Exploring local traditions and global exchange Japan Focus
Japanese art histories at the institute are approached within a transcultural framework, exploring painting, Buddhist art, architecture, material culture, and photography, in relation to both local traditions and global exchanges. Our research focuses on issues of ritual practice and the role of materiality in shaping visual culture, as well as the study of contemporary art narratives.
Doctoral projects in this area also examine historiographies, theories and methods of (digital) artwork reproduction, as well as instances of censorship in contemporary art.
Katharina Rode-Kaya
Katharina Rode-Kaya specializes in Edo-period (1615-–1886) and Meiji-era (1868-–1912) painting history, theory, and politics. She is currently expanding her work on her doctoral dissertation, in which she studied the role of pictorial models in the process of modernizing Japanese painting, with a focus on art school professor and Maruyama-style painter Kawabata Gyokushō (1842–1913). Her current project focusses on artist mobility and negotiations of identity of Maruyama-style painters, who left their hometown of Kyoto. The findings of the first phase will be published in a volume on the evolution of the Maruyama-Shijō networks, co-edited with Dr. Jens Bartel.
Her second project reevaluates Akita Ranga painting with a focus on daimyō painter Satake Shozan and his social circles. It connects the group to later ranga works (dutch pictures) by Shiba Kōkan, Aōdō Denzen and Yasuda Raishū. The study aims to contextualize discrepancies between the Chinese and European models used for the works against prevalent Sino-Japanese painting theories to situate Akita Ranga painting in its time and demystify its early end.
Transcending Asian Paradigms Postdoctoral Fellows (Heidelberg | Harvard Cooperation)
Dr. Frederick Feilden (Sept. 2026-Dec. 2027)
frederick.feilden@zo.uni-heidelberg.de
Room 120.01.14b
During the twilight years of the Edo period (1603–1868), practices of copying remained at the heart of art production in Japan. And yet, it still sounds contradictory to speak of creative copying—largely because we now live in a world circumscribed by intellectual property. As a “Transcending Asian Paradigms” fellow, my goal is to craft an alternative vision: mapping out the replication and dissemination of imagery in popular print culture by focusing on the digests of kabuki scripts illustrated by Utagawa Kunisada II (1828–80).
Throughout the 1850’s and 1860’s, these graphic narratives—known as shōhon-utsushi gōkan—took the world of commercial publishing by storm, combining striking front covers with detailed illustrations and easy-to-read prose on every page. They promised fans and connoisseurs alike a reasonably-priced backstage pass in the form of eye-catching books that brought the worlds of theatre, illustration, and literature together.
My project zeroes in on a handful of case studies that share a common thread: Utagawa Kunisada II, who illustrated more than half of the 130 digests published during the late-Edo heyday, but whose contribution to book design remains understudied. Rather than simply trace whether Kunisada was the first to employ a particular visual conceit, I intend to demonstrate the ingenuity involved in resizing, juxtaposing, collaging, amending, and redesigning; in other words, to explore the editorial techniques employed to rework pre-existing sources. By reading these strategies against terminology from the time, I aim to unpack the promise of replication and show that creative copying was not a contradiction—but a pillar of late-Edo cultural production.
Doctoral research projects, supervised by Prof. Sarah E. Fraser
- Iona-Adina Bădescu
A Chinese monk in eighth-century Japan: Ganjin and the Töseiden “Handscrolls of the Journey to the East” of 1298 - Wang Fengyu
Ordering Emaki: Reproduction Regimes and the Making of Art Historical Knowledge in Japan, 1880s–2020s - Sono Werhahn
Transcending Regimes of Visibility: Censorship and the Body in Contemporary Japanese Art (2014–2020) Between Spectacles of Control and Framing Resistance