. Indeed, there was arguably no other international exposition in history where putting on a public show of good relations between an Asian nation and a Western host was more important for political leaders and fair organizers or so essential to the success of the venture. In the field of Exposition Studies, Japan is widely regarded as having ‘mastered the Western mode of exhibitionary practice in the grandiose world’s fairs of the imperial era’ (Christ 2000, pp. 675-676). By 1915 it had nearly half a century of experience at such expositions dating back to their presence at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris,3 having sent a delegation there just a year before the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the start of Meiji Restoration, predating its process of rapid industrialization. That Paris exposition was also first time Japanese art objects were displayed to a large audience of art connoisseurs and potential future consumers in the West, setting the stage for the emergence of Japonisme – the enthusiastic adoption and appropriation of elements of Japanese style in the West. Arguably more than any other nation, by the time of the PPIE, Japan understood that effective self-representation at these expositions was determined not just by the objects it displayed, but through experiential encounters between fairgoers and a nation’s culture and its people in the context of purposeful, built environments which captured and celebrated key aspect of the national character. It was in such environments that more complex performative 2 The Chronicle mis-spells his name 3 Mizuta observes that Japan may have been to an even earlier major exposition, noting that their presence began ‘with a preemptive strike at the London World Exposition’ in 1862 (2006: 32).

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exchanges could take place, ones that from 1915 were increasingly mediated by the lens of the camera as photography moved from the studio to the streets. Japan is the necessary starting point for Asian self-representation at international expositions because they set the gold standard in the field, and because their visibility, attractiveness, industrial growth, and comingof-age as an emerging superpower is inextricably linked to their prior fifty years of carefully curated self-representation at these expositions. As we shall see in the following chapter, the story of Chinese self-representation, particularly from 1915, was very much about trying to obtain what Japan had acquired by following their successful blueprint. In 1915 Japan was a respected, industrialized nation, seen by Americans as having successfully embraced Western technology while maintaining traditional values. The familiar and now clichéd ‘tradition-in-modernity’ trope grew out of the view of Japan held by many in the West, one cemented in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and celebrated in the twentieth, that Japan’s unique and rapid rise to the top of the pack in the international order was due to its capacity to embrace Western technology – seen as the underlying feature of modernity – while retaining its ‘traditional’ culture. Assuming a special, privileged position in this narrative was the US, which claimed to have brought Japan into the global geopolitical and economy order in 1852, when US Naval Commodore Matthew Perry, acting on the behest of President Millard Fillmore, sought to open trade with Japan using the threat of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ if necessary. Thus the ‘opening of Japan’4 was claimed as an American project, something the Japanese themselves proclaimed even on the eve of World War II, as we shall see in Chapter Four. Japan had previously used the expositions in Chicago (1893) and Saint Louis (1904) to market itself as a sophisticated, culturally rich, highly aestheticized nation. Theirs was projected as an exotic world populated by lovely Geisha sauntering along cherry blossom-strewn pathways in gardens that improved upon nature, and with rich performance traditions such as Nō and Kabuki, images of the latter having been circulated through the popular and highly dramatic visual representations of Kabuki artists in performance. At both earlier expositions in the US, Japanese pavilions 4 Japan was not entirely closed to the West prior to this time. Dutch merchants were permitted to trade with Japan from 1639, evidently because they were more interested in making money than in converting locals to Christianity, a significant concern for the Shogunate. Thus, many items created for the export market from Japan before 1853 were created for Dutch consumers. Many can today be found in museums throughout the Netherlands.

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highlighted the softer, sensuous dimensions of Japanese culture, catering to the consumer demands of the American middle class, many of whom lived in homes where Japanese porcelain and decorative objects were displayed as markers of taste and refinement. By 1915, Americans would expect a Japanese tea house and a Japanese garden as defining features of Japanese self-representation at any exposition. And the Japanese, for their part, appeared to understand the intoxicating effect such gardens and tea houses would have an eager, receptive public, particularly when populated with pretty Japanese girls in kimono.5 This softer, feminized Japan was the one that the American public fell in love with, while to the Japanese, to some extent the projection of this image constituted a tactic in service of a larger aim, which was the expansion of commerce and trade and tacit support for Japanese colonization and military adventurism in Asia.

Japan in San Francisco To the business leaders and ordinary citizens of San Francisco the fair was a glittering coming out and coming-of-age party, while from the perspective of an Asia looking to the geographic East rather than to the West, it presented an opportunity to deepen cultural understandings while advancing trade and economic ties. Japan was well advanced in both respects, understanding that its attractiveness to the West was equally based on the view that they had embraced a manufacturing-led, modern, industrialized form of capitalism, one often seen as European in origin and genius, but had married it with traditional Japanese values. These values, forged by perseverance and hard work, were in turn wrapped up in a highly aestheticized ancient culture with visual and performing arts forms attractive to both consumers and arts connoisseurs in the West. Consumer demand for Japanese goods built upon a Japonisme that had been an influential current in the Western avant-garde of the visual arts for well over nearly two generations by the time of the 1915 expo. As Adam Geczy astutely observes of this time, ‘The story of Japan’s ascendency in the world of art and design can be compared to what today would be called a marketing coup’ (2013, p. 116). Artist William Merritt Chase, America’s most influential teacher of painting at the end of the nineteenth century, 5 Except where direct quotes make it necessary, I follow the Japanese practice of using ‘kimono’ to denote the plural as well as the singular.

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was just one of many to incorporate Japanese aesthetics into his work,6 and like many of his compatriots, he was especially taken with the colours and patterns of Japanese textiles, famously creating a series of intimate portraits of upper-class American women wearing Japanese-style kimono. That these kimono were not worn ‘correctly’ appears to be of no particular concern, and when donned by attractive Caucasian women of the American monied classes they evoked a kind of languid elegance. Illustrative is his 1888 ‘The Japanese Print,’7 believed to be of his wife Alice, who slouches in a comfortable reading chair, contemplating a Japanese-looking print that she holds out at a distance with one hand, the other draped over the arm of the chair, suggesting an aesthetic encounter far removed from the grittiness of industrial capitalism that provided the wealth for such a life of leisure. Chase paints Alice with her black hair pulled back, in a Japanese-style chignon, her small, pert lips dappled with bright red lipstick, while behind her a Japanese screen completes the effect of total immersion in Japonisme. This was the counterpoint to the raw power and ambition of Japan’s industrial might, the dream of an unhurried, graceful, feminine beauty that could soothe the troubled Western capitalist soul. To the nation’s political and business leaders, particularly in San Francisco where connections with Asia were already well-established, Japan was the Asian reverse imprint of America: modern, ambitious, and capable, a civilizing force in Asia. Even William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner (hereafter referred to as the Examiner), a newspaper that pioneered so-called ‘muck-raking’ journalism and was not above fanning the flames of anti-Asian sentiment,8 regarded Japan with amazement, as their commentary on Japan occasioned by the fair’s opening suggests: Japan more than any other country in the Orient has been stepping herself in European civilization in the last generation. It has sent students to American universities and has sent special commissioners to Europe. Like the bee it has been gathering honey from the flowers of every country. It has studied the intricate characteristics of every country, the things it excels in. It has absorbed the practical, vigorous ways of doing things, of going at a task, which characterizes the American. (Examiner, 20 Feb. 1915, p. 7) 6 Geczy notes that a virtual raft of contemporary painters ‘lovingly exploited Japonism’s decorative repertoire’ that ‘demanded kimono-clad women as decorative props.’ Others included Alfred Stevens, James Tissot, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeil Whistler (2013:119). 7 The image is available at: https://www.wikiart.org/en/william-merritt-chase/the-japanese-print 8 For an analysis of how Hearst’s concerns about Asian dominance were reflected in his papers see Mugridge (1995, p. 46-59).

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The industriousness of the Japanese, who like bees gathering the superior honey of European civilization, are to be admired for their ‘vigorous ways of doing things,’ for how they simply get things done. By taking the best from Europe, working harder and becoming more industrious, their relationship to the U.S is represented as parallel to that of the US and Europe, making Japan the Asian reverse imprint of America. The competing daily newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle (hereafter referred to as the Chronicle), was equally rapturous about Japanese participation and what it signified, largely embracing and celebrating the expansion of Japan’s power and influence in the Asia-Pacific. On the occasion of the formal dedication of the buildings on the country’s chief exposition site, the paper opined: Japan has taken the broadest and most advanced view of this exposition. She sees the Panama canal [sic] it is celebrating and the new era of commerce which that great waterway is ushering in. She also sees the new industrial empire forming on the Pacific Coast and wishes to acquaint it with her own industrial empire on the other side of the same ocean. (Chronicle, 25 Feb. 1915, p. 6)

Politicians, business leaders, and all major newspapers trumpeted how trade links with Asia would transform the US, with Japan consistently seen as the stable locus of power across the sea.9 Japan was viewed as the modern, civilizing force in Asia, a key trading partner in an unstable region, a trope that would be repeated by American politicians almost until the day the bombs started dropping on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Linked to this economic prosperity driven by industrialization and the consumption of practical and decorative goods, was the notion that trade ties and greater cross-cultural exchange and understanding would bring with it a peace dividend, with the Pacif ic constituting a shared co-prosperity sphere. Japanese and American politicians repeatedly voiced their strong opposition to joining the European war, with Japan’s Consul General a full six months before the PPIE opening reassuring his hosts that Japan ‘will be the last nation to enter the vortex now threatening Europe’ (Examiner, 8 Aug. 1914, p. 6). That Japan was behaving as a 9 The Los Angeles Times observed that the fair, ‘had for its object the opening up of new trade routes and lines of commerce, annihilating distance and wiping out the width of two continents between New York and Yokohama, and bringing the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific Coast together’ (Los Angeles Times, 7 Feb. 1915, p.1).

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colonizing power in Asia was not recognized as a potential problem by American politicians or its citizens. 10 For its part, the US had its own Asian colony, the Philippines, which, in a manner parallel to Japan’s relationship with Taiwan and Korea, was largely seen by American public as an instance of the more advanced, civilized country offering tutelage to the weaker one. Rather than colonization, such relationships were seen at the time as part of the natural order of things. It bears noting that Rudyard Kipling’s famous phrase, ‘the white man’s burden,’ is from a poem in praise of the US ‘civilizing’ mission in the Philippines. In this respect, America’s role as father and teacher to their ‘little brown brothers’ in the Philippines was much like Japan’s role in Asia; seen as the most highly evolved country and people in the region, Japan had a mission to lift up the less developed nations in its geographic orbit through whatever means necessary. America saw much of itself in Japan, and just as it was blind to its own role as a colonizing power, so it looked at Japan through the same set of blinders. A signif icant advantage Japan had over China in terms of advancing itself at this expo was the sizable, prosperous, well-organized Japanese community living in and around San Francisco at the start of the twentieth century. A month before the fair’s opening, the Chronicle featured extensive prof iles of fourteen leaders of the so-called ‘local Japanese colony,’ which included prominent lawyers, merchants, and doctors, many educated at US universities, including the University of California Berkeley (Chronicle, 16 Jan. 1915, p. 76). Each profile was accompanied by a photo; unlike the stereotype of the pig-tailed, buck-toothed, opiumsmoking Chinese coolie, common in newspaper cartoons and early motion pictures at the time, these Japanese men were presented as uniformly serious, upstanding, impeccably groomed men of substance, the majority with dashing moustaches, many strikingly handsome. These were men to be reckoned with, the Asian counterparts of the American men of action, looking out proudly, conf idently, as if the world was their oyster. Thus, the foundational story of Japanese selfrepresentation at the expo necessarily involves a brief consideration of the public performances of prominent Japanese men and their American counterparts who negotiated and built the event, as well as the larger context of Japanese-American relations. 10 By 1915 Japan had been in control of Taiwan (formerly Formosa) for a generation and had tightened its total grip over Korea, which it formally annexed in 1910.

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The Performance of Diplomacy: Sites of Encounter Japan sought to maximize their impact at both at the exposition and among the citizens of San Francisco by becoming the first foreign nation to commit to participation, offering to send a delegation to carry out the symbolic function of ‘site-selection’ in July 1912, nearly three years before the opening.11 As the site for the national pavilion buildings had already been allocated, the principal event would be the ceremonial public ‘groundbreaking’ on the site, preceded and followed by receptions and a formal dinner, which served important diplomatic functions. Interactions between fair officials and Japanese diplomats and commissioners staged in public reflected what George Keenan, writing on international diplomacy in this era, describes as … a tendency on the part of statesmen to conduct foreign policy histrionically, as on a stage, bearing prominently in mind at all times the reaction of domestic public opinion, which constituted the audience, rather than the bare requirements of the situation from the standpoint of national interest. What you did, in these circumstances, became less important than how you looked doing it. (Keenan 1971, p. 29)

PPIE President Charles Moore was under orders from the US State Department to see that the first two Japanese dignitaries scheduled to arrive in San Francisco for the groundbreaking, Commissioner General Haruki Yamawaki, and Commissioner Yoshikatsu Katayama,12 were paid ‘particular attention,’ while the US Secretary of War had issued instructions for ‘an escort of troops and mounted cavalry band on the day of arrival.’13 The official files of the PPIE reveal how all diplomatic exchanges connected with the fair were carefully stage-managed, with detailed minute-by-minute instructions carefully drafted and re-drafted multiple times, setting out every performed action, many of which culminated on temporary stages set up on the fair site, notably those connected with the highly symbolic groundbreakings or pavilion dedications. 11 Memo to Board of Directors from Charles Moore, President, 18 July 1912, PPIE Archives, Bancroft Library Special Collections, UC Berkeley, CA190, Carton 50, File 12. Hereafter all references from this collection will be abbreviated as: PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA190, followed by the Carton or Volume and File number, e.g. 50/12. 12 Commissioners are noted by name in letter to Hiram Johnson, Governor of California, from PPIE President’s Office, 19 July 1912, PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA-190, 50/13. 13 Undated notice to PPIE Board of Directors, PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA-190, 50/13.

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Though the groundbreaking was delayed due to the sudden death of Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito on 30 July 1912, when it finally took place on 18 September, it was a grand affair, with a motorcade taking local and foreign dignitaries, including San Francisco Mayor James Rolph, from the city to a luncheon at the iconic Cliff House,14 a massive, iconic, Victorian-style restaurant and rest house precariously perched on the rocks on the edge of the Pacific. Lunch was followed by the formal groundbreaking at the Exposition site on landfill along the San Francisco Bay adjacent to the Presidio, a military facility though which traffic from the Golden Gate Bridge runs today. The moment of breaking ground was heralded by a nine-gun salute from a US Navy cruiser just offshore in San Francisco Bay,15 which coincided with the simultaneous raising of the American and Japanese flags, the setting off of ‘day-light’ fireworks, and the release of 100 white doves intended to symbolize the depth of the peaceful relationship between the two nations. In addition, a commemorative ‘Loving Cup’ made of gold was presented to commissioner Yamawaki by director Moore, dedicated to Yoshihito, the new Japanese Emperor. The cup featured a stylized representation of the letters IPPE, or the International Panama Pacific Exposition, with the two letter P’s back-to-back in a half moon shape containing segments from a globe, with Asia on the left and North and South America to the right (Figure 1). In this revolutionary visual repositioning of the global power, the Pacific is at the centre, with the US and Asia astride it, while Europe is small and marginalized at the periphery. Yet in reality, this image of an abiding friendship between equal partners was anything but secure. As America’s most Asian city, San Francisco had long been where the battle lines of Anti-Asian immigration sentiment were most sharply drawn. Just a few years earlier, the powerful Asiatic Exclusion League had launched a campaign to bar all Asian immigration by extending the prohibitions of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to all Asians, garnering signif icant public support, while Asian school children were effectively prohibited from mixing with white children at San Francisco’s public schools.16 Inflaming tensions further was the 14 Tentative Program for the Japanese Site Selecting Ceremonies, PPIE Dept. of Exploitation, PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA-190, 50/13. 15 Letter to Colonel Cornelius Gardner from Press & Information Chief, PPIE, 24 July 1912, PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA-190, 50/13. 16 In 1906, San Francisco’s school board, concerned over the number of Japanese-American children in white public schools, upheld a de-facto policy of ‘separate but equal’ to educational facilities, placing Japanese and Chinese children in the same school (Kuo, Joyce, 1998, p. 206). This provoked outrage in Japan, with the press advocating for retaliation by the Japanese Navy.

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Figure 1 Logo from “Loving Cup” dedicated to the Japanese Emperor

The logo on the ‘Loving Cup’ dedicated to the Japanese Emperor shows the Pacific as the centre of the world, bridged by Japan and the west coast of the US. Source: Pacific International Exposition, Bancroft Library Special Collections, University of California Berkeley

passage of the Alien Land Law by the California State Legislature in May 1913 which prohibited the Japanese from purchasing or even leasing land in the state, essentially banning them from the agricultural industries, where they had long played an important role. This action also pitted

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white labour against that of Asian migrants,17 moving organized labour toward an anti-Asian position at a time when unions were developing economic and political muscle. Meanwhile, even at the federal level there was by no means an acrossthe-board consensus with respect to embracing Japan, and particularly Japanese migrants.18 Working to soothe ruffled feathers in Japan while pressing the US State Department to secure a stable relationship with Japan was US Ambassador George W. Guthrie. In a letter to the US Secretary of State he warned that if demonstrations against the Japanese broke out in the US, it would incite ‘popular indignation’ in Japan, adding that the ‘effect it would have on the relations between the countries no one can forsee.’19 Behind the scenes in San Francisco, Moore, as head of the PPIE, worked feverishly to respond to the serious and well-founded concerns raised by Japan’s Counsel General in San Francisco and their Exposition commissioner that Japanese delegates would be racially profiled or abused in and around the city.20 Moore was consistently solicitous, deferential, and reassuring in his written responses to both men, and appears to have used his considerable personal charm in his interactions with the Japanese before, during, and indeed even after the fair, largely mitigating their concerns. It seems clear that were it not for Moore’s ability to calm troubled waters, which also involved bringing a sympathetic San Francisco Mayor onside,21 the entire enterprise might well have blown up. The scale of Japanese participation at the PPIE was massive, even by comparison with its significant presence at the two prior mega-fairs in the US in Chicago (1893) and Saint Louis (1904). By early 1914, the press was trumpeting Japan’s plans to spend a staggering one million dollars on 17 See Markwyn (2014, p. 100-106) for an account of how fair off icials, particularly Moore, worked assiduously to try to defeat the passage of the law, one supported by California Governor Johnson. 18 Indeed, US Immigration Commissioner Anthony Caminetti, in open defiance of President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Bryan, in a statement before the House Congressional Immigration Committee declared that the Japanese ‘constitute a direct menace, not only to the coast States, but to the whole of the country’ (New York Times, 17 Feb 1914, p.3). 19 Letter to US Secretary of State from Ambassador George W. Guthrie, 10 Dec. 1913, PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA-190, 50/6. 20 In September 1912, letters to Commissioner Moore by Japan’s Counsel General in San Francisco, Nawai, and their expo commissioner Yamawaki raised such concerns. Nawai observed that the city’s public bath houses prohibited entry to Japanese, ‘even when they are accompanied by Americans’ (Letter from Nawai to Moore, 25 Sept 1912, #8122, PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA-190, 5/3). 21 Letter to Y. Numano, Acting Consul General, Japan, from San Francisco Mayor James Rolph, Jr., 17 April 1914, PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA-190, 137/7.

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their primary exposition display (Chronicle, 6 Jan. 1914, p. 16), and noting that Japanese self-representation would not be confined just to their own pavilions on their allotted national site. Japan exhibited at nine of the major exposition-wide pavilions, the so-called ‘Palaces’ of Manufacturing, Agriculture, Horticulture, Food Products, Liberal Arts, Education and Social Economy, Mines and Metallurgy, Transportation, as well as the Palace of Fine Arts, the iconic, ocre-hued Beaux-Arts edifice that remains on a small patch of the original site to this day. Their total footprint in these structures constituted nearly twenty percent of the total exhibition area (Chronicle, 2 July 1915, p. 3), rendering Japan more visible than any other foreign nation, making it necessary to consider not just their country pavilions in this chapter. Japanese self-representation at the PPIE thus took place over four discrete areas: (1) the official government site, largely taken up with a traditional Japanese garden and a series of pavilions; (2) the so-called ‘Japan Beautiful’ concession in the fair’s popular entertainment area known as ‘the Zone’; (3) the display of Japanese art in the Palace of Fine Arts, which capitalized on America’s love of Japanese art; and (4) the country’s many exhibits in the individual ‘Palaces’ noted above that were given over to specific themes. Each of these four sites will be examined separately as the principles by which they operated and the affective encounters they generated were markedly different, even as they functioned collectively to generate an overall impression of all things Japanese at the fair.

Site 1: Japanese Pavilions and Gardens: The Performing Spectator Anchoring Japanese participation was the official government site, which occupied a particularly favorable position. Foreign pavilions were relegated to the far western end of the expo grounds, which ran east to west along the San Francisco Bay, with the western end nestled into the Presidio, a park-like military facility. Fairgoers heading into the international area could enter either on foot through the fair’s ‘South Garden’ which ran diagonally in front of the Temple of Jewels, the fair’s dominant structure, or more directly through a more westerly entrance. Those entering through that gate, just off Baker Street, would have passed the fair’s enormous on-site hotel, the Inside Inn, followed by a magnificent open-air musical concourse, with the Japanese government’s site immediately next to it. Regardless of how one entered, the Japanese site was the first foreign government site most fairgoers would have encountered. While most nations offered large boxy

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Figure 2 Imperial Japanese Pavilion and gardens, PPIE, 1915

Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

pavilions that dominated or overpowered their respective sites, Japan set out a series of attractive traditional structures built by master craftsmen, all relatively open and visible to public view, situated in a large and meandering four-acre Japanese garden (Figure 2). The principal building on the site, the Imperial Japanese Pavilion (Figure 2), was initially billed as a replica of Kyoto’s iconic Temple of Kinkaku-ji, reported to have been ‘reproduced down to the last detail’ (Examiner, 16 Oct. 1914, p. 5). While the two-level structure in proportion, style, and size, mirrors the architecture of the famous Golden Palace, originally built as a Buddhist shrine, it lacks the smaller upper gallery, a key design element of the original. The fair’s leading chronicler, Ben Macomber, later astutely observed that ‘[t]hough in no sense a reproduction, in its general form and relation to the gardens it suggests’ the famous temple (1915b). The chief architect for the structures on the site was Goichi Takeda 22 known for bringing European influences into his designs; indeed a photo of the interior 22 Listed as ‘Chief Architect to the Commission’ in letter to PPIE Reception Committee from Y. Numano, Acting Consul General of Japan, 26 Oct. 1914, PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA-190, 50/13.

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of one of the two tea rooms on the grounds (Markyn 2014, p. 112) appears to have linoleum or tile flooring and cane chairs and café tables, looking more like a French bistro than a ‘traditional’ Japanese tea house. That the exteriors of the buildings proclaimed Japaneseness appears to have been the principal requirement; Tsen observes that the Saint Louis exposition just a decade earlier had also featured what was billed as a ‘replica’ of the Kinkaku-ji, where it functioned as a commercial operation called the Kinaku Tea House, evidently the most popular building on the site (2011, p. 116-117). In a nod to the golden exterior of the structure in Kyoto, the interior walls and ceiling, presumably of the largest chamber, were covered with gold leaf (Macomber 1915a, p. 166). The temple-like structure housed numerous smaller displays (Macomber 1915b) and was used by the Japanese Commission to the exposition (PPIE Official Guide, p. 85), which had its main offices in an adjoining building (Macomber 1915a, p. 166). There were three other principal buildings on the site: Two tea houses and a structure with a special exhibition. One of the tea houses featured an exhibit of the Central Tea Trader’s Association (Macomber 1915a, p. 166), while the other, operated by the ‘Formosa Government of Japan’ (Todd 1921, p. 380), had a pleasant view of the garden from the top of a gentle downhill slope. Here the weary fairgoer could sit on the outdoor patio and take in the view while kimono-clad women served pots of tea with rice cakes and dishes such as ‘chicken salad à la Formosa,’ served with a hot biscuit (Todd 1921, p. 380). While the menu at the Formosa Tea House appealed to Western tastes, the naming of the tea room reflects the normalization of colonization; Japan, like England, had far-flung colonial possessions where entire regions and their peoples were reduced to tea-producing areas, reminiscent of period maps where countries were identified by the commodities extracted from them. Smaller structures on the site included an ornamental gate and elaborate, five-tiered Buddhist pagoda, both of which can be found today in the Japanese Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.23 The primary display item on the grounds,24 housed in a building just north of the largest structure25 (Hakurankwai 1915, p. 155), was a 1/20 scale model 23 See https://www.inside-guide-to-san-francisco-tourism.com/japanese-tea-garden-sanfrancisco.html and http://easternimp.blogspot.nl/2016/05/ 24 According to the guide on Japan’s exhibits on display in the same pavilion was a ceremonial silver ‘loving-cup’ presented to the Japanese Navy by the American fleet in 1908, as well as a models from the Bureau of Agriculture, one focused on the production of silk (Hakurankwai 1915, p. 155). 25 While Japan’s official guide to their displays at the PPIE suggests this display was inside the main building, or the Imperial Japanese Pavilion (Hakurankwai 1915, p. 155), the Official Guide

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of the Emperor’s temple complex north of Tokyo, the so-called ‘Shrines of Nikko,’ made of wood, lacquer, and gold. Such miniatures had long brought spectators inside remote, exotic, and historically significant locations at exhibitions and commemorative sites of as a battle fields, a function largely undertaken in today’s exposition pavilions by large format video presentations and multi-media spectacles that envelop the spectator. But before film had the capacity to wrap around and absorb the human organism, though the magic of miniaturization which activated the spectator’s imagination, these models brought the body of the fairgoer into the ‘real’ place. According to the Chronicle, the impressive miniate was built immediately prior to the fair’s opening by ‘fifty trained experts’ who ‘worked practically day and night’ to complete it over a four-month period (Chronicle Sunday Magazine, 1 Aug. 1915). This observation in the relatively anti-Asian Hearst newspaper functions as a kind of dog whistle to those sensitive to the coded message, reinforcing the fears of many Californians that Japanese migrant labour was unfairly undercutting American labour through their willingness to work longer hours for less pay, particularly in the state’s important agricultural sector.26 But when it came to seducing the general public, the secret weapon was not a scale model but the Japanese garden, and as we shall see, it was here where direct connections between human bodies and a highly aestheticized environment maximized the positive generation of affect. By the early twentieth century, ‘traditional’ Japanese gardens were a known quantity, having served as highly effective producers of a particular kind of Asian affect at prior international expositions. Replete with water features, meandering paths, cherry blossom trees, temples of various sizes and shapes, and vistas that seamlessly incorporated the natural world beyond the garden’s formal boundaries, these gardens routinely featured tea houses in which kimono-clad hostesses, regarded generically as ‘Geisha’ in the West, executed an ‘ancient tea ceremony’ with precision and grace. Such gardens are designed and engineered to induce contemplation, to direct and continually re-direct the viewer’s attention, to force them meander, to respond to the unpredictable, and even sometimes to stop in their tracks and look around, as is the case with the so-called ‘zig-zag bridge’ featured to the PPIE and Macomber’s comprehensive analysis of the visual dimension that fair make it clear it was in one of the remaining buildings. Macomber states that it’s the building north of the temple, which seems likely. 26 As Markwyn observed of this period, ‘Anti-Japanese legislation had become a powerful force in California politics’ (2014, p. 101), coming to a head in 1913 when the state legislature passed the Alien Land Law, much to the dismay of fair officials and the Japanese themselves.

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in many such gardens, where walking forward without awareness would result in falling into a pond, for instance. The acknowledged contemporary master of such gardens was Hannosuki Izawa, heralded in the San Francisco press as ‘one of the leading landscape gardeners of the world’ (Examiner, 16 Oct., p. 5.), and tasked with ‘recreating’ Japan’s famous Garden of Nikko (Examiner, 29 Dec. 1914, p. 16), a garden he had himself created as part of the Japanese royal family’s summer retreat in the mountains outside of Tokyo.27 Izawa’s garden, which would have determined the footprint of the buildings on the site, incorporated a series of varied, temple-like structures of various shapes and sizes, offering a uniquely sensorial encounter with Japanese aesthetics. The press devoted considerable attention to both Izawa and the human and material resources required to transform a bare four-acre plot of earth, which included a staggering 1,300 trees, 4,400 smaller plants, in excess of a half-acre of soil, over 200 rocks, and 550 tons of decorative, building and garden materials (Macomber 1915b). The official fair booklet proclaimed the gardens one of the fair’s most enticing and exotic attractions: Statuary and palms will add to the natural beauty of the setting, but perhaps the most delightful and instructive feature will be comprised in a series of beautiful exotic flowers, plants and shrubs – a thousand phases of tropical plant life as developed for centuries by the consummate skill of the Oriental gardener – will give perhaps the first opportunity to gain a comprehensive knowledge of Oriental gardening.28

One of the distinctive features of this fair was its focus on learning and the dissemination of knowledge and its primary public benefit. Indeed, at the time of its opening, the San Francisco Examiner proclaimed the exposition ‘World’s Greatest University’ (20 Feb. 1915, p. 13). Thus, for the increasing numbers of fairgoers wishing to understand the principles of Japanese gardening, Izawa’s masterful recreation of the Emperor’s outdoor pleasure palace, replete with water features and exotic, mature plant specimens, also offered a unique educational experience. Yet more than its pedagogical potential, it was the beauty and ambience of the garden that commanded acclaim. Macomber, evidently repeating 27 See this well-established travel website for details: https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3809. html 28 ‘Panama Pacific International Exposition San Francisco 1915,’ Official Booklet. SF: PPIE Corp, 1915, np, PPIE Archives, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco Collection.

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a claim he heard elsewhere, 29 reports that they ‘dug up the Mikado’s private garden at the end of the sacred Red Bridge in Nikko, trees, rocks, greensward and soil, and set it down again on the Exposition grounds,’ enthusing that in ‘[s]o doing, she [Japan] has shown the Western world a lesson in the beauty of simplicity’ (1915a: 165). Not surprisingly, the garden was much photographed. One representative, iconic photo featured in the San Francisco Examiner before the fair’s opening shows a young Japanese woman in an elaborate kimono, seated on large rocks in this remarkably mature garden (Figure 3). Behind her are large, notoriously slow-growing sago palms, a massive, perfectly manicured Japanese Black Pine,30 and a vista to the east across the massive South Gardens with the exposition’s signature building, the Tower of Jewels, to her right. The pine tree perfectly balances the mass of the ornate, Italianate tower in the distance, while the palms serve to direct the eye toward the vista beyond the garden, creating a sense that what lies outside the garden is also a part of it. The caption proclaims the garden as ‘one of the most elaborate concessions on the grounds,’ again noting that everything, from the stones to the flower beds have been brought from ‘cherry blossom land,’ constituting ‘the largest display she [i.e. Japan] has ever made to any exposition’ (Examiner. 30 Jan. 1915, p. 3). The photo, which appears to have been taken by the off icial PPIE photographer and distributed to the press, features a vista that became popular with guests to the fair, some of whom emplaced themselves into the landscape in ways that suggested the same kind desire to casually linger in a restful, beautiful place as the kimono-clad woman. Possibly the most important, distinctive factor influencing both the experience of the spectator and the afterlife of this fair was that by 1915 an increasingly number of middle class fairgoers could take home and recall their visits through photos of themselves and their companions at the fair,31 thanks to the increasing popularity of Kodak’s famed Brownie 29 As Macomber also suggests that the Roku-on-ji Temple, the alternative name given to the Kinkaku-ji Temple, is in Nara and not Kyoto, his claim here may not be accurate. What is more important is his belief in the absolute authenticity of the display. 30 Macomber suggests that the two of the dwarfed conifers, one of them clearly in the photo, ‘are the products of ten centuries of systematic pinching back’ while the large sago palms are 500 years old (1915a, p. 166). 31 By way of contrast, the photos that circulate from the Japanese Gardens at the 1904 Saint Louis Exposition show kimono-clad Japanese women or ‘girls’ in positions so posed that they appear almost as mannequins. This Stereoscopic image would have been widely circulated at the time: https://www.flickr.com/photos/okinawa-soba/7929270662

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Figure 3 Kimono-clad woman in garden of Japanese concession

In this official PPIE photo, which later appeared in the Examiner, a kimono-clad woman sits in the garden of the Japanese concession with tree palms and an immaculately tended cypress tree. Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

Camera as well as faster shutter speeds on 35mm cameras.32 Before modern digital photography made it possible for people to afford to take as many photos as they wished and discard any number of them, what people chose to take photos of was more carefully calibrated and reflected what they were most drawn toward or valued the most. To make further selections from those photos and place them in a photograph album with captions as many did constitutes a further, secondary level of self-curation. Thus, a content analysis of the private photo albums left behind by PPIE fairgoers is useful not only for gaining insights into how individuals personally connected with and responded to particular exhibits and locations, but also for understanding what other, similar fairgoers may have also valued. 32 For photos and details on the new generation of cameras that had become available in the decade between the Saint Louis Fair and the PPIE in 1915 see: http://corsopolaris.net/ supercameras/early/early_135.html

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The collections of private photographs by PPIE fairgoers held at the San Francisco Public Library are particularly valuable for what they reveal about not only what people found interesting, but for how in them we see how it is possible to ‘perform’ for the camera, striking a pose that reflected a relationship with the photographer – often a friend or family member – while also connecting with place. In such a way, the human subject establishes an active, dynamic relationship with place rather than appearing in front of a static backdrop, as had largely been the case in the earlier years of photography where individuals had to pose for an excruciatingly long period of time. That ‘photography is a socially organized set of rituals,’ as Crawshaw and Urry (1997, p. 183) assert, is borne out by the photographs fairgoers took in the Japanese garden, and by examining them we can see how it functioned as one of the fair’s most potent attractions. Analysing individual photographs and the conditions of their production as performative acts responds to Haldrup and Larsen’s provocation that ‘Photographing is absent from most theory and research, which jumps straight from photography to photographs. Such research typically goes to the representational worlds of photographs and skips over their production, movement and circulation’ (2010, p. 123). Photos from two collections are particularly noteworthy in offering up such insights. The family photographs in the William H. Bain collection, presumably taken with a 35mm camera rather than a Brownie due to their larger size and higher resolution, include five photos taken in a straight line from the spot in the garden where the young Japanese woman in Figure 3 was photographed, now shot from the centre of the garden, where its vast scale and meticulous composition can be fully appreciated. In the first photo in a sequence, we see a smartly-dressed boy of about two or three along with two women, one possibly his mother, standing on a rock slab bridge. The boy’s gaze appears to be directed outward by a man in profile, standing on a lower level near the water’s edge, pointing out toward the photographer’s position. There are three additional shots of the boy alone on the bridge, framed by the Japanese ‘temple’ on his left, and behind him in the distance, the Beaux-Arts style Festival Hall, the iconic Temple of Jewels, with the fair’s famous Italian towers on his right. The multiple shots taken in the same highly photogenic location recall the practice of the ubiquitous ‘Kodak Picture Spots’33 that started appearing in the 33 The Eastman Museum in Rochester has images of these spots in their collection. See, for instance, this marker from the 1920s directing vehicles to such spots: https://www.eastman. org/event/talks/focus-45-kodak-picture-spots-and-perfect-picture

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Figure 4 Bain family in the Japanese Garden

Presumptive Bain Family members posing ‘naturally’ in the Japanese Garden. Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

1920s in and around American scenic spots such at national monuments and later at World’s Fairs and Disney theme parks. Signs designated particularly attractive ‘postcard’ style locations for shots, inviting onlookers to emplace themselves, friends, and family members into these much-photographed locations. If there had been a ‘Kodak Spot’ at the Expo, this would have been it. The Bain family members posed themselves artfully at another spot along the same vista, this time on an outcropping of land surrounded by water on both sides. Two men and the younger of the two women are in this photo with the boy, casually seated on the ground as if preparing for a picnic, while the gaze of one of the men, seated in profile, extends in another direction (Figure 4).34 Though carefully composed, there is a casual quality to this photo that expresses not merely the beauty of the location, but the desire to commune with it. Indeed, the ability to capture this kind of relationship between place and embedded participant was the key innovation of these new smaller, portable cameras with faster shutter speeds. 34 Indeed, the collection of professional photos of the PPIE, also in a file at the San Francisco Public Library, include a shot of precisely the same vista photographed by Bain. Presumably taken after the Bain photo, it features a bamboo frame at rail height along the back and one side of the same spot where the family staged their faux picnic, suggesting that during the course of the Expo this had become a kind of unofficial ‘Kodak Spot.’ By providing a frame around the area, the nearby vegetation was also being protected.

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One of the first to recognise the potential of this new technology to contribute to a democratization of self-representation in the public sphere was Austrian Joseph August Lux. In his 1908 essay, ‘Artistic Secrets of the Kodak,’ he asserts that the power of the portrait is not just to record a likeness, but rather that ‘what speaks in reality is not the picture, but the stimulated fantasy that complements it with life or spirit and which, as it finds breathing space, transmits atmosphere or soul into the interpretation’ (Lux, 1908, 200, p. 86). Also connecting with atmosphere and soul of the event are photos in another private collection from the PPIE, those of Sadie E. Davenport. Her photos, which appear to be of her friends and possibly herself as well, were taken in the smaller Brownie camera format over multiple occasions, including Opening Day (20 February) and San Francisco Day (2 November), and were carefully positioned in an album with captions presumably created by her and dated Christmas, 1915, after the conclusion of the fair. Of the two photos shot in the Japanese garden, one shows three women standing near the edge of a brook with the Formosa Tea House behind them; two are in relatively conservative Edwardian-era attire and look directly at the camera, while the third, wearing a more contemporary full-length coat and hat, appears in full profile, looking out beyond the frame of the shot (Figure 5). Her position, gaze, and demeanor suggests she has chosen not to be represent herself as just physically present, but rather that she is communing with the garden, even lost in reverie within it. Reinforcing this sense of longing and dreaminess is Sadie’s caption under the photo, which reads, ‘at the end of a perfect day.’ Uncannily, it appears that the woman in profile seems forever there in a way the other two are not; unlike the two matronly women looking directly toward the camera who communicate to us that they were there, much like the contemporary selfie where the individual triumphs over place, the other woman eternally lingers in this place. This connection of the individual to place recalls Merleau-Ponty’s formulation of the relationship of the body to space and time: ‘I am not in space and time, nor do I conceive space and time; I belong to them, my body combines with them and includes them’ (1962, p. 162). Here the woman in profile creates place by constituting herself within space and time and performing that relationship for the camera. Of all of Sadie’s remarkably personal and almost intimate photographs, it is noteworthy that it was in the Japanese Garden that this photographic representation of the phenomenology of bodily emplacement through space and time is most apparent (see Casey 1996). Sadie’s handwritten words near the end of the album speak to her desire to capture the wonder of the overall

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Figure 5 Women posing in the Japanese Garden

Three women posing in the Japanese Garden with the Formosa Tea House behind them. Full inscription reads, ‘At the end of a perfect day.’ Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

event: ‘It was a beautiful thing to look upon. As a toy to a child would be.’ The photos of both Sadie and the Bain family suggest that the Japanese garden was a particularly powerful spot for the generation of affect, an experience that lingers in the body.

Site 2: Japan Beautiful: Authenticity and Girls, Maids, and Geisha For many fairgoers however, their primary, lasting encounter with Japan was in the fair’s so-called ‘Joy Zone,’ where commercial operators ran a series of themed entertainment areas. These spaces or ‘villages’ were meant to offer fairgoers a more integrated and highbrow experience than what they would experience at a carnival Midway with its disparate and eclectic range of rides, freak-shows and fun houses. These were instead curated side-shows, consistent with the larger pedagogical thrust of the fair and its ‘aim to instruct and delight and amuse’ (Chronicle, 16 Jan. 1915, p. 17). Among the more successful and ambitious was the Mexican Tehuantepec Village,

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created by impresario Captain A.W. Lewis, who, according to Frank Morton Todd, the fair’s in-house historian who tended to embellish and celebrate the fair’s achievements, ‘brought out much of his material on pack mules over rough mountain trails and through the lines of hostile armies’ (1921, p. 355). Many of the Joy Zone villages featured exotic natives from far-flung places such as Hawaii, Samoa, or Somalia, though unlike previous fairs, they did not do well financially, with many closing or repurposed long before the fair ended. While Todd sets out manifold reasons for the business failures of individual concessions,35 it seems likely that with the war in Europe heating up dramatically over the course of the year, many fairgoers may have been less willing to part with the discretionary income of a day or more’s wages to entertain themselves in the zone. As Todd points out, ‘in 1915, a dollar was a dollar’ (1921, p. 374). Yet in spite the risks, and no doubt aware that these precincts offered opportunities for more impactful, experiential encounters between spectators and ‘natives’ than country pavilions did, the Japanese government provided support for the ‘Japan Beautiful’ concession in the Joy Zone, estimated to cost a whopping $600,000 (nearly US$15 million today). In charge of the concession was Japanese businessman Yumeto Kushibiki36 who considered this his ‘greatest achievement,’ capping a long career of masterminding such interactive environments at fairs in the US.37 The company formally running the concession appears to have been a Japanese-American enterprise, with George Shima, the so-called ‘California Potato King,’ as president (Chronicle, 2 Sept. 2014, p. 5). The groundbreaking for the concession, a major diplomatic and community event, was covered in detail by the press, which made no distinction between official Japanese government participation and what was here a fundamentally commercial operation. Five thousand people, most 35 Todd observes, for instance, that the occupants of Somali Land, ‘who did a great deal of violent flat-food dancing and spear shaking’ (1921, p. 375), were ‘invited to leave’ by PPIE officials early in the fair. A village featuring indigenous Australians closed in August, while the Samoans headed home by September. A 12-acre mini-city called ‘Toyland,’ conceived for adults by the originator of the famed Coney Island Luna Park in New York, provided wacky, playful escapes from the grown-up world, though it lost money and closed early, like many of other larger, over-capitalised concessions. 36 Kushibiki, who by 1915 had lived extensively in the US, was part of a group of Japanese businessmen who specialized in popular amusements. With Arai Saburô and Shibata Tadajirô he ran the Arai Trading Company, based in the Ginza (see Tsen 2011, p. 125). 37 Kushibiki’s other achievements included the ‘Fair Japan’ concession at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition (see Tsen 2011, pp. 125-167); smaller expositions such as those in Nashville, Atlanta, Omaha, Buffalo, Charleston; and notably the 1894 Midwinter Fair (Edwards 1915) in Golden Gate Park, where many San Franciscans first experienced the Japanese Garden.

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Figure 6 Schoolgirls at the groundbreaking of ‘Japan Beautiful’

Group photo of schoolgirls, including Fujihara and Nakabayashi (front row left), two older girls in kimonos, and adult women in Western dress. Note that the woman in the right is wearing a fashionable fur. Taken at the groundbreaking of ‘Japan Beautiful’ in the Joy Zone. Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

from the local Japanese community, filled the vast site38 (Chronicle, 2 Sept. 1914, p. 5) to witness a ceremony which featured speeches by Kushibiki and K. Satow, the concession’s director, followed by an entertainment programme that began with local school girls singing Japanese and American national anthems. Both of the city’s leading newspapers covered the ‘Japan Beautiful’ groundbreaking, running the story with photos, typically reserved for major news event. A photo in the Chronicle shows a young girl, identified as ‘little Miss Yone-ko Fujihara,’ dressed in a schoolgirl’s uniform of the era, holding an enormous bouquet of chrysanthemums, the floral emblem of the Japanese emperor. In an official PPIE photograph taken after the formal groundbreaking, Miss Fujihara appears in a group photo with other schoolgirls, two of whom wear elaborate kimono (Figure 6). The press account draws attention to the girls’ small stature, characterizing Miss Fujihara and her partner, Miss Kikue Nakabayashi, who jointly raised the Japanese flag as part of the ceremony, as ‘tiny Japanese girls’ (Chronicle, 2 Sept. 1914, p. 5). Placing these two girls so prominently into the visual iconography of 38 A panoramic photo taken during the formal ceremony shows the tremendous turn out for the event, reproduced from the Library of Congress, appears in Markwyn 2015: 100.

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the event also reflects the Japanese-American community’s need to publicly perform cultural assimilation. Instead of placing older girls in charge of the flag-raising, the most diminutive girls, both in standard American schoolgirl uniforms, carried out the highly symbolic act, one that would most certainly merit a press photo. A statement was also being made that the Japanese – or at least the Japanese in America – sough assimilation, valued education and wanted the same things for their children as non-Asian families. At the same time, the presence of the kimono-clad girls provided a nod to the value attached to Japanese traditional culture, which was much in vogue in America at the time. There was nothing tiny about the concession however. As in Saint Louis (1904), where Kushibiki recreated the imposing Gate of Nikko which towered over the fair’s entertainment area (Tsen 127), the entrance to Japan Beautiful at the PPIE was crowned by an enormous 109-foot tall (Edwards 1915), gold-leaf Diabutsu, or giant Buddha, modelled after a smaller bronze, seated Buddha, the 13th Century Amida Buddha in Kamakura.39 Those patronizing the three acre Japan Beautiful site entered through an enormous portal underneath the statue. Here the Buddha is shifted from an object of quiet contemplation on the grounds of a temple into a new symbolic order, one in which, according to Kushibiki, ‘I have endeavoured to portray the romance, the poetry, the beauty in the Japanese life and characters and in the country of Japan’ (Edwards 1915). Kushibiki clearly knew how to present both himself and Japan to American audiences in ways both attractive and beguiling, 40 and his renown was such that PPIE historian Todd characterized him as ‘a Ulysses of expositions’ (1921, p. 363). In San Francisco, Kushibiki offered up a representational formula that he had developed years earlier at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo and expanded upon at the Saint Louis fair. The Japan Beautiful precinct featured a miniature Japanese village resembling Tokyo’s premodern Asakusa district, later destroyed during World War II, with a restaurant, tea house, shops selling Japanese goods, cultural performances, as well as the ubiquitous ‘geisha girls.’ Situated by the entrance to the 39 The Buddha of Kamakura, the second tallest bronze Buddha statue in Japan, is much shorter, at 11.4 meters. 40 Chronicle correspondent Charles Edwards describes him as ‘a familiar and distinguished figure…with his thick gray hair, his keen, twinkling eyes, his genial smile and ready wit’ (1915), while an earlier newspaper account, written in the aftermath of the loss of one of his legs in a 1901 streetcar accident calls him a ‘genial little Jap’ (30 August 1901) and observes that ‘in spite of his misfortune’ a few months later ‘he was as philosophic and debonnaire as ever’ (26 September 1901, Cited in https://panam1901.org/midway/fair_japan/kushibiki_july27.htm ).

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precinct, Japanese and American food served by ‘bewitching Japanese girls’ (Edwards 1915) could be consumed in the restaurant, while nearby a bazaar sold a range of goods costing less than a dollar. The interior plaza featured a large theatre with a programme of ‘typical Japanese plays’ – mostly likely scenes from Kabuki drama – displays of Jiu-jitsu and Sumo wrestling, as well as a Japanese Ladies Orchestra, a ‘novelty never shown before at any exposition, ‘ according to the impresario (Chronicle, 16 Jan. 1915, p. 17). The Chronicle’s correspondent enthuses: ‘medievalism is portrayed graphically by a succession of age-old houses and shops, where antiques and curios are exhibited and sold; at intervals are diminutive temples, with the gods of marriage, Beauty and other customs and attributes, together with the divinities of the Streams, Trees, Woodlands and Mountains’ (Edwards 1915). Another account claims the streets are ‘exact reproductions of the streets of Tokio, Osaka and Kioto’ (Chronicle, 16 Jan. 1915, p. 17). The essential point is not whether the street scenes, peopled with craftsmen and shopkeepers, were authentic or not, but rather that fairgoers believed them to be so. Central to the culture of the exhibition was the belief that participation offered the possibility of an encounter with the real thing, and that particularly with respect to the Orient, the real world outside the exposition in far-off lands was an extension of what was on display at the fair. Writing of this phenomenon at international expositions in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, Mitchell observes: ‘Orientalism’s contradiction exemplifies the paradoxical nature of the world-as-exhibition’ (Mitchell 1989, p. 233). He explains: But reality, it turns out, means that which can be represented, that which presents itself as exhibit before an observer. The so-called real world outside is something experienced and grasped only as a series of further representations, an extended exhibition. … In the end, the European tried to grasp the Orient as though it were an exhibition itself. (1989, p. 233)

Charles Edwards, the Chronicle correspondent selected to write about the concession, presumably because of his prior experience with Japanese culture, suggests that ‘to those of us who have travelled that entrancing land of the Far East,’ what Kushibiki offers ‘is not a memory, it is not an imitation, it is Japan itself.’ Observing that ‘it was no light task, this bringing Japan to our western shore,’ he concludes, ‘It is Japan in its entirety’ (Edwards 1915). Thus, for Edwards, his memories of much-loved places he has visited in Japan ‘become realities’ when re-presented at the exposition. The facsimile

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is here not merely better than the real; it is the real thing itself because it is capable of being represented. The West was not alone in the creation and perception of the image-asthe-real. Other scholars (Christ 2000; Yoshihara Yukari 2008; Markwyn 2004; Tsen 2001), have mapped out the conscious ways in which the Japanese government and impresarios such as Kushibiki were complicit in perfecting images and creating experiences for an eager public in the West that purported to bring them face-to-face with the ‘real’ Japan, a fictionalized creation that served Japanese interests even as it sometimes reduced their culture to stereotypical representations. Japanese government agencies had presented exhibits at international expositions since 1873 (Christ 2000, p. 690), working in conjunction with businesses, commercial enterprises such as the one led by Kushibiki, while their own dedicated exposition commissions typically took up residence in the cities hosting these fairs some years before they opened. Japan also sought to control its own self-representation through the circulation of a raft of translated works by Japanese authors that became available to American readers in the first years of the twentieth century, all purporting to offer authentic insights into Japanese culture and the workings of the Japanese mind (see Christ 2000). Among the most widely circulated was Bushido: The Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitobe (1904), which sets out the moral values embedded in Samurai culture and was famously read with interest by then-US President Theodore Roosevelt (Christ 2000, p. 681). For some Japanese however, the representational mirror their compatriots offered to the West presented images that were reductive to the point of unrecognizability. One common trope, that of Japan as a land both ‘quaint and picturesque’ was deeply engrained in the representational orthodoxy at international expositions that by the time, prompting one Japanese reporter, on seeing Japan’s displays at the 1910 Japan-British Exposition to comment: ‘It looks so strange and absurd, to my Japanese eyes, that Japan thus shown never seems to represent today’s Japan, nor Japan in the past century. In sum, such a Japan exists only in international expositions’ (Cited in Yoshihara Yuharai 2008, p. 156). The desire middle-class Americans had to see the ‘authentic’ Japan, one steeped in the values and representational modes of the pre-Meiji era, also meant a preoccupation with the Geisha. Essential to the image of Japan as ‘quaint and picturesque’ was the image of the hyper-feminized Geisha, the single most important human element Japan displayed at these expositions, going back to the 1867 Paris Exposition. The contemporary French magazine Illustreé enticed viewers to see these women in their private quarters at

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the fair, suggesting they could see Geisha behaving ‘exactly as if they were alone in their house in Yeddo [Edo]’ (cited in Lockyer 2000, p. 66). As Mizuta observes, by the end of the nineteenth century these ‘geisha girls’ loomed so large in the Western public imaginary that ‘the Japanese woman existed purely as an image, a pictorial representation’ (30). 41 Nowhere were the charms of ‘geisha girls’ on display more fully than in the Japan Beautiful, where at the back of the concession an area designated as ‘Poetical Japan’ offered the weary fairgoer the opportunity to sit and have a cup of tea at an open-air tea house in front of a three-dimensional recreation of Mount Fujiyama (Figure 7). The setting, replete with its ‘geisha girls’ and ‘beautiful native dancers’ enthused the Chronicle, made it possible to experience ‘the people’s manners, dress, customs and religion,’ rendering it ‘unnecessary to go to Japan to see a typical tea house’ (Chronicle, 16 Jan p17). A PPIE f ile photo shows the tea house in front of a near picture-perfect miniature recreation of the famed volcanic peak. 42 Among the area’s chief attractions were elaborately kimono-clad ‘geisha girls’ (SF Chronicle, 16 Jan 1915, p. 17), by 1915 a standard feature of a Kushibiki-designed village. 43 An amateur photo44 shows a hand-painted sign at the entrance to the concession advertising ‘Geisha Girls’ and the ‘Cherry Dance,’ also known as the ‘Cherry Blossom Dance,’ a generic, highly pictorial dance featuring young women in colourful kimono spinning their fans and moving gracefully in unison. Though not a singular dance with set choreography, by 1915 the ‘Cherry Blossom Dance’ had assumed such wide circulation that it had come to typify the marriage of the quaint and the picturesque with the charms of dainty Japanese women. As we shall see in Chapter Four, it appeared in the repertory 41 Mari Yoshihara (2003: 77-100), writes of how white women embodied Orientalism onstage with their representations of the Geisha in the early twentieth century. She considers actress Blanche Bates, who played Cio-Cio-San in David Belasco’s much toured production of Madame Butterfly (1900) and her portrayal of Yo-San in the popular melodrama, The Darling of the Gods (1902). Bates believed she was offering an authentic view of Japanese womanhood, one drawn from her observations of a Japanese maid who worked for her. According to Bates, ‘From her I learned how to fan myself in true Japanese fashion and, more important still, how to walk ‘Japanesely’’ (cited in Yoshihara 2003: 82). 42 Fair historian Todd’s description of the ground-breaking for Mount Fujiyama on 29 August, 1914 would suggest that a mound of earth provided at least part the underlying structure (Todd 1921, p. 154). 43 Photos from the Fair Japan concession at the 1901 Buffalo exposition variously show these immaculately coiffed women serving tea and artfully posed in the key sites around the grounds (See https://panam1901.org/midway/fair_japan/fair_japan_photos_gardens_courtyard.htm). 44 See http://opensfhistory.org/Display/wnp15.575.jpg

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Figure 7 Japanese Tea House with Mt. Fuji

Japanese Tea House before a representation of Mt. Fuji. Here fairgoers could enjoy ‘geisha girls’ and ‘beautiful native dancers.’ Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

of the Takarazuka troupe at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair and continues to be performed today by Japanese-Americans at community events where it connect young girls of Japanese heritage to a Japanese imaginary. A third significant photo album in the San Francisco Public Library’s special collection, created by Max Wassman, Jr., a young amateur photographer studying law at Stanford University, 45 reflects his fascination with the Japanese women at the fair. Wassman’s photos, taken over the course of multiple visits, are also notable for their high quality in terms of resolution, lighting, and composition. Unlike the stagey photos of Geisha at prior expositions that show them as expressionless and placed like flora at picturesque spots in the Japanese concessions, Wassman captured these women as they appeared in their unscripted, ‘off-camera’ moments. In one such photo, two young kimono-clad women stand as some distance in front of a tea house that may have been on the grounds of the Japan Beautiful concession (Figure 8). One of the women, wearing an apron and smiling slightly, appears slightly uncomfortable, as if this may have been the first time her photo was taken by someone other than an official photographer, 45 The Stanford Daily, Vol XXX, Issue 86, of 22 May 1907, lists Max Wassman Jr. among those conferred a B.A. Law.

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Figure 8 Young women in kimonos in front of tea house

Photos of two young women in kimonos in front of a tea house, possibly at the Japan Beautiful concession. Max Wassman’s photo captures these women in a way that seems unposed and natural. Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

with the other, looking perfectly content but clearly not ‘smiling for the camera,’ looks out confidently, as if to say ‘I am here, and I am permitting you to take a picture of me.’46 46 The same woman appears in a group photo of ‘Japanese tea pickers’ in the Palace of Food Products, which would suggest that workers were not restricted to a single concession or pavilion. It would also suggest they may have worked long hours. Photo in Markwyn (2015).

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Elsewhere in the album, a set of photos appears under the caption ‘Maids of Japan.’ The first photo, shot at considerable distance from the subjects, shows two women in elaborate, formal kimono with a small child walking by a garden in front of the Court of the Universe, an enormous structure at the heart of the exposition site. In the second photo, the two women, both wearing matching kimono, and a boy of about three or four in a heavy, stylish coat, are posed, presumably by the photographer, in a spot close to the same building (Figure 9). Their position suggests that the photographer – presumably Wassman himself – either walked very quickly or ran after them, stopping them and convincing them to pose for a photo. Wassman’s photos and his need to take them reflect what Crawshaw and Urry identify as the way in which ‘a sense of being out of place can be offset by following a set of photographic rituals. It involves a repertoire of actions when confronted by the ‘other’ – an other which may be awesome, threatening, mysterious’ (1997: 183). In the photo, both women are wearing the exotic white-face makeup and wigs characteristic of a mature Geisha, as opposed to that of a Maiko, or geisha-in-training. One of the women appears distracted, looking at the child, who assumes a plucky pose not uncommon for a boy three or four, while the other woman appears highly composed, looking at the camera with an expression that reveals nothing of how she might be feeling about having been tracked down by a young man and photographed near her workplace. The young man’s choice of wording in the caption is noteworthy; rather than calling them Geisha, a designation the press routinely bestowed on Japanese women who wore a kimono, Wassman calls them ‘maids,’ perhaps not odd given the enormous continuing popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 operetta, The Mikado, with its infamously cute musical number ‘Three Little Maids from School.’ Fair records also suggest that ‘Geisha’ was the fallback term for any kimono-clad Japanese women. The initial draft of the twelve-hour long programme for ‘Japan Day’ on 31 August listed performances and events that included ‘Special dances by Geisha girls;’ tellingly, it was later marked-up in pencil, with the word ‘Geisha’ crossed out and substituted with ‘Japanese.’47 The mystery and allure of the Geisha remains a feature in Japan’s self-representation to the wider world, most recently at the 2018 Winter Olympics when Japanese figure skater Satoko Miyahara presented an homage to the film Memoirs of a Geisha using an Orientalist musical score by Hollywood composer John Williams. 47 Japan Day program with annotations, August 1915. PPIE Archives, UC Berkeley, CA-190, 95/20.

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Figure 9 Max Wassman’s photo of two “Maids of Japan”

Max Wassman’s photo of two ‘Maids of Japan.’ His related photos suggest he chased down the ‘maids’ to successfully take this highly-posed shot. Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

Site 3: Consuming Japan All Over the Place While the Japanese gardens offered places of quiet contemplation, scenic beauty, and photo opportunities where ‘Geisha’ performed an image of refined, hyper-feminized womanhood, trade halls displayed Japanese products to its

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growing American consumer base. Such displays were staged by Japanese businessmen and supported by the government and the sophisticated, market-savvy staff of the Japanese Commission to the fair. Though increasing trade was the overall goal of such displays, given the wide range of themed ‘Palaces’ at the fair there were a few unusual exhibits.48 Possibly the most overtly propagandistic exhibit was that of the Japanese Red Cross in the Palace of Education where mannequins of two military doctors and nurses, equipped with the latest in modern medical equipment, gathered around a portable hospital bed, attending to a kimono-clad female patient. Behind them is a painted backdrop with darkened skies and blackened trees, suggesting that war is raging just outside the field hospital. Most fairgoers, like their politicians who were generally supportive of or blind to Japanese expansionism in Asia, presumably accepted this dramatic depiction of a creative fiction: That Japanese civilians were or had recently been under attack by a hostile enemy. By 1915, Japan had won a war against Russia, was the colonial master of Taiwan and Korea, and controlled vast swathes of Manchuria and China, making it far more likely that foreign civilians would be end up in Red Cross hospitals than Japanese ones. For the vast and increasingly comfortable middle classes of America however, Japonisme, was expressed through a love-affair with Japanese style and objects, reinforced by the exquisite beauty of their fine arts, and made increasingly available for consumption. While early international exhibitions were essentially trade shows, and by the end of the nineteenth century they had become the places where future consumers could be groomed. As Burton Benedict observes: The goods shown at world’s fairs did not just cater to middle-class taste, they helped form that taste. People were to be educated about what to buy, but more basically they were to be taught to want more things, better quality things and quite new things. At world’s fairs this education took on society-wide and even international dimensions. The consumer society was being born. (Benedict 1982, p. 2)

One of Japan’s largest displays of consumable objects was in the vast Palace of Manufactures, where they occupied one quarter of the total space.49 The 48 The Horticultural Pavilion, for instance, featured exotic and dramatic Japanese livestock, notably showy Bantam Roosters with their angular, jagged cockscombs, Yokohama or ‘Phoenix’ fowls with tail feathers of up to twelve feet in length, and fancy fish with flowing tails and fins (New York Times, 21 February 1915; Official PPIE Guide, p. 79). 49 PPIE, Art Lover’s Guide to the Exposition, p. 97., SF Public Library, SF History Collection.

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exhibit consisted of three large blocks where over 200 merchants presented their wares, including porcelain, mattings, screens and draperies, silk products, kimono, fine embroideries, wood products, toilet and so-called ‘fancy articles,’ including lacquer ware (Hakurankwai 1915, pp. 179-226). By 1915 there was significant demand for such Japanese-identified objects and design elements American middle-class homes. Indeed, it was at large international expositions where American women were first exposed to Japanese decorative objects, which by 1915 included not only pottery and statuary, but also Asian-looking picture frames, soap dishes, pendants, flatware, and even cigarette cases. In her study on the American consumption of Japanese handicrafts, Yamamori observes that after the 1890s, as consumer culture took off, ‘an appreciation for Japanese handcrafts flowed from the upper middle class to the middle and lower middle classes, from urbanities to rural populations, in tandem with the evolution of mass advertising and marketing as well as Japan’s industrialization’ (2011, p. 5). Feeding and reflecting the demand for these goods was their prominence in the popular magazines of the era geared for women readers. Brown’s study of these periodicals (1987) reveals how widely Japanese decorative objects circulated and shows how consumers were taught how to properly display such objects in their homes. To have Japanese goods in one’s home was a mark of sophistication. As Mari Yoshihara observes, middle-class American women of the time ‘believed that the production, use, and display of Asian-style goods would represent and promote their moral and cultural refinement’ (Yoshihara Mari 2003, p. 26).50 Thus, it is hardly surprising that most of Japan’s floor space in the Palace of Manufactures was devoted to displays of porcelain and silk products, primarily of interest to the female consumer (Hakurankwai 1915, p. 179). Indeed, an analysis of the items listed in the comprehensive guidebook, ‘Japan and Her Exhibits’ (Hakurankwai 1915), reveals that displays in the palace featured decorative objects in a range of media, including bronze, copper, brass, and cloisonné, objects suitable for beautifying a refined, middle-class home. Cloisonné ware items included flower pots, vases, and incense burners, while soft metals such as antimony and tin were used to fashion small caskets, picture frames, cigarette holders, 50 Yoshihara notes that the display of Japanese decorative objects in the home did not contribute to the cause of women’s emancipation. Quite the contrary: ‘The commonalities between the qualities attributed to Asian arts and the roles assigned to white, middle-class women were particularly useful for defining and reinforcing the women’s place in Victorian domesticity, while cloaking the gender and racial ideologies inherent in such practices under the language of cultural refinement’ (2003: 26).

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Figure 10 Japanese decorative items on display at PPIE

Japanese decorative items on display for the middle-class domestic interior. Palace of Manufacturers. Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

and items for the toilet or bath. Larger items made of bronze or copper included ornamental items, as well as statuary, trays, flower vases and pots, and censers. A PPIE file photo of such objects (figure 10), designated as hailing from Yokohoma, shows a range of ornamental items suitable for a mantel or large display stand, with many designs reflecting a fusion of Japanese design with a more ornate late Victorian/Edwardian design sensibility. Objects on display were not intended to serve as the dominant items in a Western middle-class interior, but rather as attractive decorative pieces reflecting the good taste and sophistication of the owner. Even wood-crafted products were typically supporting pieces in a living room or bedroom, notably small chests of drawers, floor screens, or shelfing units. The international popularity of these items is reflected by the numerous awards many of the vendors had won at prior international expositions, including Chicago (1893), Paris (1900), Liege (1905), and the 1910 Japan-British Exposition. Fair chronicler Macomber singles out the Japanese exhibits in the Palace of Manufactures for special praise, observing that unlike its more modern exhibits elsewhere, ‘Fortunately this Japanese display is of goods in the

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ancient style, infinitely more interesting,’ adding that ‘most beautiful are the ceramics, the lacquered ware, and the silks’ (1915, p. 151). To this day, if one were to walk into a shop aimed at the Western consumer of Japanese decorative items, the holy trinity media in which Japanese decorative items are crafted remains: ceramics, lacquered ware, and silk.

Site 4: Japanese Fine Arts The demand for beautiful, decorative objects from Japan by middle-class consumers built on the longstanding appeal of Japan’s fine arts to artists and art collectors in the west. Prominent American collectors such as Henry Havemeyer, Charles Lang Freer, and J.P. Morgan51 were amassing significant Asian art collections around this time,52 as were numerous wealthy and influential East Coast women, notably Isabella Stewart Gardner, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and her sister Lucy Truman Aldrich. Locally, influential San Francisco Chronicle art critic Anna Cora Winchell championed Japanese art, claiming that ‘her [Japan’s] field of fine arts doubtless transcends that of other peoples, the pictorial arts in particular having arrived at a high and wonderful development’ (1914). In an essay that appeared in the Chronicle prior to the fair, she articulates an understanding of Japanese aesthetic principles that presage observations later made by American scholars of Japan in the post-WWII era: ‘To discern, however, regularity in irregularity, unity in complexity, beauty in ugliness, has ever been the bulwark on which Japanese art stands, and which finds it supreme expression the pictorial art of Japan’ (1914). Japan had a commanding position in the Palace of Fine Arts at the PPIE, occupying a series of interconnected galleries around a central court, anchoring the south end of the building. With a display footprint equal to Italy and France, the two other foreign nations most prominently represented, Japan’s displays focused on traditional forms valued by art connoisseurs and collectors in the West. Two galleries featured selections from the private collection of the late Emperor Mitsuhito (Official PPIE Guide, p. 85), which 51 See Mari Yoshihara (2003) for further detail on key collectors. 52 A limited edition (200 copies), three-volume tome issued by the Japanese Commission to the exposition entitled Japanese Temples and their Treasures, provides a history of Japanese temple arts, along with photos and detailed descriptions of items ranging from carved Buddhist altars to temple reliquaries and pen and ink landscape paintings. These volumes were clearly written with the American art market in mind, and reflected the fact that by 1915 there were many serious collectors of Japanese art in the US.

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reportedly had ‘never before has been placed on view, even before the Japanese,’ supporting the claim that it represented ‘the largest and most valuable of any Oriental display ever made at an exposition’ (Chronicle, 16 Jan. 1915). Despite the press attention on the Imperial collection, gallery spaces largely presented the work of living artists, the majority being paintings, including those in pen and ink, watercolour and oil, as well as wood block prints; sculptures made of wood, ivory, and plaster; and items in porcelain, earthenware, and cloisonné. The work of most artists exhibited was decidedly in a traditional mode, particularly the pen and ink paintings and woodblock prints, with their distinctively Japanese subjects depicting humans and animals in a harmonious connection with the natural world. Of those working in oil, two in particular, Fujishima Takeji (1867-1943) and Ishii Hakutei (1882-1958),53 stand out for being squarely associated with the yōga (Western) style of painting, and both produced work that fused Japanese content with the popular contemporary Art Nouveau style. Working in a form that was more open to stylization and abstraction were three porcelain designers, notably Itaya Hazan (1872-1963), Sobei Kinkozan54 (1868-1927), and Takashima Tokumatsu (1855-1902), whose work fused Japanese content with designs that were also recognizably close to the Art Nouveau aesthetic. The work of these five artists, relative outliers to the dominant representational order of Japanese art at the expo, were among the most attuned to international trends, especially inasmuch as the Art Nouveau aesthetic on which many of them drew was itself activated by an encounter with Asian, and particularly Japanese design and aesthetic principles. The famous qualities of ‘suggestion, simplicity, subtlety, and restraint,’ drawn from the teachings of Zeami (1363-1443) governing Nō theatre practice, also reflected in the design of the traditional Japanese garden, are consistent with Art Nouveau’s fluid, human-scale, nature-bound representational order. From a contemporary perspective, it is clear that Japan chose to present work that drew from both their own and contemporary Western art practices, showing off their mastery of cultural fusion. This was lost on influential San Francisco critics, however. With few exceptions,55 the work of the Japanese artists exhibiting at the Palace of Fine Arts who stepped 53 Source for birth years for both Fujishima and Ishi is Clarke 2014: 264. 54 The Kinkozan family had been producing tea bowls for the Shogun in Kyoto from the seventeenth century. The type of pottery in which they worked, known as Satsuma ware, proved popular with consumers in the west, and their designs by the late nineteenth century reflected a kind of fusion style that appealed to western taste. 55 A notable exception to the condemnation of Japanese artists not staying within their proper representational modes was porcelain artist Itaya Hazan, whose work is in the British Museum

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outside a representational framework regarded as distinctively Japanese was either harshly critiqued or summarily dismissed by San Francisco critics. Macomber observes that though ‘Japan’s art is as old as her history,’ and her display in the Palace of Fine Arts ‘stands alone for completeness,’ the mastery of ‘Occidental art … is still beyond her’ (1915a, p. 122). But, he adds, in ‘the wonderful display of her own art … she shows both the beauties of antiquity and the masterpieces of her present-day artists’ (1915a, p. 122). Similarly, Eugen Neuhaus, Professor of art at the University of California and jury member for the PPIE fine art awards, expresses a view long held onto by American critics and enthusiasts of Japanese art: Why the modern Japanese artists want to divorce themselves from the traditions of their forefathers seems incomprehensible. There is not a thing in the western style in this gallery of Japanese painting that comes anywhere near giving one the artistic thrills won by their typically Japanese work. I think the sooner these wayward sons are brought back into the fold of their truly Oriental colleagues, the better it will be for the national art of Japan, the most profound art the world has ever seen. (1915)

Even the comparatively restrained San Francisco Chronicle reminded its readers that ‘[t]he real glories of the Japanese art’ are constituted by ‘the work of centuries ago,’ which include old Buddhist statues of wood and bronze, shrines and ivory carvings (Chronicle, 16 Jan. 1915, p. 74). This desire for Japan to stay within a particular representational field, one recognizable as distinctively Japanese and pre-modern will, as we shall see in Chapter Four, remain a constant refrain, particularly in the US, where cultural and trade links were the strongest. In short, America seemed to want Japan to represent itself as it wanted to see it.

Japan as America Wants to See It Japan offered a multi-faceted, multi-sited exposition of its people, its culture, its history, and its products in San Francisco. As the master of the international exposition form, the Japanese commission, Japanese businessmen and impresarios, and Japanese-American entrepreneurs presented not just exhibits, but staged the widest possible array of artefacts, commercial and and garnered a gold medal at the expo, evidently for one of his flower vases (Macomber 1915a, p. 133; Japan Commission, ‘Japan and Her Exhibits,’ p. 159).

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decorative items, art objects and human beings, in environments ranging from a tea house at the foot of Mount Fuji and the ersatz village of the Japan Beautiful concession to the serene gardens and temple-like structures on their official government site. Japan understood that while America and Americans respected them for their rapid industrialization and their seemingly unprecedented transformation from a closed, feudal society into one of the world’s great superpowers, in 1915 many in the West were in love with a particular idea of Japan as pre-modern, ancient, and refined, with a material culture that was recognizable from the outside as distinctively Japanese. In this respect I think of my Norwegian-born great-grandmother Anna Samuelson who was raising a young family in Peoria, Illinois at the time of the San Francisco fair, and who was so smitten by Japanese goods that many decades later, whenever Japan was mentioned, would say, in her thick Norwegian accent: ‘Yapon is good.’ For her, as for many American women who had increasingly comfortable middle-class lives by the early twentieth century, the material, decorative products that came from Japan were good because they were Japanese. For its part, the Japanese Commission to the PPIE, backed by the Japanese government, exporters of Japanese goods, and the Japanese-American community, demonstrated a deep understanding of how to push American powerbrokers diplomatically, politically, and economically, while knowing how, when, and where to offer up the softer, gentle side of Japan, a facet that because it was perceived as feminine, appealed equally to Western men and women. Perhaps this sentiment is expressed no more clearly than in a newspaper account from the ‘Women’s Pages’ of the Examiner. The article describes – with the ‘you were there’ kinds of details which characterize this style of reporting – Japan’s final hurrah at the PPIE, a lavish banquet for 300 Japanese and American dignitaries who had worked over many years to make the event a success, held two weeks after the exposition ended. In this account we see the love affair in full bloom, but also the need for Japan to remain mysterious, exotic, and not fully known: The banquet was served in the ballroom, which was done in that lovely, simple style for which the Japanese artists are famous. … The tables were done in glass bowls in which swam fan-tailed goldfish, on a bed of bronze and yellow chrysanthemums, encircled with smilax. The reception room was hung with festoons of greenery and fruits. Here some geisha girls danced and Japanese entertainers gave an interesting programme. There were no speeches, the evening being dedicated wholly to diversion of the lighter vein. (Examiner, 3 Dec. 1915, p. 9)

3

The New China and Chinese-Americanness China at San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition

Abstract Eager to shake off the trappings of the Manchu-dominated Qing Dynasty, the new government of the Republic of China sought to present an image of itself at the 1915 San Francisco exhibition as both inheritor of a long and proud civilization as well as a country embracing modernity. Complicating the situation was the San Francisco Bay area’s large Chinese population, a group that in spite of their many years on American soil, was much maligned and stereotyped by the general population. China’s government largely followed Japan’s model, with a series of attractive pavilions in a garden compound, while the so-called “Chinese Village’ in the fair’s entertainment zone featured an exhibit that provoked much controversy. Keywords: Chinese in California; Chinese trade

Emerging from the detritus of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), the new government of the Republic of China was internally divided as it began preparations to represent itself at the Panama Pacific International Exhibition (PPIE). At the time of the Chinese pavilion groundbreaking in October, the country was led by Provisional President Yuan Shikai, who briefly restored the monarchy by the end of the 1915, installing himself as Emperor, serving for only a few short months until his death the following year. As preparations were underway to present in San Francisco, China was already plunging in disarray following the assassination of the youthful Kuomintang President and Prime Ministerial hopeful Song Jiaoren on 22 March 1913, most likely at the behest of Yuan himself. Given the internal chaos increasingly overtaking China which would worsen after 1915, it is perhaps not surprising that

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch03

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Chinese self-representation was largely wrapped in the mantle of its long history of civilization while sidestepping unhappy recent memories of the inward-looking, decidedly anti-modern, Manchu rule. The longevity of China’s traditions and the exquisiteness of its craftsmanship in porcelain and woodworking were on display in its national pavilions and the Palace of Fine Arts, while Chinese products were exhibited in the exposition’s themed ‘palaces,’ aimed at increasing American demand for imported Chinese goods. The other complicating factor was the Chinese community in the San Francisco Bay area, and particularly in the city’s well-established Chinatown, which had much to gain or lose from the ways in which China was represented at the fair, largely because their position in America, like that of their mother country within an Asia increasingly dominated by Japan, was so precarious. While Chinese goods had been on display at expositions going back to London’s 1851 Crystal Palace Exposition (Fermin 2010, p. 18), prior to 1915, China’s only truly integrated exercise in national self-representation was at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis. It was only then, when the Qing Dynasty was virtually in its death throes, though still under the authoritarian hand of famous Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908), that it began to embark on a path of modernization, making presenting in Saint Louis a necessity. Prior to that time, Chinese participation at expositions was largely in the hands of British officials who operated China’s Custom’s Bureau (Fermin 2010, pp. 18-19). In Saint Louis, China occupied a large national site, which included a structure touted as a copy of the summer palace of a Qing Dynasty prince (Fermin 2010, p. 5), also displaying Chinese art and artefacts at the fair’s Palace of Liberal Arts. In spite of the scale of Chinese representation there, that exposition was not remembered fondly by the Chinese, primarily due to the difficulties Chinese exhibitors faced when seeking to enter the US. Chinese representation at the PPIE was inextricably linked to the circumstances governing the lives of Chinese in America at the time. Despite the contributions Chinese had made to the westward expansion that drove the American economy in the last half of the nineteenth century, they suffered from systematic, longstanding race-based legal restrictions on their rights to live in the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which prohibited the importation of Chinese labour and was essentially made permanent in 1902,1 had the effect of permitting only a small number of Chinese in 1 The Chinese Exclusion Act was not repealed until 1943, when the Magnuson Act undid its key immigration provisions and permitted some Chinese residents to become naturalized citizens. However, the ban on ownership of businesses and property by ethnic Chinese continued, with some of these provisions still enforced in some states until the Magnuson Act was fully repealed in 1965.

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specialized classes such as merchants, students, diplomats, and short-term travelers to enter the country. Yet even as racist laws made Chinese lives difficult and resulted in a significant gender imbalance between men and women, exacerbated by prohibiting spouses from joining their husbands, a significant number of China’s emerging intellectual and political elite had been educated in the US. Thus, the Chinese responsible for organizing their participation at the PPIE had considerably more knowledge of American customs than all but a handful of Americans would have had of China. For their part, the Chinese community in San Francisco, as we shall see, sought to present themselves as polite, model immigrants, fine, upstanding people with strong family values. Because Chinese residents in San Francisco were often portrayed in the press and by fear-mongering politicians as a danger to white society, as dirty, unassimilated, backward people who spread diseases and ran opium dens and houses of prostitution in Chinatown, the fledgling Chinese community in San Francisco, led by a handful of prominent business and community leaders, were very concerned about how they would be represented at this expo. From such a position of precarity, their future in the US was literally on the line; thus, for instance, they could not afford to permit independent operators to tarnish their reputation with honky-tonk attractions in the ‘Joy Zone’ that might reinforce painful stereotypes. Yet, as we shall see, this is precisely what happened in the end, putting a pall over self-representation for many Chinese, regardless of where they lived. Unlike Japan, where a positive, powerful representational order was already well known to American fairgoers, in 1915 China was identified primarily with its general backwardness, its porcelain, and its ancient but seemingly ossified culture. Actual Chinese people, to most Californians, would be those found on the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown, a compact, bustling, city-within-the-city by the turn of the century. Indeed, at both this expo and later in New York in 1939-1940 – by which time a vibrant Chinatown existed there as well – it was almost impossible to imagine building a Chinese village on the fair site inasmuch as the ‘real’ one existed nearby in the city. These actual Chinatowns increasingly constituted sites of exoticism that rendered the job of self-representation by the Chinese themselves especially difficult, as the urban Chinatown would always compete for attention with anything built or offered on the exposition site. Thus, the story of Chinese self-representation at the PPIE is revealed not just through considering the exhibits at the fair, but equally through the ways in which Exposition Commission officials from China and local Chinese residents presented themselves at public events and how they were

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then re-presented through stories in the two powerful daily newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner. Looming large over the representational order was always Chinatown itself, both its actual residents, and as a cultural imaginary. After briefly setting out the complex and extraordinarily imbalanced relationship between China and the US at the time of this exposition, the performances of Chinese-Americanness and the queering of Chinese imported male labour will be examined, followed by a consideration of the Chinese government’s site, its displays in three key pavilions or ‘Palaces,’ and the nadir of Chinese self-representation, the so-called ‘Underground Chinatown’ exhibit folded into the Chinese Village in the entertainment area known as the ‘Joy Zone.’ A good deal of the analysis will focus on the ways in which identity and culture were variously performed and received by audiences at these sites of encounter. Out of this nexus will come a further self-representation: the birth of a distinctive Chinese-Americanness, an identity not bound to one single place or culture.

America in China; China in America China’s wooing of American PPIE officials began early with an extraordinary display of musical mastery of American tunes. In September 1913, three PPIE commissioners led by Chief Commissioner General Alva Adams embarked on a lengthy trip throughout the Asia Pacific to drum up support for the event, arriving in Guangdong (Canton) in January, 1914.2 While there, the group was greeted with a military escort before being taken to meet local civil and military governors for a luncheon. Entertainment was provided by a band which played the US national anthem, ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ as well as a pre-Civil War tune by Stephen Foster, popularly known as ‘Swanee River.’3 The song, with its lyrics that glorify the Old South under slavery, remained hugely popular in the US into the twentieth century, and to know that tune and select it would suggest deep knowledge of the American song book of the era. 4 The detailed report on the group’s tour found in the PPIE 2 ‘Report of Foreign Commission visiting Australia, New Zealand, Philippine Islands, Cochin China, Straits Settlements, Federated Malay States, Java, Siam and China,’ September 23, 1913 to June 1st, 1914, CA190, Carton 140, File 10 (Foreign Participation). 3 The correct name of the song is ‘Old Folks at Home.’ 4 Similarly, Fernsebner notes that at a national fair held in Nanjing in 1911 martial bands played American tunes such as ‘Yankee Doodle’ and ‘Poor Black Joe’ as ‘flourishes before public speeches and ceremonies’ (2006: 118). ‘Poor Black Joe’ in all likelihood refers to yet another Stephen Foster classic, ‘Old Black Joe.’

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records provides an account of a happy and lively encounter with civil and military authorities taking place later in Nanjing, when again bands played familiar Chinese and familiar American tunes. That the Chinese could anticipate the musical proclivities of the American delegation is hardly surprising given the large number of American-educated Chinese in positions of power and influence in the early years of post-Qing China. When China’s initial resident Consul General, Dr. T.C. Chu5 arrived with his wife in San Francisco in February, 1914, local newspapers6 focused on the couple’s American education; Chu had both an undergraduate degree and a PhD from Harvard, while his young wife of three weeks, referred to variously as Miss Pingaa, or Miss Pinga Hu, was a 1913 graduate of Wellesley College, one of the prestigious so-called ‘Seven Sisters’ schools, places of progressive learning for women in a time when the Ivy League schools were exclusively male bastions. The Chronicle correspondent described Chu’s new bride as ‘young and a bit of Dresden ware, of the type that appeals particularly to the Anglo-Saxon eye,’ reporting how she endeared herself with local society women by remarking that ‘the San Francisco women all look so very young.’ In a photo of the couple appearing in both leading daily newspapers, an attractive and youthful Miss Pingaa holds a bouquet of flowers, while both she and her husband wear fashionable Western coats suitable for chilly San Francisco weather in January or February. Dr. Chu, gloved and with a bowler hat and patterned tie, looks every bit the kind of successful, progressive, educated figure that represents a new China, a country that like Japan, had begun to embrace a kind of Western-led modernity.7 That Miss Pingaa is described as a fine piece of Dresden porcelain – literally a China doll – is also telling. As we shall see in press reports from the New York fairs of 1939-1940 and 1964-1965, Asian women were routinely deemed attractive to white men by virtue of their youthful, ‘doll-like’ appearance. When Chinese Commissioner General to the PPIE, Chen Chi (Qi)8 arrived in December with an extensive entourage responsible for setting 5 A letter to Mr. Hale from Ira E. Bennett, dated 3 December 1913 sets out his full name as Chu Ting-Chih (Records of the PPIE, Bancroft Library Special Collections, C-A 190, Box 12, File 14, Foreign Participation). The press on at least two occasions refers to him as S.C. Shu (Chronicle, 5 May 1915; Examiner, 24 Sept. 1915), while Todd refers to him as N.C. Shu (1921: 154). I will use T.C. Chu as Bennett’s designation would have been the most commonly used at the time. 6 San Francisco Chronicle, 1 February 1914; Marin Journal, ‘China to Spend $800,000 in Marvellous Display at the Panama-Pacific Exposition,’ 25 June, p. 12. 7 Photos of the Chinese delegation and visiting dignitaries in Saint Louis in 1904, by contrast, featured many of the men in distinctive Manchu courtly apparel. See Hur 2012 and Christ 2000. 8 Though the Chronicle (1 February 1914) suggests that Chu was the off icer in charge of the mission, this does not appear to be the case. An article in The Shanghai Times identif ies a

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up and running the Chinese exhibits, the deep American connections of Chen and his team were foregrounded by the press by both leading dailies (Examiner, Chronicle, 30 December 1914). Greeted at the wharf by several thousand Chinese as they stepped off the steamer, both Chen and his wife had previously lived in San Francisco (Chronicle, 30 December 1915). The military-trained Chen9 was a critic of how China represented itself in Saint Louis,10 and had previously served as Managing Director of China’s largest domestic international exposition, the 1910 Nanyang Industrial Exposition (Hur 2012, p. 126). A photo in the Chronicle (30 December 1915, p. 4) shows Chen wearing a formal top hat with his glamourous looking wife in a luxurious, thickly-collared coat. Mrs. Chen’s fashion sense was evident again at the Chinese Pavilion dedication in March 1915, where she appears in well-tailored suit and an elegant, relatively unadorned cloche style hat on the cutting edge of contemporary fashion (Figure 11). Given her husband’s leading role in charting Chinese self-representation, it seems likely that she was conscious of the strong statement being made through her adoption of fashionable Western clothing, an impression that would not have been lost on the society ladies of San Francisco who lived near the couple while in residence in fashionable Pacific Heights. Chen and his wife were joined by a team that included numerous commissioners and staff members with degrees from American universities and who either had lived or were currently living in the city. Among them was University of California graduate Owyang Kee, who in his dedication speech at the Chinese Pavilion made reference to ‘China’s young men [who] have, for the most part, all been trained in the United States.’11 For many influential Chinese, the demise of the Qing Dynasty and the installation of an outward-looking Nationalist government was bound up with democratic values adopted while undertaking degrees at US universities. One of the most prominent Chinese voices celebrating the ‘natural’ link between Doctor Chu, calling him the ‘resident commissioner’ to the exposition, as does a report by Todd (1921, p. 237) on events prior to the fair’s opening. Yet earlier, in a July 1913 issue of the mainland Chinese magazine Dongfang zazhi (‘The Eastern Miscellany’), Chen Qi is identified as the ‘newly appointed exposition Commissioner’ (Fernsebner 2002, p. 169). Chen had considerably more experience and Chu and was clearly the primary visionary and planner behind official Chinese participation at the event. It seems more likely that Chu was the resident Consul-General the time of the fair, which is how he is subsequently referred to in the press. 9 Chen Qi was a first-class graduate of the Jiangnan Army Academy (Jiangnan lushi xuetang) (Fernsebner 2002, p. 62). 10 See Fernsebner, 2002, pp. 51-54 and 2018, pp. 175-177. 11 Kee Owyang, Speech at Dedication of Chinese Government Pavilion, 9 March 1915. PPIE Records, Bancroft Library Special Collections, C-A 190, Box 34, File, 8 Foreign Auxiliaries – China.

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Figure 11 Chinese officials at dedication of the Chinese Pavilion

Group photo of Chinese officials at the dedication of the Chinese Pavilion, 9 March 1915. Note the Western-style formal wear of the men and the attire of the women, only one of whom is in ‘traditional’ Qing Dynasty clothing. Chen Qi, with his stiff military bearing, is on the end (right) of the first row holding an official-looking folder, while in all probability it is Mrs. Chen next to him, fashionably dressed and bearing flowers. One of the women in the centre appears to be wearing a fur stole of fox pelts. Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

the two countries was the young and dashing Dr. Wang Ching-Chun,12 a railroad man and Christian with an MA and PhD from Yale, who was one of the initial PPIE delegates.13 In a feature article in the New York Times, written in November 1912, the same year the Nationalist government took control over much of China, he invokes a shared love for American football: ‘So many of us Chinese Republicans, graduates of American colleges, are Americans through and through, that, in the intervals of fighting against the Imperialists in Nanking, we actually discussed football like other American college men.’ Declaring that ‘The new China is a new United States,’ he asserts that ‘Our Government is American; our Constitution is American; many of us feel like Americans.’ He believed strongly that these values would grow deeper over time as the elite of the new China came in increasing numbers to the US for a university education: ‘Don’t forget that thousands of Chinese have been educated here in the United States, that there are 800 Chinese 12 In an article in the Shanghai Times, Wang uses the name Wong Chung. 13 Though his article in the New York Times dated 12 November 1912 indicates he is as one of the Chinese PPIE commissioners, when the commissioners and staff are formally set out by the press two years later in the San Francisco Chronicle (30 December 1914) he is not mentioned.

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students her now, that thousands of others will come during the next few years.’ He set out this vision of the two countries are natural allies in a series of articles (1913a, 1913b, 1914, Wong Chung 1914), linking emerging Chinese values with Christian ones: The day must come when China will be a Christian nation. Most of the great political leaders from the South of China are Christians. These people all believe in the necessity of the Christian upbuilding of China and realize that earnest and affection presentation of the canonical writings of the Old and new Testament of the Bible are their guide to eternal life and that its revealed truths will be the channel through which God, All Supreme, will offer his grace … (1914)

Wong’s writings reflect many of the key elements that will be reflected in Chinese self-representation at the PPIE: In the histrionic performances of politicians and the ways in which San Francisco’s Chinese community sought to display itself at key public events, Chinese representation was about demonstrating and performing an Asian identity that was in alignment with American values. In the absence of external political power, American cities with large Chinese populations such as San Francisco had social, political, and business structures that were internally governed by huìguăn (会馆) or ‘benevolent associations.’14 These organizations, common in the Guangdong Pearl River Delta region from which most Chinese migrants to the US heralded, was typically headquartered in a temple-like structure and offered male migrants a space in which to connect and network with others from their dialect group or region. These groups, dominated by successful businessmen with more experience in the host environment, helped members find jobs, organized local functions, and spoke collectively for the community to external groups, including local, state, and national government.15 In San Francisco, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association or ‘Six Companies’16 ( 六大 公司), the origins of which date back to the founding of individual huìguăn formed in the 1860s (Yong Chen 72), took the leading role at the PPIE by organizing and running the concession in the Joy Zone. 14 Also referred to as ‘clan associations,’ which suggests a shared set of interests or background. 15 For more information on the organizational structure and functioning of these associations, see Yong Chen 2000: 71-75 and Fermin 2010: 19-20. 16 Yong Chen notes that even though it continued to go by the name of the ‘Six Companies,’ by 1903 there were in fact eight companies in the group (2000: 72). The San Francisco group was considered the most powerful huìguăn in the US at the time (Ma, L. Eve, 1990: 15).

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Chinese migration to California in the nineteenth century, contrary to the stereotype of having been fueled by a flight from poverty in the most chaotic and desperate regions of China, was largely from Guangdong Province, where there had been significant, long-term engagement between the Chinese and Western merchants (Yong Chen 2000, p. 12). Thus, it was largely ambitious young men who migrated in the first wave from 1850, many of them seeking the generate enough wealth in the gold fields to attract a spouse or to support families to which they would return. This migration pattern, halted by the Exclusion Act of 1882, followed by continuing prohibitions against Asian immigration, meant that the San Francisco Chinese community was hugely gender-imbalanced by 1915. Yong Chen’s analysis of census data and contemporary accounts suggests that for much of the late nineteenth century many women residing in the geographic area of San Francisco’s compact Chinatown were engaged in prostitution 17 (2000, pp. 75-87). Not surprisingly, the press was frequently full of lurid stories about the goings-on in Chinatown’s brothels,18 and though prostitution operated legally in San Francisco until 1917 (Yong Chen, p. 76) and was heavily patronized by white men, it came to be regarded as the ‘Oriental vice,’ with Chinese women in particular, seen as either morally suspect or need of being freed from sexual bondage. Possibly responding to the need to present a more favorable impression of Chinese women, it is noteworthy that in the many public events associated with Chinese participation at the fair, women were routinely placed in prominent positions of representation, often on display as daughters or wives, countering the stereotype of the single Chinese man lurking in the homosocial world of America’s Chinatowns, enslaved to his baser instincts. Press accounts from the time of the PPIE often focus on these women, possibly because they had previously been relatively absent from the public gaze. One such account, reporting on a ball hosted by the Chinese Consul General for the Chinese Trade Commission, observes that it ‘was heightened by the attendance of a number of local Chinese women, whose presence at such functions marks a signif icant step the new republic has taken from the social code of the old dynasties’ (Chronicle, 5 May 1915, p. 3). While American policies that prohibited Chinese 17 Prostitution was an occupation listed in the census in the 1870s and 1880s (Yong Chen 2000: 83). 18 A widely reproduced 1885 map prepared by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors showing the locations of brothels, gambling houses, and opium dens in Chinatown can be found at https:// www.loc.gov/resource/g4364s.ct002129/. Dupont Street, which runs through Chinatown, is today’s Grant Street, the commercial centre of Chinatown tourism today.

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immigration are unremarked upon, it is signif icant that the reporter sees the presence of these women as a sign that China is embracing modernity. An important social component of this expo was that for perhaps the f irst time, San Francisco society ladies who accompanied their husbands to fair functions mingled with, and in some cases shared tables with Chinese women.

Chinatown Goes to the Expo While the Chinese exposition commission was working out the details of their self-representation at the government site and across nine themed pavilions, it was the local Chinese community that took centre stage in the year before the fair opened. In terms of scale and public impact, arguably no pre-expo event surpassed the spectacle connected with the groundbreaking of the Chinese Village Pagoda and Tea Garden in the ‘Joy Zone’ on 17 July 1914. Local San Francisco businessman Jim Wong (a.k.a. Wong Fook), a leader in the Chinese Six Companies19 was the concession’s president, and despite a scandal earlier in the year,20 by July was in firm control of the enterprise at the PPIE. The festivities kicked off with a ‘motor parade’ from the group’s Chinatown headquarters on Stockton Street, led by San Francisco Mayor Rolph. Press coverage of the event, backed up by photos, suggests that as many as two thousand people, mostly Chinese, attended the formal groundbreaking event at the site. Here, a chorus of Chinese girls, clad in high collared robes over billowing trousers, sang one of the fair’s official tunes, ‘I Love You, California,’ (Todd 1921: 154), with musical accompaniment from a local group, the New Cathay Boy’s Band (Examiner, 18 July 1914, p. 3), exemplifying a kind of nascent Chinese-Americanness. Unknown to most Californians today, the bouncy ‘I Love You, California’ remains the official state song, its lyrics celebrating the beauty and diversity of the state’s landscape and ending with the refrain, ‘and I know when I die I shall breathe my last sigh for my sunny California.’ Following a formula that continued at groundbreaking ceremonies at American expos through the mid-1960s, the actual breaking of ground with 19 In spite of the name, they were eight in number by this time. 20 Wong was arrested on New Year’s Day and charged by US Immigration with running ‘houses of ill repute’ in the city’s Tenderloin District. The Chronicle printed a statement by Fung Ming, Secretary of the Chinese Village and Pagoda Company, who refuted the charges and suggested they were put forward by a rival consortium that had failed to win the bid to build a Chinese-themed concession at the expo (Chronicle, 4 January 1914, p. 42).

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shovels was typically undertaken by local and foreign dignitaries, succeeded by the raising of the national flag, the singing or playing of national songs, followed by speeches from the men, with young women serving in supporting roles or as visually attractive props. The groundbreaking of the Chinese Village was particularly festive. The fair’s historian describes the speaker’s stand as ‘a thing of real beauty, with its gold-brocaded banners and its teak thrones on which sat two comely Chinese girls in the costumes of their country’ (Todd, p. 154). Official PPIE photos of the event show two girls, most likely Jim Wong’s daughters, Mary and Susie (Ossie), wearing light-coloured embroidered gowns over pantaloons, both seated on square-backed chairs on either side of the stage.21 In pattern that will continue into the 1980s at Brisbane’s Expo ‘88, young, attractive Asian women are foregrounded in the news photos accompanying such events, as they are in the Examiner’s coverage of the groundbreaking. In one of the official file photos of the event, Wong’s daughter Mary holds out a large bowl of cooked rice22 which was strewn at the site as a blessing, while the feature photo in the Examiner story shows her sister Susie, elaborately coiffed and with her hair tightly wound into side buns, assisting her father as he turns over the first shovel of earth. The article appears with a second large photo, unusual for the time, featuring numerous young girls, bearing the caption, ‘Chinese girls in native costume singing “I Love You, California.”’ The final striking element in the official PPIE photos of the event is the presence of infants, young girls, mothers, and mature Chinese women. Given the virtually insurmountable difficulties Chinese in America faced when it came to living as families with wives and grandmothers, placing the women so prominently in the front row along with immaculately-clad children offers a powerful visual statement; such an image pushes back against the then-prevailing racist stereotypes of the amoral single man cast adrift in the city, or the a-sexual, deferential Ah-Sin23 Chinaman whose role was to serve white people without complaint (Metzger 2004). In reporting 21 In an 1898 photo, the two daughters, Mary and Susie, appear with their father, identified as Wong Fook. They bear an uncanny resemblance to the two girls in the PPIE photos and appear to be the age these girls would be some seventeen years later. See Online Archive of California photo at: http://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb8w1006fg/?brand=oac4 22 PPIE, Chinese Pagoda Groundbreaking, 14 July 1914 Folder, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library. (7904) 23 This character type, Ah-Sing in the hugely popular ‘Charlie Chan’ novels by Earl Derr Biggers in the 1920s (see Van Dover 76-77), has similarities with the character of Hop Sing the laundry man, who first appeared on stage in 1876 in the Bret Harte play Two Men of Sandy Bar. In the long-running television TV series ‘Bonanza’ (1959-1973) Hop Sing is the loyal cook for the Cartwright family, beloved by the family and seemingly happy to spend his life in service. The

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Figure 12 Two young women at groundbreaking of the Chinese Village

Two young women, most likely Mary (l) and Susie Wong (r), on either side of the speaker’s platform at the groundbreaking of the Chinese Village on 17 July 1914. The speaker is PPIE Vice-President Thomas Marshall. Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

on the event, the Examiner, the paper least embracing of San Francisco’s Asia population, paints a picture of a joyous, cross-generational gathering: Babies were festooned over the chairs and through the crowd like strings of Botticelli cherubs. Platoons of pretty trousered girls, in all their dainty finery of silk and jade, looked on soberly, or giggled discretely behind their hands. Grandmothers, or perhaps great-grandmothers, judging from the descending gradations of offspring, hand in hand, watched approvingly and kept the youngsters in line. (Examiner, 18 July 1914, p. 3)

Even as the account reinforces stereotypes – that the girls are pretty, dainty, girly in their behavior and dressed in silk – there is a sense that the reporter is describing a community, a large gathering of perhaps a thousand or more people who are there on what appears to be a warm, actor playing Hop Sing, San Francisco-born Victor Sen Yung, played Jimmy Chan in the famous Charlie Chan films produced between 1938 and 1942.

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sunny day in July of 1914, assembled as families, and against all odds, visibly demonstrating and celebrating the existence of a Chinese community that has put down roots in America. The fair’s historian, looking back fondly at the event six years later, recalls that excepting possibly events hosted by the Japanese, ‘no ceremony at the grounds during the pre-Exposition period presented more interesting and colourful aspects than this one’ (Todd 1921, p. 154). From the perspective of Chinese-Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area, this pre-expo event was arguably more successful in reflecting positively on the community than anything associated with the fair after it opened.

Male Labour: Queer Clothing, Queer Food That much was at stake for the local Chinese community was reflected in the reporting on the PPIE in Bay Area Chinese language newspapers at the time (Fernsebner 2001).24 Prior to the fair’s opening, a conflict arose over the attire of the 32 skilled craftsmen employed to erect the buildings on the government’s site. Most of the men appeared to hail from Jiangsu (Kiang Su), north of Shanghai,25 placing them culturally and linguistically at some remove from the largely southern, Cantonese-speaking population living in San Francisco (Ma, Eve 1990, p. 23). Guangdong, as previously noted, had a longer history of more sustained and direct contact with the West than many other parts of China and thus its residents both at home and in the diaspora were more likely to have adopted aspects of Western attire. Fashion in China was by this time linked to progressive thinking, as the Nationalists who now controlled most of the country sought to eradicate Manchu-style dress and replace it with clothes for men and women with cleaner, simpler lines. 24 Fernsebner (2002) identifies how dissatisfaction with how China was represented at the fair was at times directed personally at Commissioner Chen while other articles criticized the general shabbiness of the official government exhibit, suggesting that it made China look bad. 25 Construction Commissioner H.C. Hwang observed that ‘the contract for the construction of their nation’s building was let in Shanghai. These men [the ones being singled out] come from Central China, in the Kiang Su provinces. Most of these who complain are from Southern China, in Canton Province’ (Examiner, 24 July 1914, p. 3). The Peking Daily News (9 April 1915) indicates that this first group of workers was to include ‘about 50 Ningpo workmen, an area known for outstanding woodworking south of Shanghai.’ Regardless of whether the men were from Jiangsu province or nearby Ningbo, they were clearly not Cantonese. Further evidence comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, which reported that workers came by boat from Shanghai (16 June 1914, p. 5).

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This anxiety about inadvertently representing the ‘old China’ was spectacularly stirred up by the English-language press in July 2014. While the main pavilion on the Chinese government site was under construction, the Examiner ran a story in the ‘muck-raking’ investigative and prose style made famous by editor William Randolph Hearst which created the impression of a dramatic conflict between Chinese tradition and modernity. The story began: ‘Out on the fair grounds, securely locked in teakwood caskets, repose thirty-two pairs of green, yellow and purple pantaloons, thirty-two pink, lavender and crimson blouses, thirty-two variegated skull caps and odd numbers of sandals and sashes.’ These clothes in colours that would be regarded as garish and bizarre to the American reader, now dramatically locked up, were reported as belonging to the crew of Chinese woodworkers building the country’s exhibition palace. According to the reporter, ‘Young and progressive China in San Francisco has issued an edict that their newly arrive countrymen shall wear only the clothes of the Occident. And they threaten reprisal unless their demands are complied with.’ Giving ‘voice’ to this view, the reporter attempts to report back using their faux-broken English: “Nix on the pantaloons and blouse,” says Young China, “can ’em and wear pants and overalls”’ (Examiner, 24 July 1914, p. 3). According to the reporter, the great overalls controversy was settled when workers were given ‘American clothes’ and their traditional working garments locked up. Regardless of how the events actually unfolded, many in San Francisco’s Chinese community would have found the clothing of these provincial men – the equivalent of country yokels – embarrassing or at the very least out of step with the sartorial demands of either their new home in San Francisco or the newly minted and modernizing Nationalist China. The Examiner report masks a larger backstory, one extending back to the Saint Louis Exposition of 1904, when Chinese exhibitors bound for the fair were subjected to unnecessary detention at San Francisco’s immigration station on Angel Island as they sought to enter the country. Because specialized, skilled labour was required to construct the buildings on the Chinese government’s site, there had been considerable behind-the-scenes drama over how these skilled workers would be allowed to enter the country. Though exposition exhibitors were permitted to enter the US if they possessed the requisite official documents, Chinese labourers were still legally barred from entry. After considerable lobbying by PPIE officials at the federal level, in March 1914, just a few months before the arrival of the first group of Chinese workers, the US Department of Labor issued a regulation permitting the labourers to enter, subject to a $500 bond and

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requiring that they return China or their home country within 30 days of completing their work.26 Yet these workers, invisible to fairgoers as they were gone by the time the gates opened on 20 February 1915, continued to draw attention while in the city. Especially fascinating to the press (Chronicle, 16 June 1914, p. 5; Los Angeles Times, 1 January 1915, p. V142) and fair historian Todd were their dietary requirements. Todd writes of the lengths required to import some 400 bags of rice into the US to feed the men, observing wryly: ‘The Chinese workman is abysmally and Orientally scornful of any rice but his own, so this food had to be imported from China or the workmen could not work’ (1921, p. 208). The Los Angeles Times, reporting while the site was under construction, observed that the men lived behind a wall completely encircling the grounds, one that ‘gives the imported workmen a feeling of absolute security’ (1 Oct. 1914, p. 40), suggesting that the men were shy and timid. The men indeed lived onsite in purpose-built ‘apartments’ (Shanghai Times, 15 August 1914, p. 6), though it seems likely that their isolation was imposed externally rather than the result of their own choice. The irony is, of course, that these men, with their queer clothes, peculiar dietary needs, and need for protection, required the issuance of a special federal regulation governing their entry, exit, and movement within the country in order to ensure that they didn’t steal American jobs.

National Self-Representation The official Chinese government site, like Japan’s, was not occupied by a single, large pavilion, but by numerous buildings in a garden-like setting. Encircled by a wall about six feet in height that was curiously characterized in the PPIE Official Guide as ‘a miniature of the Great Chinese Wall’ (p. 82), the garden lacked the flowing, meticulously landscaped qualities of the Japanese Garden. The site had none of the meandering charm of traditional Chinese gardens such as the famed Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou and was largely given over to plants native to California, with a few prized specimens imported from China. The garden’s chief attraction was billed in the PPIE guide as ‘an exact model of the Tai-Ho Palace’ from Beijing’s famed Forbidden City. Known today as the Palace of Heavenly Purity, or Qianqing Palace (乾 清宫), this iconic structure, the first building one encounters on entering 26 ‘Regulation Concerning the Admission and Return of Chinese Participating in the PanamaPacific International Exposition and the Panama-California Exposition,’ Department Circular No. 3, US Department of Labor, 25 March 1914.

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the Forbidden City, served as the Emperor’s audience hall during the Qing Dynasty. The PPIE Official Guide and the press foregrounded its ‘Forbidden City’ mystique, with the Chronicle proclaiming, ‘The Forbidden City, that long mysterious imperial quarter of Peking wherein for centuries no outsider ever set foot, is reproduced in part on the grounds of the Chinese Government at the exposition.’ Contrasting the old with the new, the reporter continues: ‘It is characteristic of the new feeling of China, which has declared for modern ways and put the old behind it, that it has chosen for the model of its exposition pavilions one of the palaces which it would have been sacrilege to reproduce while China was ruled by Manchu Emperors’ (Chronicle, 2 May 1915, p. 19). Far from being a replica, the structure was a fraction of the building’s original size,27 and though it had similar proportions and the recognizable ‘hip and gable’ double-roof characteristic of important structures built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), its first level was paneled rather than recessed behind columns, while the upward curve of the roof was exaggerated, resembling the roof lines of later, Qing Dynasty temples, more than the more restrained, solid, earth-bound lines of the Ming Dynasty structure the building was billed as replicating. Two smaller buildings of similar style, reportedly modelled after the structures in which those awaiting an audience with the Emperor waited, flanked the larger one. All three were contained in a garden situated along a traditional north-south axis, with the San Francisco Bay beyond and the hills of Pacific Heights at its back. The 100,000 square foot site also featured a pagoda-like drum or bell tower (Burnett 2010, p. 28) open on the lower level, which the Chronicle reporter unkindly likened to ‘a country tank house on stilts’(2 May 1915, p. 19), and four other buildings: a six-sided, five-tiered pagoda prominently bearing the flag of the new Nationalist government; a replica of a domestic residence (Ma, William 2014, p. 21); and two tea houses. Situated next to the garden to the west was Canada’s enormous, columned neoclassical pavilion, which filled a site of similar size, while the site’s entrance faced the New York City and Pennsylvania pavilions. With its high external walls and imposing neighbours, the site lacked the charm and wider vistas of San Francisco that Japan enjoyed. One entered from the Esplanade, a broad boulevard, via a large decorative gate resembling those that traditionally mark the entrance to a temple ground, which in the last few generations have become iconic entrances to ‘Chinatowns’ in the Western world.28 27 The Chronicle suggests it was 1/10 the ‘original size’ (2 May 1915, p.19). 28 Chinatown gates in Liverpool, Antwerp, and Manchester, though built at different times, are all remarkably similar to each other and to this one.

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Figure 13 Chinese government entrance from The Esplanade

Chinese government entrance from The Esplanade. The main pavilion, the Hall of Audience, is directly behind the gate. The layout of the garden is angular and without the graceful curves or exotic plants featured in the Japanese garden. Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

The site’s chief exhibit, in the large, central building, contained an extensive display of valuable hand carved, lacquered furniture, many featuring elaborate inlaid work, carved wooden stands that might be used to display decorative objects, as well as a large range of porcelain vases, wall hangings, paintings on silk, screens, and cloisonne ware (Figure 15). Though the Examiner suggested the exhibit was an illustration of ‘ Chinese home life’ (10 March 1915, p. 9), much of its content, evidently on loan from a prominent Chinese art collector,29 is displayed as if the space were a formal ceremonial entrance hall, though without a central throne or places to sit. Given the structure’s resemblance to the emperor’s meeting hall and the fact that China’s President Yuan Shikai would within a year proclaim himself the Emperor of China, it is perhaps unsettling that his photo is centrally positioned among two others in the highest position in the hall.30 Examining PPIE file photos of the display one could nevertheless understand how 29 Chronicle, 2 May 1915, p. 19; Macomber (1915a, p. 162) 30 Yuan Shikai served as emperor from 1 January 1916 until his death a few months later. The two remaining portraits were of Li Yuan Hung (Li Yuanhong (黎元洪) Vice-President of the republic, and Hsi Shih Chuang (Xu Shichang 徐世昌), Secretary of State (Fermin, pp. 70-71).

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Figure 14 Main pavilion on the Chinese government site

The main pavilion or Hall of Audience on the Chinese government site, billed as replica of a hall in Beijing’s ‘Forbidden City.’ Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

the Examiner reporter might have imagined the hall as illustrating ‘home life’ inasmuch as contemporary, affordable versions of similar objects, artefacts, and pieces of furniture were on display in the fair’s Palace of Varied Industries, marketed to those interested in selling them to middle-class American consumers. And it was to the matter of what was on display elsewhere that we now turn

China on Display: The Old China Trade, The New China Trade In addition to the official government precinct, China’s displays occupied 69,000 square feet in nine pavilions (Fermin 2010, p. 73; Todd 1921, pp. 287-292), including those of Varied Industries, Food Products, Education, Transportation, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, Mines and Metallurgy, Agriculture, and Horticulture. The displays of three – Varied Industries, Education, and Fine Arts – merit attention here. But first, it is instructive to briefly set out what Americans associated with China and what consumption patterns were already in place. Unlike Japan, with its long history of exhibiting

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Figure 15 Hall of Audience, Chinese government site

Interior, Hall of Audience, Chinese government site. Pieces from a local collector of Chinese art were on display, though one newspaper characterized the room as an illustration of ‘Chinese home life.’ Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

itself and its products at expositions and its reputation as a nation that had embraced modernity while retaining ‘traditional values,’ China was new to the exposition game, had less prestige attached to its products, and did not yet have a clear, attractive image to offer to West. What China had instead was its long history, albeit not relatively well understood or appreciated in the West, its fame for having invented and perfected porcelain, and the overarching narrative that it was a country and a people waking up after a long slumber.31 The so-called ‘Old China Trade’ had in the centuries before the PPIE provided the foundation for the transfer of material culture from China to the West and the objects on display in the exposition palaces in 1915 could be seen as reflecting this much older tradition, which is summarized below.

31 As Yong Chen observes, even by 1905 the ‘awakening of China’ had become a much-repeated phrase in the press (p. 169).

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The trade in luxury goods from China to the United States predates the American Revolution, when many of New England’s more prosperous citizens lived in homes featuring Chinese porcelain and decorative items.32 As Robert Finlay observes of the pre-modern global trade in Chinese porcelain: For over a thousand years, porcelain was both the most universally admired and the most widely imitated product in the world. From the time of its creation in the seventh century, it played a central role in cultural exchange in Eurasia: it was a prime material vehicle for the assimilation and transmission of artistic symbols, themes, and designs across vast distances’ (2010, pp. 5-6)

In Europe, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) long had access to goods from Japan, and particularly porcelain, which was widely exported to Europe in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; meanwhile, in North America, and particularly in the years following the American Revolution war, it was trade with China that developed first in the absence of a national monopoly such as the VOC. Fermin (2010) notes that the turning point in the development of this trade may have been the commercial success the Empress of China, a ship that brought raw goods from the US to China and returned with exotic goods for the American market in 1784. It resulted in a ‘financial windfall for its owners’ (Fermin 2010, p. 11), demonstrating the commercial possibilities of such an exchange, leading to a market for porcelain and other goods, including furniture, draperies, silk fans, carvings, silverware and scrolls (Cohen 1992, p. 6). As a consequence of the exchange with both Europe and the US, ‘Chinese artistic motifs and designs taken from porcelain were embraced by distant societies, after which, reshuffled, reinterpreted, and frequently misconstrued, they were sent back from where they came as decoration on merchandise such as cotton cloth, carpets, and silverwares’ (Finlay 2010, p. 10). China and things Chinese could increasingly be known, experienced, and purchased by consumers in the West even when the actual link to Chinese aesthetics was being mediated by their own taste. By the time ‘china’ had become synonymous with China, porcelain houses such as Meissen, Wedgewood, Delft had mastered the techniques of production, while appropriating Asian, and particularly Chinese designs into their work, incorporating unique and occasionally wacky cross-cultural visual motifs into their products. 32 The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts contains the world’s largest collection of such items from China and Japan designed specifically for the early export art market to the West.

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On the Chinese end, the so-called ‘Old China Trade’ was largely set up and run by merchants and importers, operating largely outside national governance until 1844, when the British power grab over ports in China resulted in their control over much of the export of goods popular in the West. But as the Qing Dynasty weakened, US exporters operating from the major Chinese port cities serving as the terminus point for regions where these goods were produced were increasingly able to take advantage of favorable terms of trade. As British expatriate control over trade from China weakened at the end of the nineteenth century, the emerging Nationalist government credited the US for its so-called ‘Open Door Policy’ brokered by American Secretary of State John Hay in 1899, which led to the expansion of trade under terms more advantageous to China. Thus, in a way that ran roughly parallel to the so-called ‘opening of Japan’ in 1852 by Commodore Perry, the US was heralded as playing a foundational role in opening up China, an oft-repeated mantra by policymakers and diplomats of the time. By the middle of the nineteenth century, exported items were increasingly linked to particular regions in China associated with certain specialties. And as with Japan, the display of such goods at international expositions was the key point of entry into the American market. As trade expanded and ships became faster and larger over the course of the century, imports from China were no longer limited to small decorative items. One of the more impressive of the larger items displayed at nineteenth century American expositions, a spectacularly ornate moon-gate bed created by master artists in Ningbo, just south of Shanghai, is in Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, displayed along with a photograph of the bed at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.33 The bed’s sleeping platform sits under an elaborately carved orb-shaped structure made of three or more types of wood,34 with ornate satinwood panels inlaid with ivory scenes depicting robed scholars, women, boatsmen, and birds in a setting reminiscent of the scholar’s gardens created during the Tang Dynasty.35 Comprised of 53 panels, the bed’s carvings are in a style characteristic of this region, and indeed smaller pieces of furniture such as chests using the same combination of 33 The image can be found at: http://explore-art.pem.org/object/asian-export-art/E80259/ detail 34 Most likely elm, cypress, and satinwood. 35 The previously noted Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou is one of the most famous and grandest of such gardens. This garden, like others, creates a relationship between its built structures and the landscaped environment that reflect literary themes or passages from well-known poetic works. Thus, the garden is an instantiation and extension of artistic work through other media.

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woods and with similar patterns of inlaid stories still circulate a high-end shops that specialize in Chinese antique furniture today. The export of Chinese goods at prior expositions had been largely controlled by foreigners, chiefly British and American employees of the Chinese customs service. From 1867 to 1905, the displays at the thirty world’s fairs in which China participated were managed by the Imperial Customs Service under Inspector General Sir Robert Hart (Vennman 1996, p. 18), with China’s involvement in its own displays commencing the 1873 Exposition in Vienna (Fernsebner 2018, p. 174). Chinese Commissioner Chen Qi’s criticism of the displays at the Saint Louis Exposition (See Fernsebner 2018, pp. 175-177) prompted the development of a more modern strategy for the collection and display of objects, one he implemented as managing director of the 1910 Nanyang Industrial Exposition in Nanjing. Inspectors were sent out into the field to review and report on local products with an eye toward determining their suitably for provincial or national display (Fernsebner 2006, pp. 106-108). As Fernsebner observes, ‘The concern of their project remained, ultimately, to bring these material goods and objects before a mass audience and, ultimately, to let the things speak for themselves’ (2006, p. 108). For the PPIE this process was undertaken at the national level, and, for the first time at an international exhibition in the west, the display of objects, textiles, and furniture was organized within China through a network of domestic Chinese commissioners who sought out products to display from their respective regions. According to the English-language Peking Daily News,36 deputies were dispatched to nineteen provinces throughout the country in the years prior to the exposition, working with local Chambers of Commerce or through other networks, to inform merchants about the event, generate interest in participation, and collect materials for display, initially at provincial fairs and at larger ones in Tientsin and Shanghai, prior to being selected for the PPIE. Provinces were already associated with particular products and thus, for instance, Hunan was sought out for exhibits of embroidered silk, tea, and porcelain, while Guangdong and Fujian provinces were associated with f ine work in ivory and lacquer. By July of 1914, exhibits slated for display at the PPIE were to have been selected, sent to Shanghai for processing, and forwarded to San Francisco, arriving in September, well in advance of the fair to allow for careful placement in the respective pavilions. Indeed, when the largest contingent of PPIE delegates arrived 36 A lengthy article in the Peking Daily News (9 April 1914), presumably written with an audience of businessman in mind, set out the process in considerable detail, one that I paraphrase here.

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from China late in 1914, the group included nine provincial delegates (Examiner, 30 Dec. 1914, p. 4), all of whom appear to have stayed on in San Francisco through the fair.37 China occupied a significant area in the Palace of Varied Industries, an entire ‘block’ within the commodious structure, and it was here where the kinds of objects most commonly associated with China were on display. In many respects it was a matter of giving the American consumer – or rather those who would be purchasing in bulk for the American consumer – what they wanted. The Examiner devoted exclusive attention to China’s displays in the palace, suggesting that viewing them possessed an educational value, consistent with the exposition’s self-promotion as ‘The World’s Greatest University’: To the thousands whose days have been too full to permit a study of the lives, habits and peculiarities of the people of the Orient, the opening of China’s section in the Palace of Varied Industries, at the Panama Pacific International Exposition, was a revelation. ‘By the fruits of his labour, shall a man be known,’ and through China’s exhibits in this palace there is an excellent opportunity to learn of her art and industries. (Examiner, 11 April 1915, p. 39)

Here China is oddly subsumed by and representative of the entire ‘Orient,’ a place of difference, one with peculiarities of habit and life largely unknown to the Western mind. This kind of deep Orientalizing of China stands in contrast with Japan, which, for all of its exotic glory, was by virtue of generations of self-representation at international expositions, perceived as known, as a paragon of tradition in modernity and, in the US especially, as a key ally on the other side of the Pacific, the ambitious, efficient reverse imprint of itself. China, by contrast, was a land and people requiring further work and study, one largely outside a known, Western framework. Returning to the educational value of the fair, the Examiner reporter concludes that, ‘An hour or two spent in this section gives the busy American a clearer insight into the workings of the Oriental mind.’ On display were largely handcrafted goods selected with an eye toward the American market, and any ‘insight into the workings of the Oriental mind’ would seem to be drawn from the notion that the Chinese are skilled at producing certain kinds of goods, chiefly brass and bronze in antiquity, 37 It is likely that these are the men standing behind the dignitaries in the second row at the dedication of the Chinese Pavilion shown in Figure 11.

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and more recently wooden furniture and screens with intricate, carved designs, porcelain vases, gowns of silk, and detailed, exquisite embroidery work. Even in the absence of images from inside that pavilion, what it notable about what is described is how closely it resembles the contents of a shop catering to non-Asian tourists in the Chinatowns of San Francisco or Los Angeles today. In this respect the ‘Old China Trade,’ one that is about bringing exotic objects into homes in the West, but now at affordable prices, lives on. While the displays in the Palace of Varied Industries sought to build consumer base for Chinese goods, it was in the Palace of Education where an enduring trope was set out – that of Chinese industriousness, and in particular, the ability of Chinese artisans to excel in the production of intricate, handcrafted goods. Dedicated education pavilions at international expositions during this era focused largely on vocational training rather than higher education. It was in this context at the PPIE that China presented 6,079 separate displays over 6,000 square feet including ‘100 tons of carved wood and hand-made wares, all objects of art and practical utility, including articles of Chinese handicraft, samples of jewelry, metal work, silks, brocades, tapestries, embroideries, painting and pottery, all made by the pupils of Chinese schools’ (Los Angeles Times, 7 Feb. 1915, p .2). As the Examiner observes: ‘This display not only shows many unique features of the Chinese educational methods, but it will reveal a system of manual training work comparable with the best attainment of any of the Occidental countries’ (30 Jan. 1915, p. 3). The most remarkable and largest single set of exhibits made by Chinese students on display were the eighty-four 1:50 scale reproductions, largely of teakwood, of pagodas located throughout China (Ma 2014, pp. 6-49).38 How these pagodas came to find themselves in the Palace of Education reflects a frequently overlooked element in the Chinese-American cultural exchange – the work of missionaries who had a significant presence in parts of China, a phenomenon without parallel in Japan. That Western-educated, cosmopolitan young Chinese men such as railroad entrepreneur Wang Ching-Chun, referred to earlier, saw China as a ‘future Christian nation’ is not surprising if one follows the trail back to the missionaries, Protestant and Catholic, who carved up their respective spheres of influence in the ‘heathen nation.’ The intricate, miniature carved pagodas were the product of some 300 orphaned boys (Ma, William 2014, p. 10) who created the works under the supervision of Fr. Aloysius Beck, a Munich-born Jesuit who ran the woodworking studio at the Zikawei (Xujiahui) Orphanage, located in what 38 Both the Los Angeles Times and the Examiner single out the pagodas as noteworthy.

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was then the outskirts of Shanghai. The Jesuits first arrived in Shanghai in 1608 (Clarke 2014, p. 58) and after the end of the First Opium War (1839-1842) their influence grew enormously, to the point where by the early twentieth century Xujiahui was regarded as a Catholic neighbourhood. In addition to woodworking, boys in the orphanage were also instructed in printing, painting, shoemaking, metalwork, and stain-glass, with their output sold largely to Francophone communities in China and Europe (Ma, William 2104, pp. 8-9). The pagodas, which ranged in size from 8 to 220 cm, were arranged in a separate display section through which one entered by passing through an elaborate teakwood gateway. William Ma’s 2014 study of how these models came to be created and circulated led to their rediscovery39 and return to San Francisco for a display at the San Francisco International Airport in 2015, marking the exposition’s centenary. Though evidence suggests that the pagoda exhibit was popular, finding a buyer for the vast collection of pagodas at the fair’s end proved difficult, fetching the disappointing price of $5000 (Ma, William 2014, p. 26). Without the deeper embeddedness in consumer culture, Chinoiserie did not circulate in the same way Japonisme did in the early twentieth century. Unlike Japan, China had not yet seduced the artistic world, nor did Chinese design elements circulate widely as decorative and practical objects as Japanese designs had. Instead, as Ma observes, ‘Chinese arts were valued first and foremost for their antiquity, stereotypical stand-ins for a nation and a culture characterized by being timeless and unchanging’ (2014, p. 25).40 The image of the pagoda itself reflects such a view of China: ‘The pagoda was and still is synonymous with China. With it too, was a skewed representation of Chinese culture as embodied by the pagoda: as a container of idols, as an instrument of superstition, as a form of irrationality, or as superfluous decoration’ (Ma, p. 29). It bears noting that the pagoda on the grounds of the Chinese government site (see Figure 13), in scale and proportion awkward, reinforced this positionality: Devoid of purpose as it was sited in a garden that was neither a monastery nor the grounds of a Buddhist temple, it serves a purely decorative function, becoming a stand-in for all of 39 Though the pagodas had garnered a Grand Prize at the fair for their role in educating Chinese orphans (Ma 2014, p. 22), they had difficulty finding a home after the fair, eventually ending up the Chicago Field Museum prior being purchased by a private collector in 2007. 40 William Ma observes that the much of the Chinese art on display at the exposition was purchased by wealthy collectors, among them Mrs. Marshall Field of the Chicago, Pierpont Morgan, Mr. Macy of New York, and Phoebe Hearst, the mother of William Randolph Hearst (2014, p. 24). Some of this work ended up in the New York Metropolitan Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Chicago Field Museum (2014, p. 25).

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China. It also fulfills an expectation of those entering the site by creating in three dimensions their most iconic image of Chineseness – the mysterious pagoda – long immortalized and distributed through its ubiquitous display in porcelain, now brought to life before them. Given that China’s value in the West was so strongly tied to the age of its civilization, it is not surprising that their four galleries in the Palace of Fine Arts were largely given over to reproductions of ancient works.41 As Katherine Burnett observes, with its focus on ‘new’ old works at the PPIE, China was ‘inventing a new “old tradition”’ (2010, pp. 45-47). From a political perspective, this was understandable because, in 1915, as she notes, ‘China’s modernity was still unknown and unstable. It was imperative, therefore, for China’s international art exhibits to signify the strength and stability of an enduring civilization to the world, not the uncertainty of an uncharted modern’ (2010, p. 47). One of the catalogues accompanying the exhibition of Chinese art, prepared by the Shanghai exhibitors Shên Tun-ho and Shên Tin-chen (1915) directly addresses this mode of reinventing the old. Somewhat misleadingly entitled A Selection from Modern Chinese Arts, the catalogue provides a photo of each work, most being copies of older pieces, some dating back as far as the seventh century. The catalogue’s introductory essay, by Stafford M. Cox, an American with a long history of engagement with the arts in China (Netting 2013, p. 231), focuses on the past glory of Chinese art, suggesting that what is on offer at the exposition is the authentic recreation of the past – thus constituting the new. Of the blue and white porcelain for which China was long famous, Cox observes that in the 150 years following the reign of Emperor Qianlong (乾隆) (1735-1796), ‘Decadence rapidly ensued, the old secrets of colour blends, transmitted from generation to generation of workers, lost their value in competition with the less costly priced colours of western origin.’42 Cox praises exhibition curator Shên Tun-ho43 as having been instrumental in seeing that these secrets were not lost by ensuring that the two remaining masters of the technique passed on their knowledge and skills to younger artists. In this way, as Burnett (2010) has suggested, in the early years of the new republic, China’s cultural greatness was expressed through the ability of its artists to continue to create new antique works using ancient methods. The exhibition also featured an extensive display of reproductions of masterpieces of Chinese painting from the Tang (AD 618-906) and Song 41 See Katharine P. Burnett (2010). 42 The catalogue is without pagination. 43 Netting observed that Cole served as Chief Medical Officer in the Chinese Red Cross under Shên, who was then Vice-President of the organisation (2013, p. 231).

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Dynasties (AD 960-1277), largely comprised of landscapes that at this time had not yet been widely appreciated or collected in the West. The catalogue’s second introduction, by Alex Ting, offers the Western viewer a sense of the relationship between the artist who created such works and the natural world which served as the source of inspiration and object of representation: The scholar/painter, who would have been highly educated and typically connected with imperial court culture, ‘derives his inspiration from nature, yet he paints a priori from recollection and reason, without the aid of a sketch book’ (1915). This approach to representing nature, at odds with the eighteenth and nineteenth century Western tradition in which the artist painted directly from nature, is acknowledged as having ‘limitations’ by Ting, though he goes on to suggest that this indirect representation of nature imbues it with other valuable qualities: ‘[I]t is very questionable whether he [the artist] would be still as much appreciated as a painter of lyrisme and of the deep musings of the soul, if he surrenders all his weaknesses for the vigorous technique and sharp perception of the West.’ And it is here were Ting strikes a chord that would later explain the appeal of Chinese landscapes to viewers in the West: These works record not what nature ‘looks like,’ but rather offer up an aesthetic and philosophical position with respect to nature, one that records the feeling of being imbedded in or responding to the natural world, an experience that is more poetic, more ‘lyrical’ than direct representation. Two contemporary American critics who wrote extensively about the fine arts displayed at the exposition, Sheldon Cheney and Eugen Neuhaus, were unimpressed by China’s displays in the Palace of Fine Arts. Cheney, overwhelmed by the volume of work, observes that ‘[t]here is a wealth of interesting material in the display, but it really requires a great amount of study for the full appreciation,’ directing those who are ‘specially interested’ to the catalogue (1915, p. 94) rather than himself attempting further explanation. Indeed, some 442 items were displayed in just four galleries (Burnett 2010, p. 30), which would suggest that each gallery was positively crammed with art. Neuhaus, a University of California professor whose views would have been influential as he served on the fair’s fine arts awards committee, summarily dismissed the work: There is no real life in any of the work here displayed, and most of it consists of modern replicas – some of very excellent quality – of their oldest and best art treasures … There is so much religious and other sentiment woven into their art that to the casual observer much of the pleasure of looking at the varied examples of applied art is spoiled by

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the necessity of having to read all of the longwinded stories attached to many of them. The freshness of youth, the spirit of progress, which enliven the Japanese section, are entirely missing in this display, which seems like a voice from the past – a solemn monument to an old civilization without any connection with the New Republic and its modern pretensions. I am afraid China is labouring under conditions of internal strife which are detrimental to the development of any artistic expression. (1915)

Neuhaus’ difficulty in appreciating Chinese art seems to hinge on the higher regard in which he holds the more vigorous art of Japan. While Japanese art reflects ‘the spirit of progress,’ China’s is seen as mired in the past, held back by religion, and saddled by the viewer’s need to digest ‘longwinded stories.’ For this art critic, the work was simply too hard, too arcane, too old, and in the current moment, China was deemed too unstable to produce great works of art. Neuhaus’ view of Chinese art appears to have been shared by all but a few of the most adventurous American art collectors at the time, while middle-class Americans were firmly enthralled by Japonisme, as we have seen. Japanese kimonos could be purchased and worn by well-heeled American women wishing to look and feel exotic, and Japanese aesthetic principles had long had significant impact on Western artists, including, most famously, Vincent van Gogh. 44 By contrast, as Lara Jaishree Netting observes, China was seen as deficient in painting and sculpture, the genres believed to represent the greatest Western artistic achievements. The examples of Chinese painting that were accessible to American viewers were seen by American commentators as lacking in the skilled use of perspective, the application of colour, and the depiction of light and shade customary in European paintings. (2013, p. 4)

As for other forms, China’s brilliance in stone and bronze was still largely unrecognized and there was little enthusiasm for Chinese art among major collectors in the West until the early years of the twentieth century. 44 Amsterdam’s famed Van Gogh museum created an extensive exhibition on this theme in 2018, drawing from materials owned by the artist and works he referenced that make very clear that Van Gogh developed a ‘Japanese eye’ that informed many of his later paintings. See https:// www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/van-gogh-and-japan?v=1

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Ironically, as Netting (2013) observes in her study of Chinese art in this period, 45 American art collectors would ultimately benef it from the chaos into which China would soon descend. Indeed, China’s political and economic turmoil enabled American collectors such as Charles Freer and Ernest Fenollosa to purchase treasure troves of Chinese art that formed the basis for some of America’s largest and most valuable collections, notably those of the Smithsonian Institution and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (Netting 2013, pp. 5-6). Indeed, in the wider art market, China’s internal chaos, later coupled with the association its pre-revolutionary art had with feudal values – particularly during and through the time of the Cultural Revolution – has meant that during the twentieth century the Western world has become positively awash with Chinese antiquities. 46 Perhaps Macomber, the least prone to in-depth analysis of the critics writing about the fair, was the most prescient of them all, observing that China, ‘though desirous of appearing before the world as a modern republic, has wisely brought here the most beautiful examples of her ancient art’ (1915, p. 127).

‘Underground Chinatown’ and Chinese-American Identity This chapter ends where it began, with a consideration of the central role undertaken by the Chinese community in San Francisco at this fair. As we saw with the groundbreaking of the Chinese Village in July 1914, Chinese self-representation by those who had put down roots in San Francisco assumed a different form than the China presented in the governmentsponsored exhibits. While national exhibits stressed China’s ancient culture, its exquisite, handcrafted goods, and a kind of generic exoticism exemplified by the non-functional pagoda on the national site, an emerging group of Chinese-Americans living in San Francisco, largely Cantonese-speaking people from the south, played the role of model citizens, presenting themselves as families, with mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and children, in spite of the enormous legal obstacles that made such family life in America all but impossible. 45 Netting’s study focuses largely on the work of John C. Ferguson, attached to the American Methodist Mission in Nanjing (Nanking), who was one of the early champions of Chinese art and culture. By 1912 he was buying for New York’s Metropolitan Museum, and in 1915, the year of the expo, he became an advisor to the Republican government. 46 UNESCO estimates that 1.67 million Chinese relics are in more than 200 museums across 47 countries (Meyer 2015).

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Sadly, in spite of the best efforts of the local Chinese to display themselves as a community steeped in family values, it was on the grounds of the Chinese Village in the Joy Zone entertainment area, run by local businessman Jim Wong, that ugly stereotypes were reinforced, turning the fair for many from an object of pride to one of humiliation. The stereotypes were not advanced by Wong or his associates, but rather at a subcontracted exhibition by theatre impresario Sid Grauman47 and his father David. By 1915 the father-son team were well-respected theatre entrepreneurs, having built and run numerous theatres in the city, staying on to rebuild them even after the devastating 1906 earthquake. Perhaps in part due to their commitment to the city, they were granted the sub-concession to build and operate an ‘Underground Chinatown’ exhibit in the village. Here fairgoers were invited into the dark underbelly of Chinatown and peer into sensationalistic displays featuring mannequins engaged in gambling and opium consumption. Bay Area Chinese residents were horrified, and the response in the local Chinese-language press immediate. Fernsebner translates of a description of the exhibit from an editorial that appeared in Shaonian Zhongguo (Young China), one of San Francisco’s Chinese-language newspapers, just a month into the fair’s operation: There is a display of wax f igures, including many Chinese. Some are sleeping, some are reclined, clutching opium pipes and smoking. In one wall there is a hole through which one can spy on a young white who is purchasing opium from a Chinese … There is also a display of wax figures arranged as a gambling hall … There are nine gambling tables and every kind of gambling device. (Fernsebner 2002, p. 183)

To understand why the Chinese community was enraged by such shallow stereotypes, one has to remember how ubiquitous these kinds of representations were at the time, reinforced through racist cartoons in print and through the sensational news reporting of events in Chinatown in the daily papers. William Randolph Hearst’s influential newspaper, The Examiner was firm in its opposition to relaxing laws that would permit Chinese migration into the US, and like his father, US Senator George Hearst, he believed that: They had been useful as labourers, particularly on the railroads, but this usefulness had passed and further immigration ought to be prohibited, 47 Grauman later went on to build Hollywood’s famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, a structure that might be well at home in the entertainment area of an early twentieth century World’s Fair.

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for they were unlikely to be assimilated into the white population, thus forming a separate and homogenous group out of sympathy with the majority of the people of the state. (Mugridge 1995, p. 53)

Given the care and attention the community had given to its self-representation, one steeped in family values, respect for education, and reflecting the desire and capacity to assimilate as good Americans, Underground Chinatown threatened to undo everything of value brought about through participation in the exposition, going back the grand public celebration of the groundbreaking for the Chinese Village site in July, 1914. For some, and indeed for Chinese Commissioner Chen himself, Underground Chinatown brought back unhappy memories of how the Qing government had permitted itself to be represented at the Saint Louis Exposition eleven years earlier (Hur 2012; Christ 2000). At that fair, which Chen attended and criticized, the largely foreign staff working in China’s Maritime Customs office (IMCS) created a display in the Palace of Liberal Arts which ‘featured two mannequins respectively representing a Chinese woman with bound feet and an old man with a complexion dark from opium addiction’ (Hur 2012, p. 100). It bears noting that this view of China, one where the men were enslaved to opium and women with bound feet were enslaved to men, was presented in Saint Louis not in the entertainment zone, but rather in a pavilion dedicated to scenes of daily life. It is likely that the British customs officers responsible for the exhibit had probably not given any thought to possible offence on the part of actual Chinese, believing they were giving the non-Asian, Saint Louis audience what they expected to see. And from Sid Grauman’s perspective, he may well have thought he was offering an accurate view if slightly sensationalistic view of Chinatown, merely realizing in three dimensions what many Americans, and San Franciscans in particular, had regularly seen in cartoons and read in print. It bears noting that Grauman’s famous Chinese Theatre, 48 which opened on Hollywood Boulevard in 1927, is one of the most architecturally excessive manifestations of Chinese kitsch ever created. Given this history of representation and what was at stake for the local Chinese community, the outcry against the exhibit was so immediate and strong that on March 26th, just a week after the story broke in the Chinese-language press, ‘Underground Chinatown’ was shut down by the fair’s concessions department (Fernsebner 2002, p. 186). Thereafter a 48 The Theatre has been known as the TCL Chinese Theatre since 2013.

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new contract was worked out with the sub-concession, which remained in the hands of the Graumans, and by mid-May49 the site was undergoing a facelift, presumably as it rebadged itself from ‘Underground Chinatown’ to ‘Underground Slumming.’ When the buildings on the site were sold off the following year, Sid Grauman’s concession was regarded as his responsibility to remove, suggesting that assets and lines of responsibility between his organization and the Chinese Village and Pagoda Company had been severed well before that time.50 Todd suggests that while the successor, ‘Underground Slumming,’ was a hit, other parts of the Chinese village fared poorly, noting that within just two months of closing day a spectacle called ‘Heaven and Hell’ was built within the Chinese Village grounds, doing a ‘fair business,’ (1921, p. 358) which suggests that it returned a moderate profit while many other concessions were losing money. Ironically, anyone wanting an actual Chinatown experience would have been better served by going to the real thing less than two miles from the Chinese Village. Indeed, in the fair’s own official guide, a trip to Chinatown was offered as one of San Francisco’s chief attractions, with its ‘joss houses, the Chinese theaters, bazaars, curio stores, restaurants, markets’ (PPIE 1915, p. 116). The story of Chinese-Americans seeking self-representation does not end with this fair. Indeed, twenty-four years later things were far worse, when at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair a group of Chinese-American investors sought unsuccessfully to raise funds to create a Chinese village on the site.51 On the eve of World War II, as we shall see in the next chapter, America’s long love affair with all things Japanese had not diminished, while China had no visibility and perhaps even less respect, in spite of the concerns raised by humanitarian organizations and the American Communist Party about the horrors being inflicted upon its civilian population by the Japanese. In the absence of a country pavilion or indeed any Chinese presence at the fair, organizers distributed a booklet for tourists coming to that fair directing them to Chinatown. The 96-page ‘Off icial Chinatown Guide 49 Memo from PPIE Law Department to Director of Works, 15 May 1915; Letter to Charles Moore from General Attorney, PPIE, 15 May 1915, Box 63, Folder 1, Bancroft Library Special Collections, C-A 190 50 Letter to Sid Grauman c/o Maurice H. Asher, Attorney at Law, from Director of Works, PPIE, 2 May 1916, Box 63, Folder 1, Bancroft Library Special Collections, C-A 190 51 The New York World’s Fair Commission evidently hired investigators from Dunn and Bradstreet to check out the financial health of one Wing H. Pyn (Wilbur), listed as Executive Vice-President of ‘Old China,’ the name intended for the Chinese village at the fair. It was discovered that Wing had difficulty in paying his rent on his semi-basement apartment, thus ending consideration of any proposal (NYWF Corp 1938).

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Figure 16 Chinatown Guide Book, 1939/40 New York World’s Fair

The Official Chinatown Guide Book from the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair directed patrons to the ‘real’ Chinatown in New York City. Source: New York World’s Fair 1939-1940 records. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations

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Book’52 (Figure 16), with an enthusiastic introduction by the New York fair’s President Grover Whalen, sets out a self-guided tour, the effect of which is to locate the real China, to the extent to which it exists anywhere, in New York City’s Chinatown. As in New York in 1939-1940, in 1915 Chinatown was where most of those who attended the fair derived their primary understandings of Chinese culture. The fair’s historian sets out a long list of influential international f igures who visited the PPIE that runs for pages and observes, of their sightseeing options: ‘According to opportunity and the time of the guest, the character of entertainment varied from showing him Chinatown and the Bank Exchange53 to taking him to the annual High Jinks at the Bohemian Grove54 or the Buck Barbecue at the Auburn Gun Club’ (Todd 1921, p. 234). Thus, apart from male-bonding forays outside the city, honored guests would leave San Francisco having experienced the PPIE, a splendid new building that constituted the centre of the West Coast financial world, and Chinatown. As America’s oldest Chinatown and the largest outside of Asia,55 Chinatown continues to loom large, appearing in the top ten of most of the online lists of San Francisco’s tourist attractions. In a way, nothing that overseas Chinese or San Francisco’s Chinese population could offer would endure in the way the Chinatown experience has. The long history of representation of San Francisco’s Chinatown in novels, on stage, and in film as a place of pleasure, addiction, intrigue, and secrecy, would always compete with external representations of Chinese culture, its people, and its architecture, art, and consumable items at various sites around the exposition. And it is ultimately in America’s Chinatowns, notably those of San Francisco and New York City, where Chinese-American identity was initially forged and represented to the rest of the American public.

52 ‘Official Chinatown Guide Book.’ New York World’s Fair (NYWF) Corporation. 1939k. Box 871, File PR1.12. Archives of the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair, New York Public Library. 53 The Merchant’s Exchange Building, located at 465 California Street, was where powerful, wealthy, and influential men gathered to do business and to socialize. 54 A private club, located well outside the city, in which powerful and influential men have been gathering since 1878. High Jinks is a June event, followed by an extended period in which men camp out into July. 55 Many Southeast Asian cities have large Chinatowns, among them Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Jakarta.

4

Performing Japan in the ‘World of Tomorrow’ Japan at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair

Abstract As Asia and Europe raced toward another catastrophic world war, the Japanese government engaged Nippon Kōbō, its de-facto state propaganda machine, to reinforce America’s love affair with all things Japanese at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. The temple-like national pavilion set amidst an extensive garden celebrated the strong diplomatic and trade relationship between the two countries, while highlighting the ‘softer’ and more feminine side of Japan through displays featuring attractive, kimono-clad women engaged in silk production, ikebana floral arranging, and the ubiquitous ‘tea ceremony.’ The reception given to the genderbending performing arts company, Takarazuka in May, 1939, suggests Americans were unwilling to change their perception of Japan as the land of cherry blossoms and willowy maidens. Keywords: diplomatic performance, cultural fusion, Japanese femininity

At a time when the world was once again on the verge of war, thirty-three nations came together for the 1939 New York World’s Fair at a site a mere twelve miles from Midtown Manhattan, to ‘demonstrate how tools, processes and knowledge of today can create a better World of Tomorrow.’ Like the next significant New York fair, in 1964-1965, it was established and run as a fundamentally commercial operation and was held over into a second year with the hope of recouping costs and returning a profit. Centrallypositioned in this international exchange of cultures, technologies, and ideas was Japan, America’s third-largest trading partner, with its enormous country pavilion, reputedly modelled after the famous Grand Shrine of Ise, serving as a performance space in which the complex relationship

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch04

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between the two countries was displayed and acted out. This chapter will consider how the pavilion and its exhibits, carefully stage-managed by the Japanese firm Nippon Kōbō, which by 1939 functioned as a ‘state directed propaganda organ’ (Germer 2011, pp. 4-5), as well as the performance of Japan’s Takarazuka Revue on the fairgrounds, reflected how Japan projected its culture to American fairgoers. The pavilion offered multiple sites of performance, fundamentally gendered spaces that foregrounded the charm, industriousness, and artistic skills of kimono-clad women, while the Revue sought to present another, more modern vision of Japan. Thus, the story is equally about Japanese self-representation and American reception, one made more complex by the imperial government’s tight control over content at a time when the country was being transformed into a war machine run by a de-facto military dictatorship. A distinctive set of public performances, largely dominated by men, were enacted before the press and the media at the pavilion’s opening and annual ‘Japan Day’ celebrations in 1939 and 1940, providing political elites the opportunity to perform the relationship between Japan and the US in ways that reflected well-established rhetorical tropes. A second set featured Japanese women, both as the backdrops to the public events dominated by men, and more significantly, those gendered performances within the pavilion which daily reified and projected a kind of refined, graceful and delicate femininity that the American public associated with Japan and its culture. The final category of performance, offered as entertainment for a fair audience, were those of the all-female Takarazuka Revue on the fairgrounds which coincided with the opening of the national pavilion in 1939. This gender-bending show, conservative in its core social values but radical and wildly intercultural in its expression, might well have challenged America’s then-prevailing view of Japan as the land of delicate cherry blossoms and willowy maidens. Instead, the poorly-attended performances were met with cultural shock and horror by America’s most prominent dance critic, who like most Americans at the time, failed to recognise that Japan’s most impressive achievement has long been its unique ability to turn ‘foreign’ cultural elements into products that are distinctively Japanese, and that this ability, more than any other, was at the heart of Japanese modernity. Though this chapter briefly explores how Japan’s country pavilion reflected the mobilization of culture in the service of the state and served as a tool in a larger international propaganda campaign, this inquiry largely focuses on the response of Americans to the Japanese offerings at the exposition

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and to how Japan was packaged and presented to the public by the fair’s organizers. Data is largely drawn from the archives of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair held in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, and includes official fair programmes, brochures, and press releases, texts of speeches at public events, photos, and the extensive collection of newspaper and magazine clippings assembled by the fair’s press office. In many cases, the rhetoric and descriptive tropes used in press releases and fair publications were repeated by key public figures in their public performances of diplomacy, while also replicated in newspaper and magazine accounts, revealing more about how the Americans wished to view Japan than how Japan wished itself to be viewed by Americans. Also noteworthy is how consistent the press releases issued from the official Japanese Commission – which set up and ran the country pavilion and related events – were with those issued by the New York World’s Fair Commission itself. In tone, style, and content, they projected remarkably similar views and understandings of Japanese culture and were clearly pitched and designed for American readers in the powerful newspaper market of the New York Metropolitan area. Many of the longer feature pieces were written for incorporation into articles in Sunday magazines, so-called ‘women’s pages’ in newspapers, and monthly magazines. During this era, the clever writer of press releases knew how to pitch a story and use tone to draw readers into the excitement or novelty of an event or attraction, driven by fixed and clear notions of what women would find attractive. The Japanese Commission appeared to have people on the payroll who were masters at this style of writing. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully flesh out what the political leaders in Tokyo who conceptualized Japanese involvement in the fair had in mind, it is clear that by engaging the firm of Nippon Kōbō to be largely responsible for the pavilion’s design and exhibits, the Japanese government, at a time it was shifting from constitutional monarchy into a military dictatorship, sought to present an image of Japan that was attractive the West. Nippon Kōbō was directed by German-trained photojournalist Yōnosuke Natori, who has been likened to Leni Riefenstahl for his canniness in harnessing the power of the image to support the objectives of the state (see Germer 2012; 2011, p. 19; Kargon 2015, p. 96), as well as his desire to show a Japan not reduceable to ‘Fujiyama, cherry blossoms, geisha and maiko’1 (cited in Kargon 2016, p. 6). The company’s chief cultural and propaganda tool in the West at the time was its attractive quarterly 1 Apprentice Geisha, which, because of their elaborate clothing and adornments, are often conflated with Geisha by non-Japanese.

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publication Nippon, a glossy magazine in English, French, German, and Spanish (1934-1939) that offered readers images and accompanying texts that presented Japan as a gracious, elegant country, one where tradition and modernity went hand-in-hand. The pavilion in its form, design, and content very much reflected this larger narrative, a key feature in Japanese self-representation to the West in the 1930s. This chapter will demonstrate how ultimately, Japanese-American transactions at the fair mirrored America’s socio-political blindness to a country that scarcely a year after the fair’s end would light the fuse in the American territory of Hawaii that would turn a European war into a global conflagration. Throughout it all, the visual field created in and around the pavilion, supplemented by displays of masculine diplomatic power meeting delicate femininity in the public sphere, reassured Americans that the two countries, building on a solid relationship of mutual respect, commercial trade, and shared values, would continue, against all odds, to be good friends and solid partners in maintaining peace and security in the Pacific.

Diplomatic Performances of the Love-Fest Narrative At the opening of the Japanese Pavilion on 6 May 1939, Edward J. Flynn, Commissioner General of the fair and close friend of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, expressed the then-prevailing view among those wielding political power on the national stage that, We see in Japan the miracle of an ancient nation which, in the life of a single generation, has adapted itself to the machine age. It has done this, moreover, without greatly disrupting its older social habits. The Japanese people are today what they were a hundred years ago: polite, interested, loyal, and, above all, vital and disciplined.2

Grounding his remarks in the narrative of historical progress, Flynn cited the expedition of US Naval Commodore Perry to Japan in 1853 – an instance of ‘gun-boat diplomacy’ – which led to the opening of trade relations at a time when the American continent consisted of, in his words, ‘vast areas of unsettled land.’ Comparing Japan’s progress to America’s over this same 2 Flynn, Edward. 1939. Public Address released on 6 May. Typed manuscript. Box 2129, Archives of the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair (NYWF), Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library. Hereafter all references to will be shortened to ‘Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.’

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period of less than a century, he observed that, ‘… it seems to me that it is easier to make a new beginning as we did than to undertake a complete realignment of an existing society as you have succeeded in doing.’ Flynn’s comments reflect the key tropes in what had emerged as a kind of love-fest narrative by this time: That Japan had married the traditional with the industrial age and that the national character traits of discipline and polite behaviour made them a model of a stable, industrialized Asian nation in an uncertain world, providing much-needed ballast in an unstable region. Japan was viewed as the perfect Asian other, a reverse imprint of the US, a nation just as ambitious and forward-looking, while its people had earned the right to the dominant position in its sphere of influence, Asia, paralleling the leading role undertaken by the US in North America after the articulation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823.3 Japan’s annexation of Manchuria in 1931 was by 1939 no longer of special concern to American politicians, any more than its other de-facto colonies, which by then included Formosa, Okinawa, and Korea. When the League of Nations was established in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson envisioned it as offering an ‘alternative for the new rules of Asia’s international relations: an end to secret deals at others’ expense and respect above all for the right of all peoples to determine for themselves their political systems free from foreigners’ interference’ (Barnhard 1995, p. 47). But by the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt became US president in 1933, Japan’s ascendency in the Asia-Pacific region, tried and tested in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars after having exited the League of Nations (1933), was accepted by most American policymakers as the new normal. At the country pavilion launch on the fair’s site in May, 1939, Kaname Wakasugi, the Japanese Consul General in New York, proclaimed the ‘spirit of friendship and cooperation’ between the two nations, and spoke of Japan’s ‘wish to show the American people, and particularly the people of New York, how deeply we appreciate and how grateful we feel for all that you, the American people, have done for the building of a modern Japan.’4 Recalling the contributions of fellow New Yorker Townsend Harris, who, as the first American Consul General to Japan in 1856 famously waited for eighteen months after his arrival in the country before being granted an 3 Set out by US President James Monroe, the doctrine affirmed the rights of the nations in the Americas to remain outside the sphere of European colonial influence, while indirectly advancing the US as the leading power in the region. 4 Wakasugi Kaname. 1939. Public Address, released on 6 May. Typed manuscript. Box 2129. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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audience with the Shogun to deliver a letter from President Pierce, Wakasugi credited him with having ‘laid the foundation of our friendly and commercial relations.’ This invocation of America’s key role in ‘opening up’ Japan was a key trope in the rhetoric of Japanese diplomats of the time. Earlier, at the October 1938 pavilion dedication, the words of Japanese Ambassador, Hiroshi Saito5 were similarly crafted, citing the shared history going back to US Naval Commodore Perry, while observing of the two nations, ‘that there is little difference between us,’ adding that: There is no deeper bond of international friendship than that which exists between the United States and Japan. Founded upon a recognition of spiritual kinship, and a mutual respect, it has continued since the days of Commodore Perry, and from all indications, will flow peacefully into the chapter of the distant future. It is a union which today could be studied profitably by other nations of the world.6

Three strands of rhetoric emerge from the language used by diplomats of the time: America’s deep respect for the ways in which Japan has maintained its ancient culture and traditions in the modern world; Japan’s expression of gratitude to the US for participating in the process of the country’s modernization; the proclamation and repetition of the natural, deep, historical friendship between the two nations. The general shape of this rhetoric continued among the political elite until the time the fair closed in October 1940, even though over a year earlier in July 1939, the US government notified Japan that it was suspending its treaty of commerce and navigation, the first step toward the complete suspension of trade between the two nations.

The Japanese Pavilion and the Feminine Face of Japan The Japan pavilion and adjoining spaces on the fairgrounds provided the physical setting in which the exchanges between the two nations and cultures took place, and it is here where the gendered performances of male diplomacy and feminine grace frequently overlapped. Japan largely defined how Asia was represented at this fair. While China had a significant presence 5 Absent due to declining health, Saito’s speech was read by Wakasugi. 6 Saito Hiroshi. 1938. Address of 18 October. Typed Manuscript. Box 315. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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at the 1934/34 ‘Century of Progress’ International Exposition in Chicago, by 1939 it was facing internal turmoil and unable to offer its own pavilion, leaving Japan as the only Asian nation with a dedicated country pavilion. And Japan’s pavilion was both magnificent and well-placed. Situated along Congress Street just a stone’s throw from the centrally-situated Hall of Nations where official state events were staged, the temple-like structure in white stucco with red and gold accents was modelled on one of the country’s most sacred Shinto edifices, the Ise-Jingū Shrine, constructed in the Shinmei style dating back to the fourth century B.C. (Figure 17). The fair corporation’s press release, which would have been widely circulated, praised it for blending the modern with the classical: ‘Though of ancient design the pavilion will harmonize with the spirit and form of modern Japanese architecture,’ adding, ‘Simplicity of line marks the structure, somewhat resembling the early Greek classic temples.’7 The official pavilion brochure, created by the Japanese Commission, also drew out this connection with Greek classicism, observing that the building is ‘designed to produce a spiritual effect akin to that awakened by the classic temples of ancient Greece.’8 Nippon Kōbō was responsible for the pavilion, with the building’s design credited to Hideto Kishida while most probably largely realized by Yasuo Matsui9 (Kargon 2015, p. 94), a Japanese-born architect with a long history of significant work in New York City, who also served as one of the chief architects for 40 Wall Street,10 the city’s tallest building when it opened in 1930. Greece however was probably far from the thinking of Nippon Kōbō or architect Matsui, ‘a Japanese interpreter of European modernism’ (Kargon 2015, p. 95), and was probably invoked in the brochure to link Japan’s architectural achievements with those of ancient Greece in the minds of the reader. Indeed, both photos and architectural renderings of the building suggest that though following from the form and lines of a structure such as the Ise-Jingū Shrine, with 7 Press Release #472, n.d. Box 315. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF. 8 Japanese Commission. Official Brochure of the Japan Pavilion. Courtesy of Bob Catania. http://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/worlds_fair/wf_tour/Zone-1/japan_booklet/japan_booklet. aspx 9 In the description of the building produced by the Department of Feature Publicity, Jiro Honda and Matsuii Yisuo (sic) are identified as the principal architects (NYWF Corporation. Typed Manuscript. Box 1885. Department of Feature Publicity. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF). The official brochure (cited above) credits S. Utida and Y. Matsui. It seems likely that S. Utida is a misspelling. Given Kishida’s prominence as an architectural theorist and Professor at the University of Tokyo, it seems likely that Kargon is correct in his view that he undertook a leading role. The New York Times, overlooking what was probably Kishida’s overarching guidance of the project, identifies only Matsui as the architect (Gray 2012). 10 Now known as the ‘Trump Building.’

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Figure 17 Rendering of the Japanese Pavilion

Rendering of the Japanese Pavilion at the fair, modelled on the Ise-Jingū Shrine and likened to classical Greek temples in the pavilion brochure. Source: New York World’s Fair 1939-1940 records. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations11

its white stucco-clad exterior it was not a facsimile of an ancient temple, either Shinto or Buddhist.11 Half of the large 50,000 square foot site was given over to the iconic Japanese garden, created by well-known Japanese landscape designers Tsuyoshi Tamura and Nagao Sakurai purportedly offering an ‘interpretive representation of the mountains, forests, lowlands and streams in the vicinity of the Grand Shrine of Ise.’12 The pavilion, with its sweeping, upward thrusting roofline, had a commanding presence at an exposition largely dominated by modernist structures, and featured three chambers: The ‘Grand Hall,’ displaying Japan’s cultural and industrial products; the ‘Diplomatic Hall,’ 11 Hereafter this source will be shortened to NYWF 1939-1940 records, Manuscripts and Archives Div., NY Public Library. 12 Japanese Pavilion Brochure, 1939 New York World’s Fair, NY: Japanese Commission to the NYWF, p.7. Courtesy of Bob Catania. Downloadable at: http://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/ worlds_fair/wf_tour/zone-1/japan_booklet/japan_booklet.aspx

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which set out the historic relationship between the two countries; and a ‘Silk Exhibit,’ which was given over to activities undertaken by women. The objects on display in the first hall, observed Fair corporation President Grover Whalen, showed the ‘splendid promise of the creative genius and the products of the Japanese people bring to the World of Tomorrow,’13 underscoring the importance of the trade ties between the two nations. The ‘Hall of Diplomacy,’ to the left of the central hall, featured murals and exhibits that represented, according to Consul Wakasugi, ‘the friendly and commercial relations between the United States and Japan, not only of yesterday but also of tomorrow,’ (Wakasugi 1939). One of the room’s highlights, which somewhat improbably blended consumer culture with art and diplomacy was a pearl-incrusted, miniaturized version of America’s iconic Liberty Bell, a symbol of American independence, presented by the Mikimoto Pearl company (Figure 18). By 1939 the company was known as the world’s leading manufacturer of cultivated pearls, a process perfected by the company’s founder, Kokichi Mikimoto. The company issued a brochure, presumably made available inside the hall to visitors, that offered up their exquisite miniature of the bell as a tribute to the World’s Fair,’ while simultaneously promoting the company jewellery line.14 Much was made of its seemingly inestimable worth 15 and fair President Whalen himself plugged it as one the pavilion’s highlights, claiming to have overheard a conversation between two women in which one of them, ‘after a breathless pause before the priceless, pearl-studded object remark, “Well, I’ll just tell you, we haven’t got anything like that in this country.”’16 The third hall, given over to the production of silk and demonstrations of traditional ikebana flower arranging and the famed tea ceremony or ‘cha-no-yu,’17 was largely the province of kimono-clad Japanese women. Both the Japanese Commission and the fair’s press office routinely crafted press releases using language appealing to the editors of the ‘women’s pages’ in newspapers, hoping to attract the so-called ‘fairer sex’ to the pavilion. One 13 Whalen, Grover. Public Address released on 6 May 1939. Typed manuscript. Box 2129. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF. 14 Mikimoto Inc. (1939) ‘Mikimoto Pearls Take the Limelight at the New York World’s Fair’ Brochure. Box 315, P0.3 File 2 of 2. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF 15 A World’s Fair Corporation press release dated April 28, 1939 estimated its worth at one million dollars. The New York Times on May 7, 1939 reported that it contained 11,600 cultured pearls, 366 diamonds and twenty-seven pounds of silver. 16 Whalen, Grover. Public Address released on 6 May 1939. Typed manuscript. Box 2129. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF 17 NYWF Corp. Press Release #209, 4 May 1939. Box 315. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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Figure 18 Mikimoto Pearls brochure

The brochure issued by Mikimoto Pearls accompanying the miniature reproduction of America’s iconic Liberty Bell, is set out as a ‘tribute to the New York World’s Fair.’ Source: NYWF 1939-1940 records, Manuscripts and Archives Div., NY Public Library

such press release suggested that ladies would be particularly attracted to the Formosa Tea Terrace overlooking the Japanese garden, described as ‘a quiet sanctuary of green shrubbery and rippling stream,’ where they could enjoy drinking tea under a ‘shady verandah’ or in a ‘cool quiet room.’18 In this gentle space, another press release enthused, ‘15 kimonoed waitresses will serve Formosa’s famous oolong tea to guests,’19 presumably offering an authentic Japanese experience, complete with tea from a Japanese colony. A third press release, in a similar tone, claims the hall features ‘one of Japan’s contributions to world culture, the artistic and interpretive arrangement of flower and blossoms that exemplifies gracefulness, dexterity, as well as a consciousness of beauty.’20 The proliferation of press releases extolling the graceful, feminine side of Japanese culture builds on a long history of cultural exoticism, and seems to have worked its magic on the press; a search through the extensive file of fair press clippings during its first month of operation, May, 1939, revealed that Japanese women, typically wearing 18 Ibid. 19 NYWF Corp. Press Release #219, 28 April 1939. Box 315. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF. 20 NYWF Corp. Press Release #203, 3 June 1939. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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kimono, where the single most photographed group appearing on the pages of the newspapers in the New York metropolitan region in fair-related articles. Perhaps the most brazen manipulation of public opinion by the fair’s press office was in how it created and focused a narrative around the public performances of the silk-spinning, kimono-clad women before they took up residence in the pavilion as a kind of living ethnographic exhibit. In the days prior to their arrival, press releases spun a narrative of oriental exoticism, creating the impression that New Yorkers were awaiting the arrival of the pavilion’s lovely leading ladies with bated breath. The pavilion’s official hostess, Miss Kayako Fukuhara, reportedly in possession of a royal pedigree, was to be joined inside the ‘temple-like interior’ of the pavilion by Miss Toshi Sato and Miss Masaka Iida to ‘operate reeling machines and weave raw silk from the fibres of silkworm cocoons.’21 The latter two were selected from ‘the 47,000 girls employed by the Japanese silk industry,’ while one of these ‘chic Nipponese beauties,’ Miss Sato, was reported as having been ‘born and educated in Los Angeles,’ though still considered Japanese.22 A photo from the New York Evening Journal a few weeks after their arrival shows Iida along with two other young women in kimono on their knees in a suppliant position, hands cupped as if praying, bearing the caption, ‘These little Japanese Misses get a “scoop” in the Japanese Garden at the Fair – in fact, they are shown here getting three scoops of water in their fair hands.’23 The image and its interpretation are reminiscent of the depiction of Japanese maids in Gilbert and Sullivan’s popular 1885 operetta The Mikado; the women are beautiful, graceful and compliant, modest in their bodily needs, while their delicacy and whiteness is foregrounded. Here we see a narrative generated around the feminine side of Japan consistently reflected both in the fair’s own press releases as well as in newspaper accounts, many of which parroted back virtually the same language. Perhaps tellingly, in this instance the Japanese Commission for the fair, which included both Japanese officials and prominent Japanese residents in the US, under the watchful eye of Nippon Kōbō, took a slightly different approach to the same story. While their press release on Miss Fukuhara’s impending arrival also acknowledged her royal pedigree, it also set out the young woman’s cross-cultural competencies while grounding them in a narrative of modernity: 21 NYWF Corp. Press Release #219, 28 April 1939. Box 315. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF. 22 Ibid. 23 ‘Mirror’s Fair Fete to Offer 6,000 Dancers,’ New York Evening Journal, 7 May 1939, NYWF Corp. Box 1893, Folder 1939, May, #16, Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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Thoroughly western in appearance, Miss Kayako Fukuhara, daughter of Baron Toshimaru Fukuhara, a member of the Japanese House of Peers, will act as hostess of the World’s Fair Japanese Pavilion. A classic type of Japanese beauty, Miss Fukuhara speaks English fluently and is a student of American manners. She is now speeding across the continent and will arrive at the Fair before the opening of the Pavilion on Sunday.24

Noteworthy is that the language links tradition (‘a classic type of beauty’) with modernity (her fluency in English, the modern mode of her conveyance), providing a more balanced narrative than that offered by the official press office, which focused entirely on feminine charms. This more nuanced description of Miss Fukuhara, consistent with the ways Nippon Kōbō represented Japanese culture in their management of exhibitions in Germany and the US in 1938 and 1939 (Kargon 2015; Germer 2011), is reflected in the content and tone of their flagship magazine Nippon. Natori, who by 1939 was receiving direct funding for this publishing project from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the military (cited in Germer 2011, p. 7), sought to build upon the stereotypes the West had of Japan while redirecting attention. As Andrea Germer observes: Rather than deconstruction the stereotypes of ‘oriental’ Japan, NIPPON reconfirmed other established tropes such as its unique family system, the high value of tradition and the unbroken line of emperors, and simply added another technically advanced and modern image to it (2011, p. 6)

What is remarkable then, is how consistently Nippon Kōbō, which had a significant hand in shaping Japan’s self-representation in New York and which by 1939 was essentially a propaganda arm of Japan’s military government, sought to generate a view of Japan as powerful, technologically adept, but built on traditional values and cultural uniqueness, the last two being the qualities the West had long associated with Japan. The work of Germer (2011, 2012) and Kargon (2015) suggests that this more complete view of Japan was well understood by and embraced in fascist Germany, where they saw not tradition wrapped in gentle gracefulness, but a powerful modern industrial machine built on a proud, ancient culture in possession of a highly disciplined population with a strong social structure – in other words, the Asian mirror of what they imagined themselves to be, ultimately making Japan the perfect fascist ally in the Asian region. 24 NYWF Corp. Press Release #215, 26 April 1939. Box 315. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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Japan Day, 1939 and 1940 International expositions have long featured ‘national days’ in which individual countries are recognized and feted in a day-long programme, typically featuring speeches by diplomats and dignitaries, special events, and cultural performances. Japan Day 1939 and 1940, though largely given over to men celebrating the historical, political, and trade relationships between the two countries, was moderated and framed by the performances of women, a pattern we will see again with the Philippines at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair. In both 1939 and 1940, the day’s public proceedings culminated at the ‘Court of Peace,’ a vast outdoor space anchoring the end of the fair’s central spine, which extended in a straight line from the main gate, past the iconic needle-shaped perisphere, the fair’s symbol, and down a vast open mall which included an enormous lagoon which served as a dramatic backdrop for major public events. Quite dramatically, it was here on 2 June 1939, where the so-called ‘flame of friendship’ was presented to Fair corporation President Grover Whalen, by Miss Akiko Tsukimoto, referred to as ‘Miss Japan’25 and described in the New York Times as ‘a pretty black-haired Japanese girl in a brightly coloured kimono’ (Porter 1939). The photo accompanying the article (Figure 19) shows Tsukimoto in an elaborate kimono bearing a large, heavily ornamented torch, bowing deeply from the waist before three men: Whalen, Japanese Ambassador Horinouchi, New York Mayor La Guardia, and Consul General Wakasugi. Of the three, only the ever-dapper Whalen, flashing a large, toothy grin, bends from the waist to meet Tsukimoto almost equally, apparently unaware that such a deep bow constitutes a breach of protocol.26 Japanese Ambassador Horinouchi is ramrod stiff, standing as at attention in a military line, gazing without expression beyond Tsukimoto. La Guardia, who at that very ceremony would be one of the first prominent elected officials in America to speak out against Japan’s conduct in Asia, appears mildly bemused, with his weight on his back-right leg, as if about to take a step away from the suppliant beauty. 25 Tsukimoto was not in fact formally a ‘Miss Japan,’ but was given this title in official fair press releases and internal documents. This designation was subsequently attached to her name in virtually all press accounts of her activities. David J. Cope, an amateur historian responsible for the content on the comprehensive 1939 New York World’s Fair website, claims that Tsukimoto was a Canadian-born Christian living in Japan. See http://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/worlds_fair/ wf_tour/zone-1/Japan_Article.htm. If true, the fair’s Japanese Commission may well have chosen her precisely for her cross-cultural capabilities. 26 As Horsely and Buckley observe, ‘In business, custom requires different depths of bowing for different circumstances: the general rule is 15 per cent for greeting, 30 per cent for leave-taking, and 45 per cent when making an apology’ (1990, p. 230)

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Figure 19 Flame of Friendship at World’s Fair

From New York Times, 3 June 1939, on the occasion of Japan Day at the fair. Caption: Flame of Friendship Delivered at World’s Fair. Miss Akiko Tsukimoto as ‘Miss Japan’ presenting symbol to Grover Whalen at yesterday’s ceremony on the exposition grounds. Standing with Mr. Whalen are Kensuke Horinouchi, Japanese Ambassador to the United States, Mayor La Guardia and Consul General Kaname Wakasugi.

The provenance of the flame was as impressive as the so-called ‘Miss Japan’s’ kimono. Lit a month earlier from a flame at the sacred Shinto temple of Izumo, it was reportedly carried across the ocean by Tsukimoto herself27 though it arrived with her in New York somewhat inexplicably, by airplane. Whalen, the former of New York Police Commissioner who in his later years became so identified with the public face of the city that he became known as ‘Mr. New York,’ accepted the flame with characteristic grace and charm, proclaiming that, ‘Many other flames of friendship may be lighted from it’ (Porter 1939). In his accompanying speech, he spoke of how the ceremonies of that day were ‘particularly pleasant’ in that ‘they bring us 27 Wakasugi, Kaname. Public Address, released on 6 May 1939. Typed manuscript. Box 2129. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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the company of members of the fairer (and frequently most influential) sex, which all too rarely is represented at this type of official function.’28 Placing women centre stage, he spoke to ‘our utter dependence upon the wisdom and influence of woman,’ suggesting that, ‘As we seek to cultivate international understanding and friendship, let us take women more and more into our official circles and discussions.’29 While women were much in evidence throughout the day’s proceedings, with ‘Miss Japan’ having been met at fair’s gates and accompanied across the fair grounds to the Court of Peace by ‘twenty girls in kimono’ as part of a procession,30 there is no evidence that Whalen’s thought bubble was acted upon. Indeed, of the fifty-six distinguished guests invited to the luncheon immediately preceding this event, most of the twenty-two women in attendance were wives of influential business leaders or high-ranking diplomats or military officers.31 A full day of events celebrating the relationship between the two countries32 officially began at 11:15am when Japanese Ambassador Horinouchi and his entourage received a nineteen-gun salute on arriving at the fair’s gate. In his public address, the Ambassador used the opportunity to speak to the ‘time-honored bond of good-will and cooperation between America and Japan,’ grounding the relationship in the oft-repeated historical narrative of Perry opening Japan up and proclaiming that with respect to JapaneseAmerican relations: ‘There shall be a perfect, permanent and universal peace, and a sincere and cordial amity’ (Porter 1939). Yet like the crack in the famed Liberty Bell reproduced in the Japanese pavilion, the rhetoric of the next two speakers suggested that cracks in the love-fest narrative were beginning to form. Baron Ino Dan, a member of the Japanese Commission to the Fair, spoke to Japan’s lead in creating ‘a new civilization based on the harmonizing of the East and the West,’ adding somewhat ominously that this ‘world of tomorrow as the Japanese conceive it’ required the continuation of friendly relations between the two nations ‘at any cost’ (Porter 1939). Mayor La Guardia, departing from the prevailing diplomatic narrative, urged Japan 28 Whaler, Grover, Public address on occasion of Japan Day, 2 June 1939. Typed manuscript. Box 2129. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF. 29 Ibid. 30 ‘Japan Day’ Schedule, 2 June. Typed Manuscript. Box 695, Folder P4.0. Japan Day 1939, Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF. 31 One of the few exceptions is Lady Edith Bouvier Beale, considered one of the great beauties of her generation and later famous as the first cousin to Jacqueline Kennedy. From ‘Japan Day’ Program, 2 June 1939. Box 695, Folder P4.0, Japan Day. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF. 32 The complete schedule of the event for internal circulation set out activities commencing at 8:30am and ending at 5pm. See Box 695, Folder P4.0, Japan Day. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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to be ‘more considerate and kindly toward surrounding weaker nations,’ and without mentioning China by name, pointedly observed, ‘One cannot be happy unless one’s neighbors are happy. We want you to be the friend of our friends, and we want to be the friend of your friends’ (Porter 1939). After this exchange, a ‘score of kimono-clad Japanese girls’ accompanied Tsukimoto, the Ambassador, and Whalen with the torch to the Japanese Pavilion where it was placed in a container to burn throughout the duration of the fair. By the time Japan Day 1940 came around, relations between the two nations had worsened considerably, something diplomats and political leaders present at the formal ceremony at the Court of Peace marking Japan Day found difficult to ignore. Mayor La Guardia did not attend and instead met with the Japanese delegation behind closed doors from his office at the Arrowhead Country Club, while Whalen recruited the fiercely isolationist New York Congressman Hamilton Fish III to speak at the public event. Fish invoked the Monroe Doctrine, drawing a parallel between the pre-eminent role of the US with respect to the Americas, and Japan’s rightful role in the Asia-Pacific: Japan today has announced its form of a Monroe Doctrine for the Orient. I have no time to analyze this announcement but I believe it may become one of the most important state papers in history. Since we have adopted this policy toward our western hemisphere I do not see how we can object to Japan acting similarly in the Far East. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.33

Though Fish dropped his isolationist stance immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, what is noteworthy here is that even as Japan was by mid1940 behaving like fascist Germany in its appropriation of foreign lands, the nation was still seen, even by a staunch isolationist, as having ‘civilising mission’ akin to that of the US in its geopolitical sphere of influence.

Performing Japan: Silk-Spinning Maidens and the Takarazuka Revue While politicians and diplomats were walking an increasingly narrow tight-rope in public, performances of productive labour were enacted 33 News Release #1475, 29 June 1940. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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out daily inside the Japanese pavilion by pretty, elegant, silk-weaving women. The ‘Silk Room’ was billed as offering visitors ‘the actual story of silk step by step,’ with demonstrations performed eight times each day at regular intervals. ‘Attired in native costume,’ ‘two Japanese misses,’ Miss Sato and Miss Iida, selected cocoons fit for silk production, boiled them until they started to separate, unrolled the fibres from the cocoons, then spun them on machines, turning them into thread. Couples, families, and small groups were encouraged to participate in a tea ceremony, held in the pavilion’s Formosa Tea House and overlooking the garden, where they could partake an event characterized as ‘elaborate’ and full of ‘religious symbolism.’34 A photo appearing shortly after the fair opened in the popular daily, The New York Post (Figure 20), showed Miss Haru Higa, a Honoluluborn ‘Japanese charmer,’ clad in an finely patterned kimono with a large ornamental flower in her hair, seated in front of a typewriter, ‘writing out the day’s menu’ for the tea house. The caption notes that Miss Higa is ‘going to NYU to study American culture,’ (Beckett 1939) following the tradition-meets-modernity narrative promoted by Nippon Kōbō. Henry Beckett, the journalist who wrote the story, was so overwhelmed by the exhibits inside the pavilion, particularly by its performative dimension, the he was compelled to observe: Altogether the Japanese exhibits are a revelation of how the Japanese would like us to think of them and what they take to be Japan’s appeal to us. Writing as one American I declare their judgment sound. I want to think of the Japanese as a clean, neat, mannered people, with an eye for cherry blossoms, willows by a stream and dainty girls with fans35 .

Beckett’s observations encapsulate the then-prevailing American view of Japan, and also point to how difficult it was for many politicians, policymakers, and captains of industry to take a public stand against Japanese aggression in the Asia-Pacific. An influential journalist for the New York Post from 1924-68, Beckett was not alone in wanting to maintain this view of an artistically pure Japan, one uncorrupted by Western influences. Even though some Americans may have recognized, like the journalist, that they were being manipulated with an image of Japan through the pavilion experience that reinforced what they wanted to believe, that need to believe in an exotic 34 Ibid. 35 Beckett, Henry. ‘Japan’s Fair Pavilion, A Shinto Shrine, An Appeal to Win Goodwill of the World,’ New York Post, 22 May 1939. Box 1892. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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Figure 20 Haru Higa at the World’s Fair

Photo accompanying feature story on Japanese Pavilion in New York Post, 22 May 1939. Caption: ‘Haru Higa, Honolulu-Born, at the World’s Fair. This Japanese charmer is shown on the terrace of the Japanese pavilion at the fair, writing out the day’s menu for the restaurant there. She’s going to NYU to study American culture.’

land of cherry blossoms, willowy maidens, and clean, neat, well-mannered people was so great that it would for another two and a half years largely cancel out any information that might intrude upon that happy fantasy. The performances of Japan’s Takarazuka Revue, which came to the fair in May 1939 following a 1938-39 European tour and a stint at San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition,36 were to have offered an alternative view of Japan, showing a country ‘capable of producing advanced cultural products on par with those of western nations’ (Park 2011, p. 18) through the presentation of a hybrid art form. While the Japan Commission for the New York World’s Fair and the pavilion team led by Nippon Kōbō followed 36 San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition opened on 18 February 1939, well before the New York exposition, which opened on 30 April 1939. Both ran for two years, closing in 1940.

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the directives of the Japanese government, Takarazuka was even more closely aligned with the government’s strategy in which ‘[o]verseas cultural promotion became one aspect of an aggressive foreign policy to persuade the west to acknowledge Japan’s self-appointed role as a leader in Asia’ (Park 2011, p. 18). The tours were an extension of a public-private partnership between the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the powerful Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai (KBS), or Society for International Cultural Relations, and the Takarazuka company itself. Founded in 1913 by Japanese railroad tycoon Kobayashi Ichizō37 to attract patrons to take his rail line to the hot springs resort of Takarazuka near Osaka, by 1939 the Revue was a Japanese institution. The company had the distinction of employing exclusively female performers and training them to play male and female role types based on their physical features and vocal range. Takarazuka offered a reverse imprint of the gendered practices of the popular form Kabuki, in which men traditionally played all roles regardless of character’s gender and where the spectator receives an idealized view of women, one created by and largely for the male gaze. Unlike male Kabuki characters who range from the hyper-masculine warrior to the earnest young man-about-town, the men in Takarazuka plays, enacted by women, were generally prettier, softer, and more delicate than hetero-normative males, appealing to a fan base in Japan that remains predominantly female to this day. Much of its popularity has in fact been due to the dramatic creation and enactment of a kind of empathetic, feeling, emotionally well-rounded man that many women have difficulty finding in Japanese society (Robertson 1998, p. 17). One might see the beautiful, feminized young men featured in Japanese manga today as inheritors of this tradition.38 Yet when it was exported to New York as one of the featured performances at the exposition, the gender-bending elements were played down and it was the femininity of the women that the press foregrounded. One journalist called it ‘a Japanese edition of the Ziegfeld Follies,’39 while another wrote 37 During wartime, Kobayashi Ichizō, magnate of the Hankyū railway and department store chain, served as Minister of Commerce and Industry (1940-41) and Minister of State (1945-46) (Robertson 1998, p. 4). 38 In her study on Takarazuka and cultural nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s, Park Sang Mi (2015) observes that, ‘a good topic for future research would be the Takarazuka Revue’s political role in the last few decades, as well as how Japan’s exportation of other forms of popular entertainment, such as anime, digital games, cute items, and otaku cultural codes, is both supportive and subversive of Japan’s re-branding as a cultural state’ (p. 372). 39 New York Evening Journal. ‘Fair to Present Tokio Edition of “Follies,”’ 12 May 1939. Box 1893. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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sensationally of the spectacle the women created when they arrived in New York by train: ‘Forty little maids from Japan, 16 to 20 in age, in bright green and red kimonos, halted admiring commuters in Grand Central today as they went gracefully up the ramp en route to the World’s Fair.’40 The language used highlights the women’s delicacy, their exquisiteness, their exotic and colourful attire, and their grace, as they literally stop traffic while gliding through one of the world’s busiest train stations. The accompanying photo of the show’s six kimonoed ‘stars’ plays on the lyrics of the song, ‘Three Little Maids from School Are We’ from the Mikado, introducing them to readers with the caption, ‘Six little maids are they.’ Unlike standard ‘advance pieces’ in newspapers that typically focus on the upcoming show’s content, the article instead drew attention to the girls’ rice-eating habits quipping, ‘if someone will only bring them enough rice they will be eternally grateful.’ This comment was evidently prompted by remarks of Miss Kayo Kitano, an English-speaking member of the troupe, who when interviewed noted that, ‘It is very difficult to get Japanese food in America.’ Kitano also revealed that they had travelled from Chicago to New York by bus and had changed out of their ‘American clothes’ in order ‘to preserve the character of their troupe’ upon arriving at Grand Central Station. In press accounts as well as internal fair documents, non-kimonoed attire was consistently referred to as ‘American clothes,’ as if the only form of clothing for women in Japan was the kimono and all Western clothing styles were by definition American. That Takarazuka girls were well-versed in American popular culture was signalled by one of performers, 18-year-old Sayo Hukuke, who through an interpreter revealed that her favourite Hollywood actors were Myrna Loy and Fred Astaire. This revelation, coming as it did through a translator, may also point to how carefully stage-managed the young women’s public utterances were as they toured the world. Park’s research into the cultural politics of Takarazuka’s wartime tours uncovered a secret communication between Sakai Yoneo, then the US correspondent for the Japanese-language newspaper Asahi, and troupe founder Kobayashi which suggests that these young women routinely spoke from a master script, one that most likely governed all aspects of the offstage public performances of these young women while in America:

40 New York World Telegram. ‘40 ‘Rockettes of Japan’ Stop Grand Central Traffic: Troupe in Bright Kimonos Arrives to Entertain at World’s Fair,’ 19 May 1939, p. 8. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF, Box 1892.

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You absolutely must not mention the Sino-Japanese problem … You must praise American women. When taking pictures, you absolutely must smile brightly … You must behave elegantly, and do not mention the name of the actors involved in the anti-Japanese boycott when [you are] asked your favourite [American] movie stars. The list of [those actors] has already been sent to the Foreign Ministry. (qtd in Park 2011, p. 30)

As we have seen, Japanese women within the pavilion, in public spaces, and at official events, all conducted themselves in ways that largely follow this playbook. The complicity of press correspondent Sakai, who found himself in a relocation camp during the war along with other Japanese-born American residents, 41 points to how deeply interwoven the public/private networks governing Japanese self-representation were at this sensitive moment in the history of the relations between the two countries. In a kind of footnote to the press account of the kimono-clad women passing through Grand Central Station, one reporter noted that about twelve men accompanied the women, quipping, ‘The commuters didn’t pay much attention to them.’42 The events of the next two years leading up to Pearl Harbor would suggest it was a mistake to ignore Japanese men; besotted by the feminine beauty of Japan expressed by these graceful beauties, Japanese men were either invisible to most Americans, or even into the early years of the war, not seen as manly enough to withstand the rigours of warfare. 43 The Takarazuka Revue show, originally scheduled for a two-week run, opened for a reduced eight-day run on 21 May 1939 on the fairgrounds in the Hall of Music Theatre, a relatively expensive venue where tickets cost $2.80 at a time when other fair shows cost 10 to 45 cents (Park 2011, pp. 32-33). Billed as the Cherry Blossom Ballet, the programme for the two-hour ‘Grand Cherry Show’ consisted of a series of acts rather than a coherent single dramatic work. The featured presentation was a 16-part dance featuring segments 41 Born in 1900, Sakai came to the US in 1926, and following internment in a relocation centre during the war, he lived out the rest of his life in the US. His papers are at UCLA. See http://www. oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ft2h4n99sv/ 42 New York World Telegram, 19 May 1940, p. 8. While men have for brief periods of the company’s history appeared onstage with women, most famously from 1945-47, this practice never lasted long as it was not popular with audiences. It is unclear what function the men travelling with the company mentioned here undertook. 43 Indeed, the famously rapid fall of Singapore in February 1942 occurred largely because it never occurred to the British that Japanese men had the strength and fortitude to hack their way through the tropical jungle and ply the dirt roads of Peninsular Malaysia by bicycle, entering Singapore through the back door. Famously, Singapore’s gun emplacements only pointed outward, toward the open sea.

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with evocative titles such as ‘At the Riverside,’ ‘At the Most Famous Temple of Japan,’ and ‘Ancient Martial Frolic, ‘Harvest Dance,’ and the finale, ‘Cherry Festival.’44 Rounding out the programme were four shorter numbers, two of which featured only two actors in skits entitled, ‘Demon and Knight’ and ‘They Fooled the Boss.’ One reviewer interpreted the programme as akin to ‘the American revue tradition,’ describing how dancing took place against a ‘Nipponese background,’ variously depicting ‘a geisha mourning her departed lover,’ a ‘gay fisherman’s dance,’ and ‘a delightfully native treatment of the Madame Butterfly theme, with the fluttering prop birds visibly operated.’45 Audiences reading the show’s advance press would have received mixed messages, with one article suggesting that it was ‘similar to Radio City’s Rockettes,’ and would feature ‘ancient Japanese dances, drama and folk music,’ but with ‘rich costumes and the latest Japanese settings and lighting effects.’46 How ‘ancient Japanese dances’ might be transformed into a Rockettes-style show – one that features attractive, leggy women in spectacular costumes – is perhaps best left to the reader’s imagination. What seems clear however is that the press had little or no frame of reference for what was to be presented, as Takarazuka was offering a uniquely Japanese fusion performance form without parallel in the West. Only one reviewer, Irving Kolodin 47 of the New York Sun, seemed to understand what was being represented on stage, observing that the show demonstrated how ‘Occidental stagecraft has made a deep impression on the Oriental mind, that the classical art of Japan has been shrewdly mated with the theatrical resources of the West.’ In his account of the performance, 48 he clearly distinguishes between the features of the American revue and the show’s uniquely Japanese elements, such as the use of traditional instruments or the practice of having some company members sing while others ‘mimed and danced the texts.’ Yet ultimately, he retained a preference for the ‘traditional dances of the temple,’ citing the so-called ‘ballet’ number 44 Park’s 2011 article includes a reproduction of the original program from the 1939 US performances (p. 33). 45 Kolodin, Irving. 1939. ‘Japanese Ballet at Fair,’ New York Sun, 22 May 1939. Box 1892. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF. 46 New York Evening Journal. ‘Mirror’s Fair Fete to Offer 6,000 Dancers.’ 7 May 1939. Box 1893. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF. 47 Like many of the reviewers and reporters that covered Japan at the fair, Kolodin had a long and distinguished career in journalism. One of the most influential music critics of his generation, his New York Times obituary is at: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/30/obituaries/ irving-kolodin-music-critic-dies-historian-of-met-opera-was.html 48 Kolodin, Irving. 1939. ‘Japanese Ballet at Fair,’ New York Sun, 22 May 1939. Box 1892. Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.

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‘Dozyozi’ that concluded the programme as the one that ‘made the best impression.’ The dance was presumably drawn from the Nō and Kabuki play Musume Dojoji in which a young woman who had previously avenged herself on a priest with whom she fell in love reveals her true form as a demon in a spectacular scene in which she emerges from under a giant bell. Popular in both traditions, this is the terrifying dance of a deranged woman, hardly the stuff of ‘Cherry Blossoms,’ as the evening’s title suggests. Far less enthusiastic was New York Times dance critic John Martin, who dismissed the show as slight and insignificant, curtly observing in his regular Monday column, ‘there is little about it that need detain us this morning’ (Martin 1939), adding that ‘It is a girl show, frankly billed as such, and whether in Nipponese or any other language, the aroma of honky-ton is virtually the same the world over.’ Though the dancers occasionally presented ‘brief bits of traditional native movement,’ he critiqued them for ‘imitating the sisters of the West, strutting like Broadway chorus girls, lining up like precision troupes, waving fans with American flags on their reverse sides,’ even descending into what he characterized as ‘an ordinary tap routine.’ Showing off his knowledge of ‘authentic’ Japanese culture, Martin concluded his withering review opining that the show ‘seemed virtually endless and made one want to rush home and browse in Zoe Kincaid’s book on Kabuki or read one or two of Arthur Waley’s Nō translations to remind one’s self of some of the true glories of Japan’s theatre and dance arts.’ When the company returned some years later in 1959 to perform at the famed Metropolitan Opera House, Martin, by now the established dean of American dance criticism, again reviewed the company, recalling that it ‘was not well received’ in 1939, characterizing the new post-war production as ‘an unclassifiable hodgepodge’ that was ‘neither art, show business nor even first-class Radio City Music Hall’ (Martin 1959). Martin’s comments suggest that equally from the pinnacle of high culture as well as at street level – recalling the reception of the three little Japanese maids at Grand Central Station – most Americans wanted Japan to adhere to the image with which it was most comfortable. Martin’s disdain was due not just to the fact that the company was offering popular entertainment, but that in borrowing from the West, it had sullied the beauty of ‘true’ Japanese culture that he found expressed in Kincaid’s heavily illustrated book on Kabuki or English translations of Nō dramatic texts. Rey Chow’s famous observation that the problem with the natives is that ‘they are no longer staying within their frames’ (1993, p. 28) is anticipated in the tone of Martin’s response. Though the diplomatic relationship was by 1939 a century old, America clung stubbornly to the image of its own creation, while apart

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from the aberration of the Takarazuka Revue at the 1939 World’s Fair, Japan offered America the image it expected to see. By offering the revue to American fairgoers, the Japanese no doubt had a very different understanding of what they thought they were presenting; by staging something that was both Japanese in content and in its visual iconography, yet influenced by the variety show of early twentieth century New York, there can be little doubt, especially as the tour was conceived of as part of a larger mission of cultural diplomacy that was global in scale, that individuals in the government, the Japanese press, and the company itself felt this would show the Japanese as they really are, as masters at assimilation. In short, the show would be a demonstration of Japanese modernity. As Park observes of the company’s offerings during its 1938 European and 1939 US tours, ‘As part of the wartime strategy of cultural propaganda, Japanese theatre organizers aimed to demonstrate a national culture that was competitive at the level of Western opera’ (2015, p. 361). During the war, the revue became an important cultural and political tool as the practice of ‘cross-ethnicking’ in Takarazuka productions staged both at home and in occupied Asian countries offered what Robertson argues was a way in which ‘non-Japanese Asians were to become outwardly more traditionally ‘Japanese’ than the (selectively) Westernized Japanese themselves’ (1998, p. 104). And in the post-occupation era following the war’s end, one could say that like Japan, Takarazuka, added to the ‘the image of being a contributor to, and a skilful adapter of, the world’s diverse cultures,’ (2015, p. 359) a kind of flagship for Japanese cultural modernity. Yet, even well into the post-war era, the New York critical establishment continued to see Takarazuka as inauthentic and tacky, preferring the perceived purity of Kabuki, which was rapturously received by critics when the first fully professional troupe came to New York in 1960 (Park 2015; Thornbury 2013). The attractiveness of Kabuki at this moment in the restoration of trade ties and friendly relations was precisely this link to tradition, as Miyoshi and Harootunian note: ‘Americans seized the initiative for constructing an image of Japan and portrayed the country as a model of peaceful modernization … based upon the presumed continuity of traditional values’ (1993, p. 7). In the end, it was perhaps only corporate sponsorship that redeemed Takarazuka in American eyes; the 1989 tour, with a five-day run supported with $3,000,000 from the Mitsubishi Corporation, served as a symbol of the Japanese economic miracle. By this point, as Thornbury observes, ‘Japan now had the leverage to show the Americans what it wanted them to see’ (2013, p. 72).

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A Takarazuka promotional brochure from that time perhaps best articulates the image of Japan that the company has created and presented for over a century, asserting that the experience of seeing a production, ‘… affords both Japanese and foreigners an instant history of an incredibly complex artistic heritage, a window to view Japanese life, dance, music, culture and, what is perhaps most interesting of all, a playback of how the Japanese see and interpret the West. ‘Takarazuka’ is Japan’ (Robertson 1998, p. 211-212). That the Japanese could and would eventually become globally renowned for their capacity to turn the artistic products of other cultures into something distinctively Japanese was probably impossible for most Americans to imagine on the eve of World War Two. Instead America preferred to embrace the image set out by the New York Post reporter, that of ‘a clean, neat, mannered people, with an eye for cherry blossoms, willows by a stream and dainty girls with fans’ (Beckett 1939).

5

From ‘Panda Diplomacy’ to Acrobat Diplomacy China at the Brisbane’s Expo ’88

Abstract After a long absence from the international exposition stage, China (now the People’s Republic of China or PRC) under the leadership of marketfriendly Deng Xiaoping, sought to leave a strong, positive impression on its Australian neighbors at the Brisbane ’88 Expo. Australia was one of the first Western nations to deepen its relationship with China in the post-Mao era, and by 1988 the Australian public was enthralled by the ‘terracotta warriors’ and their acrobatic troupes, long a centerpiece of cultural diplomacy. China’s modes of self-representation reflected what Australian admired about the country and just a year before Tiananmen, the PRC offered up a play banned during the Cultural Revolution (19661976), hinting at a more open, democratic future that was not to be. Keywords: Chinese acrobats, Australia, Beijing Opera

In the post-World War II era, it soon became clear that military force, diplomacy, and commerce were not themselves fully sufficient to advance an ambitious nation’s interests on the international stage. At the height of the Cold War and continuing into the 1960s, as the US and the USSR emerged as the two competing global superpowers, the US sought to extend its power through the attractiveness of its popular culture – notably rock and roll and youth culture – while on the high culture side it promoted the abstract expressionism in the visual arts and modern dance as appealing markers of American cultural vibrancy. Joseph Nye, writing of America’s use of such cultural resources to generate a more favorable image of itself internationally, famously termed this ‘ability to attract’ ‘soft power’ (2004, p. 6). Nye’s framework, which will be invoked in future chapters as well, is

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch05

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relevant in considering the resources that China, or the People’s Republic of China (PRC), employed to win the hearts and minds of not just politicians, but ordinary citizens in the West from the 1970s onward. Ten years after the death of the senior leaders of the revolution, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, China under Deng Xiaoping sought to embrace a kind of ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ 中国特色社会主义, a concept that in practice came to mean a kind of state-directed capitalism. On the international stage, in 1988, and after a decade of market reform and just a year before Tiananmen, China did not possess the traditional ‘hard power’ resources of a modern military or the economic might to extend its reach out into the world as it does today. But it did have pandas, which had been used to create warmer bonds with other powers as far back as the Tang Dynasty, when Empress Wu Zetian (624-705) gifted a pair of the cute, furry animals to Japan’s emperor (Magnier 2006). In modern times, ‘Panda diplomacy’ has been a soft power tool, peaking in the 1970s when Mao Zedong offered a pair the US, where they became star attractions at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. The US was not the sole recipient of these cuddly creatures; indeed, as Frank McNally observes, ‘At the height of Mao’s panda policy, they were involved in more overseas peace missions than [US Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger’ (2005). Though pandas came to Australia in 1988, appearing at the zoos in Sydney and Melbourne, by the exposition year China had two additional soft-power resources: the Qin dynasty so-called ‘terra-cotta warriors’ from Xi’an, and their highlyskilled acrobats, which were already known to Australian audiences. At the Brisbane expo, the Chinese wisely showcased both cultural assets before an Australian public increasingly interested in this ‘sleeping giant’ to the north as many citizens began to recognize that their country was not an antipodean appendage of the U.K., but rather linked by geography and increasingly by trade to the Asia Pacific region. The Brisbane exposition took place four years before Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating famously set the nation on a new economic and political path with his now famous declaration that ‘Asia is where our future substantially lies,’ a course he characterized as ‘irreversible’ (Keating 1992). This was also a time in which many Australians, particularly those who remembered World War II, were unhappy about the increasingly level of Japanese investment in the nation’s economy. With its reputation for industriousness and hard-working citizens, China in the post-Mao world was seen by Australia in relatively positive terms, particularly as, in contrast with Japan, it was unencumbered by associations with wartime atrocities. Because Australia was on the receiving end of Japanese bombs during

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World War II and millions of its citizens still recalled nighttime black outs to thwart Japanese aerial bombardment, Australians were perhaps less likely to quickly rekindle their pre-war romance with Japanese culture as the US or European nations had done. China in 1988 was in a unique position; Mao, the excesses of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and the global threat of communism were fading into the mists of history, leaving behind a sense that China was old, very old, and that its people wished to enter the modern world, one still very much dominated by Western values, political systems, culture, and economic structures. Unlike 1915, when the Nationalist government had only a tenuous hold over the country, or 1939, when China was in turmoil and parts of it were controlled by the Japanese, by 1988, the PRC had been in existence for nearly two generations and had well-established, formal structures in place to broker and regulate the export of their cultural products to reflect favorably on the nation and its people. In Brisbane, the pavilion’s contents and attendant trade and diplomatic initiatives were managed by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT),1 formed in 1952 and by 1988 the government department primarily responsible for the nation’s burgeoning international trade sector. Tellingly, the Commissioner General of the China Pavilion at Expo ’88, Lu Fengchun, served as Director of the Department of Exhibitions Abroad within CCPIT, while the organization’s Deputy Division Chief, Guo Haibin, served as head of public relations for the pavilion.2 The trade-focused aspirations attached to China’s participation were reflected in the speeches at the fair’s official China Day on 20 July, 1988. Speaking at the expo’s outdoor amphitheatre, CCPIT Chairman Jia Shi, invoking ‘the socialist organization drive,’ spoke to goal of expanding direct foreign investment, observing that over 10,000 foreign enterprises had now been created in China, making it clear that the country was now open for business.3 Australian speakers, which included Expo Chairman Sir Llewellyn Edwards, also focused on the creation of a brighter future through expanded trade relations. In his remarks at that event, Michael Duffy, the Australian federal government’s Minister for Trade Negotiations, offered an overview of the pavilion’s 1 Website at: http://en.ccpit.org/info/index.html 2 Letter to John Watson from Lu Fengchun, 9 May 1987. QSA, E88A, 300253/9793. All archival files in this chapter are from either the Queensland State Archives (abbreviated as QSA) or the Queensland State Library (abbreviated as QSL). Files are from the Expo ’88 Authority (abbreviated as E88A) unless otherwise specified. QSA files are identified by Item ID followed by series as x/x, while QSL files are identified by Call or Box number followed by Series as x/x. 3 Transcript of speech of Mr. Jia Shi, 20 July 1988. QSL, Q88A, Q A825.3.

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contents while pointing to its experiential dimensions: ‘All those who visit will be able to take with them an appreciation of China’s unique landscape, its proud and ancient culture, and through the demonstrations of skilled arts and crafts, see for themselves the survival of whole and rich traditions in today’s world of automation and mass production.’4 The Chinese pavilion, as we shall see, gave fairgoers a sense of China’s long history, the beauty of its land, while displaying the skills of its artisans through the on-site production of Chinese handicrafts, with the underlying suggestion being that were such skills mobilized for the mass production of goods, export markets might grow quickly. After setting out some key contextual features of Expo ‘88, the chapter will consider how the friendly, well-established relationship between the two countries informed the content of the Chinese pavilion and how the fair’s theme, ‘Leisure in the Age of Technology,’ and created a remarkable opening for the display of Chinese acrobats who performed in a large outdoor amphitheatre, leaving a lasting mark on a wide swath of the Australian public at the most-attended event in the country’s history. A necessary coda to this chapter is the consideration of the expo-related Australian national tour of an updated Beijing Opera classic by Wu Zuguang, a playwright persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, which dramatically reveals the internal tensions brewing in China where for a brief period before the Tiananmen Massacre the following year, it appeared to much of the world that China was headed down the path of democratization and increasing freedom of expression. Much of the evidence relating to the pavilion’s content and the performances around the expo site is drawn from visual records, including videos of performances found online, exposition stock photos from the official expo files at the Queensland State Archives, and the private photo albums and scrap books of fairgoers in the files of the Expo ’88 Authority at the State Library of Queensland.

Expo ’88: Free Enterprise and ‘Leisure in the Age of Technology’ Billed as the world’s first ‘free enterprise’ exposition, Brisbane’s Expo ’88, which ran from 30 April-30 October 1988, was set up wholly as a commercial venture without government support. The prize on which participating developers had set their eyes was the post-expo future of South Brisbane, a previously largely neglected area across the river from the city’s Central Business District. Timed to correspond with Australia’s Bicentennial, which 4

Transcript of speech of Hon. Michael Duffy, MP, 20 July 1988. QSL, E88A, Q A825.3.

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marked the arrival of eleven convict ships from England to the colony of New South Wales, it was the second official exposition on Australian soil, the first being the 1888 Melbourne Exhibition in the then-British colony of Victoria. The Brisbane Exposition and South Bank Redevelopment Authority (hereafter referred to as the Expo ’88 Authority), was the initial governing authority, succeeded after the expo by the South Bank Corporation (Carroll 1994, p. 1). Brisbane’s Expo ‘88, technically a ‘specialized exposition’ and not a ‘world expo,’ ultimately delivered on its stated goal of urban redevelopment. Indeed, the success of this expo in jump-starting the redevelopment of the area on the less developed side of a river running through the heart of a city was later held up by Australian politicians as a model for future land use after the 2010 Shanghai International Exposition,5 which, though larger, was built on a site with similar features. The Expo Authority’s chair was Sir Llewellyn Edwards, a respected former Liberal (conservative) MP and ex-Deputy Premier of Queensland (1978-1983), while the state was then under the firm grip of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the conservative Premier who ran Queensland from 1968-1987 in a manner regarded by many as authoritarian. On the national stage, Brisbane in 1988 had a reputation as a backwater city, not the vibrant, cosmopolitan, Asiafocused metropolis it is today, but rather a stubbornly conservative enclave in a country that had moved in a more progressive direction politically under Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam (1972-1975), and then Bob Hawke who brought an upbeat, sunny, relaxed leadership style to the role of Prime Minster during his term from 1983-1991. Longtime Brisbane residents queried about the long term impact of the fair routinely spoke to the ways in which it set the stage not just for the revitalization of the South Bank, but how it also served as the catalyst for turning Brisbane from a sleepy town where the shops, bars, and restaurants closed early into an lively river city with a vibrant cultural life and diverse and attractive bars and restaurants open well into the evening. By attracting so many local residents to the expo, many of whom bought inexpensive season tickets and returned repeatedly in the evenings, it provided an alternative to what many regarded as the city’s traditional form of evening entertainment, namely the so-called ‘six o’clock swill,’ the hour after work when businessmen knocked back massive quantities of beer at pubs in the city’s CBD before going home to the suburbs, leaving the city streets largely empty. 5 US Federal News Service, ‘Australian Minister for Employment Fraser says World Expo 88 has potential to act as blueprint for Shanghai’s future use of expo site development,’ June 2010. ProQuest Doc. # 504667669.

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By the time of the Brisbane expo, the Asia-Pacific region had only seen one BIE-authorized full world exposition, Japan’s massive Osaka 1970, which had attracted 64.2 million visitors for a celebration of the ways in which technological innovation, much of it led by Japan, had transformed people’s lives, offering up what Peter Eckersall has identified as a kind of ‘extreme utopianism,’ that reflected ‘a powerful desire to embrace the future’ (2013, p. 107). This expo represented a watershed moment in the history of international expositions by bringing the West to Asia, also while proclaiming and enacting, as Eckersall’s study suggests, a future-oriented, utopic, Asian modernity. By the mid-1980s, a pattern of frequent BIE-recognized ‘specialized expositions’ had emerged, attractive due to the smaller required outlay of capital and because themes could reflect more directly the local capabilities and aspirations of the cityas-site. In the years after Osaka, there had been nine such specialized expos prior to Brisbane’s, of which the most recent had been Vancouver’s Expo 1986, which attracted 22.1 million people. Yet even a smaller themed exposition constituted a bit of a risk for a city regarded as a backwater in a country with a population of only 16.5 million. Selecting a site along the meandering Brisbane River with an impressive view of downtown across the river, the captains of industry behind the 1988 expo capitalized on the leisure-focused opportunities provided by the river-as-stage, Brisbane’s temperate climate, and the reputation of the nearby Gold Coast as a leisure and entertainment mecca. The expo theme, ‘Leisure in the Age of Technology,’ reflected what many people already associated with the region, while also creating an opening to expand and promote international trade at a time when Australia’s economy was heavily dependent on the extraction and export of raw materials, agriculture, and livestock production. The exposition’s economic and political backdrop reflected a division, then particularly sharp, between the older captains of industry and politicians who saw Australia as the ‘lucky country,’ one rich in resources with little need to embrace new technologies to compete in the global marketplace, and the emerging class of younger business leaders who saw links with Asia, and particularly economicallyvibrant, high-tech Japan, as the key to more diversified labour force and economy.6 Yet for many, increasing Japanese investment in Australia brought back memories of World War II, and stoked fears of Japanese control over Australian sovereignty. At the time of the exposition, such anxieties were routinely expressed in letters to the editor in the leading daily newspaper, the Brisbane Courier-Mail: 6 This shift toward the latter view would be reflected most fully under Labor during Paul Keating’s term as Prime Minister from 1991-1996.

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It may be true that the Japanese are not the largest holder of Australian assets, at least not yet, but it is the Japanese economic strength that is most to be feared … For this nation’s sake, let us not allow any nation, and the Japanese in particular, to achieve by economic domination the control over this country which they, the Japanese, failed to achieve by military means four or five decades ago.7

It bears noting that nearly three decades later, similar concerns, but now linked to fears of the geopolitical and strategic domination of Australia by China were raised when a Chinese consortium took out a 99-year lease on the port of Darwin at the country’s ‘top end,’ prompting Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to assure US President Obama that military ties and security would not be compromised by such a move. But in 1988 China’s meteoric rise was not foreseen and instead those wishing to ramp up trading ties focused on Japan and its potential for direct investment into Australian-based high-tech projects. In the year prior to the fair, the Brisbane company CM Group led an effort to enable Japan to create a high-tech town in the Brisbane area, one that would encompass a software research institute and high-tech industries in a geographically delineated futuristic town (Livingstone 1987). In such an environment, the fair’s theme, linking leisure and technology was canny, also pointing toward Asian engagement, and particularly to Japan, the foreign nation that dominated the event in terms of the space it occupied at the expo site. While Japan’s big-budget pavilions and displays of high-tech wizardry at this expo eclipsed those of other Asian nations,8 China, trading on a more recent but warmer connection with the Australian people, as we shall see, offered a more human-focused series of interactions between fairgoers and China’s people and its ancient culture.

China in Australia To understand the relative enthusiasm with which Chinese participation was met by many, it is helpful to briefly set out the uniquely Australian context in which friendly relations between the two nations and its peoples had been established. Australia was one of the first Western nations to formally 7 Letter to the Editor of the Brisbane Courier-Mail, 12 June 1988, Lexis-Nexis. 8 Both in the lead-up to the event and while it was running, articles in Brisbane Courier Mail focusing on Japanese participation routinely mentioned the cost of Japan’s national pavilion, the most expensive of the foreign pavilions with its AUD25 million price tag.

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recognize the PRC,9 having done so in 1972, seven years before the United States, while the first student exchanges began in 1974 (Thomas 2019, p. 31). Thus, Australia was, and to some extent still is, on the ‘front foot’ in terms of its relations with what is today its largest trading partner. Such was the enthusiasm for and interest in China by the mid to late 1970s that former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd,10 then a student at the Australian National University, majored in Chinese history and language.11 Rudd remains the only recent Western head of state capable of delivering a public speech in impeccable Mandarin. In the years following the expo, the human face of China was revealed to Australians on television in a 19-part series on Chinese language and culture co-produced with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Griffith University.12 Hosted by Australian academic Colin Mackerras, who produced an enormous reading list of foundational scholarship on Chinese in English, the series shows him appearing to simply walk around China, meeting people with ease, hanging out and chatting with strangers who become fast friends. There is nothing mysterious about the Chinese in Mackerras’ encounter. Watching clips from this show today one sees how it reflects a view of the Chinese as friendly and open, as a social people who like to eat well, talk freely, and who are interested in and open to developing new friendships. The message, in retrospect, seems to be that the Chinese are fundamentally very much like the way Australians wish to see themselves. Extending cultural engagement were troupes of Chinese acrobats, which first toured the country in 197313 and began touring regularly as commercial ventures to Australia’s larger cities as early as 1980, long before such tours came to the United States.14 Some of the insightful writing by local Austral9 Recognition of the PRC was simultaneous with ending recognition of the Republic of China (ROC). 10 Rudd is currently President of the New York-based Asia Society. 11 I contrast Rudd’s experience with mine as a student in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service at roughly the same time. Even at America’s premiere recruitment ground for future Foreign Service Officers there were very few Chinese majors. To major in Chinese when French was clearly la langue diplomatique, seemed odd to me and my Eurocentric peers as we trained for international careers. 12 See https://www.abccommercial.com/librarysales/program/dragons-tongue for information on the series. The ‘sightseeing’ episode can be watched in its entirety at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=4K070b7t26Q 13 Touring in 1973 were the Canton Acrobatic Troupe, which was not set up as a commercial venture (Wu Chiang 1980). 14 When the Beijing Acrobatic Troupe toured the US in 1988, the tone of the initial review in the New York Times (Kisselgoff 1987) suggests audiences were largely unfamiliar with the forms being presented. Also noteworthy is that in the first half of 1988 it appeared that performances by

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ian newspaper critics of the time makes clear not only that the form was understood, but why it was appreciated by audiences in Australia. Reviewing the Nanking Acrobatic Troupe for the Canberra Times in October 1980, Ken Healey observes: By now everyone knows about the indescribably technical perfection of the finest exponents of this form of Chinese theatre – a sort of circus without animals. Whether the skills are those shared with western exponents, like juggling, bicycle and monocycle acts and conjuring, or whether they are exotic wonders such as flying between long bamboo poles held on a man’s shoulder, or feats of strength and balance on long leather straps, the athletes who perform them are working at the outermost reaches of human physical control and concentration. (Healey 1980)

Australia has a unique connection with the more human-focused dimensions of circus, one harkening back to pre-federation days, when small touring companies came to towns and pitched a ‘big top.’ The breathtaking acrobatic antics of the Circus Oz (Tait 2005, pp. 132-135), a company that tours Australia with their own tent, began in 1978 in Melbourne, a decade before the Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil cast its spell on American audiences with similar shows,15 and the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, which trained younger kids in circus and eventually came to tour nationally, was set up the following year in the ‘twin cities’ of Albury-Wodonga. As early as 1982 that company, joined by performers from Circus Oz, worked with the Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe in a skills training programme that produced an original, joint production. Australian circus artists have long been watching, learning from, and working with Chinese circus artists across a broad range of performance practices ranging from aerial and balancing routines, to physical comedy and sleight-of-hand theatrical magic, as seen in the training and public performance programmes of the National Institute for Circus Arts (NICA) in Melbourne, where professional training takes place today. Many of these early exchanges of artists and artistic work were brokered by Carrillo Gantner, who served as Australia’s cultural attaché in Beijing from 1985-1987. Thus Australians, it could be the Beijing Troupe were taking place throughout much the same period as a tour by a ROC rival company, the Chinese Golden Dragon Acrobats and Magicians of Taipei, in a kind of ‘Acrobat Diplomacy.’ 15 Cirque du Soleil’s breakthrough performance into the US market was at the 1987 Los Angeles Festival. From the beginning, the company featured theatricalized versions of classic routines in the Chinese acrobatic tradition, many executed by the company’s Chinese acrobats.

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asserted, possessed not only an understanding of these forms, but a kind of body-empathy for the performers, as the Canberra Times reviewer’s observations suggest: ‘Tension and relaxation, that is the cycle for us. For them, up there on stage, it is relaxed control all night. They manage not to bore us with a surfeit of perfection; they remain human when they might have become robots’ (Healey 1980). If geopolitics, acrobats, and the gift of pandas to Western zoos had already set the stage for friendlier relations with China,16 then it was the discovery of the famed ‘terracotta army’ and their transnational circulation that for many in the West forever altered their view of China as a nation of poor peasants by dramatically revealing the age and vast scale of Chinese civilization. One of the world’s most famous archeological discoveries was uncovered not by professionals, but by famers digging for a well in a village outside the city of Xi’an in 1974. The first cache uncovered in what would become four major sites included an army of over 6,000 life-sized standing figures, distinguishable by rank and military function, as well as war chariots and charioteers. Dating from the third century B.C., they functioned as part of a vast necropolis for Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China. Even prior to their public display, those who had seen the warriors as guests of the Chinese government, including Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac enthusiastically proclaimed them as the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ (Chen Ji 1993, p. 26). Then, in 1978, National Geographic famously published an influential feature spread on the heroic scale tomb-guardians with ten photos, while later that year they were placed on public display inside a covered shed with seemingly endless rows of soldiers all in a line (Topping 1978). Over the next decade Xi’an became a major international tourist destination, and by 1988 these third century warriors, originally entombed to protect the emperor in the afterlife, had become symbols of China’s proud and ancient past. Their international touring power was so great that in the decade from 1982 to 1991 over ten million visitors saw various displays of these figures with horses at estimated 2,011 displays around the world (Chen Ji 1993, p. 26), making the warriors China’s greatest international museum superstars, a position they still hold. The warriors had been to Australia two times prior to Expo ‘88, initially in 1977, when in excess of 500,000 people viewed them at exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, and then in 1983 (Thomas 2018, p. 33). 16 For an analysis of contemporary panda diplomacy that identif ies panda loans as a ‘soft power’ tool used to secure international trade deals, see Melissa Hogenboom (2013).

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The China Pavilion Compared with Japan’s elegant, airy 25-million-dollar pavilion surrounded by an attractive garden, China’s pavilion, housed inside a generic white cube like most other country pavilions at the expo, might have appeared as Japan’s poor relation were it not for a clever bit of window-dressing. The Chinese gate, which marked the entry into the Chinese national site at the 1915 San Francisco Exposition, had become, in the years since then, the liminal space through which one passed to enter ‘Chinatowns’ in cities with significant Chinese populations throughout much of the Western World. Indeed, Brisbane at the time had one as well, marking the entrance to its ‘own slice of China’ in the inner urban neighbourhood of Fortitude Valley (Oliphant 1987). Virtually every official stock exposition photo as well as those in the photograph albums of spectators held by the Queensland State Library in their collection of fair memorabilia show the exterior of China pavilion’s framed by an enormous gate, one what bears a remarkable resemblance to the one at the 1915 expo (Figure 21). In the absence of formally designated ‘Kodak picture spots’ of the sort presaged by particularly picturesque spots in the Japanese garden at the San Francisco exposition, here it was left to a local photographer with a regular column in the Brisbane Courier-Mail to suggest multiple sites at which those coming to the expo with cameras, which were still in the pre-digital era, might take attractive, iconic photos. His recommendation for budding photographers was, ‘Take China framed beneath the Oriental Gateway’ (Corness 1988), a reminder that nothing quite says China like a Chinese gate. Situated near the centre of the expo grounds and alongside a monorail line, China’s pavilion opened diagonally to the amphitheatre, a venue accommodating 1,850 spectators, and directly faced the massive Queensland pavilion located next to Australia’s national pavilion. Though part of the boxy structure was shared with the Ford Motor Company of Australia, through which one entered separately, it was in a favourable, densely trafficked area of the grounds, occupying more square footage than all but a few other nations, notably Japan, the US and the USSR. Greeting the spectator inside the pavilion were a series of four Xi’an warriors lined up against floor-toceiling mirrors, a nod to their emplacement in seemingly endless rows at the original excavation site, and quite spectacularly, a large horse-drawn carriage made of bronze, pulled by four impressive horses, linked by reigns to a seated bronze charioteer. The charioteer also branded the pavilion, serving as the key image in the stamp for the Chinese pavilion that ended up in the ‘passports’ many fairgoers presented upon entering each pavilion.

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Figure 21 Chinese Gate at Expo ’88

One of many photos facing the China pavilion through the Chinese Gate, this is from the private collection of photos taken by Queensland resident Eve Pollard. Source: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, E88A, Box 11542

Bearing a blue-green cover and similar in size to an actual passport, and with pages lightly bearing repeated images of the official logo of the expo, its twenty pages were sufficient for fairgoers to accumulate stamps at each pavilion. China’s stamp, printed in red ink, consisted of the outline of two seated charioteers under a raised umbrella-like protective cover, drawn by a single horse. A striking, uncluttered image bore the text ‘World Expo 88’ at the top and China 中国[Zhōngguó], along the bottom.17 Few Australian fairgoers would have known that the Chinese characters signify ‘Middle Kingdom’ and not ‘China,’ nor would have questioned why the stamp did not indicate the international designation for the country, the People’s Republic of China, as opposed to Taiwan, the Republic of China (ROC). In this bold stamp that occupied a full half-page in each passport, there is only one China, 中国, the country now linked to the ancient heritage of the impressive Xi’an warriors. Among the exposition’s archival materials at the 17 Another stamp was apparently available at some point that featured the Great Wall, though none of the passports I found in the archives bore that stamp. It is more visually cluttered and less impactful than the iconic charioteer stamp.

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State Library of Queensland are three such passports, two used by female fairgoers who returned on multiple dates, and one without identifying marks. All three were stamped with the chop of the China Pavilion, with imprints appearing in the first half the passport (Figure 22). It bears noting that China’s was one of a handful of stamps found in all three passports, and that only one of the passports contained the Japan pavilion’s stamp, which provides partial further evidence supporting claims made in the press and by Chinese officials that China’s pavilion was popular with fairgoers. Before the age of digital cameras and social media, what fairgoers chose to take photographs of and place in scrap books reflects conscious choices about what they found interesting, valuable, attractive, and wished to remember. Scrap books containing such photos offer further curated versions drawn from selection of images deemed worthy of photographing. Of the nineteen photos taken by Queensland resident Eve Pollard and placed in her scrapbook, fully one third are of exhibits inside the China Pavilion, the only pavilion interior for which any photos are found taken by a private individual in the collections held at the Queensland State Library. In addition to a shot of the Chinese pavilion framed by the gate (similar to the shot in Figure 21), Pollard posted photos in her album of the charioteer being pulled by horses, the warriors lined up against the mirror, and displays of intricate ivory carvings of boats, landscapes, and small statuettes of performers with traditional instruments. Her focus on the intricacies of the carved ivory reflects the key human element in the pavilion: the living displays of artisans working in a range of materials, from jade and cork carving to double-sided embroidery. The pavilion’s resident artisans were profiled in the Brisbane Courier Mail shortly after the fair opened. Ms. Lin Ti, of Zhejian Province, a specialist in double-sided embroidery, was reportedly working on a giant panda, using thread ‘thinner than a human hair,’ a task requiring 120 hours of work. In residence for the entire expo, when asked about the sacrifice of leaving her three-year old son and husband back home, she responded stoically: ‘I want the world, in particular Australia and Brisbane, to know more about this unique Chinese art.’18 Another artisan, Yu Feng Ping, was working on delicate landscapes of cork inside tiny glass display cases. Reportedly working 12-hour, six-day-a-week shifts at the Expo, he was, according to the paper, ‘thrilled to be at Expo’ in spite of missing his wife and infant son back in Zhejiang province, adding that working in the pavilion gave him ‘the opportunity of find out what kind of arts and crafts Australians liked.’ 18 ‘Craft tools are a keen eye and nimble fingers,’ Brisbane Courier-Mail, 30 May 1988, Lexis-Nexis

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Figure 22 China pavilion stamp in Expo ’88 passport

Stamp from the China pavilion from the Expo ’88 ‘passport’ of Queensland resident Dulcie Collins bears the iconic image of twin charioteers from Xi’an. Source: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, E88A, Box 15538, © The State of Queensland (Department of the Premier and Cabinet) 2020

When asked what that might be, he replied, following from the experience of Ms. Lin, ‘The Australians like pandas,’19 reflecting the remarkable success of ‘Panda diplomacy.’ The display of Asian bodies in exposition pavilions and on the grounds of precincts or ‘reservations’ has a long history, one initially informed by the power dynamics of Western colonialism, the most famous case being 19 ‘Carvings are ‘corkers,’’ Brisbane Courier-Mail, 10 October 1988, Expo Week Supplement, p.3.

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American display of Filipinos at the Chicago Exposition of 1893 and in Saint Louis in 1904. And as we have seen from examples of Japanese selfrepresentation at the 1915 and 1939-1940 expositions, the Japanese regularly marshalled kimono-clad women to serve tea, spin silk, or create ikebana displays. Yet what China did with these craftsmen and women was different in some fundamental ways: Here the workers were not displayed in some pseudo-real environment, one in which spectators were meant to see them as if they were at home or in a village or tea shop, giving the viewer the manufactured sense that they were going ‘backstage’ to where ‘real life’ was lived (Goffman 1956; MacCannell 1999; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998), nor were they displayed in ways that suggested anything essentialistic about Chinese culture. Instead they were there in the pavilion simply working, something they could do anywhere given the necessary tools to paint, carve jade, sculpt cork, embroider, or create jewellery from silver or gold. In this respect it was their creative labour alone that was on display as all were engaged in tasks that required extraordinary dexterity, great skill, to say nothing of superb eyesight. But what was the value of such displays of craft-making in the pavilion, particularly in an industrialized world and at a time when China sought to boost trade with Australia? The answer is perhaps pointed to in the response to the pavilions in the two most widely circulated reviews of the fair’s main attractions, one in the Courier Mail (Hart and McLean 1988) and the other from a popular independent fair guide entitled On Site!20 Both ranked the China pavilion highly, with the latter placing it in their list of top ten expo pavilions, enthusing, ‘A perfect blend of ancient art pieces and working artisans demonstrates the uninterrupted and enduring flow of Chinese culture. You run out of adjectives like “exquisite,” “intricate,” “splendid” as you try to describe each of the many exhibit pieces’ (p. 9). Using similar language, the newspaper’s ‘Good Expo Guide’ also focuses on the human dimension: ‘People have been seen to exit from this exhibit in a dire state of culture shock an no wonder. It’s bursting with intricate examples of Chinese art, everything from Ding porcelain to Tang tri-colour pottery to shoushan stone carving,21 most of which are done on the spot by a collection of artisans almost as interesting as their product’ (Hart and McLean 1988). Both accounts connect the intricate work of Chinese artists in the ancient past with those working in the pavilion in the present. This eliding 20 ‘On Site! Expo,’ Aspley, QLD: On Site! Publishing, 1988, from Scrapbook of M.S. Kahn, QSL, E88A, Box 13224. 21 A form of stone carving originally from Fujian Province.

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of past and present was accomplished without traditional clothes or hokey homespun settings, but merely by having artisans working under the public gaze. The trade commission in Beijing, responsible for pavilion’s contents, possibly understood very well that displaying Xi’an warriors and their exquisite, intricate, ‘show-pony’ ivory carvings along with gifted, specialized artisans crafting from raw materials, spectators would themselves make the link between the past and the present through displays of impressive human labour. Another featured element in the pavilion, in its largest hall, was a 20-minute, 360-degree circular film entitled, ‘A Glimpse of China.’ Reprised in 1992 at the China pavilion in Seville,22 the film took viewers to sites throughout the country using nine interlocked cameras, including the ‘Forbidden City,’ the Great Wall, to Xi’an for the terracotta warriors, Harbin for their famous wintertime ice palaces, and to contemporary, bustling Beijing. These 360-degree films, as we shall see with Thailand’s pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo, have increasingly become the dominant communicative mode inside country pavilions. The surround-style films which place the spectator in the centre are particularly effective for generating a feeling of emplacement into the worlds appearing on the screen, and by delivering approximately one new location every minute, as the Chinese film did, the spectator is kept in a state of sensorial arousal without feeling bombarded by visual stimulation, as one might experience while watching a Hollywood adventure film, for instance. Eckersall, writing of the use of this technology at Expo ’70 in Osaka, notes that its curved screens and multiple projections ‘were designed to allow new experiences of sensory perception,’ observing that ‘the experience of cinematic immersion may have offered a sense of release from the limitations of human corporeality’ (2014, p. 109). Not surprisingly, its close relative, the integrated IMAX film which uses a single wide lens and creates an image that completely fills the viewer’s forward gaze, was first demonstrated in the Fuji Pavilion at Expo ‘7023. The 360-degree film invites a corporeally-engaged response and has the added virtue in an expo pavilion context of being suitable for either a standing audience or one sitting on the floor, enabling viewers to adjust their positions to take in and experience the wider visual field around them. Through their ability to imprint on human bodies, 360-degree films have become an especially powerful and popular element in expo pavilions over time. For the active spectator experiencing China’s film at Expo ‘88, most of whom never imagined being able travel to 22 Further detail at: https://celebrate88.wordpress.com/ 23 See https://www.imax.com/movies/tiger-child

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China, upon leaving they take with them a sense of the landscape through which they have moved. Two other features of this pavilion merit attention: its gift shop and restaurant, typically the spaces through which one passes when leaving the pavilion. In the gift shop, consumers were able to purchase some of the exquisite, miniature objects they had seen being crafted. One of the scrapbookers who documented their fair experience offered evidence of having parted with some cash in the pavilion’s gift. Catharina Kahn, who came up from Melbourne for the expo, saved and posted receipts of purchases from the China Pavilion in her album, one being for A$50, well within the range of some of the less expensive glass-encased cork sculptures created by Mr. Yu. The well-stocked gift shop also offered cloisonné thimbles, porcelain painted masks, and items for under five dollars, including cups, tea pots and piggy banks (McLean 1988), making it possible for many fairgoers to bring a little bit of China back into their homes. It is probable that Ms. Kahn’s A$50 purchase was for a display object, and certainly many fairgoers would have bought hand-crafted objects for such a purpose. Though beyond the scope of this study, the post-expo life of these objects would be fascinating to track. As Haldrup and Larsen have observed with respect to the afterlife of tourism, ‘the meaning and locality of an object are not fixed, culturally or geographically, but on the move, as it is part of dynamic processes of production, exchange, usage and meaning’ (2010, p. 154). Next to the pavilion’s entrance and facing a well-trafficked part of the exposition grounds was a large ‘family style’ Chinese restaurant. For most Anglo-Australians, as indeed for many in the Western world, prior to the last decade of the twentieth century the large Chinese restaurant with its big tables for families, circular ‘Lazy Susan’ serving platforms, and cozy booths for smaller groups was their first and repeated point of contact with Chinese culture. These sites, which were highly performative and often appeared like stage sets in some Orientalist fantasy, were both mediated by and responding to the expectations of the dominant white culture. For many older Brisbanians visiting the expo, their first exposure to Chinese food would have been in the Pagoda Room of the Oriental Restaurant in Fortitude Valley, run for over two generations by the Lee family until it closed in 1988 (Biggs 1988). Like many of the old-school Chinese restaurants of that era, one entered through a narrow staircase leading into a dimly lit room with generic Chinese décor and hanging lanterns, with red the dominant accent colour. Food at the Pagoda Room included dishes catering to the Anglo-Australian palate with inexplicable names like Sue Yook, and by the 1980s standards such as Sweet and Sour Pork or Cashew Chicken. Though without the layers

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of Orientalist frippery, the large Chinese ‘family restaurant’ attached to the pavilion would have offered both a bit of exoticism and a touch of the familiar, building on prior positive associations with Chinese food. It is possible too that many fairgoers chose to visit the China pavilion because of a dining experience at the restaurant. The restaurant was adjacent to the Chinese gate, the portal through which the much-viewed daily parades of wacky, inventive floats and street and circus performers spilled out into the fairgrounds, while the pavilion’s position meant that most people who went to the fair would have passed near it. Thus, with the commanding position of its ‘family restaurant,’ licensed to serve alcohol, and without spending A$25 million a purpose-built, designed structure as Japan did, China generated interest and excitement in and around their pavilion on a relative shoestring. Though the displays settings themselves inside the pavilion were functional and modest, fair guides, newspaper articles, and the private photos of fairgoers suggest that what was on display was deemed extraordinary. China here restored its link with its proud, ancient past, as it endeavoured to do in San Francisco in 1915, and had come considerable distance from its sad absence at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. And as we shall see in the following section, it was through the performances of three of its celebrated acrobatic troupes that the human dimension was further extended, as acrobats entertained and delighted thousands of fairgoers throughout the run of the fair.

Acrobat Diplomacy Acrobatics have been a key component of Chinese theatre at least as far back as the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) (Wichmann and Mackerras 1983, p. 2), and have long been spectacularly integrated into so-called ‘military’ plays in the repertoire of the various forms of regional theatre that came to be known in the west as Beijing Opera (京剧; Jīngjù). Military plays, which feature spectacular battle scenes and displays of floor gymnastics with stylized weapons and sticks, have for centuries required highly-skilled performers, selected for their body type and demeanor at a very young age and trained to specialize in a role type requiring a particular set of highly specialized skills. In a Chinese context, these ‘acrobats,’ with their extraordinary balance, strength, flexibility, and motor coordination, were put in the service of a dramatic structure, woven into a larger story or placed into short skits connected to the main plot. Like the lazzi of Italian Commedia dell’Arte, some are routines or ‘schtick’ associated with particular

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characters or character types and would be immediately recognizable to audiences familiar with the form. The Chinese term for acrobatics, zájì 杂 技, in which zá means ‘various’ or ‘mixed’ and jì signifies ‘technique,’ points to its origin as an umbrella term for skills that require specific techniques, but without indicating how or where they are used. Professional troupes of acrobats began to appear in China as the country began to consolidate under communist rule in the early 1950s, with significant troupes emerging in Shanghai (1951), Nanjing (1957), and Beijing (1957) and Guangzhou (1959). During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), led by the infamous ‘Madame Mao’ (江青, Jiāng Qīng) the connection of many of these skills with the traditional Jingju repertoire, viewed as reflecting bourgeois and feudal values, placed acrobatics in the service of revolutionary stories, not exactly a natural fit. But virtually as soon as the Cultural Revolution ended, new companies quickly emerged, and as we have seen, many started touring almost immediately to Australia. By 1988 China was highly skilled at managing its acrobatic troupes for cultural export. The China Performing Arts Agency (CPAA), working under the central government’s Ministry of Culture, by this time had over thirty years of experience packaging Chinese cultural programmes and managing all formal business and production elements connected with overseas tours. In the months prior to the fair’s opening, the CPAA, working with Expo ‘88 producer David Hamilton, worked out details for a complex import of artistic labour that saw three Chinese acrobatic troupes, each with 20 members, come to Brisbane and perform on the Expo grounds three times a day, six days a week, over month-long residencies. With their multiple daily performances in the open-air Piazza before up to 3,000 spectators,24 even at half capacity their three months of performances would have been viewed by as many as 300,000 spectators, making the Chinese acrobats the dominant performing art form from overseas presented at the expo. China could be seen here as taking a page, consciously or not, from the American diplomatic playbook going back to the Cold War, which had seen modern dance especially circulate overseas in tours funded by the US State Department (Prevots 1998)25 in a conscious effort to enhance the nation’s soft power. Nye, responding largely to the American use of this power in the 1960s and 1970s, observes that: 24 The Piazza accommodated 2,000 seated spectators, with a further 1,000 standing. 25 Naima Prevots’ Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War (1998) sets out the history of how American modern dance was used as part of a program of cultural diplomacy that began in 1954 under then US President Eisenhower.

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Soft power is not merely the same as influence. After all, influence can also rest on the hard power of threats or payments. And soft power is more than just persuasion or the ability to move people by argument, though that is an important part of it. It is also the ability to attract, and attraction often leads to acquiescence. Simply put, in behavioral terms soft power is attractive power. In terms of resources, soft-power resources are the assets that produce such attraction. (2004, p. 6)

At the Brisbane Expo, China used its most attractive soft power resource, offering up a performing arts tradition that directly reached out to an audience by bypassing language and connecting to the spectator kinesthetically. All three acrobatic troupes were subject to the same basic contract, offering programmes 25-30 minutes in length up to three times a day in the Piazza, a centrally-situated, open-air venue shaded by a giant sail. The Inner Mongolia Acrobatic Troupe performed from 30 April to 31 May, shortly after the fair’s opening; the Qiqihar Circus Troupe, presented from 20 June to 27 July, performing during the mid-year school holidays when many Australians from the more populous south travel north to Queensland in search of sun and warmer weather; while the Hebei Acrobatic Troupe took the final position, running from 24 September to 30 October, closing out the expo. The troupes were programmed alongside other accessible, popular entertainment, all suitable for children and adults, most of it being home-grown Australian work, including the Expo’s marching band, a family musical theatre show, and SAK Theatre, an improvisational group. Contracts with the Expo authority stipulated that the Beijing-based CPAA was to be paid A$750 a day for 30 days of performances for each group, while the Expo provided a basic per-diem for each company member on top of their pre-paid accommodation, which for most performers was only a step above dormitory accommodation. Agreements set out each named routine companies were expected to present, many of which remain in the repertoires of these acrobatic companies today. The first to perform, the Inner Mongolian company, presented rolling lanterns, shooting arrows, kicking bowls, and a contortionist routine.26 While the foundational principles behind many acrobatic routines are similar, in execution, artistry, and costuming they are quite distinct. The Mongolian troupe, founded in 1960, with its unique, colourful costumes and vigorous, martial flare, has won numerous awards for its signature acts, among them 26 Contract between Brisbane Expo Authority and China Performing Arts Agency, QSA, E88A, 23 March 1988. Item 300253, Series 9793.

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‘Four Persons Kicking Bowls’ and various archery routines, which involve shooting arrows while balanced on top of another acrobat or shooting with one’s feet while held aloft by one’s hands.27 The bowl-kicking routines typically involve tossing a bowl onto one’s head while riding a unicycle or with it balanced in a way that seems impossible. By the time the Qiqihar Circus Troupe from northeast China arrived for the mid-year slot, there was sufficient interest in the acrobats to merit a feature article in the Courier Mail. Bearing the headline, ‘ten a hand no problem,’ the accompanying photo shows eight attractive women in form-revealing costumes in a line with three poles in each hand balancing an equal number of spinning plates – six in number rather than ten – in what would have been quite a spectacular finish to a routine that typically starts with an amazing balancing feat and then extends it and multiplies it until the seemingly impossible has been achieved.28Another signature routine, described in the same news story, involved a dazzling trapeze act ‘in which two acrobats do some hair-raising gymnastics before one dives backwards and hurtles toward the floor, only to be caught by her partner.’ Such a routine, particularly within the round, circus-like shared space of the Piazza would have likely elicited more than a few gasps. The Hebei Company, the last to appear, was contracted to present lion dancing, foot juggling, jar juggling, Wushe, Diabolo, a Magic Show, and Head Balancing. Lion dancing remains one of the most photogenic and recognizable numbers, though what the company presented is unlike the relatively tame lion dancing those living in cities with large Chinese populations might witness during Chinese New Year or at the grand opening of a restaurant or shop. From inside a colourful, lightweight, and responsive, body-concealing lion costume, the dancers in the Hebei troupe combined physical agility and theatre with low comedy, an entertaining mix, as the following newspaper account of their expo routine suggests: The ‘lions’ – each acted by two acrobats – hand-stand on and somersault off small platforms and ladders. At one stage, two of the ‘lions’ balance on the backs of another two, who are themselves balancing on a type of see-saw. They also humorously scratch their ears and wiggle their bottoms, much to the crowd’s delight. (Doughty 1988) 27 Ministry of Culture, http://vod.sxrtvu.edu/englishonline/culture/chinaculture/ChinaCulture/ en_artists/2003-09/24/content_40659.htm 28 ‘Ten a hand no problem,’ Brisbane Courier Mail, Expo Week Supplement, 11 July 1988, p. 11. The ‘Expo Excitement’ Souvenir Program published by the Expo authority also features photos of the company with the women holding three rods in each hand.

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The company’s stipulated routines included a number of standard acts that have been incorporated into circus more broadly in the West, notably the juggling of jars and even other bodies on the raised feet of young women positioned on their backs on a raised platform; contortionist routines that require multiple double-jointedness and flexibility seemingly beyond all measure; and well as numerous balancing routines involving groups of twelve or more acrobats deftly balanced on chairs, tables, even held aloft from moving bicycles. The Hebei company featured a number of solidly-built men, and in addition to a delightful routine that involved tossing and catching cymbals while coming in and out of a series of gymnastic flips,29 their strength and agility offered ‘head balancing’ as a further company specialization. These routines feature the extraordinary balancing of entire bodies on the heads of standing men, often following a sequence in which a man balances his body from his arm, with his hand on the head of another, sometimes shifting to an improbable head-to-head balance in which the heads are joined, as well as another sequence in which a smaller-framed company member walks across the heads of a group of standing men. The focus, concentration, strength, and danger of these routines make them compelling to witness. The presentations of all three groups created the conditions for deep kind of kinesthetic empathy between all bodies present, enhanced by the relatively small, shared space, particularly one constituted largely in the round as the Piazza was, where other spectators become one with the acts as they unfold. The Canberra Times reviewer, writing about a performance by the Nanking Acrobatic Troupe eight years earlier, suggests a kind of phenomenology governing such a group experience: Not unexpectedly, we find that we the audience, have been played upon skillfully, as though we were a giant musical instrument. The tones which we emit vary in pitch and intensity according to pulse and heart beat, level of interests, and whether the comic vein has been injected to produce relaxation. (Healey 1980)

The physical challenges undertaken by these acrobats, their precision and their sheer theatricality fashioned in ways that show us the impossible and then impossibly better it, all done without words, reflects New York Times theatre critic Mel Gussow’s observation that ‘the circus speaks a global language’ (1988). 29 A clip can of the this from the expo can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1NM​ vL3Xe-4, with a further close-up on one of the performers at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=​ CpBvRvLgUJs

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Figure 23 Hebei Acrobatic Troupe

Hebei Acrobatic Troupe combining lion dancing with an extraordinary balancing routine, October 1988. Source: Queensland State Archives, Expo ’88 Authority

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The Road to Tiananmen In addition to the performances on the Expo site, works associated with the Expo ’88 were programmed at the massive edifice of high culture, the recently completed Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), located just outside the fair’s northernmost gate. It was here that the historical moment of 1988ness, one in which China appeared to be rapidly moving toward greater liberalization and freedom of expression, played itself out through theatre. This moment also constitutes an appropriate end point as in the years since the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, free speech has become more restricted and with the far-reaching social credit system now in place under ‘paramount leader’ Xi Jinping, China, like much of the rest of the world, seems to be moving in an increasingly authoritarian direction. But in 1988 there seemed room for optimism, and China’s theatrical offering, a production of The Three Beatings of Tao San Chun by the Peking Opera Troupe,30 suggested that greater openness would follow in future years. Based on a Qing Dynasty story, the play was written in 1962 by Wu Zugang, who, along with his wife, actress Xin Feng Xia, had been persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.31 Sponsored by the Australian government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the production was billed as ‘a Chinese version of The Taming of the Shrew,’ and presented at QPAC’s 2000-seat Lyric Theatre in July as part of the ‘World Expo on Stage’ series, also touring nationally to Canberra, Adelaide, Newcastle, and regional centres in Victoria.32 In spite of the comparisons with Shakespeare’s play, the heroine in this story, the wily, vigorous female character, Tao San Chun, brooks no nonsense from any man, and unlike Shakespeare’s Katherine/ Kate, does not submit to male tyranny at the play’s end. Rather the play could more reasonably be interpreted as a feminist parable, with its plot involving a young man (Zheng En), who, when caught stealing the watermelons, is fiercely disciplined by the feisty female melon vendor (Tao San Chun). Years 30 Billed as The Peking Opera Troupe, which is how it also appeared in the press, the company was officially known as the Fourth Peking Opera Troupe of Beijing. 31 According to the official program, the ‘onslaught of the Cultural Revolution’ began earlier in the 1960s and the play was not performed from 1963-1979. QSA, E888A, Item 299161, Series 9728. 32 According to the play’s program, found in the Queensland State Archives (see above), the play’s run was organized by the PRC’s Ministry of Culture and the Australian Embassy in Beijing, while being sponsored by the Australian government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). While in Brisbane, it was part of a ‘World Expo on Stage’ series that also included Japanese Kabuki.

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later, now in a position of national importance, he is forced to marry the woman who had previously disciplined him so harshly. After initially hiding from her in fear, he eventually agrees to marry her, thinking she will bend to his will. While preparing to beat her into submission, San Chun again fights him and wins, with Zheng kneeling before her and, in the presence of the Emperor, pledging to obey the rule of law. A full Beijing Opera or Jīngjù (京剧) production, with its highly theatricalized style of presentation and musical forms and conventions so different from Western forms, might have seemed like a bold and unconventional choice for a national tour were it not for the play’s brashness and ‘girl power’ theme and the production’s exciting physicality. Indeed, non-Chinese audiences at the time were largely assumed to have little interest in such full-length plays, with most presentations of Jingju created for cultural export at this time largely consisting of ‘best-of’ skits featuring tumbling and highly physical routines from selected operas. Not only was The Three Beatings of Tao San Chun a contemporary retelling of an older story, but it featured martial arts and tumbling sequences carried out not just by the men, but by the female lead. San Chun, played by Wang Yuzhen in the tour, was conceived as a Wu Dan or ‘Woman Warrior,’ a specialized role type at the opposite end from the stereotypical hyper-feminine young female love interest or Qingyi, at the centre of the plot in a traditional Jingju love story. By contrast with Qingyi with her soft, gentle manner and high-pitched voice, the Wu Dan relies on a unique set of acrobatic and martial arts skills displayed in her f ight sequences. Not only is the Wu Dan tough and not to be messed with, and in some operas, she may even lead armies. Indeed, this play ends with the Emperor congratulating San Chun, giving her an exalted title, and making it clear that he regards her as a military asset. Yet for all the excitement of seeing a woman warrior kicking serious butt onstage, it was the personal and political dimension of the playwright’s rise and fall from grace that constituted the most important backdrop for the tour, and possibly created the opening for DFAT sponsorship. Wu Zuguang (1917-2003), one of China’s most famous writers for stage and screen in the early years of the PRC, was viciously persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. The details of his treatment were prominently featured in the show’s official programme, and not surprisingly, Australian reviewers focused on this angle as it toured the country. Writing for The Australian, Peter Ward observes that the playwright is regarded as ‘the enfant terrible of Chinese theatre’ and ‘a leading figure in the cultural liberation,’ adding that the ‘presentation of this colourful and happy play is a pleasure that

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springs from political pain, and awareness of this makes the performance even more fascinating’ (Ward 1988). Wu had only a year earlier been forced to resign from the Communist party, following his public call for an end to censorship. That this play was permitted to represent the nation externally, and that its tour was sponsored by Australia’s foreign affair’s ministry (DFAT), reflected this moment of optimism and hope before Tiananmen, a time when Chinese artists, intellectuals, and the youth were agitating publicly for greater democratization and freedom of speech, a movement many believed was unstoppable. Indeed, the playwright’s biography in the official programme suggested that even from a Chinese perspective liberalization would prevail, observing that Wu continues to be ‘the leading voice among other, younger, writers in the struggle for the “Freedom to Create,”’ concluding that ‘[w]ith the prevailing benevolent mood of the present government, this wish may come near to realisation.’ But sadly, the rest, as they say is history, as such optimism was dealt a death blow when the army moved in on demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square, killing an untold number, before clearing it on 4 June 1989. The contrast between the relatively bureaucratically engineered Chinese pavilion and the efficient mobilization of acrobats as instruments of soft power with the public presentation of Three Beatings of Tao San Chun was dramatic. The Chinese bureaucratic state, as we have seen, had robust and established structures in place to mobilize human resources, in this case artisans and acrobats, to create a strong human connection with other bodies both in the pavilion and on the Piazza outdoor stage. On the other hand, Chinese theatre artists, supported by the Australian government through DFAT, sought to present another face of China, one in which playwrights could be rehabilitated, and previously banned works revived and staged with pride. That Three Beatings was seen, even across its national tour, by a very small fraction of what were presumably hundreds of thousands who witnessed Chinese artisans and acrobats at work on the Expo site, also speaks to the sometimes alternative universes of high and low culture, of the vast differences in the audiences for theatrical entertainment in a performing arts centre, and those who pass through a pavilion or choose to sit in the shade on long benches and see acrobats on an open, outdoor stage. Two Chinas were seemingly possible at this moment, though in the end only one prevailed. Australian Premier Bob Hawke, speaking at an Expo ’88 planning meeting, observed that ‘An exposition is not a trade fair. Exhibitors do not sell their goods or services; rather they show and explain in an entertaining and engaging manner a part of humankind’s endeavours related to a theme.’

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Expositions then were no longer primarily trade shows, as they once were, but now also created openings for nations to attract through the mobilization of their soft power assets. In his speech, Hawke anticipated a diversity of possible responses to the fair’s leisure theme of ‘Leisure in the Age of Technology:’ Some participating nations and corporations will use the opportunity the theme provides to display achievements in technology, electronics and communications; others will depict the leisure pastimes of the present and the future: sport, tourism, music, dance, theatre, acrobatics – activities which have always been a cherished part of the human experience, which are humanising, civilising, personally and culturally enriching, and which unite us nationally and globally.33

Indeed China, unlike Japan at the Brisbane Expo,34 embraced what Hawke identifies as ‘a cherished part of the human experience,’ one that brings us together, effectively marshalling its human resources through live performance to connect with others on an embodied level in what was most likely a conscious, soft-power exercise. While Japan offered not one, but three pavilions filled to the brim with things that dazzled and delighted consumers of technology,35 the PRC, building on sixteen years of diplomatic relations and nearly a decade of significant cultural exchanges with Australia, offered skilled artisans, acrobats, and physical evidence of an ancient civilization, collectively creating an experience and image that was, in Hawke’s words, ‘humanising, civilising, personally and culturally enriching.’ Thus, here in Brisbane, in their first major exercise in self-representation at an international exposition in nearly 75 years, China, now the PRC, moved beyond ‘Panda diplomacy’ to engage the largest audience ever assembled to experience things Chinese at a contemporary exposition in the West. 33 Speech by the Prime Minister, International Planning Meeting of World Expo ’88 Brisbane, 9 September 1986, QSA, E88A, Expo ’88 International Planning Meeting Files, Series 17858, Item 132283. 34 Indeed, Japan’s big high-tech ‘pitch’ at this expo was the demonstration of high-definition digital television inside their pavilion. See Dean (1988). 35 Though the Fujitsu Pavilion was operated by the Australian subsidiary of a Japanese corporation, it offered a site for the reprise of a high-tech, 3-D movie first shown three years earlier at the international exposition in Tsukuba, north of Tokyo. In addition to the country pavilion, Japan also offered a ‘Technoplaza,’ which housed six exhibitors, including the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), Hitachi, Idemitsu Kosan, Leisure Development of Japan, Brisbane’s sister city of Kobe, and Queensland’s sister state, Saitama Prefecture.

6

Fashion, Dance, and Representing the Filipina The Philippines at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair

Abstract The New York World’s Fair of 1964-1965 offered an unprecedented opportunity for smaller Asian nations to reach an audience of 54 million American in the world’s most dynamic city. The country pavilion of America’s former colony, the Philippines, occupied a commanding position near the iconic ‘Unisphere,’ the fair’s symbol, with a structure that echoed tradition while proclaiming modernity. The beating heart of the pavilion were its many guides hailing from the country’s ‘best families’ who presented regular dance programs. The so-called ‘Philippines Cultural Invasion of New York’ on the occasion of Philippine Week in June 1964 generated an explosion of Filipino culture into midtown Manhattan, chiefly through folk dance and spectacular public displays of neo-ethnic and contemporary fusion fashion. Keywords: Philippines, dance, fashion, New York City

The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair was not an official international exposition, but rather an ambitious outlier, an enterprise designed to turn a profit, led by Robert Moses, the legendary unelected powerbroker credited by many with planning and shaping the physical infrastructure of New York City at mid-century (Caro 1975). According to the BIE rules, no approval was to be given for a ‘world expo’ in a country that had hosted one within a single ten-year period; as the Seattle World’s Fair had been sanctioned for 1962, a New York fair commencing in 1964 was never going to receive international recognition. Ostensibly meant to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the founding of New York City, Moses’ fair was remembered more as a celebration of American consumer culture than as a truly international event. While the over-enthusiastic Moses initially projected 70 million attendees (Grutzner

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch06

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1960), 54 million passed through its turnstiles over its two years of operation (Samuel 2007, p. 199). It remains the most well-attended fair in US history and is remembered for its sunny, optimistic orientation and embrace of a future where progress was presented as unending, particularly in the interactive displays in the huge and expensive corporate pavilions that offered glimpses into a utopian future characterized by ever increasing leisure, comfort, and ease. Lawrence Samuel characterizes it as the ‘final gasp of American innocence, the last time and place in which the harsh realities of the mid-1960s could be ignored on such a large scale’ (2007, p. xviii), the capstone of ‘the American century’ famously prophesized by Life magazine publisher Henry Luce in 1941. Canada, as well as most European nations, chose not to participate, creating a unique opportunity for Asian countries, the Philippines among them, to take centre stage at an event at which they otherwise might find themselves relatively sidelined. Indeed, Asian representation was a priority for those running the New York World’s Fair Corporation,1 and considerable time and resources were spent ensuring the participation of Asian nations. Among the other Asian countries signing on early to participate were Indonesia, Korea, Malaya and India, later joined by the Republic of China (or Taiwan), Cambodia, Thailand, and a business consortium which set up and ran the Hong Kong pavilion. Seventeen years after its birth as an independent nation, the Philippines came to the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, presenting itself to its former colonial masters as a proud, confident nation, showcasing the country’s achievements, culture, products and people before the largest audience ever assembled in a city that more than any other defined what it meant to be a city. The Philippines was one of the first nations to sign on to the fair, when on 25 February 1961, a full three years before the fair’s scheduled opening, the country’s cabinet voted in principle to support participation.2 In spite of the early signal, long after the pavilion’s groundbreaking ceremonies on 24 April 1963, doubt remained that the pavilion would ever be built, largely due to the failure to secure a local construction contract and obtain financing, which ultimately came through just seven months before the fair opened on 22 April 1964. The delays reflected the relatively high cost of the 1 Unless otherwise noted, in this and the following chapter archival records are from the New York World’s Fair 1964-1965 Corporation, held in the New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts Division. As with records for the 1939-1940 New York fair, references will appear as: ‘Archives of the 1939-1940 NYWF.’ As before, box number will be followed by file number as: #/#. 2 United States Department of State, American Embassy, Rabat, Morocco. ‘Telegram to Charles Poletti,’ 7 March 1961. Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3.

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undertaking, and the fact that the government of the Philippines had been unable to provide all the funding for the pavilion at the earlier 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, eventually turning to private donors to meet the shortfall. The country’s financial position was not strong, and key planning for the fair took place as incoming President Diosdado Macapagal and his Commerce Secretary, Rufino Hechanova, were only beginning to secure their positions in what proved to be a short, one-term presidential term that ended with the election of Ferdinand Marcos in late 1965, shortly after the fair ended. Given the domestic economic and political context in the Philippines, it is hardly surprising that a department store magnate and head of the Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, Domingo Arcega,3 was appointed Executive Director of the country’s participation. In a statement that appears to have been widely circulated in Manila newspapers in early 1962, he set out what participation meant for the nation in ways that spoke to the aspirations of the country’s newly elected government: By 1964, the Philippines should have reached that level of productivity and stable economy so envisioned in the socio-economic program of President Macapagal so that Philippine participation in the New York World’s fair [sic] in 1964 will be a show and display of achievements of a determined nation under the new administration. 4

While Arcega was publicly proclaiming the economic rationale for participation, the charming and fiercely determined Helena Benitez, founder of the country’s flagship Bayanihan National Folk Dance Company, was working behind the scenes to secure a slot for her company in the opening season of the New York State Theatre at Lincoln Center in Manhattan.5 Benitez’s intervention is significant, as dance would ultimately prove to be a key element in the country pavilion’s design, while the company’s public performance at the famed Lincoln Center, as we will see, extended the presence of the Philippines into the city, providing the basis for a Mayoral Proclamation that gave the country considerable prestige and visibility before the general public. 3 Rand, Joseph (for the Ambassador to the Philippines), ‘Unclassified Despatch [sic] to US State Department, Washington, DC,’ 26 Oct. 1961. Manila, Philippines. Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3. 4 Article from unidentif ied newspaper in the Philippines, n.d., Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3. 5 Report on the Philippines, US Embassy, Tokyo, 1 March 1962, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3.

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While dance played a key role in the country’s self-representation at the fair, the performance of gender and gendered performances at key events, notably the pavilion groundbreaking on 24 April 1963, and the multiple appearances of the daughter of the President of the Philippines at official functions, challenged prevailing representations of Asian women in the city’s mainstream press. A review of the comprehensive collection of press clippings on Asian participation in nearly a dozen daily and weekly newspapers serving the New York metropolitan area points to a fascination, indeed an obsession with the Asian female form. Of the 58 feature photos that accompanied 52 newspaper articles found in the fair’s vast press archives, the majority of those of human subjects were of Asian women, numbering 30, or 52 percent of the total, while all except Indian Prime Minister Gandhi were of young Asian women. Photo captions such as ‘As Hostesses, They’re the Mostest’ (New York Daily News, 14 June 1965, p. 18) or ‘Hong Kong Cutie’ (Long Island Daily Press, 17 July 1964, p. 7) highlighted the beauty, grace, and availability of Asian women, consistently setting them out as objects to be gazed at, while accompanying articles often suggested that these women were by no means easy to obtain for the heterosexual white male who desired them. While Filipino women were key to the creation and projection of a positive image of the Philippines on the wider New York stage, they were consistently placed in more active, dynamic roles than the American public expected from Asian women. These women, whether serving as dancers, pavilion guides, fashionistas, or as representative of their country’s head of state, challenged many of the key tropes of Asian femininity circulating in New York’s popular press at this time. Thus a significant focus of this chapter will be on the ways in which Filipino women presented themselves and were reported upon in the daily press, relying on archival data, including newspaper and magazine articles, letters, planning documents, and press releases, as well as the extensive record of file photos of key public events. With respect to the pavilion, which occupied a commanding position near the central heart of the fair, the famous Unisphere, the focus will be on the human dimension, particularly the well-pedigreed guides chosen to represent the country. Analysing this exercise in national self-representation required deep archival detective work; for instance, in the photographic record of key public events, it became especially important to examine photos not just for what they show, but to consider the intended meanings of symbolic and material culture that may have been lost on its intended recipients. We will see how this is especially the case with Filipino fashion, which played a crucial role in the visual record of fair functions, while it was unremarked

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upon or misunderstood by the largely old-school American men running the fair. Because of the high stakes in New York for emerging nations like the Philippines and Indonesia – examined in the next chapter – a more detailed consideration of the personalities and strong imprints of key players is required, notably Charles Poletti, who was in charge of international exhibits at the fair,6 Gloria Macapagal, the daughter of the President of the Philippines, and Helena Benitez, the Bayanihan dance company founder, an iconic cultural figure in the Philippines. The structure will unfold largely sequentially, considering the public display of Filipiniana fashion at the pavilion groundbreaking, the country pavilion and the human dimension of the displays within it, and the central position of dance during Philippines Week in June 1964.

Breaking Ground: Filipiniana Fashion and the President’s Daughter Perhaps the earliest indication that the Philippines might be operating according to principles that differed from those of the other Asian nations was detectable in the first key semi-public event associated with participation, the groundbreaking ceremony for the pavilion on 24 April 1963. The event also reflects the disjunction between the ways in which the Philippines, through its local organizing committee, sought to present itself, and how it was perceived. Hosting the groundbreaking was former New York Governor Charles Poletti,7 the fair’s Vice-President for International Affair and Exhibits, famous for his ‘common touch’ which served him well while undertaking leadership roles during World War II (Goldstein 2002), but which occasionally landed him in hot water in later life. Harvardeducated, Poletti’s off-the-cuff communications possessed a rough, New York style of bluntness that on numerous occasions ran counter to the tone and communication styles of his Asian counterparts. Groundbreaking ceremonies at this and American fairs by the mid-1960s were fully diplomatic events staged in the public eye, generally featuring the nation’s Ambassador to the US, the local Consul General, a prominent national 6 Poletti’s title was Vice-President, International Affairs and Exhibits. 7 As Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1942, Poletti served as governor for 29 days in late 1942 and early 1943 following the resignation of Governor Herbert H. Lehman, who resigned to direct war-relief efforts in Europe. Though unelected to this office, in all official correspondence Poletti is referred to as ‘Governor Poletti’ for having once held that office.

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political leader who had flown in from overseas – in this case Emmanuel Pelaez, the Vice-President of the Philippines – and at the New York fair typically Poletti, fair impresario Moses, and a master of ceremonies who ran the show as if it were a radio programme, the medium in which many would have followed the event. Groundbreakings were open to community and business leaders by invitation, other prominent fair off icials, and members of the press. At this fair, attractive bound booklets were created with official speeches written out and with a rendering of the proposed pavilion on the cover, printed in small number and distributed to guests and dignitaries. In addition to the official booklet, official files of the New York fair contain extensive photos of the groundbreaking as well as sound recordings of what the featured speakers said on the day. And it is here that the performance of gender at the Philippines groundbreaking plays itself out in interesting ways. Poletti, perhaps not surprisingly given his impetuous nature, departed from his short, written speech appearing in the official booklet and spoke extemporaneously at considerable length. He was the first to address the small gathering (Figure 24), and his remarks foregrounded the unfortunate weather, the beauty of the women present for the event, as well as his sexual desire for them. What follows is from a tape recording of the event, which includes the audible sounds of the laughter of the men, largely fair officials, who were present on the dais with Poletti as he spoke: I think this is an unfortunate afternoon because the Philippines always has such lovely weather. And here we have these beautiful women that are practically freezing. [laughter all around by men]. Now if you stay around [referring to the women], I’ll see what I can do after the ceremony so that you won’t freeze [again, men laugh]. Of all the countries Mrs. Poletti and I – I worked in, Mrs. Poletti, just to let you know I am married---[men laugh again], of all the countries that Mrs. Poletti and I have visited, in no country did we encounter more cordiality, more warmth, more friendly feeling than in the Philippines.8

Leaving no doubt as to his desire for the women, Poletti concluded his remarks with, ‘and don’t forget women, I’ll see ya later!’ On cue, the men nearest to the microphone responded with laughter, though it sounds a bit forced and perfunctory, as they applauded. Seeking to make light of the 8 This and what follows, is transcribed from the sound recording of Philippines Pavilion groundbreaking ceremony, 24 April 1963, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Audio file O1101.

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Figure 24 Governor Poletti at groundbreaking of Philippines pavilion

Governor Poletti, VP for International Exhibits at the podium for the groundbreaking ceremony of the Philippines pavilion, 24 April 1963, flanked by Amelito Mutuc, Philippines Ambassador to the US. Poletti wears a medium-weight overcoat and indeed weather records suggest the high that day was 57 degrees F, which would account for his comments about the women who appeared to be cold. Source: New York World’s Fair 1964-1965 Corporation records. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library9

boss’s comments, Richard Patterson, who MC’d the event, added, as Poletti stepped from the podium, ‘The funny part of it is that he meant that.’ Less enthralled with Poletti’s comments was the urbane Filipino Ambassador to the US, Amelito Mutuc, who, like Poletti, was a fellow Harvard man, though with an M.A. in Law and not just an undergraduate degree. Patterson introduced Mutuc and just as he was about to speak, Poletti interjected, ‘and I see you got a Harvard tie on.’ Patterson, attempting to play along, added, ‘and he’s wearing a Harvard tie, so …’ At this point the men cracked up with laughter as Patterson quipped, ‘Thank you Governor.’ During the laughter Mutuc evidently either stepped aside or left the podium, prompting Patterson to query, ‘Well, where is he, where is the Ambassador? You’re to make a long speech here.’ Mutuc, now within range of mic, does speak, but responds with a non-sequitur: ‘Thank you for coming here to listen to our 9 Hereafter the following shortened form will be used: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL.

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Vice-President’s [Pelaez’s] speech’. The men laugh until it becomes clear that the Ambassador has no intention of speaking. Patterson, clearly struggling for words, exclaims, ‘That’s eloquent!’ as a single voice now laughs nervously, letting Mutuc formally off the hook with, ‘Thank you Mr. Ambassador.’ Ironically, the official booklet commemorating the event 10 contains what were presumably Mutuc’s undelivered prepared remarks, which conclude with an evocation of the fair’s theme of ‘peace through understanding,’ which seemed to be in short supply on the actual day.11 While Poletti’s remarks might lead one to conclude that he shared the stage with scantily-clad beauty pageant winners, the official photos of the groundbreaking contained in the archives show no women on stage. The audience of attractive Filipinas to which he refers appears in a series of group photos taken at the reception in the fair’s Administration building immediately following the groundbreaking (Figure 25). Though the women pictured are indeed attractive, they were not there for window-dressing, as while some had official roles in the national commission, a good many others were probably related to the high-powered Filipino men present and were serving a national agenda, the promotion of Filipino fashion. In addition to the Vice-President Pelaez and Ambassador Mutuc, also present was the Commissioner of Philippines Participation, Domingo Arcega and Consul General Bartoleme Umayam. The most striking feature of the reception photos is the length to which the younger women went to showcase Filipino fashion, all of whom indeed wore light weight clothing unsuitable for New York’s April chill. A number of the women wear heavily embroidered blouses with delicate stitching, all distinctively Filipino in design. Some of them, including two that look as though they could be sisters, clearly coordinated their outfits for the occasion, while collectively the women in the group photos record a kind of mini-fashion show, possibly all the products of the same designer. Only one of the women in the group photo wore a garment with the more heavily constructed butterfly sleeves later made famous by First Lady Imelda Marcos, while the others opted for the kind of relatively simple, unstructured, free flowing Filipiniana-style design that circulated at trade and industrial shows in the years after independence. Far from the lavish, layered, exotic, glitteringly regal displays of fashion promoted by the 10 The expectation that Ambassador Mutuc would be speaking is also verified by the official NYWF internal program for the event, which was to include 45 minutes of speeches from 3:15 to 4:00pm. Source: Program for the Groundbreaking Ceremony, 19 April 1963, Archives of the NYWF 1964-1965, 119/C1.011/P4.0 11 Brochure of the Groundbreaking Ceremony, NYWF Corp., Archives of the NYWF 1964-1965, 119/C1.011/P4.0

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Figure 25 Reception following groundbreaking of Philippines Pavilion

At the reception following groundbreaking for the Philippines Pavilion on 24 April 1963 the younger women appear to be consciously modelling contemporary Filipino fashion. Source: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL

imperial First Lady of the Philippines a few years later, these are clothes for living in and moving around in a hot, tropical climate. These garments possess similarities with the overall shape and look of the costumes in the one of the Bayanihan company’s iconic dance suites from that era, the final of five folkloric dances in their standard repertoire and the one with the strongest Spanish roots. Indeed, two of the women at the reception are wearing dresses with fabric patterns nearly identical to those worn at the same time by the Bayanihan dancers in their folkloric itik-itik dance.12 The care and attention given to the clothing and the projection of an image of casual elegance, one reflecting a cultural fusion that indigenized and adapted Spanish shapes and forms, suggests that the women were participants in a larger cultural agenda, one that would become evident when, a little over a year later, fashion emerged as a key element in Philippines Week during the run of the fair. Their curated clothing choices, evident in the official photos of the reception, also reflect the likelihood that these 12 This dance is named for resembling the movements of a duck. An image showing the costuming for the dance from this time can be found at: https://globalnation. inquirer.net/124840/pioneering-teacher-loline-lualhati-reed-laid-to-rest-in-london/ lar-in-front-with-bayanihan-itik-itik-at-winter-garden-theater-on-broadway

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official photos could have ended up being reproduced in the daily press, particularly the so-called ‘women’s sections’ of newspapers. In short, as we will see, they constituted the advance party for a fashion parade of the work of Filipino designers presented to audiences both at Lincoln Center and at high-end fashion shows in Midtown Manhattan in June 1964. Yet at the diplomatic event staged outdoors on a raised dais and performed largely for the press, only the men are featured in the file photos. In a diplomatic cable reporting back on the event to the US Embassy in the Philippines the next day, Allen Beach, Director of International Exhibits, made a point of noting that a ‘large audience was present including many Filipinos and ladies in Filipino dress.’13 That their nativist attire was visible while the American men on the stage were all wearing heavy coats suggests the women chose not wear to overcoats in order to make a visual statement at the event.14 While a distinctively Filipino fashion sense was on display at the pavilion groundbreaking, it was the role undertaken by the young daughter of the President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal, herself a future President of the country, that more directly challenged the stereotypes of the docile, pretty Asian girl. Numerous attempts were made through diplomatic channels and personal appeals to entice Philippines President Diosdado Macapagal to the fair around the time of its opening in April 1964. None were successful, perhaps in part because the president’s support base at home was eroding and also due to the increasing tensions in his own backyard between Indonesia and Malaysia. At the same time, US involvement in Vietnam was ramping up, with US President Johnson putting pressure on the Philippines and other countries in the region to come to the aid of south Vietnam through its so-called ‘More Flags’ programme. Rather than dispatching a deputy to take his place, the standard protocol at the time, on multiple occasions Macapagal sent his young daughter Gloria, who had only just turned 16 around the time of her f irst visit in 1963. Official photos show her in both the model and display rooms of the fair’s administration building (Figure 26). In all photos she is pictured front and centre, clearly the most important person in the room, and in one particularly striking image, she stands beaming, flanked by Philippines 13 Cable to US Embassy in Manila from Allen Beach, 25 April 1963, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 119/C1.011/P4.0 14 That the women travelled without coats seems less likely, particularly as Umayam and Mutuc’s daughters, as well as a number of the other women present at the event, lived either in New York or Washington, D.C.

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Figure 26 Gloria Macapagal at fair function

Gloria Macapagal, daughter of Philippines President Diosdado Macapagal, representing her father at an official fair function in 1963. Source: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL

Consul General Umayam, her maternal grandmother Irinea C. Uda de Macaraeg, and her movie-star handsome elder stepbrother Arturo, a step behind her, as she receives an official fair press packet bearing the label ‘Year to Go.’ In contrast to the glamourous Mestizo-appearing women wearing Filipiniana fashions at the groundbreaking event, Gloria is shorter, darker, and in the visual record consistently wears dresses that apart from a few decorative touches or the fabrics used, might have been worn by any fashion-conscious American schoolgirl of the time. With her teased, elevated, mid-60s beauty parlour hair framing her extremely youthful face, she presents as internationally-mind, serious young woman. The Philippines was unique for having women in key organizational positions supporting the country’s participation. A woman, Cita Trinidad, was the key figure charged with expanding tourism to the Philippines as Deputy Commissioner of Tourism for North America, while back at home, another influential woman, Medina Lacson de Leon, serving as Under Secretary of Commerce, worked assiduously to ensure her country’s participation throughout a particularly troublesome period from mid-1962 to early 1963. Indeed, the participation of the Philippines, which internal fair documents suggest was

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deemed essential to the success of the enterprise by those running the fair’s international division, was largely secured by Filipino women – notably Lacson de Leon – not men. Given the fraught path to participation and the escalating dangers in the region, it is perhaps not surprising that neither the President nor First Lady of the Philippines were able to make it to the US for ‘Philippines Week,’ from 8-15 June 1964. Representing the country during this week of maximum visibility was daughter Gloria, not her photogenic 22-year old stepbrother Arturo. A communication from Consul General Umayam to Robert Moses conveys the First Lady’s express wishes that fair officials ‘shall consider all courtesies and attention accorded her [Gloria] as personally intended for me.’15 Documentation from the Chief of Protocol for Philippines Independence Day on 12 June, the week’s focal point, place the 17-year old at the head of the official party as the ‘Personal Representative of the President of the Philippines,’ listing her ahead of the Ambassador of the Philippines, and the many dignitaries present.16 Gloria wrote a regular teenage column for the daily Philippines Herald, and the newspaper also intervened to ensure that while in the US she was given an official press pass. During her stay in New York, she not only represented her country, but also wrote daily stories about the fair focusing on Filipino participation.17 At the time of her departure from New York on 19 June, a grateful Gloria wrote a personal letter to Poletti thanking him ‘for the many wonderful courtesies extended me’ and expressing her ‘very deep appreciation’ for his help ‘in making Philippine week such a success.’18 It is perhaps not surprising that later that year the future President of the Philippines would be enrolled as a freshman at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, along with another future President, Bill Clinton.

The Pavilion: Performance of Hospitality As a former American colony, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Philippines pavilion was granted a prime spot along the fair’s central boulevard 15 Cable from President Macapagal to Robert Moses, Consulate General of the Philippines, 28 May 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965. 16 Program for Philippines Independence Day, Office of the Chief of Protocol, 12 June 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965. 17 See Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965. 18 Letter to Governor Poletti from Gloria Macapagal, 19 June 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965.

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Figure 27 Postcard of the Philippines Pavilion

The official postcard of the Philippines Pavilion, though not to scale, captures the porousness of the structure and its position adjacent to the fair’s iconic symbol. Source: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL

adjacent to the Unisphere, the fair’s most iconic structure. The gigantic all-steel globe with the earth’s land masses affixed to its longitudinal and latitudinal steel ribbing symbolized the fair’s theme of ‘Peace through Understanding.’ The Philippines pavilion, designed by well-known Filipino architect Otilio Arellano, was striking for its openness and inviting nature. In contrast to the many enclosed big boxes found elsewhere on the fairgrounds, the circular pavilion was largely open to the elements and capped by delicate gently sloping aluminium-clad roof resembling a traditional, wide-brimmed Filipino farmer’s hat known as a sakalot. In the official postcard of the pavilion (Figure 27) it resembles an earth-bound version of the home inhabited by the Jetsons in the popular Hannah Barbara television cartoon of that name which ran for two seasons from 1962-63, the time during which the pavilion was being designed. Like the Jetson home, it both looked out and could be looked into; it was space-age with its clean lines, and rather than floating in space, it was surrounded by a moat, giving it the appearance of a floating structure. To most fairgoers, unfamiliar with the shape and structure of a Filipino peasant farmer’s hat, the pavilion would have communicated modernity and tradition, as the exposed ribbing supporting the roof gave the Jetson-like structure an organic quality.

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Twelve wood panels surrounding the pavilion’s ground level masked its central structural core, furthering the impression that the building was floating in space. Designed by acclaimed artist Carlos V. ‘Botong’ Francisco, they set out the country’s history, while exhibits inside the first and second levels included art works and displays19 of wood products, hand-woven texts, handicrafts and a collection of dolls representing types of native dress. The second level, largely open in the first year and then enclosed with decorative capiz shell panels after receiving a makeover for 1965, extended beyond the structure under it, creating a massive sheltered forecourt around the pavilion, while the circular roof extended the pavilion’s footprint. Unlike its more monumental neighbours, the pavilion appeared friendly and inviting. While both Manila-based Otilio Arellano and New York architect Jeffrey Ellis Aronin were formally credited with designing the pavilion, internal fair documentation suggests Arellano undertook the leading role, with Aronin cited as the associate architect. 20 Arellano had previously undertaken high-profile design work for the 1953 Manila International Fair and by the early 1960s was a well-known architect in the Philippines. Author of the influential text, Climate and Architecture (1953), and it seems likely that Aronin’s contributions were in making the largely open-air structure able to withstand the extremes of heat and cold which would have included the New York winter of 1964-1965. Behind the building was an open courtyard with exhibition booths featuring handicrafts of wood, native textiles, fibres, and embroidery. A further stage in this area was used for dance, though it appears that in the second year, high-profile events featuring song and dance were presented on the ground level of the pavilion, a natural performance space that offered casual fairgoers passing through a place to stand and watch without entering the pavilion. Photos reveal that this area functioned as an open-air living room, particularly in 1965 when the programme of events hosted at the pavilion expanded considerably, while press releases equated the pavilion’s openness with ‘the warm hospitality of the Filipinos.’21 19 Among the items on display were gold and silver jewelry, an ‘aromatic display of Filipino cigars’ available for purchase, a display of tropical hardwoods and parquet flooring, hand-woven textiles made of combinations of silk and native fibers such as pina and abaca, and items made of bamboo such as screens and furniture. Source: ‘Exhibit Highlights,’ George Peabody & Associates, Inc. (1964) March 22, 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 280, File P0.3. 20 Profiles of Otilio A. Arellano and Jeffrey Ellis Aronin, 22 April 1964, NYWF Corp., Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 280, File P0.3/1964-1965. 21 Philippines Pavilion ‘Fact Sheet,’ George Peabody & Associates, Inc., March 22, 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 280, File P0.3.

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Governor Poletti’s characterization of the Philippines at the 1963 groundbreaking as a place with ‘more cordiality, more warmth, more friendly feeling’ than other countries is a view that remains widely held, particularly in the US with its large Filipino-American population and strong historical ties. Indeed, pavilion staff, characterized as ‘24 lovely young ladies and the four gracious gentlemen’ in the official press release on the subject,22 were collectively dubbed the ‘Hospitality Corps.’ Their personal attributes were considerable: These ambassadors of Philippine friendship are all college graduates, fluent in English, and thoroughly grounded in the knowledge of their country’s history, achievements, and aspirations. Their names read like a social register of the Philippines, since all of them come from the nation’s best families.

Indeed, many of the family names listed – notably Delgago, Sison, and Periquet – remain influential today, while virtually all the names suggest Hispanized Mestizo family backgrounds. Though the number of Spanish residents in the Philippines during its nearly 400 years of colonization was always relatively small, a considerable number of families today claim to be of Mestizo heritage. It is well-documented that in the waning days of the Spanish colonial period, many families descended from Chinese traders who settled in coastal cities of country took on Spanish names and adopted many outward aspects of Hispanic culture, marking them as Mestizo, even if by ethnicity they remained primarily Chinese. Dark-skinned lowland Filipinos from poor and middle-class backgrounds know this and in their private moments many will express the view that these lighter-skinned, taller Asians, the ones with features long-regarded as more attractive in popular culture are Chinese. The list of beauty queens crowned at the Manila Carnival, the most prominent secular festival in the country for the first half of the twentieth century, is similarly dominated by beauty queens from the Mestizo/assimilated Chinese elite. It is thus hardly surprising that at this fair the men, and the particularly the women who outnumbered them eight-to-one, were selected based on their bloodline, being descended from ‘the nation’s best families.’ The earlier history of Filipino representation at international expositions no doubt played a part in way the newly independent nation wished to 22 ‘Hospitality Corps’ Press Release, George Peabody & Associates, Inc., 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 280, File P0.3.

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represent itself before its former colonial masters. Filipinos would have been only too aware of two famous Filipino ‘reservations’ at prior fairs, famously the so-called ‘White Exposition’ held in Chicago in 1893 and the Saint Louis Exposition of 1904. As noted in the introduction, at both events, a range of Filipino villages were created, each populated with ethnic ‘types’ conforming to an American hierarchy from the least civilized to the lowland Hispanized groups that were marked as the most civilized due to centuries of continuous contact with Spanish culture. These workers, faux-ethnographic objects of study, were brought to the US by commercial operators and remained in the US throughout the fair, living in these villages and pretending to conduct their lives as they would have done at home. Indeed, these villages, particularly at the Chicago fair, were regarded as subjects of serious ethnographic study (Hinsley 1991), providing American fairgoers with the opportunity to spy into worlds featuring peoples believed to be at earlier stages of human development. Famously, a ‘primitive’ Igorot village of G-string clad men at the Saint Louis fair both outraged the modesty of locals while proving to be a source of endless fascination. Indeed, they were one of the great hits of the fair with the public, while their supposed penchant for dog meat was responsible for the notion that persists even today that Filipinos are ‘dog eaters.’ At the groundbreaking ceremony, the patrician, Yale-educated Robert Moses summarized the then prevailing view America had toward the Philippines: Referring to the Filipinos on the dais with him, he proclaimed, ‘I think our friends here will agree that we have sent out very best talent to the Philippines from the very beginning, since the Spanish-American War, to help them establish a free nation of their own.’23 Filipinos were famously referred to earlier in the century as America’s ‘little brown brothers,’ and three generations of American tutelage were seen by many of Moses’ generation as what prepared them to emerge, in the immediate post-independence era, as one of the region’s most economically and culturally advanced nations. American colonization of the country had in fact consolidated the position of the Mestizo elite, a self-identified group by the time the Spanish left and the Yanks moved in, one that became essential to the foundation of American colonialism, reinforced through trade and education. As a ‘better class’ of people with whom the Americas could negotiate, and with economic interests aligned with those of American businessmen, they became the political elite as well. Thus, it is hardly surprising that when it came to 23 Brochure of the Groundbreaking Ceremony, pp 6-7. NYWF Corp., Archives of the NYWF 1964-1965, 119/C1.011/P4.0

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representing the Philippines in New York, they would have sent their crème de la crème. Such representation both stroked the egos of America’s political and economic elite, while serving the interests of the Mestizo elite that continued to dominate the governance of the Philippines, until recently, with the emergence of the populist leader and current President of the country, Rodrigo Duterte. In addition to their gracious manner and impeccable family heritage, what marked this group of pavilion guides, at least as they were marketed to the American audience, was their beauty, forged in a mixed racial caldron, presumably blending the best of each group. As the fair opened in 1964, the pavilion’s PR company described the people of the Philippines thusly: The basic stock … is proto-Malay which came to the nation in about 13,000 B.C. On this were grafted the racial characteristics of migrants from India, Indo-China, Borneo and Southern Malaysia in the pre-Christian era, with continuing influences throughout Christian times of Chinese, Hindu, European (mainly Spanish), American and Arabian. The resulting mixture has produced many startlingly beautiful women and handsome men.24

Photos of the ‘hospitality corps’ at official fair functions such as parades suggest that indeed good looks were a requisite, while pavilion-issued press releases repeatedly focused on the attractiveness of the guides. One such press release observes that ‘many of the enchanting girls have experience as models, and all wear their graceful native costumes with elegant distinction.’25 Yet another notes that in a bid to kick start the tourism industry, information would be made available to pavilion visitors by ‘a bevy of carefully-selected, especially-trained, and beautifullycostumed lovelies.’26 The power of the press release before the age of the internet has been remarked upon in the introduction. These press releases were important for two reasons: First, because of the extent to which they reinforced conscious and unconscious biases or created new ones using colourful, carefully-crafted language; and secondly, because 24 ‘Background Information on the Philippines,’ George Peabody & Associates, Inc., 22 April 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 280, File P0.3/ 1964-1965 25 ‘Hospitality Corps’ Press Release, George Peabody & Associates, Inc., 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 280, File P0.3. 26 ‘A Big for Philippine Tourism,’ George Peabody & Associates, Inc., 22 April 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 280, File P0.3/ 1964-1965

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the language itself was often used and reused in press accounts across a range of publications27. Contemporary press accounts commenting on the attractiveness of men, and particularly Asian men, are virtually non-existent. Women, on the other hand, were a source of endless fascination by the press, at times bordering on the obsessive. One feature-length article in Newsday, a large circulation, tabloid-style daily, bore the headline, ‘Girl Watching at the Fair’ and describes in considerable detail the ‘authentically costumed native girls from Sierra Leone and fragilely lovely, doll-like young women from Malaysia,’ as well other ethnic ‘types’ (Aronson 1964). The male author focuses disproportionately on the charms of Asian women, hardly surprising in that as we have seen with the local press, the majority of stories about Asian participation at the fair that ran with photos featured images of Asian women. Remarkable however, is the absence of Filipino women in this vast catalogue of press photos and the focus on ‘girls’ from Hong Kong and Malaysia in particular. Attire and attitude may have played key roles here. An internal fair memo, 28 evidently in response to a query about female flesh on display in the Philippines pavilion observes: ‘The attendances, female, wore native dress, which are ankle length, and jackets. There is nothing misleading or objectionable.’ The defensive tone of the writer, a fair corporation off icial, may well be in response to the tenor of news reporting about Asian women at the fair as many articles suggested they were notorious teases, and that they played hard to get when American men made a play for their attention. The reality may well be that the reason Filipinas did not appear to be the object of attention in the same way as their Malaysian and Hong Kong Chinese counterparts was because their bodies were more fully covered. An off icial fair photo from 1964 shows pavilion attendant Annabelle Jeves (Figure 28), described as wearing the ‘native dress of the Philippines,’ in a waist-length jacket, which though form-f itting, was in no way form-hugging like the Chinese cheongsam, while a long, relatively formless skirt covers, rather than reveals. Jeves wears light-coloured blouse, while a brightly-patterned, wide checked sash running from her left shoulder across to her right hip serves as the 27 Indeed, as I myself know from the writing press releases for a theatre company in the preinternet age, the whole point is to provide editors and arts writer with the kind of language that they could lay claim to and repeat as if they were reporting it themselves. I recall the excitement the first time I saw my own words in print, parroted back to me as news. 28 Memo to Bob Cohen from Mike Robinson, NYWF Corp, 25 May 1965, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965.

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Figure 28 Annabelle Jeves “in native dress”

An official photo what would have been circulated to the press of pavilion guide Annabelle Jeves described as being ‘in native dress of the Philippines.’ Source: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL

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principal ‘ethnic’ design element. In a Hearst newsreel report on the fair, 29 female guides working in the Philippines pavilion wear the same uniform, with dark mauve/purplish ankle-length skirts, fitted, open collar jackets in a complementary shade of light orange, and the wide, patterned sash. The women in the newsreel, like Ms. Jeves, are conventionally attractive, but their overall presentation is classy, sharp, even professional. It bears noting that by 1964 hemlines had started creeping upward markedly in New York and other cities in the West, and that the off icial uniform of the women ‘Hospitality Corps’ in the Philippines was clearly bucking the trend. When the re-vamped Philippines pavilion reopened for the 1965 season, the clothing for guides took on more identifiably ethnic characteristics. According to the pavilion’s newsletter, the women were to wear two types of costuming, the first of which was described as ‘the brilliantly-coloured ‘Maranao’ attire worn by women in the southern Philippine islands.’ The newsletter describes the costumes as having ‘a trace of the exotic blend of the oriental dresses of the neighboring countries and the Moslem influence.’30 The history of exoticizing cultural attributes from the Muslim areas in the country’s south is a long one, a foundational feature of the core Bayanihan dance programme developed in the 1950s, and a pattern that continues to this day in the diaspora, particularly in the US, where Pilipino Cultural Nights (PCNs) staged at university campuses with large Filipino-American students populations routinely use dances and costumes derived from those regions as emblematic of a larger Filipino identity (Peterson 2016, pp. 176-178; Gaerlan 1999; Gonzalves 2010). The other costume, to be worn during the summer months was described as a ‘kimono outfit made of dainty “jusi” or pineapple fiber cloth,’ is the lightweight fabric used in the ubiquitous and iconic Spanish-inflected clothing, the other cornerstone of Filipino couture. The men wore the traditional ‘barong tagalog,’ also made of piña cloth, long a standard of Filipino formal wear, also associated with an Hispanized Philippines. In addition to having a proper pedigree and good looks, pavilion attendants were noted for their accomplishments, education, and skills, which included dance. The pavilion’s May 1965 newsletter introduced the new staff ing for the second year of operation, which included ‘eleven young ladies and two young gentlemen’ ranging in age from 19 29 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EViI4KTJ398 30 Sakalot News, 8 May 1965, NYWF Corp, 25 May 1965, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/ P0.3/1964-1965.

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Figure 29 Folk dancing at the Philippines Pavilion

Folk dancing at the Philippines Pavilion re-opening in 1965. The dance depicted is typically contained within the Spanish-inflected ‘Maria Clara’ dance suite, a standard in the Bayanihan repertory. The graceful handling of the fans by the women suggest this is the Chotis dance. Source: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL

to their mid-20s, each deemed to possess ‘as colorful a personality and background as the country they now represent.’31 The majority were university graduates with commerce degrees, while a number of the women had prior postings in New York. Carmen Francisco, daughter of artist who created the pavilion’s wood carvings depicting country’s history was selected, along with fellow senior-year journalism student from Manila’s University of Santo Tomas, Asia’s oldest university. The men included a mechanical engineer, a pianist, and Luisito Cruz, proclaimed as ‘an attorney by vocation,’ but ‘dancer by avocation’ who regularly appeared on the popular Manila television dance show, ‘Dancetime with Chito.’ Indeed, it appears that dancing on the pavilion’s grounds was undertaken not by full-time dance professionals, but rather that by the 31 The ‘Ambassadors of Good Will’ recruited for 1965 profiled in Sakalot News are Filipinas Tiangco, Andrea Luna, Ligaya Avenna, Nati Abad, Priscilla (Baby) Ignacio, Ovidia Santiago, Carmen Francisco, Tati Lim, Lily Dichupa, Milagros Manuel, Monty Sison, as well as male guides Luisito Cruz and Bernie Antolin. A group photo in the same publication includes Rosita de Guzman, who may also have served as a 1965 pavilion hostess. Sakalot News, 8 May 1965, NYWF Corp, 25 May 1965, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965.

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pavilion’s hosts and hostesses (Figure 29). A press release issued at the time of its opening boasts that ‘All of the young people in the Corps are accomplished performers, of their diff icult and exciting native dances, and are apt to burst into impromptu songs and dance out of sheer high spirits at any moment.’32 And with this promise of unrestrained joy, the pavilion comes to life, at the intersection where form and function meet up with dance and fashion.

Philippine Week 1964: Fashion and Dance Collide Themed weeks recognising individual countries have long been and continue to be a feature of international expositions. But even by the usual standards, Philippine Week 1964 was noteworthy for the ambition and uncontainability of the country’s strategic and cultural objectives as its reach extended beyond the pavilion on the fair site and into Manhattan. Encompassing Philippines Independence Day on 12 June, it also overlapped with the three-week run of the country’s flagship Bayanihan Company as part of the opening season Lincoln Center’s newest venue, the elegant, glamorous New York State Theatre,33 designed by famed architect Philip Johnson. The New York performances came at the end of the company’s fourth American tour, one that took the company to sixty cities over a four-month period (de Guzman 1987, p. 86). Heralded as a ‘massive cultural invasion,’ New York City Mayor Richard Wagner officially proclaimed it ‘Philippine Week.’ His written proclamation speaks to the deep cultural and historical connection between the two nations, praising the Philippines as ‘one of the outstanding strongholds of democratic government in the Far East,’ while recalling how ‘the bravery of the Filipino people became a symbol, early in World War II, of the indomitable will of a people to fight for freedom.’34 The document concludes by observing that ‘the delightful and welcome cultural invasion of the city of New York in the month of June by the arts and fashion of the Philippines will further strengthen the bond of admiration and affection that exist between our two people.’ The mayor’s rhetoric points to an eagerness to strengthen 32 ‘Hospitality Corps’ Press Release, George Peabody & Associates, Inc., n.d. 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 280, File P0.3. 33 ‘Massive Cultural Invasion,’ Press Release, George Peabody & Associates, Inc., n.d. 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965. 34 Copy of Mayoral Proclamation, 15 June 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NY WF, 280/ P0.3/1964-1965.

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people-to-people bonds at a time when the geopolitical situation in Southeast Asia made it essential for the US to cultivate good working relations with a key strategic ally.35 The central role of fashion and culture during the June ‘invasion,’ presaged at the groundbreaking a year earlier, was built into the advance planning of the event. In the wider international context, Filipino fashion was, by the early 1960s, poised to make a major mark on the global stage. Just a few years earlier, a group of Filipino fashion designers responsible for creating the kinds of fusion creations worn by the women at the groundbreaking ceremony had become an influential force domestically and were looking to expand to overseas markets. The group, known by the name of Karilagan, which translates as ‘loveliness’ or the ‘acme of elegance,’36 included designers Aureo Alonzo, Joe Salazar, Boysie Villavicencio, Oskar Peralta, and Eddie Ocampo.37 Conchita Sunico, a former beauty queen,38 influential socialite, and the driving force behind the group, served as the ‘Ambassador’ leading their New York invasion that week.39 Two fashion programmes were scheduled for presentation at the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton East Hotel on Park Avenue on June 11th, the eve of Philippines Independence Day: 40 one for the fashion trade and press, and the other for an elite invited audience of around 500, consisting of the wives of United Nations officials and foreign diplomats, female civic leaders, and women in key roles in industry. 41 35 Picking up on this theme was the President of US Industries, the manufacturer of the famed Jeepneys still widely in use today throughout the Philippines. The company’s president, John Snyder, Jr., in a letter to President Moses, observes: ‘In my opinion the Philippine festivities at the Fair are important for a number of reasons, including the fact that the Republic is about the only real friend we have left in the Far East and should be recognized as such by all of us.’ Letter dated 2 June 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965. 36 ‘Massive Cultural Invasion,’ Press Release, George Peabody & Associates, Inc., n.d. 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965. 37 See http://www.philstar.com/fashion-and-beauty/545868/modelling-memories-may-bebeautiful-and-yet A fair press release characterizes Karilangan as ‘the newly formed Philippine Couture Association.’ George Peabody & Associates, Inc., 22 April 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965. 38 Conchita Sunico was Manila Carnival Queen/ Miss Philippines at the 1935 Manila Carnival. http://www.reocities.com/hollywood/7723/links_carnivalqueens.html 39 Suzie Benitez, Executive Director of Bayanihan recalls that Sunico ‘was dubbed the Perle Mesta of the Orient.’ Mesta, who inherited a huge sum after the early death of her husband, famously hosted lavish parties for wealthy, connected, and famous in Washington D.C. and New York. 40 Invitation to Karilagan ’64., n.d. 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965. 41 ‘Massive Cultural Invasion,’ Press Release, George Peabody & Associates, Inc., n.d. 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965.

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The fair archives contain a copy of the elegant invitation for the event, written in the faux-cursive script of a wedding invitation. Presumably a mock-up of one sent, it is addressed to Mrs. Mary Jane McCaffree, a prominent socialite who served as personal secretary to former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower when her husband served as US President, and who was presumably on the guest list. The invitation characterises the fashions as ‘a collection of beautiful fashions designed and made in the Philippines for contemporary living.’42 It is instructive to recall that though Manila was famously bombed to smithereens during World War II, it had once been known as ‘the Paris of the East,’ a moniker that the middle-aged and older women attending this event might well still associate with the country. As a former American colony, the Philippines was seen, and to some extent still is, not as a part of the rest of Asia, but as a Hispanicized, Americanized, Christian nation that shares American values. While today the country is often associated with poverty, overpopulation, corruption, natural disasters and more recently the extra-judicial killings under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, in the early 1960s and throughout the early years of the Marcos Presidency, it was regarded as a sophisticated, cosmopolitan nation, emerging in the years after World War II with one of the region’s highest growth rates (Maddison 1983). Thus, the notion that the Philippines could produce fashions ‘for contemporary living,’ ones that would be attractive to non-Asian women, is consistent with how it presented itself and was regarded in America and Europe at the time. Rather than offering fashions foregrounding the traditional, as was the case with the Japanese kimono for instance, the Philippines placed its fashions within the narrative of what today would be regarded as a kind of transnational cosmopolitanism. At home in the Philippines, Karilagan lunchtime fashion shows were regular events, while they also ran nightly cultural shows in Manila’s Hilton hotel where, according to former model and Bayanihan Executive Director Suzie Benitez, ‘fashion and dance regaled patrons of the hotel’ (2012). Benitez recalls that later, Sunico’s musical productions were staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and their fashion shows were presented at Hilton hotels in Europe as well as the famed Eagle’s Nest in the Hong Kong Hilton in Central, one of the most glamorous hangouts in Asia for the rich and famous in the 1960s. It is therefore not surprising that this fusion of theatre and fashion, at the heart of impresario Sunico’s presentation of Karilagan designs, took centre stage during Philippine Week in New York. While Bayanihan was undertaking a three-week run in the New York State 42 Invitation to Karilagan ’64., n.d. 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965.

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Theatre which kicked off on 9 June, 43 it was Sunico’s five-century pageant of Philippine costume history, and not Bayanihan that performed on that stage on June 12th, Philippine Independence Day. Their presentation of ‘Giting Kayumanggi,’ or ‘Brown Splendour,’ the day’s glittering evening event, was repeated a few days later at the fair pavilion and offered free of charge to the public. Dramatically, on 15 June, the show’s cast was transported through the streets of Manhattan in a motorcade of Jeepneys at 12:15pm, maximizing the visual impact of the event at a time of day when many of the city’s workers would be stepping out for lunch. A mayoral proclamation had for one week renamed Times Square as ‘Philippine Square.’44 The Philippines ‘invasion’ of New York was complete. That fashion played a key role in the captivation of the New York public’s imagination is noteworthy. Unlike the cheongsam, which was a garment presented in the popular Western imagination at the time as the sexy outer skin containing an Oriental beauty and revealing her curves for the viewing pleasure of the heterosexual white male, the representation of contemporary Filipino fashion follows more closely the kind of formulation set out by Nigel Thrift in his essay, ‘Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour:’ Aesthetic practices can take on a number of forms but among their chief expressions must surely be the vast spectrum of consumer objects that, as numerous ethnographies have shown, are able to produce all kinds of affective allegiances. Aesthetics is bound up with the discovery of new and alluring imaginative territories that reflect upon themselves. Though these territories are usually vicarious they are no less real for that. Goods are a substantial part of this process of imaginative exploration. From early on, goods have provided a sensual means of inhabitation that is also a means of captivation. As elements of aesthetic experience, they do not just provide evocations of times past or moral reckonings but affective senses of space, literally territories of feeling. (2010, p. 292)

The distinctive ‘imaginative territories’ reflected in Filipino fashion offered the generally well-heeled Western women seeing them displayed at fashion shows what Thrift identifies as ‘a sensual means of inhabitation that is also a means of captivation.’ The largely female audience at such 43 Program for Philippine Week, 7 June 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NY WF, 280/ P0.3/1964-1965. 44 ‘Massive Cultural Invasion,’ Press Release, George Peabody & Associates, Inc., n.d. 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 280/P0.3/1964-1965.

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a show can imagine themselves sensuously inhabiting these garments, a process that also captivates the imagination. That the flagship production on Philippines Independence Day at Lincoln Center consisted of a cavalcade of Filipino fashion through the centuries, speaks to a particular kind of aestheticization of fashion designed to appeal to women, ‘territories of feeling’ that circulated both in the theatre and through the circulation of similar garments purchased by American women. 45 The June 1964 cavalcade of fashion was just one of dozens of significant subsidiary events associated with Philippines participation at the New York fair. 46 Indeed, one of the overarching features governing the generation of affect by the Philippines at this fair is perhaps the quality of ‘too-muchness,’ which corresponds with the term Filipino term grabe, repurposed from the Spanish grave, or grave, severe. In its contemporary urban usage, particularly in Manila, grabe conveys a sense of doubleness: Something that is both literally too much, but possibly, too good by virtue of its excessiveness. This experience of grabe is thus an ambivalent one; while some might consider Metro Manila, with its epic traffic jams, hideous pollution, and barrios of massive poverty just outside the walls and gates of the super-rich as a collective manifestation of grabe, it may be that it is precisely this quality of too-muchness that makes it ‘good.’ Thus grabe, as the above example suggests, will track differently on different bodies; within a Filipino affective context grabe might be expected, even welcomed, while the same set of external stimuli may not generate a comparable affect for American fairgoer, or those Americans tasked with working out the details of international participation in this particular fair. The pavilion and related activities, as we have seen, expressed the quality of grabe, variously serving as a site for the performance of gender, sometimes, as with Gloria Macapagal’s visits, challenging expectations about gender roles by placing women stage centre even at official state and diplomatic functions. But it was ultimately the porousness of the pavilion, its permeability, that made it a metaphor for the nation as a place not only of looking in but also looking out, a site from which the cultural power of 45 One of my informants, Lina Winebrenner, a Bayanihan dancer who was in New York at this time, recalls that the fashion designers travelled with multiple sizes of the dresses on display that could be sold directly to women after the fashion shows. Personal Interview, Manila, 27 September 2017. 46 A sense of the excess of activities connected with Philippines participation can be gained by watching the short video assembled by Arcega Photography, which presumably draws from the photo record of Domingo Arcega, the Executive Director of Philippines participation. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCLq0ykGK5U

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the Philippines might extend to the larger New York metropolitan area and beyond, connecting non-Filipinos with Filipinos and Filipinos in the diaspora with well-pedigreed cultural ambassadors possessed of good looks, education, and dancing skills. In this respect, the pavilion and the men and particularly the women who populated it were in many respects an extreme illustration of grabe in action. There was always more on offer than could reasonably be taken in, particularly those activities driven by the many human actors working in and around the relatively small space occupied by the pavilion. Rather than a singular experience, the pavilion, with its manifold activities and endless possibilities for personal, cross-cultural exchange, offered ‘territories of feeling,’ reflecting the ambitions of a young nation as it launched what the city’s mayor characterized as a ‘welcome cultural invasion of New York.’

7

Performing Modernity under Sukarno’s ‘Roving Eye’ Indonesia at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair

Abstract Indonesia was one of the first Asian nations to sign up for the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, with the country’s participation intimately connected to the downfall of the country’s charismatic leader, President Sukarno. The erratic, brilliant, mercurial Sukarno was personally involved in the form and content of the country pavilion, reputedly selecting the attractive women who served as pavilion guides. The centerpiece of the pavilion was a theatre restaurant, which offered elaborate music and dance performances four times a day. As the US government grew increasingly hostile to Sukarno’s policies and the entire Southeast Asian region became unstable, Sukarno’s health and power began to fail, resulting in the nation’s withdrawal from the second year of the fair. Keywords: Indonesia, Sukarno, dance, media representation

The case of Indonesia at 1964 New York World’s Fair would appear to have much in common with the Philippines. As another formerly colonized, newly independent Southeast Asian nation with an even vaster archipelagic reach than its neighbour to the east, it also sought to represent itself in ways that championed modernity and tradition, wrapped in a national framework that celebrated cultural diversity. Yet unlike the Philippines, the Indonesian pavilion’s content, design, and even its very location in New York was largely directed not by a diverse team of officials, but largely by one man: President Sukarno. Because Sukarno’s fall from grace was so spectacular, with his health and grip on power rapidly declining as his country spiraled into economic chaos in a geopolitical region increasingly plagued by instability – much of it of his own making – his role in directing

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch07

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and shaping Indonesian culture has been a difficult one to assess openly and honestly. Sukarno’s nation fell into its ‘Year of Living Dangerously’ – a phrase he famously coined – in 1965, the second year of the New York fair, and by early 1967, he was under house arrest, his reputation in tatters. Though Suharto, the military commander who eventually succeeded him as President ran the country for a vastly longer period of 31 years, it is Sukarno, for all of his failings, who is still regarded as the founder of modern Indonesia. It is useful to consider who Sukarno was in the context of the early 1960s, as he is not a leader to whom history has been particularly kind, and for some good reasons. To Indonesians in the immediate postwar era, he was a man of the people, referred to informally by many as ‘Bung Karno,’ or ‘Brother’ or ‘Comrade Karno.’ It was Sukarno who formally declared independence from the Netherlands on 17 August 1945 from the front porch of his home in Jakarta, marking the end of Japan’s wartime occupation of the archipelagic nation. As Indonesia’s first President, he directed efforts to quash Dutch attempts to reassert their power in parts of the country in the years following the war, and it was he, along with Vice-President Mohammad Hatta, who navigated the rough geopolitical waters of that era to govern a nation of over 18,000 islands characterized by signif icant cultural and linguistic diversity. Internationally, by the mid-1950s he had emerged as the iconic and cool Ray Ban-wearing leader of what later came to be known as the non-aligned movement, a third block of nations – many of them newly-independent nations in Asia and Africa – that sought to provide a countervailing force to the hegemony of the United States and the Soviet Union as the Cold War escalated.1 As Shimazu observes, ‘Sukarno was a superb actor, who not only understood the importance of ‘performance’ and ‘performativity’ in his brand of revolutionary politics, but also, in the self-construction of the revolutionary icon – ‘Sukarno’’ (2014, p. 250). In the years immediately prior to the New York fair, Sukarno successfully courted both the US and the USSR with his personal charm and charisma, while befriending China’s Zhou Enlai, as well as revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. According to US Ambassador Howard P. Jones, reputedly a good friend of Sukarno, he wanted his country’s pavilion 1 Sukarno played host to this group at the famed Bandung Conference of 1955 at which leaders set out key principles for the ‘promotion of world peace and cooperation’ outside bi-polar world of the US and Soviet orbits. The group was joined by a raft of African nations that became independent over the following decade.

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at the New York fair to be ‘placed dramatically between the sites of the United States and the USSR,’2 something that became unnecessary with the Soviet Union dropped initial plans to participate. By the time Indonesia’s ‘year of living dangerously’ culminated in the early hours of 1 October 1965 when six army generals were killed in what was reported as a failed bid by the country’s communist party to seize power, the country’s pavilion at the Flushing Meadows fair site was abandoned and boarded up. In the aftermath of that event – referred to at the 30th of September Movement – over half a million Indonesians were murdered (Anderson 1990), many brutally and publicly, the majority being fingered as communists or leftist sympathizers. Recently declassified documents from the US Embassy in Jakarta during the period from 1964-1968 reveal that the US turned a blind eye to what was evidently a false narrative that the generals had been killed by Indonesian communists, while supporting successor Suharto’s increasingly authoritarian regime as it consolidated its power from 1965 (Varagur 2017). Thus, Indonesia’s participation at this fair is inextricably linked to the dramatic political events of the era, taking place against a backdrop of declining relations between the US and Indonesia which followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 11 November 1963, less than six months prior to the fair’s opening. While Sukarno was playing a leading role in the regional political dramas with the US3 and regionally with Malaysia, 4 his guiding hand was present everywhere in and around the pavilion. Sukarno was himself a visual artist with considerable natural talent, and his own work and private collection were featured in the pavilion. Cindy Adams, who wrote 2 Letter from Ambassador Howard Jones, American Embassy, Jakarta, to Charles Poletti, 23 June 1961, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, 273/P0.3 3 Relations with the US, close in the Kennedy years, deteriorated significantly by 1964 under President Johnson as he increased US covert military operations in Vietnam. Domestically in the US the fear of communism was expressed through the famed ‘Domino Theory’ that argued that without robust American intervention, Southeast Asian nations would fall prey to communism, one after the other, collapsing like dominos. 4 The period of the fair also coincided with the ratcheting up of tensions between Indonesia and the former British colony of Malaysia, which as a newly independent nation sought to maintain the territorial integrity it had over portions of what had previously been known as Borneo. Sukarno believed all of Borneo should belong to Indonesia, and tensions between the two nations resulted in frequent low-level military skirmishes. During this time, known as the ‘Konfrontasi’ period, the two nations were on the brink of igniting a significant regional war, further worrying US foreign policymakers concerned with an increasingly unstable region seen as vulnerable to communism. As Indonesia had the third-largest communist party in the world at the time, after the PRC and the USSR, Sukarno’s fragile domestic political alliance with the communists was seen in the US as potentially leading to a communist Indonesia.

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Sukarno’s autobiography,5 paints a romantic picture of him as a ‘great lover,’ summing up his character thusly: ‘He loves his country, he loves his people, he loves women, he loves art, and, best of all, he loves himself’ (1965, p. 1). In what reads like a hagiography, Adams praises Sukarno as ‘a man of feeling – an appreciator. He takes a deep breath when he sees a beautiful scene. He waxes lyrical at an Indonesian sunset. He cries when he hears a Negro spiritual’ (1965, p. 1). Sukarno’s ‘artistic temperament’ and his eye for the ladies is not peripheral to this story; indeed, it assumes a central role in both what was represented and how Indonesia was received by the American audience in 1964, the year the Indonesian pavilion was in operation. And it is here in the gendered space of Sukarno’s expressive life that the nation’s self-representation intersects with American press accounts of the time that routinely objectified the exotic Asian women as the object of heterosexual male desire. While Asian men occupied the diplomatic sphere, as we saw in the previous chapter it was the Asian woman who was more likely to appear in feature photographs, frequently with captions remarking on their attractiveness or availability or lack thereof with respect to Western men. Even more than was the case with the Philippines Pavilion, it was almost exclusively through the medium of so-called ‘traditional dance’ that American audiences encountered these women. After setting out the foundational historical, political, and cultural elements informing Indonesian self-representation at the fair, this chapter will focus on the centrality of dance and the position of women in that representation, on what was presented and by whom, and also how the forms of dance presented in the country pavilion were variously understood by dancers and their audiences. Indonesia’s distinctive culinary tradition plays a supporting role in this story as most audiences encountered dance as part of lunchtime and dinnertime entertainment in the country pavilion. The exoticism of the dance, the food, and the musical entertainment in the were of special interest to New York’s vibrant daily press, while the overarching framework for many stories consistently returned to the elusive charms of the Asian women, and the role of the charming and irascible Sukarno in selecting the Indonesia women on display. In short, ‘Suky,’ as he was referred to by columnist Warren Hall in the popular broadsheet, the New York Sunday News, was an Asian man that the predominantly white, heterosexual newspaper columnists could 5 The full title of the work, Sukarno: An Autobiography as Told to Cindy Adams, suggests it was dictated to her.

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relate to, a man’s man with a fondness of American movies, including the great Hollywood Biblical epics of the day (Kalb 1961) and an appreciator of beautiful women from all corners of the earth. In this respect Sukarno is the central actor in the entire exercise of self-representation and consequently, it is useful to start with an invocation of the country’s iconic, national story-telling form, wayang kulit, or shadow puppetry, and consider what it means for Sukarno to be cast as the master puppeteer, or dalang.

Wayang Kulit, Dance and National Identity In the 1982 movie, The Year of Living Dangerously, based on Australian journalist Christopher Koch’s 1978 novel of the same name, the ubiquitous and iconic theatre form of wayang kulit is woven into the aesthetic and narrative fabric of the film. The structure and content of the wayang stories, and how the Javanese people relate to them, both parallels and offers insights into the breakdown of Indonesian society as it slid into a dark chapter from October 1965. In the English-speaking world, it was probably John Legge who in his political biography of Sukarno (1972) first made the foundational connection between the man and wayang kulit, the vehicle through which the boy Sukarno entered the world of traditional Javanese culture in the village in which he was raised. The Indian epics on which the form’s key stories are based, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are not seen as cultural imports, but rather as embodying core Javanese spiritual values. As Legge observes: The stories of warriors and giants, of gods, kings, princes, princesses and clowns are not merely a source of entertainment but a repository of values and subtle exploration of mankind’s relation to the universe. They embody the idea of the parallelism of the terrestrial order and the supernatural and their themes illustrate the importance both of conflict, and of harmony and equilibrium precariously maintained through that conflict. In this view of the precarious balance of the universe can be found a perception of polarity in the natural and supernatural order alike, an interaction of complementary opposites – male and fame, light and darkness, life and death, heaven and earth, mountain and sea and so on – but these polarities do not include a simple opposition between good and evil. On moral questions there is no such simple dichotomy, but rather an inherent ambiguity which leads to a moral pluralism. (1972, p. 32)

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Sukarno was named after Karna, the strong and powerful warrior in the Mahabharata, the great epic tale of the war between two families, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Because he had been a sickly child, Sukarno’s father renamed him in childhood, replacing his birth name Kusno with the Su-Karno, or the ‘best Karna,’ in the belief that this new name would confer strength (Hering 1986, pp. 1-2; Adams 1965, p. 26). Javanese wayang kulit, as Ward Keeler demonstrates in his comprehensive, book-length study, is the ‘preeminent art form in Java’ (1987, p. 14), reflecting Javanese registers of speech, its cosmologies, hierarchies, and ways of understanding human behavior. Running the entire process is the dalang, a revered figure in Javanese society who not only controls the movements of the puppets and gives them voice, but who also cues the accompanying gamelan and singers from his position behind the screen on which the images of the puppets are projected. According to Adams, while she was in Indonesia working with Sukarno on his autobiography, he himself undertook the role of the dalang in a production at the presidential palace in Jakarta. A photo in her 1967 book, My Friend the Dictator,6 shows the president manipulating the shadow puppet of a warrior character in the Mahabharata, while the caption indicates that the performance began at 8 am and continued until 6 pm. Here Sukarno is both actor and brand, looming as large as any dramatic figure in one of the Hindu epics, while also serving as the master puppeteer. The Sukarno era, which came crashing down dramatically in late 1965, can be viewed as a kind of dramatization of a contemporary ‘branch story’ from the epic, the Mahabharata, one in which the godlike leader’s human flaws cause the unravelling of civil society, pitting neighbours against one another in a destructive, epic battle in which all suffer horribly. But if Sukarno was a character in the wayang drama, suggests Legge, he would have been cast – as apparently he did himself while a student (Hering 1986, p. 2) – as the bold, brash, uncompromising Bima, the least refined of the five Pandava brothers, the one who ‘did not learn to follow [the wayang’s] models of polished, refined, exquisite (halus) behavior’7 (Legge 1972, p. 33). Thus, there was both a sensitivity and a coarseness, an earthiness to Sukarno, 6 The book was reissued in Singapore a few years later as Sukarno, My Friend, Singapore: Gunung Agung Ltd., 1971. 7 Bob Hering, writing of Sukarno’s leadership style, further sets out this connection with Bima, while noting that Sukarno could also quickly shift into the mode of unifying leader: ‘Sukarno was soon widely known as, on the one hand, the unrelenting warrior, the Bima, banishing to the opposite side of his antithesis everything that in his opinion might hurt the movement or delay its course – and on the other hand as the pivot of unity, the leader, who in his first attempt had succeeded bringing the divergent political movements together under one roof’ (1986, p. 4).

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qualities that influenced the nature and shape of Indonesian participation at the fair. Perhaps more than any other significant political figure on the international stage in the twentieth century, Sukarno had the unique ability not just to hob nob with the widest conceivable range of politicians and heads of state, but to genuinely charm and befriend them. He forged a key alliance with the communists in Indonesia when it was useful, collaborated with the Japanese occupiers for a time in the hopes of ridding his country of the Dutch after World War II, famously hung out with a sympathetic John F. Kennedy in a state visit in April, 1961, and then just a few years later, furious at the United Nations for admitting Malaysia into the body, quit the organization while telling both the US and the UN to ‘go to hell with your aid’ (New York Times, 17 Jan. 1965, p. 1). His volatility, passion, and so-called ‘artistic temperament’ very much reflect how Indonesia represented itself and was received by its American audience. The other related, wider frame was the position of performing arts forms, and particularly dance, which was used to articulate and express Indonesian national identity through the concept of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, or ‘Out of Many, One,’8 the nation’s post-independence motto. More broadly, from the earliest days of nationhood in the early 1950s, culture was seen by Sukarno’s government as the foundation on which the nation stood. As Jennifer Lindsay observes of this time, ‘Despite various and conflicting ideological approaches about what kind of culture Indonesia should have, there was a common conviction that ‘being Indonesian’ was an issue of culture’ (2012a, p. 2). Indeed, Section VI, Article 40 of Indonesia’s 1950 Constitution makes clear not only that culture is to be protected, but that it should serve the nation: ‘The authorities shall protect cultural, artistic and scientific freedom. Upholding this principle, the authorities shall, to the best of their ability, promote the development of the nation in culture, art and science.’9 Young artists and performers in the 1950s saw Sukarno as one of them, as Iriwati Durban Ardjo, a dancer from the Sunda region of West Java recalls: ‘President Soekarno10 was a statesman and an artist who loved the arts, particularly the dance of Indonesia’s regions’ (Ardjo 2012, p. 397). A national arts infrastructure, which included professional training institutions, was established in the 1950s, with a national department for 8 The usual translation of the phrase, ‘Unity in Diversity,’ is not entirely accurate and fails to point to the implied end, namely that ‘the many’ become ‘one.’ 9 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, Section VI, Article 40, 15 August 1950, p. 376. http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Indonesia-Constitution-1950.pdf 10 The older Dutch spellings used ‘oe’ instead of the vowel ‘u’. Where this spelling was used in the original quote it will be preserved.

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arts, the Kantor Djawatan Kebudajaan Urusan Kesenian, initially located in Yogyakarta, formed in 1954, later becoming a part of the Jakarta-based ministry, the Department of Education, Training and Culture (Lindsay 2012b, p. 192). The first postwar international tours of dances from Bali and Sumatra took place as early as 1952, and by 1954, an even wider intracultural reach within Indonesia11 brought together dancers from Yogyakara, Solo, Bandung, Makassar, Medan, Padang, and Jakarta to generate a dance programme for a three-month tour to China, working out of the now-demolished former home of Sukarno, known then as Gedung Proklamasi (Building of the Proclamation), as it constituted the physical home of Indonesian independence (Lindsay 2012b, p. 193). The department’s cultural mission, which mobilized some sixty artists, was, according to Lindsay, ‘the first time the new nation of Indonesia curated itself, so to speak,’ and ‘[f]rom 1954, the young republic managed the cultural self image it would portray abroad and projected that image alone, often at its own initiative’ (Lindsay 2012b, p. 199). Reflecting the prominent role dance in the project of nationhood, just a few years later, the ‘elegant, urbane, and polyglot’ Professor Prijono, 12 a trained Javanese classical dancer, took up the position of Minister of Basic Education and Culture (Lindsay 2012b, p. 206). During this long tenure in that role (1957-1966), Lindsay observes that he was a ‘strong supporter of regional arts, as long as they were harnessed to national consciousness’ (Lindsay 2012b, p. 206). Thus, the degree to which dance was central to the project of nationhood and to its external representation cannot be understated. While in the Philippines, the early emergence of the Bayanihan company, built on a similar unity-in-diversity dance repertoire that incorporated various forms of ‘traditional’ dance from the country’s major, identifiable regions, was driven largely by a few prominent individuals who came together at a particular university,13 in Indonesia, virtually from the beginning of the country’s operation as a stable political unit, dance was a project enthusiastically supported and directed by the state. Dancers of that era recall routinely performing at state functions (Ardjo 2012, p. 403; Lindsay 2012b, p. 201; Ross 2016, pp. 60-61), while the experience, as one such dancer observed, reflected ‘the excitement of 11 International tours started as early as 1952 with artists from Bali and Java representing Indonesia at the Colombo Exhibition (Lindsay 2012b, p. 195). 12 Prijono, who earned a Ph.D. in literature at the University of Leiden, served as Dean of the Arts at the University of Indonesia prior to taking up a ministerial position (Lindsay 2012b, p. 206). 13 The initial troupe was organized through the Philippines Women’s University when it was under the leadership of Helena Benitez.

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being young, of being part of something new, and of having meaning in the larger world’ (Lindsay 2012b, p. 195). Authorized ‘Presidential Missions’ were sent out from 1957, and by 1960, with the increased opportunities international air travel provided, dancers toured ‘with dizzing regularity’ (Lindsay 2012b, p. 196).14 In this context, and given Sukarno’s desire to maintain good working relationships with as many international players as possible in the golden years of the late 1950s and early 1960s, it is not surprising that Indonesia was one of the first nations to formally agree to participate in the New York fair, even though the event had no chance of being recognized as an official BIE ‘world exposition’ for reasons previously noted. Sukarno signed on in January 1961, with Indonesia being the fourteenth nation and the first Asian country to do so.15 A few months later in April, he was in the US courting President Kennedy, meeting with him privately for a remarkable four hours on the f irst day alone. The front-page story in the New York Times was accompanied by a photo of the two dynamic leaders, the handsome young American president and a cool and relaxed Sukarno, in his customary Ray Bans and oval shaped pitji hat 16 clutching a gold-clasped swagger stick, wearing a smartly tailored military uniform festooned the medals (Lawrence 1961). Kennedy welcomed Sukarno as ‘a distinguished national leader, father of his country, and a leader in the world,’ adding that ‘we wish that relations between his country and the United States should be intimate and close.’ He suggested a commonality of shared interests, asserting, ‘We seek for our country what he seeks for his country – a life of independence, a life of security’ (Lawrence 1961). The previous day, Sukarno, a fan of American movies, capped off a four-day visit to California on the way to the US capital, where he dined in Hollywood with the President of the Motion Pictures Producers Association prior to a reception with 150 producers, consular and State Department officials, and movie stars, including Joan Fontaine and Danny Kaye, with whom he apparently chatted (New York Times, 24 April 1961, p. 6.). 14 Lindsay’s research (2012b) identifies at least ten such high-level missions sent out during these years, including some to the US. Her data on dance from this period is largely drawn from the memories of dancers. Given that talking about their tours, especially to communist countries, until recently had the potential to place them in danger, it is not surprising that this body of work has been largely undocumented. 15 Memo to Robert Moses from US Ambassador to Indonesia Howard P. Jones, NYWF Corp., 30 January 1961, Archives of 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3. 16 Though this style of hat is also referred to as songkok or kopiah, it appears in Cindy Adams’ book, purportedly using Sukarno’s own words, as pitji (1967, p. 9).

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In the years leading up to the breakdown of relations between the two countries in 1964, Sukarno was among the most followed world leaders by the New York Times, with his comings and goings in various parts of the world, and declining health and attempts on his life from 1962 reported on in considerable detail, even as the country headed for confrontation with the Dutch over control of Irian Jaya and with Malaysia over that newly independent nation’s territories.17 So impressive was Sukarno’s charm that he even managed to win over ramrod-stiff fair impresario Robert Moses, who, at the Indonesian pavilion groundbreaking on 18 January 1963, recalled with fondness his meeting with the Indonesian president two years earlier: ‘I’ve seen a good many representatives of foreign countries come and go in the last two years, and I have seen no more interesting personality than President Sukarno’s.’ By way of illustration, he offered a story of how Sukarno, a trained engineer, ‘looked the place over on the ground’ and ‘knew just what he wanted,’ adding that as the lawyers had not yet completed the paperwork, Sukarno offered to ‘sign his name down on the bottom’ of the page for it to be filled out later. ‘Now that’s the kind of man I like,’18 concluded Moses. Throughout, it was often Sukarno’s alleged way with the ladies that fascinated the press and made him popular with powerful men and women alike. In the years before the so-called ‘sexual revolution’ in the West, Sukarno famously had a reputation as a playboy and great lover. He was in his fourth marriage in 1959, when aged 58, he fell in love with Naoko Nemoto, a beautiful 19-year old hostess he met in Tokyo, presumably at a men’s club,19 who became his fifth wife in 1962 and assumed the name Ratna Sari 17 This moment in 1961 was arguably Sukarno’s apogee on the world stage, as events at home and in the region soon began to overshadow his earlier achievements. In 1962, there was a dramatic attempt on his life that killed three and wounded 28, which he blamed on the Dutch (New York Times 9 January 1962, p. 18). He suffered from a kidney ailment in April (New York Times, 23 April 1963) which plagued him for the rest of his life, followed by another dramatic assassination attempt a month later, with a total of f ive such attempts up to mid-1962 (New York Times, 13 May 1962). This was followed by conflict with the newly independent nation of Malaysia that came to a head in early 1963 over fate of former British colonies on Borneo. In November 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was elected and the US began to escalate its military involvement in Vietnam. These events collectively created the perfect storm for Sukarno’s ‘Year of Living Dangerously.’ 18 Groundbreaking Booklet for the Indonesia Pavilion, NYWF Corp., 18 January 1963, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3. 19 Though the press in the West and even in Indonesia have referred to Dewi Sukarno’s former occupation as that of Geisha (New York Times, 17 February 1998, https://www.nytimes. com/1998/02/17/world/jakarta-journal-weighty-past-pins-the-wings-of-a-social-butterfly. html; UPI, 18 November 1993, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/11/18/Indonesia-payscompensation-to-first-presidents-widow/2534753598800/; Cerpen 16 May 2017, https://www.

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Dewi Sukarno, often subsequently referred to simply as ‘Dewi,’ or ‘Goddess’ Sukarno. In a letter to US Ambassador Jones in Jakarta following Sukarno’s 1961 trip to New York to select the Indonesia’s site at the fair, quintessential ‘man’s man’ Charles Poletti, Vice-President for International Affairs and Exhibits at the fair, alludes to Sukarno’s ability to attract beautiful women into his orbit, suggesting that the women he selects may prove too attractive for men like him to resist. Recalling his time with Sukarno, Poletti observes: ‘He is certainly a fascinating man. We had several good laughs together, apropos of his plan to send some beautiful Indonesian and Balinese women. I told him not to exaggerate because there are limits to our capacities!’20 A few years earlier, the relatively staid New York Times, in their Sunday magazine section, featured photos of well-known celebrities and politicians dancing. Sukarno, the only world leader featured in the photo essay, was shown dancing with an attractive female dancer from North Vietnam visiting Indonesia with a performing arts troupe. The caption observed, with a bit of wink and nod, that ‘He played no favorites, dancing with every girl in it’ (New York Times Sunday Magazine, 4 December 1960, p. 127). Similarly, the influential Saturday Evening Post, no fan of Sukarno’s politics, characterized him as a ‘bon vivant,’ ‘famous for his love of women,’ suggesting that ‘[w]hen he travels in Indonesia, women are arranged for him’ (Rose 1963). As Benedict Anderson argues in his essay on the Javanese conception of power, it is concrete, a constant, and fixed force in the Javanese universe and not an abstraction (1990, pp. 22-23). Thus, by extension, for a ruler to have and exercise sexual power is natural reflection of his power. ‘Sukarno’s well-publicized sexual activities appeared to do him no political harm,’ he observes, either at home or abroad, while ‘the political aspects of Sukarno’s personal life are overlooked in such a perspective, for signs of the ruler’s virility are political indicators that he still has the Power’ (2006, 1990, p. 32). In short, for as long as Sukarno was virile, he was able to rule. Indeed, it was just at the moment when his health began to fail that his fall from power began. cerpen.co.id/post_141042.html), the expat-oriented Japanese website Japanzone offers a more likely explanation for the place at which they met, the Kokusai club in the Tokyo district of Akasaka, a place frequented by foreign VIPs https://www.japan-zone.com/modern/dewi_sukarno. shtml. Though Dewi denied that they met in such a club (Brilio, 26 July 2016, https://en.brilio. net/figure/7-controversies-of-ratna-sari-dewi-soekarnos-beautiful-wife-160726k.html), his 1965 autobiography by Cindy Adams makes it clear that he enjoyed going the Kokusai Gekijo, and even introduced his Ambassador to Japan to the club, exhorting him to ‘taste every kind of life in the country to which he’s assigned’ (Adams 1967, p. 10). 20 Letter to Ambassador Howard P. Jones from Charles Poletti, NYWF Corp., 18 September 1961, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3.

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For his part, Sukarno never sought to dispel this reputation, confiding to Adams that ‘People say Sukarno likes to look out of the corner of his eye at beautiful women. Why do they say that? It is not true. Sukarno likes to look out of his whole eye at beautiful women’ (1965, p. 12). Many women were evidently charmed by Sukarno, most famously Cindy Adams herself, the longtime New York Post gossip columnist who wrote two books him, the first of which, Sukarno: An Autobiography as Told to Cindy Adams,21 was picked up by New York publishing giant Bobbs Merrill in 1965, with excerpts appearing in Esquire, a prominent men’s magazine. Adams, an unabashed fan of US President Donald Trump today (Rosman 2016), when interviewed on film by the Indonesian news magazine Tempo in 2004, spoke reverentially about Sukarno, referring to him as ‘Bapak’, or ‘father,’ a term of both familiarity and respect that points to his position as ‘founder’ of the nation, recalling how when she met him at Istana Merdeka, the presidential palace, she was struck by how ‘magnificent’ he looked in his smart hat and uniform. At the close of the interview, responding to a question posed by the young son of Kartika Sari Dewi Sukarno, the grandson of Sukarno and Dewi, Adams painted a heroic picture of the man, a description that one might well apply to a hero in the Mahabharata: Your grandfather was one of the most important people in the world, in history. He created this country that you are sitting in now [spoken with emphasis]. He made it from little islands that didn’t speak the same language as any other island and that were not connected, that didn’t know one another, and that were poor. And he made this from 10,000 little islands into one country, and he gave it the Merah Puti, the red and white flag. And he made one language, Bahasa, from all the 10,000 different dialects, and he created this as one of the most powerful countries in the world. He did it.22

Though Adams’ narrative is hagiographical to the extreme, it is in the Godlike qualities many ascribed to the Sukarno that we begin to understand his appeal, and the tragedy of not only his fall, but the chaos into which the nation was plunged as his power and health declined in the early 21 Adams also wrote My Friend the Dictator (NY: Bobbs Merrill, 1967), later reprinted as Sukarno my Friend (Singapore: Gunung Agung, 1971). According to both his autobiography and Adams’ own account, they met in 1961 when she came to Jakarta on a US State Department cultural mission with her husband, comedian Joey Adams (Adams 1965, p. 15; Adams 1967, p. 8). 22 ‘Cindy Adams Talking About Sukarno,’ Tempo Magazine, Tempodotco, 30 December 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM-_nSt9k-Q

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1960s and he grew increasingly desperate and erratic in his judgments and pronouncements. Thus, it is not surprising that for Sukarno’s Indonesia in the early 1960s, nothing on the international stage was more important than representing both Sukarno and the nation successfully before the largest audience ever assembled in one place to engage with all things Indonesian.

A Modernist Pavilion: Tradition, and Girls, Girls, Girls When in its initial planning phase Sukarno placed the highly respected and politically astute Sultan of Yogyakarta, Hamengkubuwono IX, in charge of the pavilion. As Commissioner General, he officiated at the usual public functions connected with participation, while also connecting the country’s representational regime with the most vital and important of the remaining sultanates that predated Dutch colonization. In his political biography of Hamengkubuwono, John Monfries suggests that it was the Sultan’s ‘moderate reasonable’ image that contributed to the trust he enjoyed outside his native Java, noting that there he ‘commanded an enormous amount of public faith and even reverence’ (2015, p. 240). Significantly, the court culture of Yogyakarta, in central Java, is the one most strongly identified with refining key Javanese performing arts forms, notably wayang kulit, and the dance forms of wayang wong and bedaya. To this day Yogyakarta retains a reputation as one of the preeminent centres for the arts in Indonesia, the others being Jakarta, Bandung, and Denpassar in Bali. Though much was made of Sukarno’s guiding hand in the pavilion design,23 it was the architectural team of Indonesian R.M. Sudarsono and US-based architects Abel Sorensen and Max O. Urbahn who completed the designs for the structure. Sorensen had designed two of Indonesia’s most significant large mid-century modern buildings, Jakarta’s National Housing Development Board Building (1960), and with his wife Wendy Becker, the iconic and massive Hotel Indonesia, both government concessions under Sukarno (Silver 2008, p. 101). Balancing out the international modernism of Sorenson and Urbahn was Sudarsono, whose role was evidently to ensure that the pavilion ‘was appropriately grounded in traditional design elements’ 23 A NYWF Corp. press release on the pavilion groundbreaking stressed Sukarno’s key role in the ‘direction and guidance in the design of the building and in the selection of materials to be used in the construction.’ NYWF Corp., 17 January 1963, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 117, File C1.011/P4.0.

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(Silver 2008, p. 101). Reportedly costing in excess of US$2,000,000,24 the circular pavilion appears as a largely modernist structure (Figure 30), constructed primarily of steel and glass and topped with a fluted roof of the sort found on mid-century modern homes in a California desert town such as Palm Springs. The concessions to tradition appear largely tacked on as ornamental elements, or are entirely external to the structure, most notably the 86-foot tall split towers in the Balinese candi bentar or split gateway style that served as the entrance to the pavilion grounds, functioning much as they would in front of a Balinese temple. Inside the pavilion grounds was a Balinese meru tower, typically found inside the temple grounds, as well as stone carvings, also in the Balinese style. In the context of the high modernist buildings that dominated the larger built environment of the fair, the white, glass and steel Indonesia country pavilion proclaimed modernism, and unlike the Philippines structure, it was entirely enclosed and air-conditioned. The building featured a stylized, five-petalled, flame-like structure on the roof that was meant to represent the five guiding principles of nationhood,25 symbolism that would have not been apparent to most fairgoers. Belying the pavilion’s modernist exterior, once inside, the first floor was given over to demonstrations of Javanese batik-making and Balinese wood-carving, as well as displays of wayang kulit puppets. Paintings, woodcarvings, and sculptures from Sukarno’s private collection were also featured, including works from his own hand, a point of distinction picked up by the American press. Writing for the New York Journal-American, L.E. Levick observed that while Indonesia ‘chooses to stress its soul and spirit,’ ‘Fascinating also is the fact that President Sukarno has chosen to project an image of himself at the pavilion not primarily as a statesman or political leader, but as an artist’ (1964). Levick singles out Sukarno’s 1958 painting of an attractive Indonesian woman known as ‘Rina’ which was evidently 24 Press Release, Indonesia at the NYWF, Hamilton Wright Organization, January 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3. The total cost of the exhibition, according to a later press account, was US$6.5 million (Hall, Warren, ‘Okay, Suky, We’re Impressed,’ New York Sunday News, 16 August 1964, p. 6). 25 The PR company representing the Indonesian pavilion offered the following abbreviated version of the principles as ‘Belief in God, Humanity, Devotion to Country, Democracy, and Social Justice’ (Press Release, Indonesia at the NYWF, Hamilton Wright Organization, January 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3). The actual principles, which Sukarno first set out in a speech on 1 June 1945, are far more nuanced and complex. Belief in God, for instance, requires adherence to one of the world’s ‘great’ religions, namely Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism or Confucianism. Similarly, the concept of democracy implies and indeed requires consensus, which may only be achieved after a long process of consultation in which different or opposing views are bridged or papered over as parties wear one another down.

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Figure 30 Model of the Indonesian Pavilion

The scale model of the Indonesian Pavilion on the cover of the brochure for the groundbreaking in January 1963 reflects a modernist aesthetic encompassing traditional design shapes, notably the entryway and the Balinese-style tower to the right. In its final form, the pavilion had a flame-like structure on the roof that gave it a more temple-like appearance, balancing out the modernism of the primary structure. Source: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL

prominently displayed, praising it as ‘colourful’ and ‘pleasing.’ The painting, executed in oil in the neo-realistic style to which Sukarno was evidently drawn as a collector (Zweers 2014), reveals considerable talent and skill, and features a young woman with high cheekbones and a strong jaw, facing forward, in profile to the viewer. She has a flower tucked behind her ear and wears a traditional Javanese blouse known as a kebaya along with a skirt in the shades of brown and sepia associated with the Yogyakarta batik. When the work appeared recently in a 2016 exhibition entitled ‘Goresan Juang Kemerdekaan’ at Jakarta’s National Gallery, curator Mikke Susanto observed that ‘[t]his is an advanced technique. To draw a side-facing anatomy like this is not easy,’ adding that ‘[i]n terms of coloring, green, brown, black and sepia are in harmony.26 In a contemporary full-page spread on the pavilion in the New York Sunday News under the headline, ‘Okay, Suky, We’re Impressed,’ 26 ‘Who is the mystery woman in Sukarno’s painting?’ Jakarta Post online, 2 August 2016. See www.thejakartapost.com/life/2016/08/02/who-is-the-mystery-woman-in-sukarnos-painting. html for images of the painting.

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Warren Hall deems the president a ‘pretty good artist himself’ with his ‘life-sized portrait of a most charming girl’ (1964). What is most striking about the representational order of the pavilion and how it was reported by New York press is that the gaze is exclusively that of a heterosexual male, one in which the women are objects on display, and when they are pursued by the determined male, prove impossible to obtain. Few subjects connected with the fair were more fascinating than the Asian woman, the subject of an inordinate amount of attention, speculation, and intrusion by the large pack of reporters in the New York metropolitan area writing for a dozen major dailies. If Sukarno was seen as one of the boys, then the girls, and his girls, were there for the viewing pleasure of the heterosexual male. It bears nothing that the fair took place on the cusp of the sexual revolution, and it was only in June 1965 during the second year of the fair, that the US Supreme Court ruled by overturning Giswold v. Connecticut that states could no longer prohibit access to birth control. Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1970) was yet to be written, and Betty Friedan’s observations about the ways in which women were disempowered and disconnected from the possibility of creating meaningful lives as set out in The Feminine Mystique (1963) were not widely distributed, accepted, or even understood. At time the fair opened in 1964, Simone de Beauvoir’s foundational material feminist observation that ‘the problem of women has always been a problem of men’ (2010, p. 181) was perhaps never more evident but unrecognized. Women, and in particular Asian women, were not fully in control of their own representation, and largely without agency in terms of shaping their reception, particularly in the Indonesian context at the fair where the focus was consistently on women as seen through Sukarno’s gaze. Of the articles focusing on the content and activities inside the Indonesian pavilion during the run of the fair located in New York City metropolitan newspapers,27 over half focused on Indonesian women in ways that foregrounded their attractiveness or otherwise objectified them,28 while the overwhelming majority of photos in newspapers and magazines connected with articles on participation by Asian countries at the fair were of women, 27 Among the New York newspapers comprehensively monitored by the NYWF Press Office for articles on the fair were the following: Newsday, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, New York World Telegram, New York Mirror, New York Daily news, New York Post, Long Island Press, Long Island Entertainer, Long Island Star Journal. 28 Of the fifty articles that appeared in the newspapers, a good many (19) focused either on the dramatic shut-down of the pavilion or the theft of a ceremonial knife or kris early in the run of the fair. With those articles removed from the tally a full 17 of the remaining 31, or 55% focused on the women in the manner set out here.

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generally with captions that spoke to their physical attributes. Even the New York Times, the most restrained of the dailies, when writing about the women working in country pavilions framed them in such terms, observing that, ‘A large share of the burden of demonstrating the World’s Fair’s theme of ‘Peace Through Understanding’ falls on the graceful shoulders of about 300 pretty guides and hostesses at the 35 foreign pavilions’ (Raymont 1964). And when it came to the women in the Indonesian pavilion, the reading public was directed to view them through Sukarno’s eyes. Under the caption ‘Sukarno’s Roving Eye,’ accompanied by an Associated Press (AP) photo of the Indonesian president looking captivated, William Rollins, writing for the New York Herald Tribune in January 1965, reports that at 63, and ‘still using his old roving eye,’ Sukarno ‘helped select the 25 girl guides for the Indonesian Pavilion.’ Though relations with the US had deteriorated and Sukarno was in deep trouble both at home and in region making the likelihood of participation dim by that point, ‘About 55 girls had assembled at the favorite Presidential palace at Bogor, south of Jakarta, to compete for the 25 guide positions.’ Sukarno’s advice to them was reportedly: ‘I do not want you to wiggle around with tight skirts. Do not copy French or American women. Be Indonesian girls in every one of your actions – do it the Indonesian way.’29 Attributed to the AP, an article conveying similar advice to the potential guides appeared on the same day in the competing morning paper, the New York Times as well as the Long Island Press.30 In all three cases, Sukarno was the subject identified in the headline, while the women were the objects of his attention. An AP story such as this one would most likely have also appeared in other major newspapers and reflects the American newspaper reader’s prior association of Sukarno with attractive women.

Dancing the Traditional in the Modern and the Modern in the Traditional The second level of the pavilion, accessible by escalator from the ground level and comprising virtually half of the overall structure, was given over to a theatre restaurant that featured a thirty-minute dance and music 29 A shorter article conveying similar advice to the potential guides appeared on the same day in the competing morning paper, the New York Times (see ‘Sukarno Advice to Girls at Fair: “Don’t Wiggle,”’ New York Times, 24 January 1965, p. 6.). Also picking up the story was the Long Island Press (‘Sukarno Picks Girls for Fair,’ Long Island Press, 23 January 1965, p. 7). 30 New York Times, 24 January 1965, p. 6. and Long Island Press, 23 January 1965, p. 7.

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programme presented by as many as 80 performers four times a day, with two programmes at lunch and a further two in the evening. Despite the relatively high prices for lunch and dinner,31contemporary newspaper accounts suggest that the performances were popular with audiences. Television star Lucille Ball saw the show at lunchtime in conjunction with the fair’s ‘Lucy Day’ on 31 August 1964, an indication that the pavilion’s show was a major attraction by that time. Dancers, singers, and musicians performed on a raised round stage in the centre of the restaurant, with a runway extending the stage further into the audience, where many patrons were seated at tables. Dance entertainment consisted largely of abbreviated, contemporary versions of Javanese, Balinese, and Sumatran dances staged by resident choreographer Indrosugondo, who gathered the troupe prior to the fair in this role as head of the cultural department of the Ministry of Culture and Education (Shepard 1964). Indrosugondo had considerable prior experience assembling such cultural shows by 1964, having been responsible for a 1952 tour that went to the Colombo Exhibition and later to Singapore32 Musical entertainment included musicians playing both Balinese and Javanese gamelan sets, as well as the fusion form of kroncong, with up to nine players on stringed instruments ranging from the standing bass to the acoustic guitar, the most notable being a four-stringed ukulele-like instrument. With its layering of melodies, kroncong is perhaps closer in musical construction to the gamelan with its relatively polyphonic music lines, while the sound is lively and jangly, suggestive of East-meeting-West. Dance from Indonesia has a long history of presentation at international expositions during the period of Dutch colonial rule, most famously at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale Internationale (ECI) when fifty Balinese performers took Paris by storm, attracting huge audiences at the Dutch pavilion, garnering significant media attention (Bloembergen 2006, p. 333), and leaving a lasting impact on the young failed poet Antonin Artaud. His famous riffs on the 90-minute presentation, a show which as Matthew Cohen observes was similar to one featured at Denpassar’s Bali Hotel at around

31 Lunch was $3.75 while dinner was $6.50. It appears to have been possible to enter without dining, while diners were levied a cover charge of 50 cents on top of the cost of the meal. The single-entry fee appears to have been $1.25 (‘Fair Visit Can Cost a Little – or a Lot,’ Long Island Star Journal, 18 April 1964, p. 2) though another report suggested it was $2. 32 Indonesia Club advertisement, Singapore Free Press, 22 March 1952, p.3, http://eresources. nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/freepress19520322-1.2.47.1 Sutanti, one of the dancers interviewed by Lindsay, also remembers this tour (Lindsay, Chapter 8, p.195).

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the same time33 (2010, pp. 143-144), became the basis for the collective body of writings that later circulated as The Theatre and its Double (1958), for a generation and beyond, a virtual bible for avant-garde theatre makers in the West. The fact that Artaud had so little understanding of the context for any of the work that he witnessed was perhaps what made it so open to interpretation and such a rich source of imaginings for how Western theatre – and particularly the bourgeois, wordy French theatre of his day – might tap into an alternative wellspring of archetypes through movement, rhythm, and the and exotic soundscape of the Balinese gamelan.34 But most observers of these cultural dance shows were not themselves artists, and as Lindsay observes, their presentation at expositions ‘conveyed an image of timeless tradition and innocence juxtaposed to the technological development and fact-moving modernity of the West (2012b: p. 199). For the foreign, Western viewer, these dance performances can take them out of time and place and transport them to a ‘real’ imagined place: Cultural performers who take to the stage as folkloric dancers or historical figures often appear to have the veneer of authenticity – or, at the least, they are able to convey a sense of comfort to the viewer and participant that what is being presented collapses historical time, that what is presenter to the viewer is some transcendent and ahistorical figure conjured out of primordial pasts. In contrast to the immediacy and plasticity of our common and everyday entertainment, the cultural performer represents the embodied equivalent of the romanticized oral history – the true voice of the people. (Gonzalves 2010, p. 27)

Indeed, the long history of emplacement of ‘primitive’ peoples in camps at international expos, built physical environments which provided the Western viewer with an ocular experience meant to mirror one located ‘back home,’ reinforced the view that what spectators were seeing and experiencing was out-of-time, or at the very least outside the modern, Western time frame. But here at the 1964 fair, the context for Indonesian dance was different in many key respects. Not only were performers decontextualized from any village or ritual context, but they were performing on a raised stage 33 Cohen also notes that the Bali Hotel was run by the Dutch shipping company, KPM (2010: 143). Thus Artaud was essentially viewing a tourist show designed to attract European tourists to Bali. 34 As Cohen observes, Theatre and its Double ‘is neither a theory not description of Balinese dance. It is a poetic recreation of a spectator’s experience embedded in a utopian programme for advancing French theatre’ (2010: 142).

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before Western diners in a decidedly modernist structure, a crested, round pavilion floating about the fairgrounds, surrounded by other white buildings such as the nearby Philippines Pavilion that seemed to proclaim that the future was not just ahead of us, but that it had already arrived. And more importantly, the repertoire, no longer curated by colonizers with an eye toward the foregrounding exotic, offered traditional dance forms recast through a decidedly modern choreographic lens. Following the close of the fair, the pavilion’s dancers toured to Paris, where the trip coincided with a visit to the city by Sukarno and his new young wife Dewi, while in the Netherlands they performed in Rotterdam, Eindhoven, Amsterdam, and just outside the Hague at Scheveningen (Nicolaï, cited in Lindsay 2012b, p. 203). From its earliest days as a newly independent nation, Indonesia’s culture, and particularly regional dance and related music forms, was seen as integral in creating a strong civil society, one where unity rested on the recognition and celebration of internal cultural diversity. If the Dutch colonial representations of Indonesian culture sought to express Balinese and Javanese culture as timeless, discrete, and highly individuated, the ways in which dance was positioned and taught by the mid-1950s in Indonesia was founded on the sharing of forms with dancers and choreographers across regions. As Lindsay observes of work that toured overseas in cultural shows from the decade following 1954: ‘[T]he programs became more sophisticated … and the regions presented varied, but the missions always included both regional traditional dance, and often some modern dance as well, plus national songs and regional songs with contemporary arrangements’ (2012b, p. 207). While the focus remained on dance from Central and West Java, Sumatra, and Bali, short, regional folk dances were created, ‘with each region allotted relatively equal stage time. The development of choreography at this time was clearly influenced by the need for new short performances with simple narrative, or traditional dances condensed and adapted with new narratives’ (Lindsay 2012b, p. 209). This kind of packaging of regional dances into short, dramatic sketches was ideally suited to cultural exchange and overseas presentation as it required little from the audience in the way of sustained attention and could dazzle them with diversity in musical and dance styles as well with ‘traditional’ costumes. Over the decade prior to the New York fair, cultural dance programmes for export had been developed that relied on contrasting styles and tempos even within a single regional presentation, a formula that continues to this day in cultural performances for tourists from overseas, most notably in Bali and Yogyakarta. Dancers from that period recall that for instance, the Javanese segment of the programme might feature ‘short duets of contrasting dance

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styles,’ ones that might alternate between male with female, or between the ‘refined alus style’ and the ‘boisterous gagah’ (Lindsay 2012b, p. 209), the latter being a bold, vigorous movement style used by strong male or warrior characters. Such dances might be preceded or followed by the slow-moving, regal forms of srimpi or bedaya associated with the Central Javanese court cultures of Yogyakarta and Surakarta (Solo). Significantly, Hamengkubuwono I, from whom the Commissioner General for Indonesian participation at the fair was descended, is credited for originating specific dance known as bedaya sumreg, while successive Sultans added to the form, believed to have originated in the eighteenth century (Brakel 1976, pp. 156-157). Both bedaya and srimpi are subtle, gentle dances, known for their elegant hand gestures, performed by small groups of women who move slowly and in unison, their arms close to their bodies, creating movement patterns as a group. Such contrasting works maximize audience interest by dispensing with the long stories or symbolic knowledge expressed in the complete version of such dances – which in a traditional, court context could extend beyond an hour in the case of bedaya – while also shifting movement styles and tempos kept the audience engaged. The contrasting styles of alus (refined) and gagah (boisterous) can also be contained within a single work to maximize impact. A file photo from a dance performed on the pavilion’s stage shows is instructive in this regard (Figure 31). In one of the branch stories of the Mahabharata, the refined, expert marksman Arjun, one of the Pandava brothers, is pursued by the fierce demon character, Buta Cakil. The dance version of this scene, known as Perang Kembang, or ‘War of Blossoms/Flower War,’ adapted from wayang kulit, is presented in the photo in wayang wong style, one in which dancers both in attire and movements mimic the shadow puppet ‘original.’ In the short battle scene, the hero Arjun enters first, and as he is one of the most refined characters in the Mahabharata, he is typically played by a slender, small-framed man. The photo from the presentation shows a woman in the role of Arjun, a sarong in a batik pattern characteristic of Surakarta tied around her waist, open in the centre and exposing knee-length pants, enabling her to assume the classic refined warrior stance. By contrast Buta Cakil, assuming the considerably wider stance befitting an ogre, stands aggressively behind her, his arms raised to shoulder level, about to assault the warrior. Arjun’s right arm dismisses the aggressive gesture with an elegant, downward thrust, which encapsulates the dramatic exchange, one in which Arjun ultimately triumphs because he maintains an economy of movements while Buta Cakil leaps and lunges aggressively around him until Arjun, seizing his aggressor’s kris (knife) in a moment of weakness or

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Figure 31 Dance in the Indonesian Pavilion: Arjun vs. Buta Cakil

The contrasting styles of alus and gagah are reflected in this moment from a dance sequence in which the warrior Arjun, played by a woman, deflects the aggressive, unrefined gestures of the demon, Buta Cakil. Source: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL

distraction, suddenly stabs him. The scene is staged on the thrust section of the stage in the theatre restaurant, with audience members visible. One of the most striking aspects of the photo is how intently audience members are looking at the stage action, some of them appearing entranced (Figure 32).

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Figure 32 Spectators watching dance in the Indonesian Pavilion

A close up on the spectators from the image above shows how close they were to the raised stage as well as their heightened level of attention. Source: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL

While press and publicity materials suggested audiences were encountering ‘traditional’ works in these shows, Indonesian dancers of the time had a different view of the relationship between the traditional and the contemporary. As early as 1950, the Indonesia cultural journal Gelanggang published a statement offering a manifesto for young artists coming of age in a newly independent nation: We are the legitimate heirs of the culture of the whole world, a culture which is ours to extend and develop in our own way. … We do not wish to limit by a name this Indonesian culture of ours. On the other hand, we do not understand it as the refurbishing of something old to be a source of self-satisfaction; we envisage it as something vigorous and new. For this Indonesian culture will be determined by the manifold responses made on our part to stimuli from every corner of the globe, each of them true to its own nature. And we will oppose any attempt to restrict or impede a re-examination of our scale of values. (Feith and Castles 1970, pp. 237-238)

As dancers came together from different regions of the vast Indonesian archipelago to form the country’s new arts academies, being able to learn

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and dance one another’s dances was a key element of modernity which contributed to a new and expanded way of being Indonesian. And as contemporary artists, ‘the legitimate heirs of the culture of the whole world,’ they were free to borrow and interact with modern, traditional, and historical cultural forms regardless of origin. Lindsay observes that at this time, ‘Being Indonesian allows for an embracing of other regions of Indonesia as one’s own. This was the sense of liberation from one’s own “suku” [tribe] and the leap to national consciousness that [Ministry of Education and Culture head] Prijono described – the regions were not denied, but they now belonged to all’ (2012b, p. 210). At the same time, dancers and choreographers during this period were increasingly informed by modern dance techniques and training taking place outside of Indonesia. Two influential choreographers of this period, Bagong Kussudiardja (1928-2004) and Wisnoe Wardhana (1929-2002), had gone to New York on Rockefeller Foundation scholarships to study modern dance at the Connecticut College School of Dance and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, at a time when the US government valued and understood the importance of cultural diplomacy. With President Eisenhower’s support, in 1954 federal funding was specifically set aside for American cultural exports, which included dance, with the United States Information Agency (USIA) given funding to support the presentation of such work. As Prevots observes, ‘This was the first time in the history of American public policy that choreographers, composers, playwrights, and their works were systematically funded for export’ (1998, p. 15). Many dancers still young in 1964 would have seen or been influenced by the work of Martha Graham’s company when it performed in Jakarta in December 1955 (Prevots 1988, pp. 48-50) as part of a lengthy Asian tour supported by the US government. What this meant for Indonesian choreographers is set out by Claire Holt, who makes the following observation about the impact of contemporary dance training in the US on Kussudiardja’s choreography that he incorporated into Javanese dance: ‘[B]oys and girls now leap and jump, arch and twist their spines, collapse on the floor, whirl in space; they no longer depend on the fluttering dance scarves, the girls’ limbs are freed from the confining tightness of waistbands and long batik wraparound skirts’ (1967, p. 167). If modern dance going back to Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan had freely appropriated Asian forms as a source of inspiration for their work, enabling them to break from established forms of movement, by the 1950s and 1960s modern dance from the West was informing the reworking of the traditional by choreographers in countries such as Indonesia.

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Of the generation of choreographers who emerged between 1950s and 1970s Kusumastuti observes: ‘There is no discontinuity between the past (traditional) and the present (modern/contemporary) in the universe of Indonesian dances. All are owned by dance artists without removing the original roots, i.e. the tradition’ (2018, p. 158). Choreographer Indrosugondo, reflecting on the requirements of the local audience as he planned the dance programme for the Indonesian pavilion, recalls, ‘I thought we should have dances with strong movements and expressions’ (Shepard 1964). The inclusion of the fight sequence between the graceful and noble Arjun and the ogre Buta Cakil certainly fits this bill, as does another dance presented, the Balinese kebyar termonpong, also documented in the pavilion’s file photos (Figure 33). Famously associated with dancer I Ketut Mario who appeared at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition (Cohen 2010, pp. 144-145), and a standard in the international touring repertoire by 1964, this spectacular dance for a sole male dancer takes place partly in a seated position, and also involves the dancer playing the gamelan set. It is a dynamic, virtuosic, rapid-fire dance, a bit like watching bursts of fireworks. The photo from the Indonesian pavilion shows a woman in the role (Figure 33), her fingers executing a hand gesture with index and forefingers raised, her right hand deftly and delicately holding a fan. Dances specifically referenced in press accounts include the Tari Pendet,35 an offering to the Gods that typically precedes a Balinese dance presentation, and two lively Sumatran dances, the ‘Coconut Shell Dance’ (Terry 1964) and a courtship dance known as the Tari Payung of ‘Umbrella Dance’ (Long 1964). Another work, performed at the pavilion dedication on 15 May 1964,36 and presumably in the pavilion shows as well, reflects the influential position of dance in the service of the young Indonesian nation. Known as Bhinneke Tunggal Ika or ‘out of many, one,’ this signature number was created in the early 1960s by Yogyakarta native Wisnoe Wardhana, with choreography37 that drew from the emerging style of sendratari,38 or literally ‘art dance,’ a 35 This dance was performed at the pavilion dedication (‘Indonesia Welcomed,’ Long Island Press, 15 May 1964, p. 8) and spin-off events at the Harkness Dance Festival (Terry 1964) and on the fair site on ‘Peace through Understanding Day’ (Tania 1964). 36 ‘Indonesia Welcomed,’ Long Island Press, 15 May 1964, p. 8. 37 Today this dance has devolved largely into an intracultural fashion show in which girls and young women in glittering neo-ethnic garb representing the nation’s internal diversity dance energetically and in unison to all manner of pre-recorded musical accompaniment. 38 The most famous iteration of this form is the so-called ‘Ramayana Ballet’ created in 1961 and attributed to Prince Djatikusuma of Surakarta (Soedarsono 1974, p. 11). Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Hindu temple Prambanan outside of Yogyakarta in Central Java, it was originally performed only in the evenings over a four-night cycle timed from the start of

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Figure 33 Balinese kebyar termonpong dance in the Indonesian Pavilion

The dynamic, virtuosic Balinese kebyar termonpong dance, presented on the stage in the theatre/ restaurant of the Indonesian Pavilion. Source: NYWF 1964-1965 Corp., Manuscripts and Archives Div., NYPL

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theatricalized reworking of the Javanese traditional form of wayang wong, which as we saw with the dance sequence of Perang Kembang, involves human dancers attired like their wayang kulit counterparts and following gestural and movement patters similar to those of puppets. As Kusumastuti observes, choreographer Wardhana’s training, which included a stint in the US, resulted in dances that cut across forms and traditions: The dance movements and techniques were a mixture of the traditional Javanese dances and the styles from Yogyakarta, Sunda and Bali, combined and explored with Graham’s modern techniques. The musical accompaniment is a fusion of the Javanese and Sundanese gamelan, and the costume – not as glamorous as the traditional dance costumes of Yogyakarta and Sunda – was a new rework based on the dance themes. (2018, p. 155)

If there was a dance that danced modern Indonesia at the fair, this fusion creation, one that integrated rather than compartmentalized the nation’s diversity, would have been it. Music presented in the theatre/restaurant included the sounds of the Javanese and Balinese gamelan which underscored the dance, as well as stand-alone musical numbers in the Indonesian fusion form of kroncong. Popular Indonesian singer and comedian Bing Slamet performed such numbers as part of the show,39 with while Gordon Tobing sang ethnic Batak songs from Sumatra along with the dancers, a part of the programme that Irawati Durban Ardjo, who danced in the New York show, recalls as being popular with audiences (2012, p. 407). Among the songs presented was Tobing’s popular number ‘Sing-sing so,’ sung in the Batak language, a rousing, anthem-like song, and it seems likely that his big, tremulous voice would have left a deep impression on audiences. Ardjo recalls that programmes overseas typically ended with these kinds of musical numbers sung as a group (2012, p. 407). Press accounts and internal fair documentation suggest that the Indonesian performers were present for the entire season and formed a close-knit community. After an unsuccessful attempt was made early on to permit some of the dancers to live on site near the Indonesian pavilion, 40 performers were the full moon. In recent years, single evening performances of the entire story have been added, presumably to accommodate the growth in tourism. 39 One press account writes of how Slamet delighted audiences with his rendition of ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’ (Shepard 1964). 40 During the planning phase, architect Sorensen sought unsuccessfully to gain permission to build a small structure on the country site for young dancers from Bali who ‘would be ‘frightened’

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ultimately housed in apartments off site in groups, as was the case with other pavilion performers from overseas. Choreographer Indrosugondo, in charge of the performers, observes that the dancers, almost exclusively women and between 17-25 years of age, were kept busy with other activities when not performing: ‘To rest means not always to sleep. To rest means also to get them interested in other things’ (Carlson 1964). Among the extracurricular activities he arranged were sightseeing trips and visits to museums, as well as on open class at Martha Graham’s School of Contemporary Dance. The food in the theatre restaurant was a subject of considerable interest to the press, with some accounts disparaging it or noting the awkwardness and ‘indignity’ of bringing dancers into the midst of an eating and drinking audience on the raised runway. New York Times reviewer Allen Hughes was particularly snooty with respect to the latter concern, observing that ‘Thus one may see a temple or court dance – a subtle dance nurtured through centuries of dignity and tradition – in a setting and atmosphere that is not conducive to an appreciation or understanding of the art involved’ (1964). Hughes’ response echoes the dance reviews of fellow Times critic John Martin, who as we saw in the previous chapter, sought to champion and defend the traditional, even when that was not what was being offered. Prominent food critic Craig Claiborne, also writing for the Times, found the food ‘more admirable in concept than execution,’ citing the ‘chicken soup of indifferent body’ and the salad, described as ‘a mélange of radishes, cucumbers, bean sprouts, watercress and other greens, plus bits of bean curd,’ concluding witheringly, ‘It was crisp’(1964). Charles Poletti, who in a cable to US Ambassador Jones in Jakarta on the day of the fair’s opening characterized the food as ‘exquisite,’41 evidently changed his mind a few months later when, following an official lunch in the pavilion wrote the following in a tersely worded letter to S. Haditirto, the Executive Director of the Indonesian NYWF Committee: ‘I regret to be compelled to inform you that I didn’t think the food was very good. Surely the operators of the Restaurant [sic] could improve the food and also make sure that it is served hot.’42 A few days later an announcement was made indicating that the at lunchtime the restaurant would serve ‘only American foods,’ though by New York. Letter to Mr. Constable from Gates Davison, International Affairs, NYWF Corp., 23 February 1962. Constable’s response (27 Feb 1962) makes clear that such an arrangement was not permissible under the fair’s rules. Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3. 41 Memo to James Smith from Charles Poletti transmitting cable to Ambassador Jones, NYWF Corp., 20 April 1964. Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3. 42 Memo to S. Haditirto, Indonesian NYWF Committee, from Charles Poletti, NYWF Corp., 18 June 1964. Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3.

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‘Indonesian foods will comprise the evening fare.’43 Not all accounts were so unfavorable, with noted food critic Clementine Paddleford (1964), writing for the New York Herald Tribune, evincing an extraordinary understanding of the regional varieties of Indonesian food and sharing the restaurant chef’s fine recipe for gado gado in her column, the dish summarily panned by Claiborne, her counterpart at the Times.

‘Girl Watching’ and the Legacy of the Indonesian Pavilion In the news reporting on the Indonesian pavilion, when the focus was not on Sukarno or his ‘roving eye,’ it was on the ‘girls’ in the pavilion. Writing for Newsday, young journalist Harvey Aronson, set the tone in a piece entitled, ‘Girl Watching at the Fair’ in which he observed, ‘All over the World’s Fair, men are watching. Inside and outside pavilions, they are observing, absorbing, looking, leering and ogling. In short, by and large, and no matter how you size it up, they are girl watching’ (1964). According to Aronson, the problem was that these women were not available for consumption: The fair ladies are watchable to the point where some viewers get the idea that they are also approachable. Usually, this sort of thing is a prelude to disappointment for the watcher. An informal poll taken in various pavilions indicated that the average foreign hostess gets about seven date offers a day and claims that she refuses every one.

Similarly, Bill Whitworth, writing for the Herald Tribune in a manner befitting the newspaper’s 1960s motto, ‘Who says a good newspaper has to be dull?’ (Kluger 1986, p. 619), set out the story of a ‘cop’ who was seen on the fair site talking ‘though an iron fence, to a real, live Balinese dancing girl’ as she waited for the bus to take her back to her lodgings. The cop asked for a date, writes Whitworth, but the girl was quickly whisked away before he could hear her answer. As in Aronson’s account, the heterosexual male pursuer was left unfulfilled: ‘These Balinese dancing girls not only are under tight security, they are a bunch of future lawyers and historians and things like that. Their days at home aren’t spent on the beach, cracking cocoanuts. They are all in high school or college, and the ones in college are majoring in solid subjects.’ (Whitworth 1964). 43 Memo to Poletti from George Bennett, NYWF Corp., 29 June 1964. Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3.

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While it seems unlikely that Aronson conducted in an ‘informal poll’ of the women working in the pavilions and Whitworth’s account of the cop and the shy Balinese maiden reads like a work of the imagination, both stories reflect the era; 1964 was a time in which – to re-paraphrase from the popular American television show of the era, The Twilight Zone – it was not aliens, but rather men who ‘controlled the vertical and the horizontal.’ The women’s movement was nascent, early ‘women’s libbers’ were dismissed as ‘bra burning men haters’ and heterosexuality, in the days before Stonewall (1969) and the launch of the gay rights movement, was compulsory. In such an environment and in such a time it is perhaps no surprise that press accounts relating to Indonesian self-representation foregrounded the exotic and feminine, reflecting the consciousness of the men who wrote for New York’s daily newspapers. While the largely female contingent of multilingual guides working in the pavilions of foreign countries at the fair may well have found Americans ill-informed about the countries whose pavilions they visited (Raymont 1964), the press often framed the encounter with the guides within the tropes of exoticism. Shortly after the fair opened, the New York Post introduced the Indonesia pavilion to its readers in an almost incantatory fashion: ‘The very names, Java, Bali, Sumatra, have magic in them.’ Inside, the reporter continues, ‘[g]irls in bewitching costumes create batik patterns, craftsmen work in wood, stone and silver, and indescribable masks are on display’ (Beckett 1964). As we saw earlier, the notion that the girls could be so attractive they might ‘bewitch’ the heterosexual male was anticipated by Poletti by comments in his 1961 letter to Ambassador Jones. Four years later, nearing the end of the first year of the fair and seeking guarantees for Indonesian participation in 1965, in a letter to Haditirto, Poletti quoted from a series of press accounts of the pavilion, calling it ‘a dainty, jewel-like place … a place of genuine elegance and grace … with the most incredibly beautiful women hostesses with delicate faces and fascinating attire whose politeness, from welcome to goodbye, borders on the intoxicating.’44 Poletti, a clever and seasoned politician, was simply telling Haditirto what he believed his Indonesian counterpart wanted to hear, that the pavilion had been a great success by projecting such an image of refined and delicate femininity. Yet in spite of the good will influential men such as Poletti and Ambassador Jones projected toward Indonesia, geopolitical events were increasingly pitting the US government against Sukarno. Fair organizers remained keen 44 Letter to S. Haditirto from Poletti, NYWF Corp, 4 September 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3.

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for Sukarno to visit the fair despite his declining health and the political uncertainties within Indonesia and the wider region. As late as 1 July, 1964, in a personal letter to Poletti, Ambassador Jones wrote in his own hand the additional note, clearly meant to be off-the-record: ‘Sukarno is biting his finger nails – wants to go to the Fair so much [emphasis in original] – but Malaysia keeps getting in the way.’45 Five months later Jones, whose views were presumably out of alignment with the increasingly hawkish views of US President Johnson, had resigned (New York Times, 20 Nov. 1964). And in spite of Sukarno’s well-publicized recruitment of attractive women to staff the pavilion in 1965, by March of that year he formally halted plans to exhibit, responding to ‘the open support given by the United States to the neo-colonialist project of Malaysia.’ (New York Times, 12 March 1965, p. 21). But the end to the romance was only temporary. Perhaps even more than in Europe, American associations with Bali and Java in the post-WWII era tended to conflate Java and Bali – the focal point of Indonesian cultural representation at the fair – with the ‘South Sea’ islands of the Pacific as places of exoticism, the land of bewitching, dark-skinned, almond-eyed beauties. One of the most popular musicals of the era was Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, a Broadway hit in 1949 that became a popular movie in 1958. Few adult fairgoers in 1964 would have been unfamiliar with one of the most enduring and enchanting songs from the musical, ‘Bali Ha’i.’ It is a song of seduction, delivered as an incantation by the character ‘Bloody Mary,’ with lyrics that speak to how a powerful, mystical island will weave its magic over you: Bali Ha’i may call you, Any night, any day, In your heart you’ll hear it call you: “Come away, come away.” Bali ha’i will whisper, On the wind of the sea, “Here am I your special island!” “Come to me, come to me!” (Genius.com)

While the musical, an adaptation of James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, was set on islands in the South Pacific, the mere mention of the 45 Letter to Poletti from Howard Jones, US Foreign Service, San Francisco, 1 July 1964, Archives of the 1964-1965 NYWF, Box 273, File P0.3.

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word ‘Bali’ would have conjured up associations with a sensual, exotic, mysterious land, something shattered by the bloodbath that was ‘the year of living dangerously.’ Yet after the smoke had cleared, the bodies were buried, the Indonesian pavilion dismantled, Suharto and the generals had assumed power, and American corporations began to enrich both themselves and an Indonesian elite, Indonesia resumed its position as a land that gave the West exotic Bali, Java, as well as the remarkable transracial childhood of former US President Barak Obama.

8

Maximizing Affect, Minimizing Impact with Hansik South Korea at the 2015 Milan International Exposition

Abstract With its theme of ‘Feeding the Planet: Energy for Life,’ the 2015 Milan Exposition offered a unique opportunity for smaller Asian nations to present their unique culinary heritage before a largely Italian audience. Korea took the fair’s theme seriously, seeking to educate audiences about the health benefits of hansik, its distinctive, often fermented, vegetableheavy cuisine. The Korean pavilion brought fairgoers inside the experience of how the cuisine works, virtually on a cellular level, in a highly aestheticized environment resembling an art installation. While hansik probably won few Italian converts, the youthful energy and exuberance reflected in the pavilion and its guides that exploded onto the streets of Milan during Korea week in June 2015 reflected its positive international cultural branding. Keywords: Korea, hansik, foodways, affect, art installation

With its theme of ‘Feeding the Planet: Energy for Life,’ the 2105 Milan International Exposition sought to link food cultivation, production, and consumption practices with the demands they place on our planet. Fair organizers wished to create ‘an Expo in which content and container, signifier and signified, are therefore no longer separated but become a single whole’ (Milan Expo 2015a, p. 5). Possibly no country took this brief as seriously as South Korea (Republic of Korea), with their ambitious theme, ‘Hansik, Food for the Future: You Are What You Eat.’ Hansik, Korea’s vegetable-heavy cuisine which features fermentation, was set out as a solution to the problems of world hunger, obesity, and scarce resources. This chapter considers how the pavilion’s interactive installations and its attractive, young Korean hosts

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch08

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maximized the possibilities for generating affect, generating an energy that exploded out into the city of Milan during ‘Korea Week’ in June. I will argue that the modes used to communicate the wonders of hansik largely failed to adequately consider the embodied and cultural dimensions of food, particularly for its largely Italian exposition audience. While the pavilion maximized affect by appealing to the visual and the aural faculties, offering spectators an extraordinarily well integrated, intelligent, and beautifully aestheticized experience, it did not engage the senses of taste and smell, essential pleasure centres for the experience of food. With its focus on the science behind hansik, to consume it, as one had the opportunity to do on leaving the pavilion, was to participate in a science experiment rather than entering into a participatory food culture, the latter being an essential feature of the Italian relationship with food. Unlike the case studies up to this point which have relied upon off icial exposition documents, contemporary accounts in newspapers and magazines, photographs, and in some cases further details from a range of other sources about the nature of the performances, particularly dance, inside country pavilions, the Milan Expo creates an opening for a consideration of the ways in which the pavilion experience generates affect. Country pavilions in the post-WWII era have increasingly moved away from the display of objects to be seen, admired, or desired and incorporated multimedia and increasingly interactive displays that maximize affect through an encounter in an environment curated in ways similar to those of contemporary art exhibitions.1 This is particularly the case with two Asian countries selected for consideration in this and the subsequent chapter, South Korea and the Kingdom of Thailand. While Thailand offered a highly directed and relatively singular narrative largely through fixed-length film and multimedia presentations in three adjacent spaces, South Korea created a series of an installation-like art spaces, an interactive environment with the potential to leave a lasting imprint on the human body in ways that are more complex to unravel than an encounter that is more singularly directed toward a series of f ixed objects or images. Tracking how such experiences sediment on human bodies is difficult to measure, especially in a cross-cultural context such as the Milan Expo, where even though fairgoers were largely Italian, many other Europeans were present as well. 1 Indeed, the French pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai International Exposition, which unfolded as a series of galleries, was the artistic creation of Pauline Leveque, a young production designer. See Peterson (2012).

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These chapters, constituting the final two case studies, will feature an account of the experience of moving through the respective pavilions, interacting with exhibits, and consider my own experience set against what I observed others doing and responding to, based on observations obtained through repeat visits. Thus these two chapters offer up a different kind of analysis than earlier chapters, one more speculative and experiential and less bounded by historical data and newspaper accounts; here the analysis seeks in part to recreate the pavilion experience and its performative dimensions for the reader, pointing to ways in which bodies and human senses are engaged to generate a deep, lasting affective encounter with an Asian nation’s culture. As Haldrup and Larsen have observed in spaces of tourism, which to some extent are what the interiors of country pavilions are, ‘The performance turn destabilizes semiotic readings in which places and objects are seen as signifying social constructs that can be unveiled through authoritative cultural readings rather than in terms of how they are used and lives with in practice’ (2010, p. 3). This type of analysis parallels conceptual shifts governing national self-representation at international expositions, which, as we shall see, is no longer focused on presenting a unified image of a cultural or national self, but rather to finding performative forms in which the pavilion experience might sediment on human bodies in ways that take the expository thrust of the pavilion’s narrative back out into the world. Because, as Haldrup and Larsen assert, ‘the performance turn dislocates attention from symbolic meanings and discourses to embodied, collaborative and technologized doings and enactments’ (2010, p. 3) these chapters seek to recreate the embodied dimensions of the encounter with both the doings and enactments’ associated with Korean and Thai self-representation. Thus, the modes of analysis in these two chapters also seek to map out what Paul Rodaway terms the ‘sensuous geographies,’ the places where body, sense, and place come together (1994). To do this is to enter into the space of perception, one that he defines as ‘a relationship to the worlds and a decision-making process with respect to that world’ (1994, p. 11). Because I cannot enter into the bodies of others, I can only rely on my own perception in parts of this analysis, while mindful that ‘perception is not the reception of single stimuli from one source direct to the sense organ concerned, but rather involves a myriad of different stimuli from various sources reaching the different sense organs’ (Rodaway 1994, p. 12). Thus the perceptual pathways through which the pavilion experience enters the body will be identified, and given that perception is, as Rodaway observes, ‘learned behavior,’ I seek to identify and query those moments when my own

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perception is ‘culturally specific,’ when my ‘style of perception’ can be linked to my own ‘process of socialization’ (1994: pp. 11-12). To do this will at times require candour, some degree of lightheartedness, and a necessary degree of personal self-revelation not present in the earlier chapters. In short, a different method is being employed here, one that seeks to communicate and analyse the embodied experience of engaging with the pavilion’s contents filtered through my own senses of perception.

Setting the Stage: Soft Power, Foodways, and Milan As the previous chapters demonstrated, as the so-called ‘golden age’ of the exposition ended and self-representation increasingly offered fewer obvious returns for participation by wealthy Western nations, expositions became increasingly important for Asian nations, and remain so today. Here we turn to the most recent international exposition in Europe, one that is significant for two reasons: First, for its focus on the intersensorial, cross-cultural dimensions of food, which created a particularly attractive opening for South Korea and Thailand through the generation of affect; and secondly, because in temporal terms the Milan Expo may well represent the end of the line for major, non-specialized world expos hosted in the West, for reasons set out in the concluding chapter. So Milan is in many ways the best last place to look at Asian self-representation at world’s fairs in the West, coming as it does at the end of a long cycle, one in which it is no longer the West but Asia that has the most to gain through self-representation at these events, providing an opportunity to demonstrate their ascendency in the global economic order, while projecting and further accumulating cultural capital. In this respect, South Korea and Thailand, two of the most prominent and visible smaller countries in the region, offer useful contrasts as to how such ambitious, emerging Asian nations sought to represent themselves in pavilions that offered disparate, but deeply immersive experiences. The fair’s theme of food, while also pointing to food security and sustainable practices, offered unique opportunities for both nations, as we shall see, to generate affective encounters through radically different means. The experience of the Philippines and Indonesia at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair revealed how such events offer particularly attractive opportunities for smaller or so-called ‘middle power’ states (Gilboa 2009; Cooper 2009) to generate what Joseph Nye Jr. (1990, 2004) famously termed ‘soft power.’ While Nye derives his model almost exclusively from an examination of the projection of American soft power in the world, all nations

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use soft power, whether they are conscious of it or not. If, as Nye argues, ‘power is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the outcomes one wants,’ then one can achieve this objective through three means: ‘You can coerce them with threats; you can induce them with payments; or you can attract and co-opt them to want what you want’ (2004, p. 2). Compared with hard power, exercised through force or coercion and often through military might he suggests that, ‘in behavioural terms soft power is attractive power’ (2004, p. 2). Thus ‘soft-power resources are the assets that produce such attraction’ (2004, p. 2). This expo, with its focus on food, offered an attractive opening for nations to generate such soft power. After all, eating is something all humans do. It is social, culturally bound, and it engages all our senses. Unlike prior expos with themes such as ‘Better Cities, Better Life’ (Shanghai 2010), ‘Peace through Understanding’ (New York 1964-1965), or ‘Leisure in the Age of Technology’ (Brisbane 1988), the focus on food creates an opening for the sensual and the social to meet. Food is also the site where most people first encounter and respond to cultural difference. As we have seen with the central, iconic position occupied by Japanese tea houses at the San Francisco and New York Fairs, and with placement of a Chinese ‘family-style’ restaurant the Brisbane Expo, food is the means through which foreign cultures are digested and often first appreciated by the greatest numbers of people. Well before the Milan Exposition, what has come to be known as ‘gastrodiplomacy’ had proven particularly attractive as a soft-power strategy for smaller or middle-power nations. Thailand was the first Asian country to aggressively market its food in this manner, with a government-led campaign launched in 2002 to significantly expand the number of Thai restaurants globally. Dubbed ‘gastro-diplomacy’ by The Economist (2002), the concept has subsequently been further developed in academic scholarship (Wilson 2013; Rockower 2011, 2012; Suntikul 2017). As a public diplomacy pursuit, gastrodiplomacy, observes Rockower, ‘is predicated on the notion that the easiest way to win hearts and minds is though the stomach’ (2011, p. 125). Food is fundamental to human identity, as Massimo Montanari, argues in Food is Culture: Food is culture when it is eaten because man, while able to eat anything, or precisely for this reason, does not in fact eat everything but rather chooses his own food, according to criteria linked either to the economic and nutritional dimension of the gesture or to the symbolic values with which food itself is invested. Through such pathways food takes shape as a decisive element of human identity and as one of the most effective means of expressing and communicating that identity. (2006, pp. xi-xii)

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Though choice of foods and the symbolic value connected with particular foods imbue it with cultural value, it is also in the larger context in which food is produced, individual dishes created, and how and where it is consumed that the more complex and embodied cultural dimensions are played out. This larger, more comprehensive framework, which has come to be referred to as ‘foodways’ in recent scholarship (Kalcik 1984; Phillips 2006; Sutton 2015; Nacarato 2017), is defined by Carole Counihan as ‘an organized system, a language that – through its structure and components – conveys meaning and contributes to the organization of the natural and social world’ (Counihan 1999, p. 19). Though there can be no doubt that the hansik method of food fermentation, which reflects the philosophy that ‘food and medicine come from the same root’ (Korean Tourism Organization, 2015a), constitutes such a foodway, the problem with the Korean presentation of hansik in the pavilion, as we shall see, was that it focused largely on the mechanical process behind hansik, linking it to health, but not taste, pleasure, or the social dimensions of food consumption. Korea’s promotion of hansik as a soft power strategy at the Milan Expo represents the continuation of what is now known as the ‘Global Hansik’ campaign. Initially launched in 2008 by the South Korean Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries as the Global Promotion of Korean Culture (hansik segyehwa ch’ujin) campaign, it set out the ambitious goal of ‘turning Korean food (hansik) into one of the five most popular ethnic cuisines in the world by 2017’ (Cwiertka 2014, p. 363). In her role as honorary chairperson of the campaign, the wife of former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took the message to the US where in a 2009 New York visit to meet with American Korean War veterans, she picked up a spatula herself cooked pajeon, a savory, pancake-like dish made with eggs, wheat and rice flour, and scallions. In a later interview with Western media, she explained, referring to the veterans, ‘I wanted to give them a new taste of Korea as something positive and delicious,’ adding, through an interpreter, ‘From the war, they do not have many pleasant food memories’ (Moskin 2009). According to Korea’s director of tourism, the US$77 million campaign (Suntikul 2017, p. 6) sought to gain a more prominent seat at the culinary table in the West: ‘First was Chinese food in the US, then Japanese and Thai,’ adding, ‘Korean is the next big boom.’ (Moskin 2009). As Cwiertka observes, from the start the promotion of hansik took a central position, adding that unlike the international promotion of Japanese cuisine or the former First Lady’s offering of the comfort food pajeon, ‘there is no clear consensus on which dishes should enter the pantheon of Korean cuisine’ (2014, p. 364). Instead, the Global Hansik Campaign, unchained from the need to hawk

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specific dishes, focused on the purity, age, and health benefits of hansik, generating ‘the image of Korean cuisine as the food of yesteryear, unaffected by industrialization and other evils of the modern world’ (Cwiertka 2014, p. 365). Promoted in official government publications and online sources2 aimed at non-Koreans, the campaign continues to seek to build on the prior success of the Korean Wave or hallyu (Cwiertka 2014, p. 274), which saw Korean cultural products, particularly K-Pop, television dramas, and film, find large and enthusiastic audiences throughout Asia. The Global Hansik campaign, supported by thousands of years of culinary history oriented around the hansik method of food fermentation, and with its focus on the health-enhancing qualities of the Korean diet, constitutes a significant foodway by any international standard. Linked to environmental sustainability with its reliance on vegetables and its low-carbon imprint in production, in the expo context hansik was thus nicely set up as the leading candidate globally for a type of cuisine that should be as attractive as the cultural export of K-pop. The Milan exposition was originally envisioned as an opportunity for countries to demonstrate how food is produced in their respective countries, with initial designs for some pavilions showing food being grown on the site,3 a brief that the German and French pavilions quite uniquely pursued. Jacques Herzog, one of the principal designers engaged to produce the masterplan for the expo but who later left the team, observes of this initial vision that, ‘We would much rather know how countries like Kenya, Mexico, China, Laos or Germany are dealing with the question of how to feed their people’ (Heilmeyer 2015, p. 1). The initial plan was evidently abandoned or highjacked by the fair’s senior officials in the end, prompting Herzog, speaking just prior to the opening of the fair, to observe with more than a trace of bitterness that ‘this Expo will be the same kind of vanity fair that we’ve seen in the past’ (Heilmeyer 2015, p. 2). Indeed, many country pavilions seemed to nod only marginally to fair’s theme and instead offered monumental, iconic structures that were designed to entertain and promote tourism. But South Korea, forgoing any demonstration of food production, quite rigorously stuck to the foundational theme 2 See the vast and attractive government-supported website devoted to promoting Hansik at: http://www.hansik.org/en/index.do. The site is operated by the Korean Food Promotion Institute, formerly the Korean Food Foundation, set up in 2011. 3 The successful bidder to design the Thailand pavilion, Rightman, has images on their website that suggest rice production would be happening next to the pavilion. See http://www.rightman. co.th/index.php/projects/detail/196. Similarly, the unsuccessful design for the Korean Pavilion by BCHO Architects incorporates a stylish and elaborate full-production facility: http://www. bchoarchitects.com/ws/?projects=milano-expo-2014-2

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of how to feed the planet. While other countries used their pavilions to shamelessly hawk national foods, Korea started with the proposition that sustainable consumption and personal health were the two food-centred concerns to be addressed through the pavilion’s contents. As evidence of the seriousness given to the brief, during ‘Korea Week,’ a week in the fair calendar dedicated to highlighting the special activities of selected countries, they hosted a Korea-OECD Conference that featured experts in food and sustainability from South Korea and a number of European nations, extending the aestheticized science of hansik from the pavilion and placing it into an academic and political forum held in the convention hall on the expo grounds. In this respect, all aspects of national participation contributed to setting out an argument for hansik in expository terms; the exhibition of individual objects for display or consumption, which had been so important at fairs into the early years of the twentieth century, were here replaced by a series of art installations in the service of a larger, overarching argument, presented sequentially and experientially in space and time, bounded by the pavilion’s structure, as we shall see.

Hansik and the Pavilion Experience The pavilion’s transnational design team reflected the seriousness of the endeavour. The lead architect was Kim Seok Chuk and his Seoul-based firm Archiban Partners. Kim and his company have a long history of designing for major domestic and international exhibitions, including those with an arts focus such as the Venice Biennale where they designed the Korean pavilion (2000, 2004). 4 Significantly, as we will see from the aesthetic format of the pavilion displays, Kim had earlier in his career designed the exhibit space to house the work of Korean-American video artist Nam June Paik, known for his early inventive use of video technology and multiple television monitors in a number of his most famous installation works.5 In Milan, Archiban Partners teamed up with designers Maurizio Carones and Luigi Paolino, as well as a design team consisting for Marco Cabelli, Hang-Joon Gio, and Luca Scalingi, all connected with Carones’ architectural studio.6 At least 4 See http://www.archiban.co.kr/exhibition.html#!prettyPhoto 5 A link from this page on the company’s website offers an overview of the collaboration through a promotional poster for a 1993 show in Zagreb. See http://www.archiban.co.kr/exhibition. html#!prettyPhoto 6 The team is set out in Duemiladiciassete: Raccolta Progetti, by Maurizio Carones, Milano: Studio de Architettura Maurizio Carones, 2018

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three members of the team, notably Hang-Joon Gio as well as Carones and Kim, have had significant experience with Korea-based projects. What is remarkable about the pavilion as a whole, as we shall see, is its virtually seamless integration of the many design elements, as well as its distinctively Korean modernist aesthetic. In an interview on Korean television also distributed the Arirang TV,7 the government-run English-language TV station, the representative from the ministry responsible for the pavilion,8 Park Min-gwon, observed that in determining the pavilion design and content they sought a great deal of external advice, including input from academics such as Bak Sangmee, a cultural anthropologist of food at Seoul’s Hankuk University. Significantly Bak was one of the authors of the successful application to UNESCO which placed the famously spicy Korean vegetable dish, kimchi, on the list of foods recognized as constituting the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013.9 The pavilion then was the product of an all-star line-up, led by the Korean government, but with a vast team of high-accomplished specialists, architects, and designers all in the service of the larger objective of promoting hansik. My own experience at the Expo, which involved spending time in most pavilions, led me to the view that the Korean pavilion, with its integrated vision, one that blended form and structure in an ingenious matter within a tightly controlled, unified aesthetic, was the most successful national pavilion in terms of its ability to generate a memorable, hyper-aestheticized experience. Indeed, at the end of the expo it was awarded the silver prize for ‘best installation’ by the Bureau International des Expositions (Floornature 2015). The exterior (Figure 34), with its undulating, whitewashed walls, provided an earthenware container for a series of internal spaces that functioned like galleries in a massive, carefully-curated art installation, designed sequentially to offer the participant a direct experiential encounter with the dynamic internal structure of the science of hansik, the culinary tradition in which raw ingredients are activated and fermented in giant clay pots. In a television interview, Professor Bak, in her capacity as consultant on the project, spoke of the importance of ‘extending the visual metaphor to the 7 Arirang TV is operated by the Korea International Broadcasting Foundation and financially supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The video of the broadcast can be viewed at: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x30jatl. 8 Park was identified in the broadcast (above) as first Vice-Minister in the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. 9 Bak’s profile at http://cefia.aks.ac.kr:84/index.php?title=박상미_(한국외국어대학교_교수) points to her work on that project. Further information kimchi on the UNESCO site is at: https:// ich.unesco.org/en/RL/kimjang-making-and-sharing-kimchi-in-the-republic-of-korea-00881

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Figure 34 Republic of Korea Pavilion at Milan Expo

The exterior of the Republic of Korea Pavilion in Milan reflects emulates the look of rounded, clay pots that are integral to the hansik food fermentation tradition. Photo by author

pavilion as a container for Korean food culture.’ While the pavilion ‘boasts the beauty of white curved pottery,’ she observed that it also represents how ‘traditional Korean jars are used for fermentation, and the air inside and outside the jar circulates well. In the same way, the inside and outside of the Korea Pavilion merge seamlessly with effortless transitions between’ (Arirang TV 2015). If the outer shell of the pavilion, itself a giant art object, was the clay-like skin that contained the thousands of human organisms that moved through the structure in a single day, then the interior provided the opportunity for participants to literally go ‘inside’ the clay pot to witness and engage with the process of fermentation, to experience the ‘foodways’ unique to Korea. Given the sheer number of people moving through the most popular country pavilions at contemporary international expositions, many are designed to provide a largely singular ocular experience for an audience moving through each chamber as a group, assembling to witness short presentations in one or more of the pavilion’s larger spaces. Largely eschewing this approach, Korea offered fairgoers an opportunity for a more gentle

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perambulation at their own pace through the pavilion’s three principal spaces organized around what, in the words of the official pavilion brochure, reads like a research question that might be posed by an university student: ‘Which foods should be selected for sustainable consumption in the future’? (Korea Tourism Organization 2015a). The entryway and first chamber of the pavilion was given over to the theme of ‘what our bodies tell us,’ focusing on ‘the food crisis that we face today’ due to overeating, excess production and consumption of processed foods, and depletion of the planet’s food resources. For the participant, the experience was closer to an encounter with a richly layered installation environment in an art gallery than what one might expect at an international exposition, where what countries want from the spectator is often quite singularly set out. Entering from the front of the building, the fairgoer ascended two stories of steps inside a wide, stark white passageway with dark, raised metal sculptural scripts flowing up the wall on the left setting out hundreds of named foods in various languages (Figure 35). Inscriptions were readable at eye level, creating a dense palimpsest of international dishes ranging from ‘cheeseburger’ and ‘seafood paella’ to ‘bulgagi with rice,’ inviting active participation with the words just not as stylized art objects – which to some extent they were – but as foods both familiar and foreign, known and exotic. As one walked further up the stairs, life-size black and white line drawings of primates appeared on the wall to the right, first chimpanzee, then ape, and finally homo erectus, depicted holding a piece of fruit in his hand, beckoning us at the top of the staircase, providing a point of entry into three large gallery spaces, the first of which set out visually and through digital media the link between food as fuel and the internal functioning of the human organism. The adage, ‘you are what you eat,’ was played out visually inside the first gallery, as the viewer encountered a series of detailed, fully-representational renderings of homo erectus continuing along the gallery walls on the right, depicting the decline of the human body from fitness into obesity, while linking each stage of ‘development’ pictorially to a corresponding food source that might account for the body’s level of fitness or its decline (Figure 36): The first man carrying two fish on a skewer appeared as upright, smoothly muscled, and with no discernible body fat; the next man in the sequence, carrying stalks of rice suggestive of agricultural cultivation and a more sedentary life, was fit, though a bit thicker; then from that point the girth of each male figure ever widened as he appeared successively holding out a doughnut, sausage, and hamburger, culminating with a morbidly obese man holding out a partially-consumed slice of pizza in front of his gaping mouth. In the gallery a giant video projection showed the internal organs

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Figure 35 Ascending the steps, Korea Pavilion

A dense palimpsest of international foods set out in raised cursive lettering accompanied spectators as they ascended the steps from the entrance into the principal exhibition space. Photo by author

of the obese man straining to work properly, making the inescapable link between the consumption of excess calories and fatty foods with the slow poisoning of the body. The curved walls behind the projection consisted of rows of words pointing to the human body’s internal process of food consumption. Appearing in raised letters and in a font reminiscent of the old dot matrix printers, the words themselves became metaphors for the internal decay of the body as individual letters comprising words such as ‘calorie,’ ‘carbohydrate,’ or ‘protein’ appear to have decayed and fallen from the wall, accumulating into piles of broken, black metal bits on the gallery floor. Drawing the viewer further into the gallery was an ingenious art installation consisting of fifteen rows of stainless food tins covering the circumference of a large, rotating circulator tower extending nearly to the full height of the ceiling, which served as tiny projection surfaces for images of the human body in motion, stylistically and with its space between individual frames recalling Eadweard Muybridge’s iconic series of twelve horse images that when shown sequentially appear as a single horse in motion. The empty food tins were

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Figure 36 Obese man, Korea Pavilion

One of a series of images of human ‘progression’ from a lean, fit figure to one of obesity, linked to foods being consumed. Photo by author

in turn ‘spit out’ from the pavilion and were visible from the exterior of the structure at ground level, materializing both their lack of nutritional content and also the colossal drain on resources they require to produce and dispose of.

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Figure 37 Emaciated child, Korea Pavilion

Close up of the emaciated child within the larger installation. The child’s gaze looks out directly onto passersby in the gallery for a few long hard seconds, beyond the level of comfort for most people. Photo by author

On the other wall of the first gallery, blocked from view until one was almost upon it, was a video hologram of a naked, emaciated child with an oversized head inside a harsh, violent installation space set back into the gallery, created abstractly in three dimensions by a series of tension lines that splattered violently to endpoints against the whitewashed walls (Figure 37). At first the child looks down, as if foraging for food in the dirt, while suddenly and unexpectedly, he turns gazes out directly at all of those standing within a few meters of the installation, staring, unable or unwilling to let the spectator off the hook, implicating them in the global system that enables some to destroy their bodies by excess consumption while others starve to death, out of sight and forgotten. On each viewing over a series of days, the child’s gaze met mine wherever I stood near the installation, and each time, I found myself tearing up. To look away felt wrong, as if one was literally turning ones’ back on the child, and just as the gaze began to seem unbearably long, the child turned back toward the earth, repeating the opening gesture of digging fruitlessly in the barren earth.

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For Koreans born in the 1950s or earlier, starvation is not an abstract concept, but rather something that they endured during the long war in the peninsula. Perhaps because my father served in that war and I was born in the 1950s, the child speaks directly to my body across time and space, representing not just a generic starving child, but rather a ‘real,’ embodied one in whose company I find myself. This inter-corporeal exchange, albeit with a hologram, has lingered on in my body beyond the event, following a process Seigworth and Greg describe as the conditions under which affect is generated: Affect arises in the midst of in-between-ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon. Affect is an impingement or extrusion of a momentary or sometimes more sustained state of relation as well as the passage (and the duration of passage) of forces or intensities. That is, affect is found in those intensities that pass body to body (human, nonhuman, part-body, and otherwise), in those resonances that circulate about, between, and sometimes stick to bodies and worlds, and in the very passages or variations between those intensities and resonances themselves. (2010, p. 1)

Half a world away and three years later, my body continues to feel interpenetrated by the virtual body of the starving child, sharing a world of bodies that stick to one another with a level of intensity I rarely experience in my daily connections with actual, fleshy human beings. Though charged with affect, this was not happy stuff, certainly not the kind of encounter one might expect inside a country pavilion, many of which at this Expo seem to blatantly disregard the theme of food and sustainability and focus instead on promoting tourism. I returned to this gallery numerous times observing audience behaviour from a position along the back wall, not once witnessing anyone hold the gaze of the starving child. Perhaps it is the South Koreans themselves, only two generations removed from famine, and who are only too aware of the horrors inflicted on their cousins to the north during the North Korean famine of 1994-98, who would be willing to unflinchingly meet that gaze. On the other hand, it may be that some things are just too unpleasant to look at for most people, particularly on a warm, sunny day in Milan. The remaining second and third galleries set out a sequential response to the foundational question posed earlier, namely, ‘Which foods should be selected for sustainable consumption in the future?’ Upon entering the second gallery three subsidiary questions are posted on the wall near the entrance: ‘How will you eat? What will you eat? How long can it be

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sustained?’ The answer is presented through the ‘tradition’ of Hansik itself, set out in Italian as, ‘Hansik: Chiedi e la Tradizione Risponderà,’ or ‘Ask and Tradition Shall Answer.’ The invocation of tradition is apt in an Italian context given the ancient and localized traditions of Italian cuisine that collectively contribute to the much lauded Mediterranean diet, officially recognized as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.10 But the questions of ‘how’ and ‘what’ to eat may have been harder to open up for the largely Italian audience. Even the most casual observation of the eating habits of thousands of Italians who attended the expo during the week I was there would suggest that the Koreans gave little consideration to the cultural value of ‘how’ Italians eat, and further, what the question of ‘what to eat’ might mean in a nation with so many diverse regional cuisines. Indeed, the restaurants on the grounds of the expo overwhelmingly served Italian food, while the many food courts, restaurants and along the vast piazza situated in the middle of the expo grounds that collectively constituted the Italian pavilion were essentially showcases for distinctive regional cuisines. Italians and a majority of other fairgoers appeared to consume mountains of Italian food, much of it in the company of friends and family members. The spare and compressed visuals in the second gallery’s first video installation, located in a nook just to the right of the entrance, though beautiful, seemed to have little to do with food in ways Italians might think of it. Images of food growing, then of vegetables being sliced and diced were followed by close ups of exquisite and artfully arranged food on plates, resembled not food so much but rather a colour wheel palate one might paint with. The video showed raw foods being placed into giant, earthenware pots, with liquid poured in and the lids set down on them, signalling the beginning of the fermentation process. Next, rows of pots are set outside in a vast courtyard and shown weathering the seasons, suggesting to the passage of time, while the images that follow show the process of molecular transformation occurring inside the pots as pristine, white spores circulate within, interacting with the contents, turning them into enriched food material. Old people with wise, kindly faces are shown making earthenware pots, bleeding into a sequence of identical clay pots lined up seemingly to infinity. From these pots emerge the ingredients that end up trimmed, sliced, boiled, fried, or simmered, and placed into small bowls and dishes with meticulous precision, as if it were a science 10 The diet, most identified with Italy internationally, has been on the UNESCO list since 2010 and is also recognized as extending to Morocco, Spain, and Greece.

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experiment, a feeling reinforced by the all-white world in which all of the food preparation was taking place. In his account of the history of Italian food, Fabio Parasecoli sets out the feeling of connection to the local, to place, as fundamental to the relationship an individual Italian has with a particular cuisine. This quality, which he calls campanilismo, is defined ‘as an expression that refers to the love, pride and attachment that the inhabitants of a certain place – those who find themselves under the shadow of the town bell tower – feel for it’ (Parasecoli 2014, p. 27). This is place-based food, grown in the fields on the edge of town, nurtured and harvested by local labour, and turned into cuisine by the human labour that chops, cuts, blends, combines, stirs, bakes, fries, boils or poaches those ingredients. It is not accidental that wherever Italians have migrated, the place-based nature of dishes remains intact, even through the generations. Italian food also has a spectacular global reach, reflecting the massive diaspora of the population in a relatively short period of time. As Parasecoli observes, ‘Between the 1880s and the Second World war, 9 million Italians, the equivalent of a quarter of the entire population, left the country’ (2014, p. 225). This population brought the local with them, many settling in communities with others from the same region who spoke the same dialect and ate the same foods. Thus, whether in New York or Melbourne, a Napolitano pizza can only mean the same thing: a pizza made with mozzarella and tomatoes only, and more correctly, with local-origin Mozzarella di Bufala Campana and San Marzano tomatoes grown near Mount Vesuvius. Ingesting the local has long been an essential element of Italian food not just for Italians themselves, but for those who consume Italian food anywhere in the world. Any connection with the local, with terroir, was absent in the second chamber of the Korean Pavilion, the centrepiece and dramatic highlight of which was a ‘Symphony of Food,’ a three-minute, whiz-bang, hightech multimedia show that combined food ingredients in a kaleidoscopic manner on two extraordinarily mobile screens that appeared to float and reposition themselves into a virtually infinite number of combinations, an effect enhanced by their positioning onto mechanical arms nested into an apparatus which moved back and forth along set tracks. To watch the images presented on these dueling screens come together, then apart, to merge, disengage, and to move between and across screens was mesmerizing, an effect enhanced by an electronic soundscape heavy on the bass that created resonating chambers within the body. The content at times dissipated into the background as the medium became the message.

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Audiences appeared transfixed while standing in front of these dynamic screens, as abstract figures turned into perfectly sliced objects that revealed themselves as vegetables, generating a kind of digital still life. This colourful kaleidoscope of food was transformed by a computer-generated pot called into existence before our eyes, woven together via a stream of electronic beams to create an energized whole, the receptacle for the raw foods that through the process of fermentation turn into a power source that activates the coming-into-being of a luminous and strong male body that appeared on the screen. The message is clearly expressed: the three principles of ‘balance, fermentation and storage,’ essential and interrelated elements that are at the heart of hansik as both a process and a cuisine, offer the most eff icient, indeed most hi-tech fuel for the human body, a kind of superfood. The gallery contained two additional exhibits, a giant food urn with a cut-away section into which one could enter, featuring digitized images of enzymes frantically interacting, and a single interactive exhibit, a glass-topped table in which spectators were invited to combine food ingredients, responding to the earlier imperatives of ‘what’ and ‘how to eat’ (Figure 38). The latest in interactive technology was used, with a sensor recognizing the movements of a human hand as it moved over images of food items projected onto a stovetop height flat surface below. Participants were able to virtually prepare and cook a dish, taking it through all steps leading to completion. Choices were activated by responding to a screen command to move the hand up and down over the image of the dish below. By starting the process, individual ingredients appeared in virtual form as one looked down on them, while subsequent insertions of the hand into the field enabled the participant to add additional ingredients. Some items were beaten or mixed, while others were placed into a suitable pot, flying pan, or clay pot in which they would be cooked. Every step of the process was activated by moving the hand into the f ield and touching the ingredient on the screen, creating a direct, kinesthetic link between the virtual cook and the virtual food being prepared, ending with the completed dish appearing immaculately plated up and presented onscreen, ready to eat. Though a kinesthetic operation was activated, the experience of actually touching something real was absent, generating a kind of incomplete haptic sensation, while the senses of smell, sound, and taste were not engaged at all. Without synesthesia, the actual pleasures of preparing food were not actively activated. To engage in the operation, as I did on a number of occasions, was a bit like playing a clever, aesthetically pleasing video game, but one

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Figure 38 Hand-activated tabletop, Korea Pavilion

This hand-activated tabletop enabled participants to virtually create a dish by adding the necessary ingredients. Once the process was finished, the completed meal was presented, as it is here. Photo by author

that mimicked only one element of the process that invites an affective response to food, and possibly the weakest of them all: the movements of the hand and arm as it places ingredients into predetermined spots on the screen. Indeed, for all its beauty in design, this interactive game was less effective than most video games, which have the potential to more fully engage the participant, even inducing a trance-like state through the total engagement of the eyes, the ears, and the body through proprioception which enters through the fingers. At the end of the cooking process one stands in a darkened gallery over a smooth, glass-topped table, cut off from the smells, tastes, sensations, and places of making and consuming food, all fundamental to the larger operation of a foodway. Entirely absent are the experiential links essential to the experience of food consumption as set out by Wilson: Because we experience food through our senses (touch and sight, but especially taste and smell), it possesses certain visceral, intimate, and emotional qualities, and as a result we remember the food we eat and the

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sensations we felt while eating it. The senses create a strong link between place and memory, and food serves as the material representation of this experience. (2013, p. 6)

Again, it is the marshalling of all these sensations that the sedimented memories of the experience are laid down. Perhaps this is the basis of what Appadurai observes as food’s ‘capacity to mobilize strong emotions’ (1981, p. 494). Emotions were more directly engaged in the pavilion’s third and final gallery through visual and musical stimuli, though again, failing to ignite the visceral, intimate, and emotional qualities that might lay down tracks in the body. The gallery invited participants into a long, darkened passageway containing 365 three-dimensional fermentation pots (Figure 39), each capped with a shiny surface onto which moving images of food in various states of cooking and preparation were projected, images that gave away to rows of flowers and kaleidoscopic designs unfolding and disappearing, all synched to a musical score. The music, which included a two-minute looped track of the well-known tune Arirang, was roughly of the duration it took for most participants to move leisurely through the space, even if they chose to stop briefly at a few spots to observe the visual splendour of these changing displays of food and colour, punctuated by sound. At the end of the cycle, the gallery briefly returned to darkness before the sound and light show began again. Mirrors on the back and side walls created the impression that these overactive, at times seemingly psychedelic urns continued into infinity, generating an odd sense of disorientation that encouraged participants to slow down their walking pace or stop. The musical sequence began with the gentle sounds of a far-off gong and a slow gathering of forces coming to life, while midway into the sequence, it shifted into an instrumental version of the iconic Arirang, a folk tune that serves as Korea’s unofficial national anthem, one that crosses the divides of both north and south. The song’s lyrics recount a sad tale of unrequited love, while the tuneful, hummable melody line reflects the spirit of eternal loss and longing. Korean violinist Won Hung-Joon, speaking of the song’s emotional impact, observes that ‘It just touches our soul,’ adding, ‘It’s very sorrowful and feels like pain’ (Strother 2018). In this respect Arirang functions as a ‘soundmark,’ a concept set out by Rodaway that derives from landmark and refers to ‘a community sound,’ one that is ‘recognized and shared in the soundscape of a social group’ (1994, pp. 87-88). In this highly aestheticized, sensorially-rich fermentation gallery, in the last segment of the sound and light sequence the colourful projections on the tops of the

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Figure 39 Fermentation gallery, Korea Pavilion

While moving through the ‘fermentation gallery’ participants experienced the visual splendour of looking into a seemingly endless numbers of pots transforming from psychedelic floral designs into complete clay pot meals. Photo by author

pots are blown off as the final musical coda of the ‘soundmark’ provided by Arirang crescendos toward a final punctuation mark. As an aesthetic experience that activated the eyes and ears and sought to control the movement of the body through the space, the fermentation gallery was thrilling. I returned multiple times and stayed through numerous cycles of the sound and light show. Part of me wanted to stay in that world as the plaintive sounds of Arirang added to the appeal of the endless shape-shifting images that enveloped me, reminding me that beauty and happiness is delicate and short-lived but that humans, like the crescendo of the Arirang, stoically carry on and find happiness when and where they can. But it strikes me that my response, possibly conditioned by my own cultural orientation as a Scandinavian-American from the Upper Midwest raised in a church-going family, is perhaps far from the norm for the Italians moving through that space. Returning to this gallery on multiple occasions, I never saw anyone stop and appear to connect with the space in ways I did. The vast majority of participants simply walked purposefully through it, a

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lovely, colourful garden of light and sound leading them to the white light of the exit beckoning at the end of the passageway. Like many other country pavilions in Milan, the primary exhibition spaces were on the upper level. Yet unlike other pavilions, when exiting the Korean exhibition, one faced three choices: leaving the pavilion entirely in the middle of the ground level; turning left into a central court from which one could access a gift shop, food bar, and restaurant; or walking through a further exhibit curving around the backside of the staircase. Few took the last option, one with contextual information that provided the backstory to Korea’s relationship with food from the mid twentieth century. A bank of small screens at eye level lined the narrow, curved corridor, the first of which showed a starving child looking directly into the camera, subtitled with the year, 1950. A series of videos and still images on these monitors told the story of how Korea, a poor nation with a malnourished population during the war-ravaged years of the 1950s, moved toward greater prosperity under the Saemaul Undong, or ‘New Community Movement’ that took shape in the decades that followed. Its guiding principles of self-reliance and community-based development are set out as foundational in moving the country from poverty to prosperity, while the last few display monitors in the sequence showed how these principles were now being exported overseas through projects in developing countries, particularly in Africa. In contrast with the arty installation-like encounter with hansik on the upper level, this final exhibit, didactic in form and content and shorn of aesthetic trappings, offered a narrative for those interested in placing the Korean food experience into a wider historical context. But not once in my repeated trips to the pavilion, did I observe anyone stopping to take in the content of these displays; most simply avoided them altogether, either exiting directly from the ground floor of the pavilion or moving toward the gift shop and the food. Apart from the additional public events associated with ‘Korea Week’ at the fair, few fairgoers seemed eager to sample Korean food, either at the café bar where one stood to eat, or in the rather sterile and uninviting glass-walled restaurant. As few appeared to have stopped long enough to be put off eating Korean by images of starving children, it seems more likely that there was little the Koreans could have done to entice Italians, a people whose identities both nationally and regionally are so deeply entangled with very well-established foodways, to consume their food. When looking at the empty restaurant that should have been f illed with diners, I reflected on the image of the morbidly obese man holding a piece of pizza in front of the open hole of his mouth in the first gallery

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space (Figure 36). At that moment I was reminded of how, on the streets of Milan, pizza is a practical, reasonably healthy fast food, one prepared from scratch with natural, locally-sourced ingredients and served up in minutes, a crispy, wafer thin slice of bread containing just a few toppings, a far cry from the carbohydrate-laden pieces of thick, wet bread dough piled high with excessive, high-caloric ingredients sold by international pizza chains. By disparaging the noble piece of pizza in the first gallery, something created with great skill and cooked to perfection at cafes throughout Milan, the designers of Korea’s well-meaning installation about the dangers of highcalorie food displayed a lack of understanding of what pizza really is and what it means to the Italians. What they presented as part of a cautionary tale in their pavilion was the pizza of multinationals, made with fatty, inexpensive, and sometimes fake ingredients that increasingly poison the bodies of the those entering the middle classes throughout the developing world. The sloppy, goopy fat-man pizza of international chains such as Dominos or Pizza Hut is not the pizza of Milan. At an exposition devoted to theme of food production and sustainability, the Korean pavilion was not alone in presenting a narrative in which the actual, embodied pleasures of food were absent within the dedicated exhibition spaces. But what other countries were not trying to do was to convince people what and how to eat, a bold undertaking in a country like Italy. Noteworthy too was that the stated research questions guiding the pavilion did not consider the question of where to eat, so essential not just for Italians but for anyone with a deeply embodied, experiential, social connection with a foodway – which is to say virtually all humans. Many country pavilions sought to provide the viewer with a richer understanding of the food cultures their country. For instance, the US pavilion, while foregrounding issues of food production and sustainability, offered a series of galleries that connected distinctively American dishes to the regions of the country from which they hail, with seafood associated with New England, and barbeque associated with the south, and so forth. The Dutch took at a different approach and dispensed with pavilions altogether, giving their pavilion’s footprint over to food trucks and the small, food stalls one would find at the seaside or at civic carnivals in the country’s smaller and medium-sized cities. Anyone who had lived in smaller city in the Netherlands would have immediately understood that they were claiming foreign cultural space as their own, bringing in the actual vendors to Milan, along with their food trucks and even one crazy Ferris wheel restaurant. In terms of maximizing affect, it was hard to beat dining on a Ferris wheel while eating a humble grilled cheese sandwich and drinking Dutch beer. While the food

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the Dutch offered was uninspiring – cheese sandwiches, croquettes – it was in the packaging of the fun connected with its consumption that they generated affect, making it attractive and deeply memorable for the solo traveller like me. Yet while Korea failed to offer such an integrated dining experience, where they left the most remarkable impression on their local hosts was most surely at the interpersonal level, through the remarkably friendly hosts in their country pavilion, and then through the explosion of talent across a range of performance forms that rocked Milan during Korea Week in July, examined in the final section below.

Korea Rocks Milan Staff at the Korean pavilion were uniformly youthful, well-trained, and multi-lingual, notable for their good looks, their friendliness and their overall perkiness. Apart from those with specialized skills and in management positions, the guides stationed in and around the pavilion told me they were all recent university graduates, fluent in Italian and/or English, and engaged for the duration of the fair. Those I spoke with appeared happy to simply chat and were eager to pass on information about the pavilion of which they were clearly proud. Guides also seemed to be having fun. On more than one occasion, while walking past the Korea pavilion I saw the young people responsible for the flow of people into the pavilion entrance dancing spontaneously to the canned K-pop music. This was in stark contrast with the staffing in some of the other expo pavilions, particularly those from smaller and medium-sized countries in Latin America, where pavilion labour was outsourced to locals, many of whom appeared to be bored with their work even by the second month of the fair’s operation. But where Korea truly rocked was not at the Expo, but on the streets of Milan, where they exploded off the stages in a series of public performances associated with Korea Week. The two that I witnessed, one on an open-air stage in the shadow of a massive Arco della Pace in the Piazza Sempione, on the edge of the city centre, and the other in a theatre in the heart of the fashion district, offered an army of performers across a range of forms, from K-pop and B-Boying to Taekwondo, Western Opera and both Folk and Modern Dance. Programmes featuring display pieces from these forms were received rapturously by local audiences at both events, with relatively restrained Milanese audiences practically shouting themselves hoarse when responding to the virtuosic and precise displays of group choreography in some of the more spectacular feats of Taekwondo, for instance. For this one

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week that also corresponded with Milan Fashion Week as well as Milan Gay Pride, the Koreans were briefly the rock stars of Milan, a reminder of why Korean cultural products, particularly K-Pop and television series, have become popular with younger audience throughout Asia. Within the intra-Asian sphere, Korea has sought to position itself as a leader in what Chua Beng Huat identifies as a ‘cultural economy,’ one where ‘consumption is not focused on commodity as material object, nor on the ways in which objects are used and discarded’ (2012, p. 12). The success of their popular television soap operas within Asian markets, notably Winter Sonata (Gyeoul yeonga) and Jewel in the Palace (Dae Jang Geum), create a wider sense among intra-Asian youth that Korea is cool and fashionable. As Chua observes of this process, ‘What is consumed are meanings and symbolic values which are not used up, but which continue to circulate in ever increasing and expanding circuits of communication’ (2012: p. 12). When it comes to energy, precision, and expressing and harnessing the raw power of youth, during Korea Week in Milan the country positioned itself as a force to be reckoned with. Witnessing the audience response to these events, I later pondered over what might have happened had the Koreans been able to link the seductiveness of their live performance forms with the pavilion’s content. One had to look no further than the nearby Argentine pavilion to see how another country understood how to create an affective encounter that connected bodies with food through the seductive rhythms of a high-octane performance. Dispensing with the expo theme altogether, Argentina presented a warm and personal narrative of human struggle and perseverance that communicated the lived experiences of Italian immigrants to their country in the early years of the twentieth century, offered up a striking contrast with the Korean pavilion with its focus on the research questions of what and how to eat and how to do it sustainably. Leaving the dimly-lit, woody, warm and handcrafted space of the small cozy galleries within the Argentine pavilion, one exited through a sensorial wonderland, assaulted by the smells of sizzling cow flesh coming from a nearby grill and the din of diners jostling for position at small standing-height café tables on which were placed massive platters of cooked slabs of beef and glasses of Argentine beer and gorgeous ruby red Malbecs. Adding to the party was the street theatre of a troupe of young, attractive, tattooed, sexy and ridiculously talented performers dancing to the beat of an enormous percussive band created with PVC pipes and industrial detritus. Twice a day, including an extended set at dinner time, the group cranked up the energy to the point where everyone in the space in and around the restaurant and performance

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area tucked under the pavilion appeared to be dancing with wild abandon. The smells, sights, tastes and sounds of Argentina fused in such a way as to invite a synesthetic experience shared by vast numbers of people every day, presumably for the run the fair. Yet perhaps unfortunately for the planet, the Argentine experience, for many, including myself, also involved consuming mountains of red meat and vast quantities of alcohol, fuelled by the kinaesthetic brilliance of sizzling hot hipster youth from Buenos Aires. In terms of youthful exuberance extending the brand of Korean cool, it was hard to beat the performances of Korea week in Milan. Yet it strikes me that for the Milanese at least, few would be drawn to their food just because Korean youth are masters of B-Boying or Taekwondo. As one of my informants,11 anthropologist Erika Lorea observed, Korean food is not widely recognized in Italy: Korean food is simply not known in Italy. I guess that has to do with our history of migrants from Asia. While the Chinese community in Italy is one of the oldest and most established, and you would find a Chinese restaurant even in the most remote and improbable Italian town, Koreans just did not come to Italy. (2018)

Indeed, in the official ‘Korean Restaurant Guide’ produced for the expo, there are only seven Korean restaurants in Milan, and while the influential Yelp website lists ten, all of them are concentrated around the parts of Milan where Korean tourists are likely to stay.12 The pavilion, in its effort to set out a polemic, that Hansik represents the answer to the problems of what and how to eat in ways that are sustainable for the planet, overlooked those other human dimensions of foodways that might have invited the Italian participant in for an experience that could maximize affect by tapping into the social dimensions of food consumption. As Counihan observes, ‘As humans construct their relationship to nature through their foodways, they simultaneously 11 As I was unable to obtain ethics clearance to conduct interviews with patrons on the site, I set out a number of open-ended questions relating to perceptions of Korean and Thai food and any Milan Expo eating experiences and put them to a network of Italians identified by one of my colleagues at the International Institute for Asian Studies at the University of Leiden. Snowballing by participants in the survey yielded fairly consistent results about Italian food preferences and the general lack of awareness of Korean food, in particular. 12 This is consistent with the observations of Fabio Parasecoli who, in his work on the history of Italian food, observes: ‘With the exceptions of big cities like Milan, Turin or Rome, immigrant communities are frequently not large enough to sustain ethnic eateries’ (2014, p. 247). Ethnic Italians make up over 95% of the country’s populations and all immigrant groups are relatively small.

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define themselves and their social world’ (1999, p. 24). The social world of Korean foodways was absent from the pavilion experience, while the spaces for consuming food on the pavilion grounds were cold and quite at odds with the communal nature of the sharing of a meal in Korean homes and restaurants. In the end however, who was eating their food? I was. David Sutton’s observation about the work of food is relevant here: ‘Food does not simply symbolize social bonds and divisions; it participates in their creation and re-creation’ (Sutton 2001, p. 102). It occurred to me that as I ate Korean food even in the stark, white environment of the food stall under the pavilion, I was reconnecting with my embodied experience of a few years earlier where I had consumed what my body remembers as the world’s best mackerel soup with a friend at a dingy, impossibly small restaurant in the heart of Seoul, or when a few days later I found myself in a rural restaurant with new friends picking from dozens of little plates assembled on a vast table, washing the culinary richness down with buckets of fermented soju rice wine as a snowstorm raged outside. Food, in such instances, following from Holtzman’s observations on food memory, ‘traverses the public and the intimate’ while ‘fostering food’s symbolic power, in general, and in relation to memory, in particular’ (2006, p. 373). Here the act of eating and its embodied dimension created social bonds and embodied memories capable of being reactivated years later and continents away. As Kirschenblatt-Gimlett observes: ‘Food is a way of substantiating place, quite literally, in the sense of substance. Food is not only multisensory, often in ways that elude language while evoking memory, but also food offers a way to incorporate place quite literally, in the sense of ingestion’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimlett 2001, p. 225). By contrast, as I have argued, inside the Korean pavilion hansik failed to activate the senses, ultimately serving to distance the largely Italian audience from Korean consumers of Hansik. Divorced from its cultural, social, and embodied dimensions, the visual and intellectual experience of Hansik more than likely failed to win new converts to this particular foodway. But what the pavilion did demonstrate, however, was just how committed the Koreans were to the overall theme of the expo to both ‘feed the planet’ and provide ‘energy for life.’ Their spectacular success in this regard, but their failure to adequately marshal the forces of affect are ultimately a reminder of why so many nations opt to dispense with an exposition’s brief and offer a multisensorial experience that will leave a lasting imprint on foreign bodies, bodies that may well someday determine the future of their own nation. And as much as I may want to continually reactivate the body memory of place and food from my time in Korea, on the day, like many other fairgoers, I was unable to resist the smell, sights, and sounds of the red-meat-eating, beer-drinking dancing Argentine hipsters.

9

Hard and Soft Power in the Thai Pavilion The Spectral Presence of King Bhumibol at the 2015 Milan Exposition

Abstract With the much-loved King Bhumibol Adulyadej (r.1946-2016) on his virtual deathbed while the 2015 Milan International Exposition was being planned and became operational, it is hardly surprising that the pavilion’s content reflected the nation’s anxieties more acutely than it engaged with the fair’s food-oriented theme. While the exterior of the national pavilion expressed an organic, earthy quality that departed for the usual iconic Thai temple architecture, the interior offered up a series of three discrete sites in which fairgoers were bombarded with visual stimuli that conflated the country’s abundant natural resources with corporatized food production, ultimately wrapping it up in a paean to the King for his role in virtually single-handedly creating a more efficient agricultural sector. Keywords: Thailand, soft power, King Bhumibol, food

The case of Thailand at the 2015 Milan Expo is fascinating not only for how it chose to represent itself, but for what it revealed about the nation’s domestic dramas and political anxieties at a moment when the country’s beloved, long-serving monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej (r. 1946-2016), was on his deathbed. Ever-present despite his physical absence, the King who had become a virtual quasi-divine figure over the course of his reign was both the means and the message for the audience as they moved through the pavilion’s three dedicated halls. The overall exposition theme, ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life,’ provided an opportunity for Thailand to present itself as ‘the Golden Land,’ one blessed by human and supernatural forces, placing it in a unique position to respond to food security issues with its

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch09

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corporatized food production and an agricultural sector under the stewardship of a wise king. As was the case with Korea, the fair’s theme tapped into a pre-existing international campaign centred around food; yet unlike Korea’s campaign, which in the years prior to the expo focused on increasing the number of Korean restaurants overseas, Thailand’s campaign sought to further international markets for pre-packaged foods manufactured by the country’s largest food corporations. Thus, corporate interests were aligned with those of the state in ways that reflect both the nexus of power, politics, and influence in Thailand in an age that has moved beyond capitalism into what Edward Luttwak identifies as ‘turbo-capitalism’ (Luttwak 1998). In its presentation, the pavilion offered a strange and at times surreal conflation of state and corporate power wrapped in the mantle of the King, generating an experiential encounter that seemed more appropriate for a Thai rather than an Italian audience. Pavilion visitors were shepherded through three spaces, each of which relied on short videos presented in differing spatial configurations to communicate three distinct but interconnected narratives: (1) a celebration of the human capacity of Thailand, blessed by both a fertile land and divine intervention, as citizens tap into nature’s generous resources to ‘feed the planet’; (2) an evocation of delight and wonder as audiences responded to a massive, multi-media display of the power of agribusiness and corporate food conglomerates to transform nature’s raw ingredients into attractive, cooked and processed food; and (3) a quasi-reverential encounter with the ‘father of Thai agriculture,’ King Bhumibol, in a viewing room where spectators were gathered like children in a classroom, and the power of the word and the image came together to triumphantly proclaim and celebrate the greatness of the King and the country, inextricably bound together in a perpetual, self-proclaimed ‘Golden Land.’ In key respects, the journey in the pavilion performs the culture of contemporary Thai politics before an absent Thai audience, reflecting their increasing compliance in the face of the authoritarian power of the state. Indeed, in its design, seating arrangements and content, the pavilion seemed to quite consciously wear down the viewer to the point where there was nothing to do but accept the doctrine set out in the final film: That a selfless, brilliant King who has lived his life in the service of his people will, through his groundbreaking achievements in the field of agriculture, contribute to ridding the planet of food shortages, malnutrition, and starvation. Ultimately, the pavilion also offered insights into the future of the exercise of power, one where the apparatus generated by what Althusser termed the state’s ‘Repressive State Apparatus’ and the ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’ (1971)

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work hand in glove to generate a compliant citizenry. The representational regimes employed by corporations and governments contribute to generating consumer demand for what George Ritzer (2003) has identified as ‘grobal’ products, which range from Gucci bags to Coca-Cola, those deracinated items of desire that signify nothing beyond themselves. And it is here on the ground of the local where the Thai pavilion appeared to struggle to find its audience of consumers; in a country such as Italy with its own rich food cultures, where the concern is not just on where and how one consumes, but also on the provenance of the products one consumes (Parasecoli 2014; Naccarato et. al. 2017; Cappati and Montanari 1999), corporate food production, which as we shall see is literally the end point of the pavilion experience, appeared to be unable to stimulate the actual consumption of the frozen, prepackaged, deterritorialized Thai foods on offer. After establishing a contextual framework for Thailand’s self-representation at the expo, each of the three principal spaces of the encounter with food in the Thai pavilion will be set out and described in some detail, taking the reader inside each space, examining both its form and content. The Thailand country pavilion, I will argue, appeared to fail to connect with a domestic Italian audience in large measure because those involved in the production and planning of the pavilion, like so many Thais today, have so completely internalized the world-view of Thailand as a nation, culture, and people whose sense of Thai-ness rests on the quasi-divine status of King Bhumibol that they could not occupy an external position from which to construct any narrative that did not place him at the centre. The chapter’s conclusion will reflect on the relationship between power and representation in the pavilion, while pointing to a possible future for a dominant mode of Asian self-representation at international expositions.

Soft and Hard Power in the ‘Kitchen to the World’ The Thai pavilion and its content were directed by the national government, specifically the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry, which in turn sought to promote a positive image of the nation while hawking corporate food brands. Thus, it is useful to again invoke Joseph Nye’s distinctions between hard and ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power, set out more fully in the previous chapter. Thailand, one can argue, has a significant pool of accumulated soft power resources, particularly among Northern Europeans for whom ‘the land of smiles,’ with its friendly people, graceful temples, white sand beaches, and value for money continues has long offered up an attractive holiday

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destination. While on an international level the country possesses a deep well of soft power by virtue of its much-lauded food culture and through the embodied encounters with the land, it is less popular with Italians than other Europeans. Though Italy has six times the population of Sweden, twice as many Swedes vacation in Thailand than Italians, a staggering three percent of the national population in a single year, while German tourist arrivals outnumber Italians by over half a million annually.1 Consuming Thai food is not only an important part of the experience of tourism, but it is also something that can increasingly be found at home, particularly in the larger cities in Northern Europe as well as the United States and Australia, where the number of Thai restaurants has grown considerably over the last two decades. One could reasonably assume that the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry, aware of the potential of the Italian market with over sixty million consumers, sought to win over converts to Thai food – possibly its greatest exportable soft power resource – in Italy’s relatively untapped market. Meanwhile, at home in Thailand, the performance of hard power before a Thai audience was being daily wielded by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, formerly the Commander in Chief of the Thai Army, who assumed power in a military coup in May, 2014, just days after the joint venture that would design and run the pavilion was announced (Kewaleewongsatorn 2014). In spite of his commitment to ‘return happiness to the people’ with his much-vaunted national happiness campaign following a period of political turbulence (Chanwanpen 2015), in his public pronouncements, he made it clear that he alone would be the final arbiter of all political disputes, and that those who disagreed with him were automatically seen as grave dangers to the state.2 Given the continuing domestic political instability plaguing Thailand in the lead up to the Milan Exposition, further fuelled by uncertainty about what a future without King Bhumibol might look like once his son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn ascended to the throne, the country appeared to increasingly embrace a kind of corporate authoritarianism wrapped in a divinely-sanctioned monarchism. Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws are among the most draconian in the world, with the incarceration rate for such offences spiking under Prime Minister Chan-ocha.3 Indeed, as Baker 1 Tourism statistics drawn from: https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1410495/ italian-minister-marks-150-years-of-diplomatic-relations; https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/ tourist-arrivals-in-thailand-by-country.html 2 For an account of the Prime Minister’s rants directed at domestic journalists on just a single occasion see Saiyasombut 2016. 3 According to the New York Times (Paddock 2016), 57 such cases have been brought up in the two years to May 2016, with 44 involving online commentary. Those arrested and brought

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and Phongpaichit (2009, pp. 162-180), observe, the rise and rise of military rule in Thailand since the late 1950s has moved hand in glove with the elevation of the King. For those planning the operation of the pavilion, this larger political environment no doubt had a chilling effect on its content and the potential for audience interactivity both within the pavilion and the surrounding precinct. The year leading up to the Milan Exposition was a particularly critical one for Thailand: With the military firmly in control and the ageing symbol and soul of the nation on slow fade and absent from public view, it is as if all of Thailand is collectively holding its breath, fearing that the words of King Chulalongkorn’s (r. 1868-1910) chronicler, Damrong, would come to pass: ‘If there is no king, … the land will fall into disorder’ (Baker 2009, p. 78). While Bhumibol’s son, the current Rama X, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, appears to have successfully wrapped himself in the mantle of his father in the years that have followed (Jackson 2017), there was considerable anxiety about the future of Thailand in 2014 and 2015. Thus I will argue that while the soft power was very much in evidence in terms of the content of the pavilion, what has happening at home in Thailand generated a kind of hard power imperative in terms of how the content was delivered and expressed within the pavilion, creating a notable disconnect between content and form for the non-Thai spectator as the moved through the pavilion’s three key content-driven spaces. Given the considerable expense in planning, constructing and operating country pavilions, typically participating nations are there to some extent to increase their economic, political, or cultural capital on the international stage. Some country pavilions at recent expos, particularly in Milan and at the earlier 2010 Shanghai Exposition, blatantly promote tourism, paying no heed whatsoever to the exposition theme. Smaller, developing nations sometimes focus on a few export products inside their pavilions, hoping to create or deepen overseas markets, while countries with a strong international branding such as France may – as was the case at the 2010 Shanghai Exposition – promote an image that builds upon existing reservoirs of cultural capital to enhance the positive feelings foreign nationals have for their county and its culture (Peterson 2012). But what they all seek is the exercise of some form of power not merely through their physical presence, before a military court include the mother of a human rights activist who responded to her imprisoned son’s text message with a single word, affirming receipt of a Facebook message. See also Khaosod 2015 for an account of the Thai government’s attempt to extradite those who have fled the country to avoid prosecution on such charges.

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but through the experiential encounter they generate within and around the pavilion. And it is at this nexus where a nation’s power over its citizens and where its aspirations for power over foreign nationals meet that make this particular encounter within the Thai pavilion is so rich and multilayered. As for what Thailand wanted from fairgoers who experienced their country’s pavilion, on the level of consumption, the answer is clear: an expanded overseas export market for its national cuisine. Indeed, the fair’s theme provided an opening to extend a national economic development campaign launched in 2102, one that built upon the ‘Global Thai’ campaign of a decade earlier which initially sought to boost the number of Thai restaurants around the world, a move characterized as ‘gastro-diplomacy’ in The Economist, a term that as we saw in the prior chapter has entered the lexicon of Food Studies scholarship (Wilson 2013; Rockower 2011, 2012; Suntikul 2017). Using corporate-style language, the official fair catalogue sets out how Thailand responded to the expo theme, ‘Feeding the Planet: Energy for Life:’ With theme [sic] “Nourishing and Delighting the World,” Thailand wishes to showcase the fertility of the country’s natural resources, production processes of premium agricultural produce and food with high standards, sustainable farming as well as high technology and innovation used in the food industries. These strengthen the country’s capability to “nourish and delight” the world, ensuring the nation’s readiness to become “The Kitchen to the World.” (Milan Exposition 2015c, p. 161)

The ‘Kitchen to the World’ designation, following an articulation of the requisite conditions to support such an aspirational claim – namely rich natural resources, high standards, sustainable practices, and the latest technological innovations – is set out as an end in itself, not the ability of the Thai food to make a contribution to the fair’s stated imperative of ‘Feeding the Planet.’ ‘Nourishing’ and ‘delighting’ are reduced to themes, the means through which Thailand might become ‘Kitchen to the World,’ which is itself both a corporate and a national economic goal. The tagline ‘Kitchen to the World’ was first used in 2012, when Yingluck Shinawatra, then the country’s Prime Minister, launched an international campaign under that name. At the campaign’s formal launch in Sydney, Shinawatra set out the government’s strategy by first invoking in a celebratory fashion the existing gastronomic soft power hold Thailand had over Australia: ‘It is a pleasure to be here among people who share at least one thing in common – a love of Thai cuisine and products!’ (2012). Shinawatra’s speech was full of statistics boasting about the growth in food exports to

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Australia, the kind of metrics-driven data so in vogue among captains of industry today to justify their own achievements, while near the end, she set out the very themes that just a few years later would find expression in the Thai pavilion in Milan: To play our part in promoting food production and addressing the issue of food security, my Government is implementing the Kitchen to the World programme. The objective of this programme is to produce high quality food and agricultural products at competitive prices and which meet international standards of safety. A comprehensive strategy has been planned, covering raw materials, logistics, production, improving value-added and distribution centres. (Shinawatra 2012)

Using much that same language appearing in the Thailand entry in the expo catalogue two years later, it is noteworthy that in her public presentation she framed the narrative by invoking her country’s soft power, the existing ‘gastro-diplomatic’ ties connecting her with her Australian audience. Given the gastronomically-situated soft power successfully accumulated elsewhere by Thailand by the time of the Milan Expo, one might have expected the pavilion to offer an interactive pavilion environment, one featuring multiple opportunities for the participant to create their own personal connections with Thai food. An early preview of the Thailand country pavilion on the official expo website in the year prior to the fair’s opening suggested that the country planned to respond to the exposition theme with a richly experiential, interactive, and intensely performative environment which would engage all of the senses of the active spectator/ participant. On offer would be the ‘tastes, streets, and Thai flavors’ though ‘an authentic, unique tasting experience’ in the form of ‘an outside exhibition that recreates the atmosphere of the Festival of the Temple’s local food fair, with a floating market to recall times past, when Bangkok was called, “The Venice of the East”’ (Milan International Expo 2014). Eight months before the expo opening, as I read these words online and gazed at the accompanying renderings depicting smiling vendors in small boats selling their produce in a floating market that appeared integrated into the pavilion’s design, I surmised that the Thai pavilion was likely to offer the most sensorially complex experience at this fair, one in which participants were given the opportunity to see, hear, smell, and consume the total experience of food production and consumption in a Thai context. As I knew from both personal experience and the sheer number of Thai restaurants in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, I imagined that Thais, well aware that they had already

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conquered Northern Europeans taste buds, would use the expo to spread their epicurean joy southward to Italy, finding a consuming audience receptive to the total immersive experience in which food is inextricably linked to the sensations of being in Thailand. As months went by, this earlier narrative of intense interactivity was gradually softened on the official pavilion website, though when the official programme was printed just prior to the fair’s opening in May, the dedicated pavilion theme of ‘Nourishing and Delighting the World’ still held out the promise of the performative pavilion; among the ‘delights’ on offer would be ‘outdoor live exhibitions, a paddy field and a floating market,’ as well as the presentation of Thai ‘cultural shows’ such as ‘Muay Thai,’ or Thai kickboxing (Milan International Exposition 2015c, p. 161). Seeking to determine the reasons behind this shift, I initially attributed it to choices by the design and management companies, Right Man and Workpoint, tasked with running and operating the pavilion (Kewaleewongsatorn 2014). Multiple attempts to contact the lead design company failed, and it was hardly surprising that a company working for a government ministry would be reticent to discuss the project even the best of times, let alone shortly after a military junta had taken over the country. As was noted in the previous chapter, changes to the overarching vision for the event by exposition organizers may also have contributed to the reduced imperatives for more direct, experiential encounters between fairgoers and food production. The original expo concept called for a complete rethinking of the ways in which nations represented themselves, as each country was to demonstrate how food was or could be more efficiently cultivated. The lead designer, Jacques Herzog, who had championed this approach quit in 2011 and it appears that the total abandonment of the original macro-level design concept was not clearly communicated to participating countries by the organizing committee (Heilmeyer 2015). While the preliminary sketches of the pavilion and early publicity materials suggested considerable interactivity as well as human actors beyond mere attendants, it was the extreme lengths to which the pavilion designers went to minimize any contact with humans or designed or displayed materials of any sort that is noteworthy as ultimately, the pavilion experience was entirely one of passive reception on the part of the audience member, as we shall see. The following section will map out the pavilion experience by walking the viewer through it, considering its affect-generating environment through the coordinates of the then-prevailing political, social, economic, and spiritual landscape in Thailand in the year prior to the death of King Bumibol Adulyadej. The position of the ideal spectator in the pavilion, I

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assert, parallels that of Thai citizens today with respect to the divinized position of the king, one in which, as Sarun Krittakarn argues, manifests itself through not merely the gaze of the populace on the figure of the ubiquitous king, but through the king’s omnipresent gaze back on his people: If a nation, in order to exist, must be gazed on, its nationals are also subject to a constant stare in order to feel a sense of belonging to it. The closely related gaze – which turns time, space, nation, people or anything in its field into a visual object of scrutiny – is therefore, the panoptic gaze to which Thais are so accustomed. This calls to mind the omnipresence of the king who casts his gaze over this subjects everywhere they go: he watches over them form the calendars at home, in the kitchen where they have breakfast, from the side of the computer monitor at the workplace, from framed photographs in classrooms, banks, government offices, in taxi and tuk-tuk, in almost all buses trains and boats, which must have at least one image of him on board, on the streets, especially at times of celebration, every now and then from the televisions, and every time before a film starts in the cinema. (2010, p. 67)

Krittikarn, who as a Thai is unable to risk being identified with these words and consequently writes under a pseudonym, argues that for today’s Thai citizens, ‘The central watch tower of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon is diffused into various forms in the vast penitentiary of a nation, creating a total empire of the royal gaze’ (2010, p. 67). The structure of the pavilion experience mirrored this practice, shifting the position of the spectator from one simply viewing, to one also being seen by others, and ultimately seen by the King as one gazes back at him, thus making them potential recipients of the King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s divine grace. Thus, the pavilion ultimately offered a coercive, hard-power experience, one whose success is possible largely because of the ways in which film, sound, and human bodies gathered collectively in a space, make it possible for subjects to fail to recognise that they are being beaten over the head with soft brickbats.

Site 1: Encountering the ‘Golden Land’ For visitors, the encounter began outside the structure where the pavilion departed radically from previous architectural proclamations of Thai-ness at international expositions. Instead of the usual white-washed Thai Buddhist temple adorned with elaborate gilded door and window frames, topped

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Figure 40 Exterior, Thailand Pavilion, Milan Expo

The Thai Pavilion departed from the usual temple-like structures used at prior expos. The roofline mirrors the shape of a traditional farmer’s hat, while a moat runs alongside the pavilion, a section of it given over to a small rice paddy with an effigy of a famer and a water buffalo. Photo by author

with intricate cornices supporting a steeply pitched roof, the pavilion’s architecture was based on what the exposition catalogue identif ies as ‘symbolic design’ in which ‘The building has the shape of a Ngob, a Thai farmer’s hat, representing Thai agriculture, and the base of a stupa, a symbol of faith. Naga, a deity of rain and water in the form a multi-headed snake, is at the entrance’ (Milan Exposition 2015, p. 161). The materials used, notably a latticed outer shell of wood, recalled the colour and weave of a traditional farmer’s hat with its broad brim, though the top of the hat suggested a stupa without the deity. The covered walkway alongside the pavilion entrance where spectators queued prior to entering the structure was integrated into the overall structure’s design, with a small waterway leading to a rice paddy running parallel to it (Figure 40). While long after the close of the expo, the official website continued to feature a video of the small pond awash with kayak-style boats navigated by fruit and vegetable vendors, by the time I came to the expo a month after its opening, there was no sign of such activity. The paddy behind it appeared to have rice growing in it, presided over by two life-size fake water buffalo and scarecrow-like effigies of farmers wearing loosely-fitting, traditional blue worker’s clothing, their faces covered with bandanas and crowned by the traditional ngob hat. There was a somewhat ghostly quality to both the human and animal figures, as

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if they were taxidermy versions of actual life forms, placed on display in a manner that drew further attention to the unnaturalness of their setting. The wait outside the first gallery of the pavilion, and the control over the entry, which was limited to about fifty at a time, signaled that this was to be a largely ocular experience shared by the entire group, rather than one inviting interactivity through encounters with a range of exhibits. The first hall we entered was round, with an IMAX style screen encircling the room, fixed from about two meters above the floor. Guides encouraged us to sit on the floor, and on the three occasions I visited the pavilion, most did. From floor level more than 180 degrees of the screen could be taken in at once, and from this position especially, it dominated one’s visual field. When the external doors close, dramatic Hollywood blockbuster-style music fills the space as images of the planet in crisis flash before us and move rapidly across the screen, starting with frozen landscapes, followed by a desert which captions in Italian and English proclaim as ‘scorching with 50 degrees centigrade.’ The eye of camera then retreats rapidly, pausing to view the planet from space, as the onscreen text declares that ‘Only 10% is fertile land suitable for cultivation,’ dramatically adding, ‘One of which is Thailand.’ On cue, the camera zooms back toward the planet with Thailand in a bulls-eye position, followed by a succession of moving images of spectacular beauty, including rainforests, fast flowing waterways, and vast, underwater paradises teaming with fish. As the musical score turns increasingly Thaiinflected, initially with a subtle but ever-strengthening drum beat joined by an ever-widening Thai orchestra, large fish are lifted into boats by smiling, handsome fishermen from seas bordering on idyllic white sand beaches. Fishing nets are cast out and pulled in and the screen divides into smaller segments, while in one of them a fisherman holds out an enormous fish into the eye of the camera, as if presenting it to the viewer. The next cut is to colourfully dressed children cavorting through verdant rice paddies, with kites trailing in the sky behind them. A modern combine is shown harvesting rice, followed by village scenes of people tending to chickens, ducks, and water buffalo, suggesting that while modern harvesting practices are followed when it comes to rice cultivation, animal husbandry is villagebased, and animals enjoy a happy, free-range lifestyle. Spectacular scenes of fertile crops flash onscreen, as farm workers offer perfect specimens of fruits and vegetables to the film audience with arms extended outward. The dynamic music trails off, becoming gentler and invoking the mystical, and with the resonant sound of a gong, a young boy enters a Buddhist temple, moving toward the altar, stopping to observe the paintings of the golden

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Naga serpent adorning the wall, as if preparing to ask for something. The water-dwelling Naga, associated with the Mekong River and control over the flow of its waterways, a quasi-animist protector deity originally associated with Hinduism, is often depicted as rising from the water and spewing fireballs as it flies through the skies. A villager then bangs a large drum, presumably to bring local people together, and they start to gather in fields, around their homes, and in ever-increasing numbers carry out actions of supplication and reverence to collectively will it to rain. Suddenly, a shaft of golden light shoots skyward from the neck of a Naga adorning the exterior of a temple, and the entire village gathers to look skyward at the glorious display. The winds pick up and fairy dust from the Naga ignites into a beam of energy, materializing into a giant Naga slithering across the sky. As the music builds to a crescendo and breaks, the skies open, at first depositing a few drops of rain on villagers and attractive women in tribal attire, building to a steady, warm, tropical rain to the delight of those now dancing in it. A spiralling melody backed by a slow, regular drum beat accompanies the penultimate section in which the many attractive villagers, fishermen, and farmers featured earlier now reappear, arms extended, bearing all manner of luscious raw foods. As the camera’s eye retreats, a proliferating number of beaming, food-bearing villagers gift the Western viewer endless quantities of food, while the phrase, ‘Thailand is the Golden Land’ appears above their heads (Figure 41). A digitized basket then weaves itself rapidly into being, quickly reclaiming the screen, while the final static image has viewers peering through a round basket as if we ourselves are in it, looking out through the weave at expanses of gold. To extend the metaphor further, it is as if we are the village chickens, trapped in a traditional open-weave basket, blinded by the light of the golden land. To Thais, this notion of an abundant land, one with ‘fish in the waters, rice in the field’ is reflected in the well-worn expression, ‘nai nam mee pla, nai na mee khao’ (Apirsitniran and Tortermvasana 2018), enshrined in the oldest extant Thai text, the so-called King Ramkhanhaeng inscription, believed by many to date back to the 13th century AD (Hutangkura). Thus the ability to pull the fish from the water and harvest rice and food from verdant lands is part of an overarching and even mythic Thai identity; in this sense its reflection in film expresses Debord’s assertion that, ‘The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images’ (2004, 1967: 7). Yet this same trope, given visual, aural, and dramatic representation in an overpowering, Hollywoodized style, with rapidly changing images, the fusion of the quotidian with the magical, and a high-octane musical score that shook one’s bones, cannot circulate in the

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Figure 41 Rich food resources, Thailand Pavilion

At the conclusion of the film, the rich food resources of the land and sea are presented to the viewers in the pavilion. Photo by author

same way among a group of people – primarily Italian in this instance – who share a different set of social relations. Here the spectacle itself was the message, the presentation so powerful that many spontaneously clapped at its end, and in spite of possibly knowing that they were being manipulated, many were clearly taken in by the experience.

Site 2: Corporatized Food Production At the film’s conclusion, doors at the back of the screening chamber opened, and guides directed us down a narrow hallway. Reminiscent of the backstage rabbit warrens behind and underneath a theatre stage, the ceilings were low, the lighting stark, and fluorescent and the walls even just one month into the expo showed wear from the thousands of bodies that had already squeezed themselves through the passageway. Emerging from this claustrophobic space into a round, cavernous one, participants were directed to take a position standing along a single, circular rail peering down into a stark, windowless room covered with reflective surfaces. As soon as the audience was settled into position around the four sides of the space, the lights came down and strands of digitized golden wicker threads appeared to partially

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envelop us, revealing the placement of mirrors and projection screens behind and above us, as well as on the floor and walls of the pit below. As in the previous film, the wicker basket quickly materializes, and into it fly raw food materials, endlessly flowing from a source above and moving so quickly into our field of view that they challenge the capacity of the human eye to reasonably identify, while synthesized music underscores the sense of rapid, increasingly frantic movement. The basket quickly retreats along with its contents and we find ourselves gazing into a clear pool, rapidly populated by plump, digitized fish leaping out of the water. Once again, we are confronted with infinite food resources, present for the mere taking. Suddenly, approximately one minute into the presentation, we move into a distinctly different mode, one that sets out and celebrates the mechanics of food production visually with limited text. The colour palate switches to blue and white, while the images that appear before us are almost clinical in their purity. The words ‘research’ and ‘innovation’ flash on the floor, and we peer into down below, and as the music shifts into a driving, pulsating beat, it seems to activate science-inflected images projected all around us, while throwing out phrases in English and Italian such as ‘Good agricultural practice,’ ‘breeding research,’ ‘high technology,’ and ‘bio-security.’ Rectangular shapes rain down into the pit and its walls with images of food production, many so sterile that it is unclear what the food product being manufactured is. Acronyms, company logos, labels, and food workers dressed in white looking like doctors in a laboratory now come up and out toward the standing audience from the bottom of the pit as raw materials are transformed into packaged food and ‘GMP’ appears all over the floor, an acronym for ‘Good Manufacturing Practice,’ a food safety certification by the Thai government that would be meaningless to the largely Italian audience. This visual and aural onslaught on the senses by a high performance corporate machine brings to mind Jeff Malpas’ observations about contemporary managerial practice, ‘when terms like ‘excellence’ or ‘agility’ function as more than empty signifiers, and are instead tied, even if indirectly, to real outcomes, those outcomes are invariably quantitative in character’ (2018, p. 29). Buzzwords such as ‘security’ and ‘standard’ then start to appear, along with the logo for Authentic Asia, a prepared food product brand owned by Charoen Pokphand Foods, the country’s largest food conglomerate. Images of food going into boxes and boxes of food moving down conveyor belts proliferate, creating the impression that food production and supply is as endless and unceasing (Figure 42). Suddenly, the music shifts into a heavy, driving beat and pre-cut fresh ingredients are thrown seemingly from above us into massive bowls below in the pit, blended and mixed, transformed into giant

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Figure 42 Iconic food dishes, Thailand Pavilion

After having witnessed the efficiency of corporate food production, complete dishes appear both within the chamber below and all around the audience, with names of iconic dishes such as this one for Pad Thai to direct future consumption. Photo by author

plates and bowls containing luscious, healthy-looking, ready-to-eat meals. The next sequence features images of cooks and the word for ‘delicious’ in many languages popping up in gold lettering, swirling around us, giving way to a rapid fire set of images of prepared foods in boxes, breaking away to form the final triumphal phrase, ‘Kitchen to the world’ in gold lettering as the sound track swells to a massive crescendo. It is as if, while standing for a mere four minutes, the human organism has been tested to its absolute physical limits as it withstands a rainstorm of raw food, rapid slicing and dicing, swirling pots cooking and bubbling, technicians monitoring and factory-lines packaging it up, while being expelled from the space like the little boxes of prepared food churned out in a Willie Wonkastyle food factory. The scale of the operation reflects Gellner’s observation that ‘industrial society is the only society ever to live by and rely on sustained and perpetual growth, on an expected and continuous improvement’ (1983, p. 22). What we were witnessing was a kind of manic visual and aural dance demonstrating that nation’s commitment to continuous improvement in

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food production and manufacturing to efficiently feed the planet. Food here has been reduced to a commodity, presented via a thrilling and beautiful spectacle. Again, Debord offers a useful analysis of the what happens to a commodity when it is transformed by spectacle: The fetishism of the commodity – the domination of society by ‘intangible as well as tangible things’ – attains its ultimate fulfilment in the spectacle, where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality. (2004, 1967, p. 19)

Here efficient, hygienic, mechanized food production delivers enticing, delicious foods while the unseen hand of turbocapitalism controls the levers of supply and demand, a spectral presence which mirrors that of the mighty Naga, the giver of the water on which all life depends. If religiosity, the belief in the power of the Naga, was the life force in the first video, the spectral effects of market forces are very much in evidence in the second. Spit out into the backstage area once again as we leave the space, this time we literally rub up against empty boxes of packaging for prepared foods, the commodity appearing in its final form. As the boxes are unceremoniously affixed to the wall at eye level, the brand names greet us as we move through the narrow hallway. Three brands stand out in particular, that of Authentic Asia, Sensations of Asia, and Greenday, the manufacturer of vegetable snack chips. Only later would I come to understand the importance of this product placement.

Site 3: Encountering the Farmer King In contrast with the disorienting multiple screens of the second chamber or the 360-degree screen of the first, the third chamber featured a single, giant screen, while on entering, when seated, audiences were directed to take a place within a steeply-raked row of backless seats. Spectators were positioned as though they were students, summoned here to learn of the great deeds of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The film starts on the grounds of Chitralada Villa, the royal place in central Bangkok, where in 1961 the King famously created an agricultural research station. Presumably on a school field trip to the site, a freckle-faced, red-haired boy of about nine looks quizzically at a series of humble, utilitarian structures and a nearby windmill, asking his teacher, an attractive, young Thai woman with a kind

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face: ‘Teacher, is this His Majesty the King’s palace?’ The boy, speaking in Italian, but clearly dubbed, looking up to the teacher from below, directs the camera’s gaze to a picture he has drawn of a European-style castle, complete with turrets, massive walls, and pointy roofs, suggestive of the type of royal residence he expected to encounter on the grounds of the royal palace. The teacher, who is shot from the child’s perspective and towers over viewers both on screen and off, responds gently to his naïve drawing by speaking of the selflessness of the world’s richest monarch (Linshi 2015): ‘The King has dedicated part of his palace grounds to be rice fields to create food and ponds to breed fish.’4 As the teacher builds a narrative setting out the king’s role in agriculture, the film cuts away to shots of children in school uniforms walking through the grounds of the research station and delighting in its features. The children appear to be from an international school, a number of them are Caucasian, and all seem in a state of wonderment and excitement as the teacher observes how this site, developed by the King, has ‘been a model of sustainability for Thai people for a long time.’ The soundtrack is sweet and light-hearted, while the camera cuts away to the beaming face of a henna-haired Thai girl in pigtails with whom the teacher converses for the remaining three minutes of the film (Figure 43). The girl, smiling broadly while speaking, asks, ‘Teacher, where is the King?’ Her response is telling and most certainly true: ‘His Majesty’s presence is felt everywhere in Thailand for more than 50 years.’ With the student-teacher dynamic now firmly established, the film moves into a more presentational mode, launched by an image of the King in profile as a young man, bearing the caption, ‘Over 50 Years of His Majesty’s Works on Agriculture.’ The King is credited with numerous personal achievements in developing and ushering in sustainable agricultural practices that have benef ited his people from his earliest years as monarch. Among those highlighted is the development of ‘the world’s first rice bank’ in Mae Hong Son Province in 1970, which the film proclaims as having been ‘granted by His Majesty the King,’ as well as quite famously, a rain-seeding project that he is said to have personally developed, one that according to the film was responsible for ‘eliminating the water shortage problem faced by the farmers.’ The rapidly accumulating achievements become so numerous that they can no longer be recognized individually, but only by quantity: 166 Agricultural Development Projects, 327 Occupational Promotional Projects, 3,102 Water Sources Development Projects, and 941 unspecified ‘Other Projects.’ Images 4

The English-language captions that appeared on the screen are being used here.

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Figure 43 Teacher talking to girl, Thailand Pavilion

In the film setting out the agricultural achievements of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the teacher tells a young girl that ‘His Majesty’s presence is felt everywhere in Thailand for more than 50 years.’ Photo by author

of the King in youth and middle age follow, as he walks through fields, building plans in his hands, appearing to take an active, leading role in each project accompanied by ever-mounting statistics. Perhaps his greatest gift, suggests the film, is revolutionizing farming practices, as ‘His Majesty gave the New Theory farming resting on the foundation of sufficiency, creating the everlasting path of sustainable agriculture.’5 As the music swells to a crescendo in the final minute of the film, images of the King working tirelessly for his people (Figure 44) flash onto the screen with increasing rapidity, and his remaining achievements set out in a massive list of awards that scroll up from the bottom of the screen like film credits as a Hollywood Blockbuster sound score blasts us in our seats. 5 The principles of ‘New Theory’ farming, resting on a foundation of self-suff iciency and sustainable practices at the local level, also call for decisions to be based on knowledge and guided by virtuous behaviour. Practices are set out in some detail on the website of the Chaipattana Foundation, set up by King Bhumibol to disseminate and implement key principles. See: http:// www.chaipat.or.th/eng/concepts-theories/sufficiency-economy-new-theory.html

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Figure 44 King Bhumibol working tirelessly, Thailand Pavilion

One of many images in the film showing King Bhumibol working tirelessly to improve Thailand’s agricultural practices over his long life. Photo by author

The final fifteen seconds of the film mirrors the miraculous rainfall at the conclusion of the first film, only this time the rain is not the result of praying in the temple for the divine intervention of the golden Naga, but presumably a blessing from the King, as a link is made to his success with the famous rain-seeding project that earned him the moniker ‘the Royal Rainmaker’ (Blake 2015). The film returns to the school children on their field trip to the palace’s agricultural station as it starts to rain. They look up gratefully to the sky and run for cover, as the teacher’s voice provides the final narrative both for the audience of children and for us, sitting like children ourselves in a lecture hall. Her words, voiced in Italian, are delivered in a kindly tone: ‘Even in rainy days, His Majesty never stops working for his people.’ With the teacher standing behind the assembled children looking out over the royal rice paddy, we see images of the King working again without cease, only this time in the rain, in every kind of rain imaginable, getting wet, wetter, but ever moving forward with great purpose and resolve, through fields, forests and rice paddies over the course of his long life. The final image is that of a young King, in profile, standing in the rain, while the screen

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flashes, in golden letters, ‘The King of Agriculture.’ Here the audience is subjected to the techniques to shock and awe: The King, responsible for the rain itself, never stops working in the rain to care and provide for his people, while the overpowering musical score and endless list of his achievements, trumpeted with huge gold letters that explode aggressively on the screen, hold no hostages, leaving no room for contesting narratives. At the end of the film, the spontaneous clapping of the audience is sparse, with only a few joining in, and it starts and ends awkwardly. Audience reactions witnessed on repeated visits to the film suggest that this paean to King Bhumibol appeared to baffle Italian spectators, as though they were impressed by the razzle dazzle but were left wondering why the King had the last word. Rather than ending the pavilion experience with the light and sound show depicting Thai dishes and food products, audiences are instead subjected to a strident enumeration of the King’s achievements in setting the foundation for the sustainable practices that capitalize on the nation’s abundant food resources. In effect, the supernatural forces depicted in the first film, the power of the mighty Naga, which activates the blessings of a rich ‘golden land,’ are reactivated in the current era by the extraordinary, selfless acts of a tireless king. Yet, in a contemporary Thai socio-political context, one that I have asserted is what the pavilion most fully reveals, the audience experience must end by reasserting the central, quasi-divine role of the King, particularly at a moment when he had retreated from public view and was entering his final period of decline. The film reflects what Peter Jackson has termed a Thai ‘regime of images,’ ‘a systematically ordered form of power-knowledge’ (2004, p. 183) that blends the word and the image in such a way as to mandate smoothness and surface calm in the public sphere precisely because in the private sphere the country was holding its collective breath. As Jackson observes, ‘[w]ithin the discourses that come under the sway of this apparatus it is the combination of both the silencing and the productive effects of power, the unsaid as much as the said’ that determines what is acceptable (2004, pp. 183-184). The reverential tone of the film mirrors the feelings Thais are required to have and to display publicly for King Bhumibol, described by one Thai reporter as ‘a very special, almost indescribable feeling; a mixture of love, respect, reverence, appreciation, awe, and worship’ (qtd. in Jackson 2010, p. 30). The centrality of the King in the articulation of a unified Thai identity has been much observed (Kulick and Wilson 1992; Baker and Phongpaichit 2009), while Peter Jackson has set out the process through which the late King was responsible for what he terms ‘the redivinization of the monarchy’ (2010, p. 32). This redivinization, one that Jackson argues ‘needs to be seen as a politically inflected instance

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of the worldwide resurgence of religiousity that has been incited by the mediatization of social life and the spectral effects of neoliberal capitalism’ (p. 32), was staged most spectacularly in the Thailand pavilion.

On Power and Exiting though the Giftshop While exiting through the pavilion’s ubiquitous gift shop, the master plan governing the overall consumer experience became apparent. Instead of the usual knick-knacks and inexpensive craft items, we entered what appeared to be a massive, Asian 7/11, one filled with many of the same pre-packaged Thai food products under the brand names Authentic Asia, Sensations of Asia, Greenday, and Roi Thai, including those featured in the second film and summarily tacked to the wall between cinemas two and three. A wall of microwaves behind the cash register pointed to the intent of the shop. Audience members, now educated about Thailand’s role as the ‘world’s kitchen,’ were evidently expected to seek nourishment in the form of a vast array of pre-packaged food, much of it lined up on a wall of freezers. Yet, as informant Erika Lorea observed, ‘Prepackaged food to be microwaved is an insult to any Italian visitor. Italian aunties brought us up with the fear of the demonic and detrimental effects of the waves of the microwave oven and I bet Italy is still the country with the lowest use of those sketchy microwaves in the whole world.’6 As another informant, an Italian who has lived abroad observed of the food at the expo more generally, it ‘looked pretty unremarkable: I often ended up telling myself, ‘I can get nice and more authentic ‘world food’ than this in London.’’ A further complication was that there was no place to sit and eat either inside or just outside the pavilion, so presumably patrons were expected to have their ready-to-eat meals heated and hastily devour them while standing or walking to the next pavilion. Perhaps not surprisingly given the importance Italians place on how and where one consumes food (Parasecoli 2014; Naccarato et. al. 2017; Cappati and Montanari 1999), most patrons quickly streamed directly through the food store, in spite of the many prepackaged delights on offer. 6 While no reliable data comparing microwave within European nations could be located, the Executive Summary to the country report on microwave use in Italy by the global consulting firm Euromonitor International would support Lorea’s view: ‘Microwaves posted volume growth in 2017, although the healthy cooking trend, which was a strong driver in 2017, drove sales of microwaves less intensely than it did in other categories. This was due to the attention to food ingredients that many consumers paid, together with their preference for fresh nourishment.’ https://www.euromonitor.com/microwaves-in-italy/report

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Figure 45 Wall of microwaves, Thailand Pavilion

There appeared to be no interest in the ‘ready to go’ foods by the largely Italian audience as they headed out the door of the Thai Pavilion. The wall of microwaves suggests that prepackaged frozen food was expected to be a popular item. Photo by author

In my multiple trips to the pavilion, I never observed a single patron waiting for a microwaved meal. Though the pavilion appeared to fail to market prepackaged Thai food to its largely Italian audience, ultimately it reveals much about Thailand’s distinctive modes of self-representation and its understanding of what it means to perform Thai citizenship. Jackson observes that the Thai ‘regime of images’ adheres to the principles of phap-phot (literally, “appearanceutterance”)’ where an image ‘may incorporate both visual representations and forms of spoken and written discourse’ (2004, p. 186). Phap-phot, he elaborates, ‘describes the performative effect of public utterances and actions as well as representations of speech and action in media such as cinema, television, radio, and the press’ (2004, p. 186). The final film then is such a performed, public utterance, one that enacts the citizen’s relationship to the King. Another useful framework in mapping out the position of the Thai citizen is Gerhard Göhler’s distinction between ‘power to’ and ‘power over’:

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Power over can only be effective if it also exists as a potential – on the other hand, the mere potential of power remains undefined and therefore nonexistent unless it is realized and becomes visible in social relations. In this context, power to is generally analyzed in terms of the resources needed to make power relations effective, and power over is analyzed in terms of the effects of power capacities on social relations. (2009, p. 31)

The power over the population held by King Bhumibol was, until his health started failing, that of potential, a symbolic power accumulated over the course of his long reign and through his much-vaunted deeds. The power to control the citizenry has manifested itself most palpably since the rise of the junta in 2014, as they have controlled the narrative of the Thai state in the public sphere, prohibiting even indirect performances of protest, while using lèse-majesté laws backed up by a redivinized monarchy to shut down debate wherever it may appear, including social media. With the apparatus of the state at their disposal and without robust domestic structures capable of talking back, and by hijacking the mediatization of social life, they have been successful in talking to the citizens in a one-way conversation, much as the teacher did to her happy, enthusiastic students in the pavilion’s final film. And like those children, Thai citizens appear to be unable to challenge even the most outrageous statements by Prime Minister Prayut, possibly because the sense of being Thai is so firmly framed within a top-down culture in which the King, whose title links him in majesty to Rama, the Hindu god of protection,7 can literally provide his people with food and even rain. Thai political scientist Thanes Wongyannavam’s observations set out this dynamic in operational terms: ‘The king’s gaze, although it would leave us weak and defenceless, is nothing to be suspicious of, and even desirable: under his gaze, we are turned into a child in need of security; we are in a state of lack and long for the perfection which can be found in the king’ (qtd. in Krittikarn 2010, p. 69). The pavilion experience reduces international spectators largely to the position of children, a social dynamic imbedded in the performance of submission to King Bhumibol by a complaint citizenry that sees him as offering protection. By representing itself as ‘the Golden Land’ and ‘the Kitchen to the World’ using heavy-handed techniques that ultimately place the pavilion’s participants into the role of children while an adult tells them what to believe, the pavilion was not likely to succeed in

7 The current King, Maha Vijiralongkorn, is Rama X. King Bhumibol Adulyadej was Rama IX.

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delivering its message, much less attaining the economic goal of increasing the market share of Thai processed foods in Italy. For success with an international audience, an audience used to moving through country pavilions that feature interactivity and personalized experiences in a range of different environments, the didactic nature of the Thai pavilion’s three four-minute films was never likely to be effective in communicating with local audiences. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty observes that ‘Real power, real Kraft is silken: the power to elicit cooperation without commanding it, without even raising suspicion or resistance’ (1992, p. 2). This was the Kraft of the first video, one that pulled audiences in so fully that they spontaneously clapped, responding to the attractiveness and charm of the narrative and the images. Once in this state, audiences remain in a state of openness, ready for the next experience or an encounter that will build upon and be validated by it. But the pavilion’s second film, with its constant bombardment of images of food ingredients followed by the sanitized, nearly martial progression of boxes of food products rolling off assembly lines, a kind of war against hunger, was as exhausting as it was empty. Ironically, this barrenness was mirrored by the empty cardboard boxes of Thai Kitchen food products plastered onto the walls of the passageway into the final viewing room. Power over Thai citizens is performed daily by Prime Minister Prayut through his Mussolini-like harangues, a rhetorical style he routinely adopts, one that relies on threats and drowns out any competing views. Though the teacher’s rhetorical style in the final video would appear to be vastly different from the prime minister’s with its soft, gentle tone, and in its articulation of a single narrative, with the deification of the God-King, the ‘Farmer King,’ the ‘Royal Rainmaker,’ the giver of all things Thai whose presence is omnipresent for all Thais, there is still only one outcome, one message, and one possible mode of behavior: that of compliance, at least in the public sphere. Thus, on a midsummer day in Milan, while Thais performed self through their own representational regime of images, for Italians in a city that knows much of dictators and the power of the harangue, the soft power of real Kraft was remarkable by its absence in the Thai Pavilion.

10 Conclusion The Future of Asian Self-Representation at the International Exposition Abstract While diminished audience numbers and the impossible scale of resources required to successfully pull off international expositions over the last fifty years suggests that their days are numbered in the West, the extraordinary draw of the 2010 Shanghai Expo (73.1 million) demonstrates that the form is far from dead. The massive resources that flowed into that expo and the 2020 Dubai Exposition would suggest that top-down economies, ones where the state functions as the seat of corporate power, can create an attractive platform for any ambitious nation to seek out a seat at the table. The future of representation at world’s fairs may thus be more about ‘nationalising the sell’ than representing nation. Keywords: Dubai Exposition, Osaka Exposition, Chinese allure

The 2015 Milan Exposition makes clear that the grand European exposition as a national project is unlikely to be revived anytime soon. Perhaps the bleakest assessment on the exposition form came from British architecture and design critic Oliver Wainwright. Writing for The Guardian before the expo ended, he argued that in the wake of two disastrous prior European expos, Seville’s Expo 92, which left the city deeply in debt, and the poorlyattended Hanover 2000, ‘it seems clearer than ever that the format of the world exposition is well past its expiry date, leaving a trail of debt and destruction wherever it strikes’ (2015). The massive cost-overruns of the Milan Expo, which blew the budget out to €1.3 billion, the unsightly unfinished pavilions that required a €1 million to conceal (Cameron 2015), and the full-scale anti-Expo rioting on the streets of Milan at the time of its opening made this one of the most fraught and criticized international expositions in history. Milan Expo master planner Jacques Herzog spoke out against

Peterson, William, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789462985636_ch10

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way the expo was executed in the post-design phase, characterizing it as a ‘vanity fair,’ (Heilmeyer 2015, p. 54) while even Pope Francis weighed in, responding to the fair’s theme of ‘Feeding the Planet’ with the observation that the Expo itself is part of a ‘paradox of abundance’ that ‘obeys the culture of waste and does not contribute to a model of equitable and sustainable development’ (Day 2015). With 21.5 million visitors, Milan’s Expo attracted only a few million people more than Hanover’s (2000), and a number of European nations chose not to participate, suggesting that fully international fairs in Europe may no longer be viable. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, it bears noting that the US has not hosted an official BIE-approved world expo since Seattle in 1962,1 making the New York World’s Fair, fundamentally a private venture, the last truly large, international fair to be hosted on American soil. It is clearly Asia, famously starting with Osaka in 1970 and more recently with Shanghai in 2010, that has taken the mantel from the West as the great host exhibitor in more recent times. And it is in Asia where Western nations seem most keen to self-represent, as the Shanghai example suggests; while France, the United Kingdom, and Australia spent vast sums of money to see they were represented in unique and interactive ways at the Shanghai Exposition, Australia was absent in Milan while France and the U.K. presented themselves in ways considerably less dramatic and scaled down from their self-presentation in China five years earlier. The case of the Nordic countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland is instructive; while in Shanghai these nations with smaller national populations than many Chinese cities offered distinctive, elaborate pavilions which maximized opportunities for interactivity in environments that were playful, quirky, fun, and educational, they did not participate in the Milan Expo. Thus, it seems that in the next phase of Asian self-representation at world’s fairs, at fairs that matter in terms of having the greatest direct, experiential impact on the largest number of people in emerging markets, the focus will have shifted from those hosted in the West to those in Asia. The tide turned most spectacularly at the Shanghai Expo, where 73 million participants made it the most attended expo in history. It was also the most expensive, returning a profit with an estimated income of 13.01 billion yuan (US$2.3 billion)2, serviced by five 1 Since that time there have been three specialized expos in the US, in Spokane (1974), Knoxville (1982), and New Orleans (1984). 2 According to a report in the China Daily dated 1 October 2011, the fair’s higher than expected income of 13.01 billion yuan returned a surplus of 1.05 billion yuan (US$164 million). See http:// www.china.org.cn/travel/expo2010shanghai/2011-10/01/content_23534854.htm.

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new subway stations,3 while the land on which it was situated required the forcible displacement of an estimated 18,000 families. 4 It may be that quasi-authoritarian regimes are the best future hosts for such fairs. Indeed, though ultimately it was Japan that was successful in their bid to host the 2025 international expo, their competition came not from Europe or the US, but from Russia and Azerbaijan (Japan Times 2019). Significantly, the 2020 international expo is in Dubai, with the host nation, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), being one of the few countries in the world capable of financial and building the infrastructure to support a grand fair to the standard and scale recently set by China. Rising from the desert outside of Dubai and covering an area of the size of six football fields, the site is to host a record number of individual country pavilions from 180 participating nations (Badam 2018). As Jonan Staal observes, the UAE is a natural for such an event, as a nation ‘engineered by an invisible government of family-owned corporations and public relations industries, which intervenes in the lives of its people only when the construction of skyscraper and artificial palm-shaped beaches is threatened by strikes or other forms of political organizing’ (Staal 2015, p. 22). The fair’s theme, ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ contains the sub-themes of ‘Opportunity,’ ‘Mobility,’ and ‘Sustainability,’5 set out on the expo website in ways position Dubai strategically as one of the world’s leading centres for innovation. By 2018, a series of podcasts were embedded into the in-flight entertainment system on long-haul flights on Emirates, the national airlines, focusing on the entrepreneurial dimensions of the fair, pitching it as a kind of global hook-up event for young people working in the high-tech, gig economy, a place for would-be inventors and ‘creatives’ to come together to generate ideas that can be developed, tested, branded, and marketed to the world with Dubai as the strategic hub connecting Europe, Africa, and Asia.6 Building the fair’s physical platform for global innovation are some 40,000 labourers (Badam 2018) working the site in the year prior to its opening, most of them heralding from some of the world’s poorest nations, notably Indonesia, India, Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal (News.com. 3 The stations are detailed at: https://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/shanghai/ worldexpo/transportation.htm 4 These figures are from an Amnesty International report dated 30 April 2010. See: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2010/04/china-silences-women-housing-rights-activists-ahead-expo-2010/ 5 https://www.expo2020dubai.com/themes 6 These podcasts were embedded into the in-flight entertainment system of long-haul Emirates flights I took in 2018 and 2019. When audio or video selections had not been made, the system defaulted to these podcasts.

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au 2016). In spite of recent reforms by the UAE government to improve the conditions for this group, according to the 2017 UAE country report prepared by Human Rights Watch, ‘many low-paid migrant workers remain acutely vulnerable to forced labor.’7 Architectural critic Wainwright not surprisingly, looks on the enterprise with no small degree of cynicism: ‘[I]n the fantasy playground of the United Arab Emirates, where impossible dreams are daily conjured from the desert at untold human and environmental costs, perhaps the world expo movement has finally found its spiritual home. For the good of other cities around the world, may it be its final resting place’ (2015). Wainwright’s views notwithstanding, China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping to expand its commercial and economic interests across Asia and Africa, suggests that China, and probably other Asian nations as well, will continue to take these events seriously. What can be reasonably predicted is that in the future those countries, like Dubai and China, where quasi authoritarian governments exercise firm economic control over the country’s commercial enterprises, are likely to be those with the most to gain from hosting and participating at the national level. Conversely, as we have seen with the Thai pavilion in Milan, where the interests of major corporations align with a nation’s economic goals, Asian nations are likely to self-represent in their respective national pavilions in ways that firmly direct the participant with a carefully crafted narrative toward a particular end. That end, associated with a goal, may be to generate positive associations about the country, possibly stoking the desire for travel among some, while in its expression it is likely to increasingly assume a form and style of presentation that is both immersive and didactic, as we saw with example of the Thai pavilion. While Dubai 2020 promises to offer multiple spaces where diverse groups of people can come together and share ideas and work together to solve local and global problems, country pavilions are likely to contain even more narrowly focused national stories than ever. Again, Asian self-representation in Shanghai may offer a preview. There Singapore showcased its highly engineered ‘multi-racial’ society through displays of representative apparel representing the country’s three primary ethnic groups, Chinese, Malay, and Indian, while neighbouring Malaysia enacted the nation’s well-worn ‘unity in diversity’ trope with colourfully-costumed performances in front of the pavilion of ‘traditional’ dances drawn from its culturally diverse population. With the rise of China, the ways in which 7 Human Rights Watch Report for the UAE, 2017. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/ country-chapters/united-arab-emirates.

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Figure 46 Vista of shifting lights, China Pavilion, Milan Expo

As one moved into China’s pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo, one passed alongside and then looked down upon an enormous field of shifting lights that generated a sense of looking out over a vast, ever-changing vista. Photo by author

Asian nations present themselves to one another has increasingly become more important than representing themselves to the West. The content and form of China’s self-representation at the Milan Expo may well point toward how an authoritarian state clear about its larger political and economic objectives can manipulate foreign publics through an a carefully crafted, targeted appeal to values shared with a local culture. Unlike the Thai pavilion, with its three films that promoted tourism, packaged corporate food, and a divinized King, China offered a film in their pavilion that brought together food, family, and live performers in ways far more likely to have left a positive, lasting impression on an Italian audience. The room screening the film was located deep inside the pavilion, requiring spectators to walk through an outdoor garden and then move into the pavilion structure itself, where they passed through an enormous art installation-like space filled with a sea of thin posts of different heights underneath a curved, undulating roofline (Figure 46). Each of the 20,000 posts was capped with a programmable LED optical fibre from which lights emerged in sequences

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Figure 47 President Xi Jinping, China Pavilion

The film inside the Chinese Pavilion is preceded by a message about the importance of the fair’s theme by President Xi Jinping. Photo by author

that suggested the natural world, with vast vistas and fields of crops shifting between seasons. The overall effect, as one rode up the long escalator along the long axis of this virtual field, was to feel as though one had entered the natural world. In the context of a fair where the density of human bodies was often very high, it had a calming effect, particularly as one reached the upper level, an antechamber for those waiting to enter the film room, and looked down on a vast fertile, field. Once seated inside a video hall on the upper level, the short feature presentation was preceded by a lengthy video introduction by Chinese President Xi Jinpin, seated at an enormous, immaculately polished desk in a mahogany-paneled room, with the nation’s flag over his right shoulder and a large rendering of the Great Wall behind his head, almost like a kind of halo (Figure 47). With his suit unbuttoned to reveal a striking purple tie, he spoke of the importance of the fair’s focus on ‘agriculture and food,’ observing that ‘such a theme concerns the survival and development of every human being.’ The film, he observed, offers ‘a glimpse of our ancient agricultural civilization, the exciting progress of science and technology, and the great diversity of Chinese cuisine,’ adding ‘All these are important components of the Chinese civilization.’ The film itself, expressed visually as a kind of charming animated tale of three adult children returning to the family home in a village to be with their parents and elderly grandmother for the Spring festival, depicted a

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Figure 48 Animated cartoon, China Pavilion

In the animated cartoon depicting a family reunion the elderly grandmother lovingly prepares noodles for her family. Photo by author

China that respects the past while embracing the new, with food at the centre of family life. One son is depicted as a professional chef, the other a dashing pianist dressed in a white tuxedo playing a white piano in a huge concert hall, while the third child, the daughter, is an agronomist, shown working in a research lab. As they gather around a table to consume the noodle dishes and dumplings lovingly prepared by their kindly-faced grandmother (Figure 48), it seems clear that the Chinese, perhaps more than any other nation present at the expo, had an understanding of the fundamental relationship between food and where and how it is consumed that connects us all as human beings. If Korea has severed the connection with consumption by focusing on the science of food through a highlyaestheticized installation-style environment, and Thailand seemed to just want people to buy their pre-packaged food, China offered the warmth of family and hearth combined with the pleasures of eating locally-produced, hand-crafted food with a loving family. The final sequence of the film shifted to a region in Southeast China, near the border with Vietnam, where the Hani ethnic minority group in Yunnan Province farms in rice terraces, the most famous of which, in Yuangyang County, constitutes a UN-recognized World Heritage Site. We see the terraces from above, while the film shifts into a dance sequence by young women in traditional costuming which the text on the screen tells us expresses ‘their wishes for a fast grow of seedlings and a rich harvest in the coming year.’

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Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, live dancers enter the space from the side doors nearest the screen, all wearing costuming that to anyone who has travelled to Northern Thailand or Myanmar, resembles in shape, form, and ornamentation the ceremonial clothing worn by region’s so-called ‘Hill Tribes’(Figure 49). Indeed, the second highest concentration of Hani people outside of China is in Myanmar, where they number 200,000. In this respect, China is laying claim to a group that crosses national borders, that is not distinctively their own, and that bears cultural traditions removed from the dominant ethnic Han majority population. Bearing palm fronds which they raise up above their heads as if capturing the blessings from the sky and extending them to the earth below them, they dance with their on-screen counterparts behind them, fusing the live and the virtual, bringing the film and performance to a colourful, joyful neo-ethnic conclusion. Those exiting the pavilion during the week I was in Milan had an opportunity for further engagement with dancers from the region, as on a small stage at the pavilion entrance and long the exposition’s long central plaza, dancers from the Zhuang minority group, with the women all wearing distinctive local headdresses, moved from the stage and out into the crowd of onlookers, inviting them to participate in a rhythmic, circular dance. In a country that is over ninety percent ethnic Han, the message China wished to communicate by turning the pavilion’s human element over to the local colour provided by exotically-clad ethnic minorities was clear: China is a culturally-diverse nation that not only respects, but celebrates diversity. Further, the foregrounding of family and the site of the home as the place where food is lovingly prepared and consumed, plays quite masterfully into the core Italian foodway that is based on the same constellation of elements. It bears noting that Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative runs along a geographic axis that extends through these areas peopled by ethnic minorities and includes access to the considerable and largely untapped oil and gas resources in the Andaman Sea off the coast of Myanmar, adjacent to Rakhine state, where the Rohingya Muslim population has recently been forcibly driven out of their lands. Thus on a geopolitical level, China’s celebration of ethnic diversity is deeply troubling as it uses soft power via the feel-good resources generated by dance and an invocation of China’s comfort foods of noodles and dumplings in the f ilm to advance the expansionist goals of an authoritarian state at the very moment when China is creating economic dependencies by offering loan packages to nations along the twenty-first century Silk Road with the potential to bankrupt their national economies, turning them into de-facto Chinese vassal states.

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Figure 49 Live dancers, China Pavilion

In a kind of joyous neo-ethnic celebration, live dancers suddenly appear in costumes that mirror those of the Hani ethnic minority from Yunnan Province on the screen as together they engage in a dance ritual to bless the rice and ensure a good harvest. Photo by author

Yet in spite of these real-world problematics, China’s was a feel-good pavilion in which a clever marketing and design team, working with gifted artists, animators, installation designers, and dancers, succeeded in making even

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President Xi look lovable and kindly, a bit like the Winnie-the-Poo characterization of him banned in China. He comes across as a nice guy, avuncular with his pleasant demeanor and snazzy purple tie, more trustworthy than, say, US President Donald Trump. After all, Trump would never wear a purple tie, or appear in an office with walls filled with books, as Xi does. In the twenty-first century, China, with its social credit system which relies on intense surveillance of its citizens and their own voluntary complicity in that surveillance, is perhaps the ultimate performance-obsessed state, reflecting McKenzie’s articulation of the postmodern condition of performativity, one that not only ‘demands that all knowledge be evaluated in terms of operational efficiency, that what counts as knowledge must be translatable by and accountable in the ‘1’s and ‘0’s of digital matrices,’ but a force that ‘extends beyond knowledge; it has come to govern the entire realm of social bonds’ (McKenzie 2001, p. 14). In terms of the third dimension of performance set out in the introductory chapter – the one in which one performs a highly-performing nation – China seeks nothing less than the top position among nations. And when it comes to the human dimensions of performance which have been so integral to a nation’s self-representation at these fairs over time, here in the Chinese pavilion Asian bodies were largely virtual creations – the wily grandma and her talented and successful children in the video – with an affective encounter being at the level one might experience in a family-friendly Disney movie. Pavilion guides were inobtrusive and served largely as crowd control in and out of the pavilion’s centrepiece film show, while the only impactful human bodies were those of the cultural performers – the minority Hani people, who materialized out of the film into three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood creations. The virtual encounter with these people in their verdant homeland on the screen was the prelude to their physical incarnation, blurring the real and the virtual, and generating the creative fiction of authenticity, that the people in the movie theatre at the end of the show were the ones we had seen on the screen, recalling Jeffrey Alexander’s observation that where social and cultural performance comes together, ‘[s]uccessful performance depends on the ability of convince others that one’s performance is true, with all the ambiguities that the notion of aesthetic truth implies’ (2005, p. 32). Here performance generates something akin to what Nigel Thrift identifies as ‘a certain kind of secular magic that can act a means of willing captivation’ (p. 290). Thrift sets out arguments for ‘how imagination of the commodity being captured and bent to capitalist means’ operates ‘through a series of “magical” technologies of public intimacy’ (290). This ‘magic,’ he asserts, in

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turn activates ‘the singular quality of allure,’ one that functions ‘through the establishment of human-non-human fields of captivation’ (290). The animated cartoon of Chinese family is presented to us in public, through a technological means that facilitates intimacy, captivating the viewer, and offering us a most alluring set of characters – the sweet and wily granny, the ridiculously handsome concert pianist son, the good-natured son that cooks for us, and the clever daughter, committed to feeding the planet more efficiently through her scientific work. The allure of this animated short cannot be overstated, particularly when contrasted with how videos were used in the Thai pavilion in Milan, where the audience was overwhelmed or humbled, enervated rather than activated. Here too we see the potential triumph of the virtual over the real, where we have real, empathic connections with the virtual, where virtual encounters such as the one I described with the starving child in the Korean pavilion in Milan, can be directly pitched to individuals in ways far more likely to generate affect than a smiling host greeting you at the door of a pavilion. On the other side of the East China Sea, the announcement in late 2018 that Osaka would be hosting the 2025 expo, some fifty-five years after Expo 1970 offered the world an image of a Japan that had not only embraced the future, but had run with it, suggests that Japan is by no means done with the exposition form. As we have seen, it was Japan that by the early twentieth century was the master of the national representational order at international expositions, the premiere site for the dissemination of Orientalism in the West. While Japan represented themselves in ways that often self-exoticized, they were also clearly quite keenly aware, as we saw from their modes of representation at the 1915 San Francisco Exhibition, how it would ‘play’ with Western audiences as they sought concrete outcomes. Whether it was the choice of art objects, luxury consumer products, or the affect it sought to generate among those who lingered in the Japanese garden, everything was part of an integrated and recognizable narrative of the country, its culture, and its people, a story that stressed its proud and ancient culture, while linking prized attributes to the ‘traditional’ with their rapid success in modernization. In so doing, they became the ultimate early success story of an Asian nation embracing and reflecting ‘tradition in modernity.’ And as their national displays focused increasingly on not just displays of objects, but also performances by kimono-clad beauties, performance increasingly became the most powerful mode through which self-representation took place. On their home turf, Japan has not only hosted the Osaka expo, with its massive attendance figure of 66.2 million (BIE) which exceeded the 1964-1965 New York fair, but a series of smaller,

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specialized fairs, notably Expo 2005 in Aichi with its focus on nature and sustainability, and fairs in Tsukuba (1985) and Okinawa (1975). With an anticipated attendance of 28 million, not significantly above that of the Aichi or Tsukuba fairs, it appears that Japan is hoping to jump-start the faltering economy of the Osaka region in 2025 while capitalizing on the momentum of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, much as China did when Shanghai hosted the most-attended international exposition in Asia (73.1 million) just two years after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Yet it seems more likely 2025 will be the last major international exposition in Japan, as anticipated attendance figures are only modestly in excess of Milan’s 21.5 million, and that the exercise is largely driven by the agenda of economic revival by spreading the big infrastructural spend on the 2020 Olympics beyond the Tokyo area. When it comes to Asian self-representation at expositions, whether they be largely in the Middle East or Asia in future years, it may be what China offered audiences in Milan a glimpse into the future. In today’s mediasaturated landscape, one in which untrammeled growth has been elevated to the status of religion and advanced economies are intricately interconnected, it may well be that Asian national self-representation at world’s fairs will be increasingly oriented around generating positive, powerful affect as the Chinese did in Milan, where the aim of all collective representation is to contribute to a more highly-achieving, high-performance nation, supported by a large, enthusiastic, and increasingly compliant global fan base. In the face off between China and the US, China would appear to be far savvier in controlling the affective nature of the encounter in their country pavilions. Whereas the US pavilion in Milan offered teacherly displays on American regional foods and poorly-performing food trucks adjacent to the pavilion, China offered a quirky, entertaining feel-good show about how food and family are inextricably connected, a message on-point for an Italian audience. Rather than trying to sell their many regional cuisines, China spruiked the cultural values they shared with Italians. And at the 2010 Shanghai Exposition, while the US offered a series of preachy videos in English in enormous rooms promoting American corporate power, on their home ground China offered up a glorious and grand national pavilion, one packed full of experiential encounters, while virtually every region in the country self-represented in ways that spoke to a clearly differentiated identity, even if the narrative was largely conceived and presented by local government or state tourism authorities. Of course with its massive internal audience, China had the luxury of selling itself to itself in Shanghai. And as the largest emerging market in the world, it is hardly surprising that a record-breaking 192 countries came

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to Shanghai in 2010, eager to represent themselves in ways that would leave an imprint on Chinese bodies and minds. Particularly notable in this regard were the Nordic nations of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland, each of which offered highly idiosyncratic pavilions that built on what Chinese audiences might associate with their respective countries, and then sought to distinguish themselves from their neighbours. Sweden, for instance, the most populous of the four and the country with the longest and deepest trade relationship with China, sold itself as the clever nation, offering a series of child-friendly, interactive exhibits that stressed education, ingenuity, and scientific and technological excellence. Denmark built an entire pavilion structure around an encounter with a recreation of the famed ‘Little Mermaid’ sculpture, situated on a rock surrounded by water, reflecting her iconic location in Copenhagen. Norway, perhaps the least known of the four, presented a series of sonic spaces in a woodsy environment that sought to conjure up the magic of its powerful, rugged landscape, while Finland, associated with Nokia, the mobile phone that was once ubiquitous throughout Asia, sold itself as the clever, quirky, digitally-savvy outlier, as to some extent they are by virtue of their distinctive culture and non-Scandinavian language. As someone of Scandinavian heritage with strong personal and family links to Sweden in particular, it seemed abundantly clear to me what these countries were seeking to communicate to their Chinese audience in Milan. Thus if the exposition survives and thrives into this century, the exposition platform may mean more to the world’s less powerful nations seeking to represent themselves in clear and distinctive ways in countries like the UAE or China than it does to the formerly powerful exposition players, namely the US and the larger European nations. Further, the notion that there is any such thing as ‘Asian self-representation’ even at the national level, is perhaps over now that China is poised to overtake the US as the world’s most powerful economy – with political and military power to back it up. When China came to Brisbane in 1988, it was as a junior partner, as a nation that sought what Japan had achieved in terms of its position in Western markets. As we saw, China brought its acrobats, ancient artefacts and crafts in equal measure to Australia, building on what Australians already knew and valued from China. That China would have significant control over Australia’s understanding of itself and its position in the world would have been unthinkable in 1988, but certainly not so thirty years later, by which time it had become the country’s largest trading partner, with its full-fee paying students propping up the entire Australian system of higher education. Thus ‘Asia as method,’ (Chen 2010) invoked in the opening chapter,

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can no longer be predominantly concerned with the process and methods of deimperialization, particularly as China, with its Belt and Road initiative and financing of major infrastructure projects in many of the world’s poorest nations is generating a new kind of global imperial framework. Whatever the future may hold, it seems clear that as a singular, highlyvisible place from which to project one’s cultural and national identity, both symbolically and concretely through the display of art, crafts, and manufactured products, as well as the site on which social and cultural performances are enacted before a foreign audience, the international exposition no longer has retains the singular power it had for over a century from the late nineteenth century until the mid-60s. I have argued that for emerging, formerly colonized nations such as Indonesia and the Philippines, the New York World’s Fair of 1964-1965 offered an extraordinarily important stage on which to project its culture and identity. Much was at stake for these nations in New York, as much as at stake for Japan and China in San Francisco in 1915. These were the global sites where the greatest positive impact on the greatest number of bodies could be realized. If the Milan Expo is significant, it is for the ways in which aestheticized, mediated experiences are the basis for the encounter. As I have argued, the troubled history of the Milan Exposition, along with relatively desultory attendance numbers for all European fairs over the last three decades and the clear disinterest from the US in hosting anything other than small, specialized off-year expositions, makes Milan a natural ending point. In today’s neoliberal world order, Volcic and Andrejvic identify the ways in which nations no longer merely sell themselves, but rather ‘nationalize the sell,’ resulting in new forms and strategies to generate affect and mobilize the powers of attraction. The old nationalistic formations based on ethnic identity, industrialization, or communities forged through print culture, as they observe, ‘have not fully recognized the importance of markets, commerce, and consumption in the process of nation-building’ (2016, p. 3). Thus increasingly ‘nationalism entails corporate thinking … and combines patriotic emotional ideas with marketing goals, integrating commercial and national appeals’ (2016, p. 4). In short, this new commercial nationalism serves to ‘displace citizenship with consumerism’ (2016, p. 4). The Thai pavilion in Milan with its extraordinary mixing of consumerism and devotion to their ailing King, wrapped up in foundational myths of nationhood, displaces citizens both Thai and foreign, and conflates nation with patterns of consumption. Well before the time of the Milan Expo, archival, visual, and print-based data stopped offering any kind of comprehensive insights into how a nation may seek to represent itself,

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generating an opening for and indeed a necessity to describe and seek to analyse the affect generated by the Korean and Thai pavilions, as I have endeavoured to do. And as we saw with Thailand, representation was generated by a firm of corporate consultants, and the intentions behind what was inside the pavilion remain largely trade secrets as they sought quite literally to ‘nationalize the sell’ of pre-packaged foods. In such a world, future expos are more likely to exploit national identity than communicate anything meaningful about its nature, while what it means to be a citizen of a nation will be continuously reconfigured, repackaged, and projected in ways that maximize consumption and advance a nation’s economic position. There will still be much to write about, but the analytical frames will have shifted beyond recognition, generating the necessity for a very different kind of analysis, but one that will nevertheless remain rooted in regimes of representation that are performative and visual, and no doubt increasingly interactive, mediated, and virtual.



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Wainwright, Oliver (2015) ‘Expo 2015: What Does Milan Gain by Hosting this Bloated Global Extravaganza?’ Guardian, 12 May. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/12/ expo​-2015-what-does-milan-gain-by-hosting-this-bloated-global-extravaganza Wakasugi, Kaname (1938) ‘Japan’s Enthusiasm for the Fair Called Sign of Accord with US,’ New York Times, 31 August. Wang, Ching-Chun (1912) ‘The New China Will Be a New United States,’ New York Times, 10 November. Wang, Ching-Chun (1913a) ‘A Plea for the Recognition of the Chinese Republic,’ The Atlantic, January, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ archive/1913/01/a-plea-for-the-recognition-of-the-chinese-republic/306399/ Wang, Ching-Chun (1913b) ‘China’s Revolution and Its Effect,’ The North American Review v.197, no. 687 (Feb): 189-202. Ward, Peter (1988) Review of The Three Beatings of Sanchun, The Australian, 15 July, AusStage archive. Whitworth, Bill (1964) ‘Balinese Dancers at Fair: Off Limits,’ New York Herald Tribune, 24 April, p. 7. Wilson, Rachel (2013) ‘Cocina Peruana Para El Mundo: Gastrodiplomacy, the Culinary Nation Brand, and the Context of National Cuisine in Peru’, Surface 2.2: 13-20. Winchell, Anna Cora (1914) ‘The Pictorial Art of Japan,’ San Francisco Chronicle, 2 August, p. 7. Wong Chung (1914) ‘The New Republic of China,’ The Shanghai Times, 28 April, p. 3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chinese Newspapers Collection. Wu Chiang (1980) ‘Ancient Acrobatic Art of China Being brought to Canberra,’ Canberra Times, 20 August, p. 24, TROVE, National Library of Australia. Yamamori, Yumiko (2011) A.A. Vantine and Company: Japanese Handcrafts for the American Consumer, 1895-1920, PhD Dissertation, Bard College. Yoshihara, Mari (2003) Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yoshihara, Yukari (2008) ‘Kawakami Otojiro’s Trip to the West and Taiwan at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,’ In Asian Crossings: Travel Writing on China, Japan and Southeast Asia, Steve Clark and Paul Smethurst, eds., Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Young, Bill (n.d.) ‘The Story of the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair,’ Website of the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair, http://www.nywf64.com/fair_story01.shtml Zweers, Louis (2014) ‘Sukarno’s Art Collection,’ Newsletter of the International Institute for Asian Studies, no. 67 (Spring): 6-7.

Index Adams, Alva 82 Adams, Cindy 197-198, 200, 200n16, 204, 205n19, 206 Adulyadej, King Bhumibol 36-37, 255-259, 262-263, 270-274, 276, 277n7, 278 affect 24, 35-36, 191-192, 288-289, 292 in China pavilion in Milan 283-284, 290 in Korea pavilion in Milan 228-230, 235-250, 253 in Thailand pavilion in Milan 228, 262 Ah-Sin stereotype 89, 89, 90n23 Aichi Expo (2005) 290 Aldrich, Lucy Truman 74 Alien Land Law 48 Alonzo, Aureo 189 Arcega, Domingo 169, 192n46 Archiban Partners 234, 234n6 archival research, data and methods 28-31, 115, 142 Arellano, Otilio 179-180 Arirang 246-247 Aronin, Jeffrey Ellis 180 Art Nouveau style 75 Artaud, Antonin 212-213 Asia as Method 17, 291-292 Asian-American identity 16, 32 anti-Asian sentiment in US 47-49, 53 see also Asiatic Exclusion League, Chinatown; Chinese, American perceptions of; Chinese-Americans; JapaneseAmericans; San Francisco PPIE Japan Beautiful Concession, Underground Chinatown Asian women, objectification of 170, 183-184, 191, 198-199, 210-211, 223-224; see also Sukarno and women Asiatic Exclusion League 47 Australia 19, 34, 139-166, 260-261, 280, 291 Australian Bicentennial 142-143 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) 162, 162n32, 164 relationship with Asia 140, 144-145 relationship with China 145-148 relationship with Japan 140-141, 144-145 Authentic Asia 268, 275 authenticity 55n29, 60-70, 213, 288 Bain, William H. Collection 57-58 Bak Sangmee 235, 235n9, 236 Ball, Lucille 212 Bayanihan National Folk Dance Company 22, 169, 171, 175, 175n12, 186-191, 189n39, 192n45, 202 Beach, Allen 176 Beck, Fr. Aloysius 102-103

Becker, Wendy 207 Beckett, Henry 129 bedaya dance 207 Beijing Olympics (2008) 290 Beijing Opera (Jīngjù) 142, 156; see also The Three Beatings of Tao San Chun benevolent associations 86 Benitez, Helena 169, 171, 189n39, 190, 202n13 Bhinneka Tunggal Ika 201, 201n8, 219, 219n37, 220 Bjelke-Petersen, Joh (Premier) 143 Boston Museum of Fine Arts 107 Brisbane Expo ’88 33-34, 139-166, 231, 291 China Day 141-142 Chinese pavilion 142, 149-156 film, ‘A Glimpse of China’ 154-155 impact on city 143 Japan at 145, 165 organization of 142-143 ‘passports’ 149-152 Piazza 157-160, 157n24, 164 Brisbane Exposition and South Bank Redevelopment Authority 143 Brownie camera 56-57, 59 Brussels International Exposition (1958) 22, 27n5 Bureau Internationale des Expositions (BIE) 20, 144, 167, 203, 280 Canton see Guangdong Carones, Maurizio 234-235 Castro, Fidel 196 ‘Century of Progress’ International Exposition, Chicago (1934-35) 118-119 Chan-ocha, Prayut (Prime Minister) 258, 258n2, 278 Charoen Pokphand Foods see Authentic Asia Chase, William Merritt 42-43 Chen, Chi (Qi) 83-84, 84n8, 91n24, 100, 109 Cheney, Sheldon 105 cheongsam 184, 191 Cherry Blossom dance 66-67 Cherry Blossom Ballet 133-136 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) 15, 21, 25, 41, 73, 153, 182 China (People’s Republic of) 33-34, 139-166 ‘Belt and Road’ initiative 282, 286, 292 Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) 141 cultural exports 141 Performing Arts Agency (CPAA) 157, 158 ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ 140 see also Australia, relationship with China; Brisbane Expo ’88, China entries; Milan International Exposition, China at; Xi Jinping

312 

Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs

China (Republic of) 79-112, 139-166 absence at expositions 118-119 American trade with 97-100 ‘Old China Trade’ 98-100, 102 Chinatown 94, 94n28, 102, 149 New York 110-112 San Francisco 81-82, 86-87, 110, 112 Chinese acrobats 139, 142, 146-148, 156-165 attire 91-93 American perceptions of 80-82, 87-93, 96-102 Consolidated Benevolent Association see ‘Six Companies’ crafts 153-154 Cultural Revolution 107, 139, 141-142, 157, 162, 162n31, 163 Custom’s Bureau 80 Exclusion Act of 1882 47, 80-81, 87 fine arts 104-107 gates 149-150, 156 labour and entry into the US 92-93, 108-109 Nationalist government 84-85, 91-92, 94, 99, 106, 141 porcelain 98, 104, 153 restaurants 155-156 Village and Pagoda Company 88n20, 110 Chinese-Americans 79-82, 107-112 Chinoiserie 103 Chirac, Jacques (President) 148 Chitralada Villa 270-274 Christianity in China 85-86, 102-103 Chu, T.C. 83-84, 84n8 Circus Oz 147 Cirque du Soleil 147, 147n15 Cixi, Empress Dowager 80 Claiborne, Craig 222 Clinton, Bill (President) 178 Colombo Exposition (1952) 212 colonialism, display of colonised people 16, 21-22, 25, 27, 213 Cox, Stafford M. 104 Cruz, Luisito 187 Dan, Ino (Baron) 127 Davenport, Sadie E. 59-60 de Beauvoir, Simone 210 de Leon, Medina Lacson 178 de Macareg, Irinea C. Uda 177 Deng Xiaoping 34, 139-140 Dewa, Admiral Baron Shigetō 40 diplomacy cultural 139-142, 148, 156-162, 157n25, 164-165, 218 performance of 27, 33, 46-49, 114, 116-118; see also groundbreakings; Japan, diplomatic relations with US; New York World’s Fair (1939-40), Japan Day;

Brisbane Expo ’88, China Day; New York World’s Fair (1964-65) Philippine Week, Sukarno Dubai International Exposition (2020) 19, 279, 281, 281n5, 282 Duffy, Michael 141-142 Duncan, Isadora 218 Dutch East India Company (VOC) 98 Dutch trade from Asia 41 Duterte, Rodrigo (President) 183, 190 Edwards, Sir Llewellyn 141, 143 Eisenhower, Dwight David (President) 157n25, 218 Eisenhower, Mamie 190 Empress of China 98 entertainment zones 26 ethnographic research methods 28 ethnography at world’s friars 182 Exclusion Act of 1882 80 exhibition, use of term 19-22 Exposition Coloniale Internationale (1931) 212-213 exposition, use of term 19-22 Fenollosa, Ernest 107 Fillmore, President Millard 41 film in country pavilions 154-155 Fish, Hamilton III 128 Flying Fruit Fly Circus 147 Flynn, Edward J. 116-117 foodways 232-233, 248-249, 253, 286 ‘Forbidden City’ 94 Formosa Tea House 52, 59-60, 122, 129 Foster, Stephen 82 Francisco, Carlos V. ‘Botong’ 180 Francisco, Carmen 187 Freer, Charles Lang 74, 107 Friedan, Betty 210 Fujian province 100 Fujihara, Yone-ko 62 Fujiyama, Mount 66, 66n42, 67, 77 Fukuhara, Kayako 123-124 gamelan 200, 212-213, 219, 221 Gantner, Carillo 147-148 Gardner, Isabella Stewart 74 Geisha 41, 53, 65-70, 77 Georgetown University 11, 146n11, 178, gift shops in pavilions 155 Gio, Hang-Joon 234-235 Giting Kayumanggi (Brown Splendour) 191 Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco (1939) 130n36 grabe 192-193 Graham, Martha 218, 221-222 Grand Shrine of Ise 113 Grauman, David 108 Grauman, Sid 108-110

Index

Greer, Germaine 210 groundbreakings Chinese Village (1914) 88-91 Japan Beautiful concession (1914) 61-63 Japan Pavilion (1912) 46 Philippines pavilion (1963) 170-176 Guangdong province 82, 86-87, 91, 100 Guevara, Che 196 Guo, Haibin 141 Guthrie, George W. 49

313 Italian food culture 242, 242n10, 243, 248249, 252, 252n12, 253, 257, 275, 275n6, 276 Izawa, Hannosuki 54

Haditirto, S. 222, 224 Hakutei, Ishii 75 Hamengkubuwono I (Sultan) 215 Hamengkubuwono IX (Sultan) 207 Hamilton, David 157 Han Chinese 286 Hani ethic group (China) 285-287 Hanover 2000 Expo 279-280 hansik diet 28, 36, 232-234, 252-253; see also Milan International Exposition, Korea pavilion content Harris, Townsend 117 Hart, Sir Robert 100 Hatta, Mohammad (Vice-President) 196 Havemeyer, Henry 74 Hawke, Bob (Prime Minister) 143, 164-165 Hay, John 99 Hazan, Itaya 75-77, 77n55 Hearst, George 108-109 Hearst, William Randolph 43, 108 Hebei Acrobatic Troupe 158-161 Hechanova, Rufino 169 Herzog, Jacques 233, 262, 279-280 Higa, Haru 129-130 Horinouchi, Kensuke (Ambassador) 125-127 Hu, Pinga (Miss Pingaa) 83 huìguăn see benevolent associations Hukuke, Sayo 132 Hunan province 100 Hwang, H.C. 91n25

Japan 15-16, 22, 25-26, 28-29, 31-34, 39-78, 113-138, 281, 289-292 American perceptions of 19, 28, 40-44, 53, 71-77 (Japan-)British Exposition (1910) 65, 73 diplomatic relations with US 40-41, 44, 116-118, 121; see also diplomacy, performance of Japanese (Japanese)-Americans 45, 47-49, 62-63 annexations and colonies 117 Commission to the PPIE (1915) 52, 74n52, 77 decorative objects and porcelain 42, 44, 71-77 femininity 43, 62-64, 66-70, 113-114, 118, 121-124 fine art 74-76 mastery of exhibitionary practice 40-42, 312 Ministry of Foreign Affairs 124, 131 propaganda see Nippon Kōbō ‘Prosperity Sphere’ 26, 44 tea ceremony 53, 121, 129 values 42 Japonisme 40, 42-43, 71, 77, 103, 106; see also orientalism Jeves, Annabelle 184-185 Jia, Shi 141 Jiangsu (Kiang Su) Province 91, 91n25 Jiāng Qīng 157 jīngjù see Beijing Opera Johnson, Lyndon Baines (President) 34, 176, 197n3, 204n17, 225 Johnson, Philip 188 Jones, Howard P. (Ambassador) 196-197, 205, 222, 224-225

Igorot 182 Iida, Masaka 123, 129 IMAX film 154 Imperial Customs Service (Britain) 100 Indonesia 168, 171, 176, 195-226, 281 Bali as imaginary 225-226 independence from the Netherlands 196, 201 international relations 34-35, 196-197, 224225, 230, 292; see also Malaysia, conflict with Indonesia; New York World’s Fair (1964-65), Sukarno Indonesian dance 201-203, 214-221 Indrosugondo 212, 219, 221 Inner Mongolia Acrobatic Troupe 158-159 ‘intangible cultural heritage’ 235, 242 Ise-Jingū Shrine 119-120

K-pop 27, 233, 250-251 Kabuki 41, 64, 131, 135-136 Karilagan 189-190 Katayama, Yoshikatsu 46 Keating, Paul (Prime Minister) 140 Kennedy, John F. (President) 197, 197n3 and Sukarno 201, 203 Kim Seok Chuk 234 kimono appeal of 42-43, 66, 69, 122-123, 289 wearing of 55, 62-63, 69, 106, 125-126, 132 kinesthetic empathy 160-161 Kinkozan, Sobei 75 Kinkaku-ji Temple 51-52 Kishida, Hideto 119, 119n9 Kissinger, Henry 140 Kitano, Kayo 132

314 

Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs

Kobayashi, Ichizo 131, 131n37, 132 Kodak picture spots 57-58, 149 Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai 131 Kolodin, Irving 134, 134n47, 135 Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of 241 Korea, Republic of 19, 24, 28, 35-36 ‘cultural economy’ 251 performance culture 27 see also Milan International Exposition, Korea entries Korean Wave (hallyu) 233 kroncong 212, 221 Kuomintang 79 Kushibiki, Yumeto 61-63, 61n37, 63n40, 65-66 Kussudiardja, Bagong 218 La Guardia, Fiorello (Mayor) 125-128 League of Nations 117 Lee Myung-bak (President) 232 Lee Kuan Yew (Prime Minister) 148 London Crystal Palace Exhibition 15, 20, 80 Lusitania, sinking of 39 Lu, Fengchun 141 Lux, Joseph August 59 Macapagal, Arturo 177-178 Macapagal, Diosdado (President) 169, 176-177 Macapagal, Gloria 171, 176-178, 192 Mackerras, Colin 146 Macomber, Ben 51 Madame Mao see Jiāng Qīng Magnuson Act (1943) 80 Mahabharata 199-200, 206, 215 Maiko 69 Malaysia 133n43, 183-184 conflict with Indonesia 176, 197, 197n4, 201, 204, 204n17, 225 Manila Carnival 181 Manila Hilton Hotel 190 Manila International Fair (1953) 180 Mao Zedong and Maoism 33-34, 139-141 Manchu rule of China see Qing dynasty Marcos, Ferdinand (President) 169, 190 Marcos, Imelda 174 Mario, I Ketut 219 Martin, John 135, 222 Matsui, Yasuo 119, 119n9 McCaffree, Mary Jane 190 Meiji Restoration 40 Melbourne Exhibition (1888) 143 Metropolitan Opera House 135 Michener, James 225-226 The Mikado 69, 123, 132 Mikimoto Pearl Company 121 Milan International Exposition (2015) 16, 19, 21, 23-24, 26-28, 30, 35-37, 292-293 Argentina pavilion 251-253 China at 283-290 cost and planning 279-280

criticism of 279-280, 292 ‘Feeding the Planet’ theme 227, 230-231, 233-234 Korea (Republic of Korea) pavilion content 227-250; see also hansik diet Korea pavilion design 234-235, 261-262 Korea pavilion guides at 250 Korea Week 27, 36, 227-228, 234, 248, 250-253 Netherlands at 249-250 Thailand pavilion content 263-278, 265-278, 282-283, 292 Thailand pavilion design 233n3, 255-257, 263-265 US pavilion at 249, 290 Ming dynasty 94 Mitsubishi Corporation 136 Miyahara, Satoko 69 Monroe Doctrine 117, 117n3, 128 Moore, Charles 46, 49 Morgan, J.P. 74 Moses, Robert 167, 172, 178, 182, 189n35, 204 Motokiyo, Zeami 75 Mutsuhito (Emperor) 47, 74-75 Mutuc, Amelito 173-174, 174n10 Naga, power of 264-266, 270, 273-274 Nakabayashi, Kikue 62 Nanking Acrobatic Troupe 147, 160 Nanyang Industrial Exposition (1910) 84, 100 National Institute for Circus Arts (NICA) 147 Natori, Yōnosuke 115, 124 Nemoto, Naoko see Sukarno, (Ratna Sari) Dewi Neuhaus, Eugen 76, 105-106 New Community Movement (Saemaul Undong) 248 New Theory Farming 272, 272n5 New York City newspapers and press 31, 170, 198, 210, 210n27, 211; see also Asian women, objectification of; ‘women’s pages’ New York State Theatre 169, 188, 190-191 New York World’s Fair (1939-40) 11, 19, 28-30, 32-33, 81, 83, 110-138 Japan Day 114, 125-128 Japanese national pavilion and gardens 118-124 Japanese silk demonstration and production 122-123, 128-129 see also Cherry Blossom Ballet; diplomacy, performance of; Japanese femininity; Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Japanese tea ceremony; kimono, appeal of, wearing of; Nippon Kōbō; Takarazuka Revue New York World’s Fair (1964-65) 19, 26, 30-35, 83, 113, 125, 167-226, 231, 280, 289, 292 female guides at 222-224; see also Asian women, objectification of Indonesian dance at 195, 198, 211-223

315

Index

Indonesian participation 34-35, 195-196, 203 Indonesian pavilion, operation, design, planning 197, 207-211 Indonesian pavilion restaurant 195, 198, 211-212, 212n31, 216-217, 222-223 organization and operation 167-168, 170-171 Philippines participation 34-35, 168-169, 195 Philippines pavilion 178-188, 192-193 Philippine Week (1964) 188-193 Unisphere 167, 170, 179 see also diplomacy, performance of Nikko, Shrine and Garden 53-55, 63 Nippon Kōbō 113-115, 119, 123-124, 129-131 Nippon magazine 115-116, 124 Nitobe, Inzao 65 Nō theatre 41, 75, 135 Nye, Joseph see soft power Obama, Barak (President) 145 Ocampo, Eddie 189 Okinawa Expo (1975) 290 Opium War 103 Oriental Restaurant, Brisbane 155-156 orientalism 21, 26, 64-70, 66n41, 101, 155, 289 Osaka Expo ’70 144, 154, 280, 289 Osaka International Exposition (2025) 19-20, 289-290 Owyang, Kee 84 Paik, Nam June 234, 234n5 Pan-American Exposition (Buffalo) 63, 66n43 Panama Canal 39-40, 44 pandas and ‘panda diplomacy’ 140, 148n16, 151-152, 165 Paris Colonial Exposition see Exposition Coloniale Universelle Paris Exposition Universelle (1867) 21, 40, 65; (1878) 20; (1889) 15, 21; (1900) 21 Park Min-gwon 235, 235n7 Patterson, Richard 173-174 Peabody Essex Museum 98n32, 99 Pearl Harbor attack 44, 128, 133 Peking Opera see Beijing Opera Peking Opera Troupe see The Three Beatings of Tao San Chun Pelaez, Emmanuel 172-174 Peralta, Oskar 189 performativity 20-28, 229, 288 performing excellence 268, 288, 290 Perry, Matthew (Commodore) 41, 99, 116, 118 phenomenology of perception 36 Philadelphia Centennial International Exposition (1876) 20 Philippines 167-194 at Brussels International Exposition (1958) 22 at Chicago Exposition (1893) 182 colonization of 45, 181-183, 190

dance 180, 187, 202; see also Bayanihan National Folk Dance Company fashion 167, 171-178, 184-186, 189-192 Mestizo identity 181-183 Muslim culture, position of 186 relations with US 176, 188-189 Photography and performing for the camera 41, 55-60, 151 Pilipino Culture Nights (PCNs) 186 Poletti, Charles (Governor) 171-173, 171n7, 178, 205, 222, 224-225 Prijono 202, 202n12, 218 public relations, impact of 30-31 Qianlong (Emperor) 104 Qin dynasty 140 Qin Shi Huang (Emperor) 148 Qing dynasty 16, 79-80, 84, 93-94, 99, 109 Qiqihar Circus Troupe 158-159 Queensland (Australia) government of 143 Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) 162 Ramayana 199, 219n38 Ramkhanhaeng (King) 266 Riefenstahl, Leni 115 Right Man 262 Republic of China see China (Republic of) Rockefeller, Abby Aldrich 74 Rohingya ethnic group 286 Rolph, James Jr. (Mayor) 47, 88 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (President) 116-117 Roosevelt, Theodore (President) 65 Rudd, Kevin (Prime Minister) 146 Said, Edward 16-17 St. Denis, Ruth 218 Saint Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904) 15, 25-26, 41, 52, 63, 80, 84, 92, 100, 109, 153, 182 Saito, Hiroshi (Ambassador) 118 SAK Theatre 158 Sakai, Yoneo 132-133, 133n441 Sakurai, Nagao 120 Salazar, Joe 189 Samuelson, Anna 77 San Francisco Chinese community 32 Japanese community 32 post 1906 earthquake 40, 108 San Francisco Chronicle 44 San Francisco Examiner 43 San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition (1915) 16, 22, 25-26, 29, 32-33, 39-112, 149, 292 Chinese goods on display 96-102 Chinese national pavilion and garden 92-97 Chinese pagoda miniatures 102-104

316 

Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs

Chinese Village 79, 88-91, 88n20 Japan Beautiful concession 50-60, 66-68, 77 Japanese exhibition spaces 49-50, 71-74, 289 Japanese garden 51-60, 289 Japanese national site 50-60 Japanese Red Cross 71 Japanese tea house 52, 59-60 Joy Zone 60-70, 81-82, 86, 88-91, 108-110 Palace of Fine Arts displays 50, 74-76, 80, 104-107 ‘Underground Chinatown’ 82, 107-110 Sato, Toshi 123, 129 Satow, K. 62 Seattle World’s Fair (1962) 167, 169, 280 sendratari 219, 219-220n38, 220 Seville Expo ’92 279 Shanghai International Exposition (2010) 2021, 28, 30, 143, 231, 279-281, 290 Australia at 280 China at 290 French pavilion 25, 259 Malaysia at 282 Nordic countries at 280, 291 Singapore at 282 United Kingdom at 280 Shên Tin-chen 104 Shên Tun-ho 104 Shogunate (Tokugawa) 40-41 Shima, George 61 Shinawatra, Yingluck (Prime Minister) 260-261 ‘Six Companies’ 86, 86n16, 88 Slamat, Bing 221, 221n39 Smithsonian Institution 107 ‘soft power’ vs. ‘hard power’ 139-140, 148n16, 157-158, 164-165, 230-232, 257-261, 276-278, 286 Song dynasty 104-105 Song Jiaoren 79 Sorensen, Abel 207-208, 221-222n40 South Bank Corporation 143 South Pacific 225-226 Spanish-American War (1898) 182 Sudarsono, R.M. 207-208 Suharto (President) 35, 196, 226 Sukarno, (Ratna Sari) Dewi 204-205, 204-205n19, 214 Sukarno (President) 34-35, 195-214, 223-225 as artist 197-198, 208-209, 209n26 history and legacy of 196-201, 206-207 international image of 196-199, 201, 204-205, 207 fall of 195-197, 200, 204n17, 206-207, 224-226 and women 197-198, 204-206, 211, 211n29 Sunico, Conchita 189, 189n38, 189n39, 190-191

Taekwondo 250, 252 Tai-ho Palace 92-93 Taiwan, Japanese colonization of 45 Takarazuka Revue 28, 66-67, 113-114, 130-137, 132n38 Takeda, Goichi 51-52 Takeji, Fujishima 75 Tamura, Tsuyoshi 120 Tang dynasty 99, 104, 140 terra-cotta warriors 140, 148-151 Thailand Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry 257 corporatized food production 36-37, 255-257, 261, 267-270, 275-278, 282-293 ‘gastro-diplomacy’ 231, 260-261 ‘Global Thai’ campaign 260 ‘Golden Land’ 36, 255-256, 266-267, 277-278 king in Thai society 258, 263, 274-278; see also Adulyadej, King Bhumibol ‘Kitchen to the Word’ 260-261, 269, 277-278 lèse-majesté laws 258, 258n3, 259 politics 27, 256 tourism 258 The Three Beatings of Tao San Chun 162-164 Tiananmen Square 33, 139-140, 142, 162, 164 Tobing, Gordon 221 Todd, Frank Morton 61 Tokumatsu, Takashima 75 Tokyo Olympics (2020) 290 Trinidad, Cita 177 Trump, Donald 37, 119n10, 288 Tsukimoto, Akiko 125, 125n25, 126, 128 Tsukuba Expo (1985) 29 Turnbull, Malcolm (Prime Minister) 145 Umayam, Bartoleme 174, 174n14, 177-178 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) 139, 149, 196-197, 197n4 United Arab Emirates (UAE) 281, 281n4, 282, 282n7; see also Dubai International Exposition (2020) Urbahn, Max O. 207 Vajiralongkorn, King Maha 258-259, 277n7 van Gogh, Vincent 106, 106n44 Vancouver Expo (1986) 144 Venice Biennale 234 Vienna World’s Fair (1873) 100 Villavicencio, Boysie 189 Wagner, Richard (Mayor) 188 Wakasugi, Kaname 117-118, 121, 125-126 Wang Ching-Chun 85, 85n12,13, 286 Wang Yuzhen 163 Wardhana, Wisnoe 218-221 Wassman, Max, Jr. 67-70

317

Index

wayang kulit 199-200, 207-208, 215, 221 wayang wong 207, 215, 221 Whalen, Grover 112, 121, 125-128 Whitlam, Gough (Prime Minister) 143 Williams, John 69 Wilson, Woodrow (President) 117 Winchell, Anna Cora 74 Winebrenner, Lina 192n45 ‘women’s pages’ 77, 115, 121 women, representation and presentation of 170-178, 184-186; see also Asian women, objectification of; ‘women’s pages’ Wong Chung see Wang Ching-Chun Wong, Jim (Wong Fook) 88, 88n20, 108 Wong, Mary 89, 89n21, 90 Wong, Susie 89, 89n21, 90 Workpoint 262

Wu Zetian (Empress) 140 Wu Zuguang 142, 162-164 Xi Jinping 162, 282, 284, 286, 288 Xin Feng Xia 162 Yamawaki, Haruki (General) 46-47, 49 The Year of Living Dangerously 199 yoga style 75 Yogyakarta, Indonesia 202, 207, 209, 214-215, 219, 219n38, 221 Yoshihito (Emperor) 47 Yuan, Shikai (President) 79, 91n30, 95 Zhou Enlai 140, 196 Zhuang ethnic group (China) 286 Zikawei (Xujiahui) Orphanage 102-103