WCMA
Archived
  • Home
  • Exhibitions & Programs
    • Archive
  • Collaborate
    • Object Lab
    • Rose Study Gallery
    • Reading Room
    • Cocurate
    • Agents for Creative Action
  • [SPACER]
  • Visit
  • Who We Are
    • Mission & Vision
    • History
    • Staff
    • Jobs & Internships
  • Collection
    • Featured Acquisitions
    • WALLS
    • Prendergast Archive
    • Public Art
    • Search
  • Make a Gift
  • News & Press

The Williams College Museum of Art makes dynamic art experiences to incite new thinking about art, museums, and the world.

Follow us:

TW
IG
FB
Sign up for our newsletter here.

Repro Japan: Technologies of Popular Visual Culture

i
  • Overview
  • Events
Dates
10/1/21 - 3/19/22
Guest Curator

Christopher Bolton, Professor of Comparative and Japanese Literature, Williams College

In Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868), the growth of urban audiences and new popular entertainments from kabuki theater to travel tourism developed in tandem with new printing technologies. This resulted in the rise of new forms of visual culture—including color woodblock prints and printed textiles—that could be mass produced, transformed, and consumed.

Subsequently, photography and electronic media have fostered the global spread of Japanese popular visual culture, including manga, anime, cosplay, and subcultural fashion. This spread across different technologies, eras, and cultures has produced an incredible diversity of material—reproductions, appropriations, reverse-importations, parodies, remixes, and tributes. At the same time, the central themes and motifs—sports, fashion, and fighting, along with fantasies of all kinds—have remained remarkably consistent.  

These themes and media technologies are integrally linked with the human body: as subject, maker, performer, viewer, and consumer. Bodies represented in 18th-century prints, 19th-century photographs, and 20th-century anime cels are seen taking similar actions, from gazing in mirrors to exchanging blows. These bodies can be read variously as objectified or self-actualized; as violated, celebrated, or liberated; as objects of pure, popular consumption or as nuanced critiques of consumption itself.

Guest curators Christopher Bolton, Professor of Comparative and Japanese Literature, Panalee Maskati ’20, Eron Rauch, artist and critic, Diana Tolin, World Cosplay Summit Alumna and Coordinator, Wei (Maggie) Wu, MA ’19, with Lisa Dorin, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Contemporary Art

Watch videos of the artists and curators here.

Download the exhibition publication here.

News & Press

Beatrice Moyers, Professor Bolton and Minneapolis College of Art and Design professor discuss visual culture and cosplay, Williams Record, February 16, 2022

William Jaeger, Japanese anime cross-currents at Williamstown exhibit, Times Union, February 1, 2022

Paul Joseph, 7 events to visit in Massachusetts this February, New England Magazine, January 19, 2022

Christopher Marcisz, ‘Repro Japan’ examines technology’s lasting impact on Japanese popular culture, Berkshire Eagle, January 13, 2022

‘Repro Japan’ Exhibition On View At WCMA, iBerkshires.com, December 10, 2021

Yuchan Kim, Review: ‘Repro Japan’ examines Japan’s contributions to pop culture, Williams Record, November 2, 2021

Watch: Fashion, Subculture, and Cosplay: A Conversation with Frenchy Lunning and Christopher Bolton

Watch: Curatorial Close Looks: Repro Japan

Browse the installation:

2/21/22
Anime and Art Film Series: Belle

Images Cinema and the Williams College Museum of Art, in tandem with the exhibition "Repro Japan: Technologies of Popular Visual Culture," are hosting three screenings of Japanese anime films throughout the run of the exhibition. The last in the series is the new film "Belle," which will screen Monday, February 21, at 7:30 p.m.

2/10/22
Fashion, Subculture, and Cosplay: A Conversation with Frenchy Lunning and Christopher Bolton

Join us for a discussion about the way that fashion, fandom, and self-expression play a role in cultural and community formation, inspired by the exhibition Repro Japan: Technologies of Popular Visual Culture.

1/10/22
Anime and Art Film Series: Miss Hokusai

Images Cinema and the Williams College Museum of Art, in tandem with the exhibition "Repro Japan: Technologies of Popular Visual Culture," are hosting three free screenings of Japanese anime films throughout the run of the exhibition. The second in the series is the the award-winning 2015 film "Miss Hokusai," which will screen Monday, January 10, at 7:30 p.m.

11/22/21
Anime and Art Film Series: Weathering With You

Images Cinema and the Williams College Museum of Art, in tandem with the exhibition "Repro Japan: Technologies of Popular Visual Culture," are hosting three free screenings of Japanese anime films throughout the run of the exhibition. The first in the series is "Weathering With You," a 2019 Japanese animated romantic fantasy film, which will screen on Monday, November 22, at 7:30 p.m.

11/15/21
Curatorial Close Looks: Repro Japan

Learn about some of the ways Japanese visual culture has been reproduced and transformed across media and through time—from woodblock printing to 19th century photography to contemporary cosplay—with "Repro Japan" exhibition co-curators Christopher Bolton, Williams College Professor of Comparative and Japanese Literature; Eron Rauch, artist and critic; and Maggie Wu, MA '19, PhD candidate at the University of California, San Diego. The curators will look closely at some of the works on view while discussing their collaborative process and taking audience questions.

This is your path so far:
Explore more paths
  • Visit
  • Exhibitions & Programs
  • Who We Are
  • Collection
  • Collaborate
  • Make a Gift
W