The Poetics of Bodily Transplantation, 1702 – 1902

Dear Friends,

The image you see is of a ’self-portrait’.  If you keep reading, you’ll find out why that seemingly fair description is in inverted commas.  This piece of writing was written almost entirely after Event 2. I don’t have the object in question and have never seen it in real life, I am aware that I am focusing upon the idea of the object as distinct from the object.  Event 2 has sensitised me to such things.  Previously, I might not have complicated my object of interest, instead launching straight into the argument.  Now, however, I am able to separate the image from the object and, further, the object from the idea of the object.  I hope that the influence of Event 2 is apparent in the piece’s opening paragraphs.  And I hope you enjoy the writing.  If it interests anyone at all, I think it would interest Jo the most because of her interests in the male body.  It would be interesting to see what she thinks!

And so here we go!

Re-Member Me: the Sculptural ‘Self-Portrait’ of Hananuma Masakichi

The cover of ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Encyclopedia [sic] of the Bizarre’ insists that everything within is ‘amazing, strange, inexplicable, weird & all true!’ Indeed, inside this brash and garishly designed book of oddities are hundreds or thousands of works of art, objects, people, and events deemed to fit that description.  The encyclopaedia came to be in my hands as I had an interest in one of the works in Ripley’s collection: the 1885 sculptural self-portrait of Hananuma Masakichi.

Master sculptor Hananuma Masakichi, believing himself to be dying of consumption, created this life-like self-portrait, complete with his own nails, teeth, and hair, as a farewell gift to his beloved.  He later regained his health, but lost his lover.  The artist is pictured on the left; his creation appears on the right (Mooney 2005, 100)

And that is everything.  In fact, no other ‘official’ documentation is available, save for the image accompanying the above text, also on a postcard (see Appendix).  The presentation of this sculpture prompted me into thinking about portraiture and fidelity, and how a Japanese sculptor at the end of the 19^th Century came to indulge in – at least ostensibly indulge in – what has been described as the ‘purely western phenomenon’ of self-portraiture (Lippard in Pearlstone and Ryan 2006, 70).

To preface my argument, I would like to spend a paragraph clarifying and describing the object of my interest.  My focus is not on any particular representation of the statue.  Rather, it is on the statue itself or, more specifically and in its absence, the idea of such a statue being constructed in Meiji Japan and being considered a ‘self-portrait’.  With this in mind, and to supply texture, I would like to offer a description of the statue according to one internet source (Anon. n.d.): Masakichi assembled his statue from somewhere between 2000 and 5000 wooden strips.  He painstakingly bore a separate hole in his statue for each pore of his body; pulled out each individual hair and placed them in their corresponding locations on his sculpture; tore off his toe- and finger-nails, carefully positioned them; and finally transplanted his teeth.  It now stands mid-restoration in one of Ripley’s museums.

The sculpture is evidently an attempt at self-preservation that, I argue, is a little more complicated than first appears in that it reflects not only the ‘Western’ influences of portraiture (or, more accurately, the ‘Western’ framing of the sculpture as a portrait) but also myriad Japanese traditions.  Not only was the sculpture meant so that Masakichi may be remembered – for posterity, his lover, et cetera – I argue that it is also a product that one might expect of Meiji Japan as a period in which the Japanese and ‘the West’ were concerned with each other through trade and culture; where ‘the West’ had an obsession with Japan in the Great Exhibitions and World Fairs, and Japan with applying Western technology whilst maintaining Japanese identity, or wakon yōsai (Japanese spirit, Western technology) (Schwartz 2000, 366).  As one author put it, ‘[I]t often seems in Meiji: tradition and change were not at odds; the one demanded the other’ (Seidensticker 1983, 93).  The sculpture becomes something only possible under such circumstances.  It may be viewed as a screen onto which this dialogue between Japan and ‘the West’ is reflected.  As part of its Japanese heritage I argue that, far from being a ‘self-portrait’, it is very much part of an ancient Japanese tradition of ritual and material ‘copying’ and, with that, part of an equally ancient tradition considering inanimate objects to be in some way ‘alive’.  However, its acquisition, presentation, and perhaps the spirit in which it was conceived and created all suggest a strong Western influence on its significance.

In order to satisfactorily explain my argument, firstly, I establish the extent to which trade and cultural dialogue between the two cultures grew.  Secondly, I situate Masakichi’s statue within the Meiji period and suggest that its conception and creation was most likely influenced by ‘the West’.  Thirdly, I use this as a springboard into a discussion of how, although the sculpture and the time in which it was produced was influenced by ‘the West’, it is nonetheless a ‘Japanese’ sculpture and, when the Japanese ideas of the copy and ningyō (and the notions bridging those two concepts) are applied, the meaning of the sculpture is obscured (ultimately, its acquisition by Ripley enforces the ‘purely Western phenomenon’ [Lippard in Pearlstone and Ryan 2006, 70]).  Finally, I conclude by complicating the notion that Masakichi’s sculpture is a self-portrait and re-negotiate its value and cultural significance.

During the conception and construction of the statue there existed significant dialogue between Japan and ‘the West’ that resulted in cultural changes and exchanges.  This is reflected not only in trade but also in fashions.  Around 1800, two years before Masakichi’s birth, a new era was supposed to have brought economic and social improvement to Japan.  Foreign ships had appeared with increasing frequency in Japanese waters since the 1790s and the shogunate had finally responded in 1825 with orders for the daimyō to ‘drive away any and all such ships’ (Tipton 2002/2008, 25).  Commodore Matthew Perry brought four American warships into Edo Bay in 1853, insisting that Japan should be ‘opened up’.  This was met with a variety of responses.  Some of the daimyō thought that the foreigners should be repelled, while others favoured opening up the country for trade which would enable the adoption of Western technologies and techniques.  The shogunate recognised that it would be impossible to expel the foreigners but were still not entirely enthusiastic about opening up the country.  Eventually, in 1858, the new American consul, Townsend Harris, succeeded in negotiating Japan’s opening for trade. Treaties were signed with Britain, France, Russia, and the Netherlands shortly after (ibid 28-29).  According to J. Richard Huber, ‘[n]o other nation has made the leap from virtually no trade to a flourishing commerce in so short a time [...]. 1858 marked the end for Japan of self-imposed restrictions [and] within a dozen years foreign trade had multiplied some seventy-fold’ (Huber 1971, 614).  Indeed, some Japanese historians consider there to have been a ‘worship of the West’ (Daikichi 1970/1985, 52) as trade encouraged the adoption of Western social customs and cultural styles to reach the goal of ‘”civilization and enlightenment” [...] with no doubt that “civilization” meant Western civilization’ (Tipton 2002/2008, 47).

Following Perry and Harris’ ‘opening up’ of Japan, ‘the West’ can be seen to influence Japanese society in myriad ways.  A comparison between how Japan was represented in the 1876 World Fair in Philadelphia and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition of Chicago demonstrates clearly the altered focus of the Japanese image of itself presented to the rest of the world.  In the 1876 exhibition in Philadelphia, the concentration was on porcelains, bronzes, silks, et cetera and emphasised ‘Japanese design’ that emphasised an ‘aesthetic shift from the overstuffed display of Victorian sensibilities’ (Gross and Snyder 2005, 109) In contrast, the World’s Columbian Exposition of Chicago in 1893, presented a changed focus.  While the elaborate objects were still there, manufacturing and other aspects of Japanese life were represented including ‘72 exhibits of rice, 215 exhibits of tea and tobacco, photographs of railways and telegraphs, textbooks, crime statistics, toys and numerous other products like those found in Western countries’ (Tipton 2002/2008, 75).

The example of the exhibitions gives a general idea of how ‘Western’ technology and values took hold in Japan but, to give more specific examples of wakon yōsai (‘Japanese spirit: Western technology’): in the 1880s, the Shinto ritual in which one bowed before a mirror while scrutinizing one’s reflection in order to cleanse the soul was resurrected due to the full-length mirrors brought by ‘the West’ (Schwartz 2000, 366).  Further, in the mid 1880s, when Masakichi built his sculpture, the Rokumeikan was established.  This was a ‘Renaissance-style hall, for Western-style dancing, eating, card-playing and other events.  The Rokumeikan gave its name to the height of the civilization and enlightenment era in the mid-1880s’ (Tipton 2002/2008, 49).  Furthermore, in Edo, the playwright Hasegawa Shigure recalled her return home one day to find her mother transformed:

She performed the usual maternal functions without the smallest change, but she had a different face.  Her eyebrows had always been shaved, so that only a faint blue-black sheen was where they might have been.  Her teeth had been cleanly black.  The mother I now saw before me had the stubbly beginnings of eyebrows, and her teeth were a startling, gleaming white.  It was the more disturbing because something else was new.  The new face was all smiles, as the old one had not been. (in Seidensticker 1991, 91)

The empress also ceased to blacken her teeth in 1873, as it was ‘out of keeping with the new day’.  The ladies of the court followed her lead (ibid).

At the beginning of the Meiji period (1868), Masakichi was 36 years old.  It is not inconceivable that this ‘Western civilization’ would have influenced his life and art, particularly as Japan had been altering its focus in the World Fairs and adopting some Western cultural practices throughout the time of the sculpture’s creation.  Indeed it clearly did influence him.  Masakichi’s hair, for instance, is in the Western style, which has great significance in the 1880s and 1890s: ‘“If you thump a jangiri head [a head cut in the Western style],” went a popular ditty of the day, “it sounds back ‘Civilization and Enlightenment”’ (Seidensticker 1983, 93).  Presumably, a head cut in the traditional style resounded with the old order.  The length of the hair is congruent with this trend, as the sculpture was completed in 1885, around the time when Western influence was already keenly felt in Japan and men who wanted to appear more ‘enlightened’ had their hair cut in such a style.  Indeed, the emperor had adopted a Western-style short haircut in order to signify his ‘strong statement in favour of reform’ and this example was rapidly followed.  Helping this was the pressure from the police, who ‘cut any long hair they encountered’.  This new style was seen to replace the samurai topknot (Tipton 2002/2008, 49).

[T]he fiction of late Edo the barbershop, like the bathhouse, had been a place for watching the world go by.  The new world spelled change here too.  Western dress was initially expensive, but the Western haircut was not.  The male masses took to it immediately; the other masses [...] more slowly.  The Meiji word for the most advanced way of cutting the hair was zangiri or jangiri, meaning something like “random cropping.”  The old styles, for aristocrat and commoner alike, had required shaving a part of the head and letting the remainder grow long, so that it might be pulled into a topknot.  Already in 1873, the sixth year of Meiji, a newspaper was reporting that about a third of the men in the city had cropped heads. [...].  The first new-style barbershop opened in 1869. [...].  By 1880, two-thirds of the men in the city had randomly cropped heads.  The figure had reached 90 percent a scant six years later, and by 1890 [...] only the rare eccentric still wore his hair in the old fashion. (Seidensticker 1983, 93)

It would therefore appear that Masakichi was at least influenced by these Western ideas of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘civilization’ if only passively by following fashion and, as someone willing to produce a piece of artwork in a ‘Western’ spirit – one to be cherished and, essentially, collected – he was probably influenced to a great extent.  I suggest that this following of fashion is as far as the sculpture’s construction goes into being ‘Western’.  Everything else is imposed by its framing.  David Piper, in his introduction to Joan Kinneir’s The Artist by Himself, states that:

[The] reflection [of a person in their self-portrait] is not only not the object itself but a reproduction of its three-dimensional existence on a two-dimensional plane, but, further, [...] it reverses the object.  Our own faces as we know them in daily life, are the wrong way round and no face, once it develops from childhood, is symmetrical.  We do not “see ourselves as others see us”.  Alice, even when through the looking-glass, had problems about the nature of reality.  Self-portraits [are] inevitably subject to distortion if considered as attempts at exactly accurate description.  The nature of human perception allows of no such thing, and even a life-mask distorts (Piper in Kinneirs 1980, 12-13).

This transposition from three to two dimensions is one aspect of representing the human form that is obviated for the sculptural form.   However, the point is made – true for all portraits – that this form of copying requires some distortion.  Masakichi aimed for a fidelity that has, apparently, never been seen before or since.  Contrary to what Ripley’s encyclopaedia suggests, this is more akin to the Japanese culture of copying than to that of self-portraiture.  Continuing, Piper argues that:

Naturally the ordinary client’s wish is to be shown by his artist at his best and an occupational hazard for all portrait painters who depend on portraiture for their livelihood is the temptation to flatter.  When the sitter is the artist the portrait is unlikely to be cash-productive, but there is no likelihood that his personal vanity will be less than that of any other sitter, and he may only too easily see himself through rose-coloured spectacles in “the deceiving mirror of self-love.  Moreover, he, unlike the ordinary sitter, is in complete charge of the production.  Flattery may include factors other than the approximation of the sitter to the currently fashionable view of ideal beauty, and the playing down of physical flaws.  The sitter can be dressed in expensive clothes that do not belong to him, as Pepys was when he sat, or may be provided with attributes, armour or even a martyr’s palms, and s shown equated with historic or mythological heroes.  Skilful control of lighting can achieve wonders (ibid, 13)

Masakichi has none of this, ostensibly, although some users of an online blog featuring his image are resolute that Masakichi adorned his abdomen, asking ‘anyone else suspecting that he embellished maybe just a liiiiitle [sic] bit on those abs?’ (comment from a user in Foer 2009).  Lucy R. Lippard in her essay ‘Differing Differences’ (2006, 69-74) Pearlstone and Ryan’s About Face, asserts that ‘[s]elf-portraits, like autobiographies, are a purely western phenomenon, trademarks of an individualization [...] “snowflake singularity” and “imperial non-conformity”’ (Lippard in Pearlstone and Ryan 2006, 70).  It appears that her idea of a self-portrait being of an individual tallies with Piper’s and must necessarily include representations of one’s character as part of that ‘snowflake singularity’ and being an ‘individual’.  In the portrait tradition, for instance, the sitter is typically seen with objects that represent their profession, character, temperament, ailment, or whatever.  It is seldom the case that absolute bodily fidelity is intended or achieved in any medium.  In addition, the significance of a collectable object personal to an individual is amplified with a ‘self-portrait’ (or indeed ‘copy’ of the self) which is, by its very nature, personal to an individual.  Because it has been isolated as an object of almost absolute fidelity – even the accuracy of the glass eyes are said to puzzle those in the profession of making such ornaments (Foer 2009) – this is arguably even more the case for Masakichi’s statue.  It initially seems that Lippard’s comment, above, that self-portraiture is a ‘purely Western phenomenon’ cannot be entirely true, as Masakichi is Japanese.  Despite this seeming incongruity, I very much agree with Lippard.  A self-portrait is only a self-portrait when it is framed as one.

The statue is stored and displayed as a Western curiosity and ‘billed’ as a self-portrait, yet does not seem to adhere to the individualistic trappings of the self-portrait.  Rather than a clandestine aim to self-flatter or admonish, the portrait supposes to be as faithful a copy as possible.  In thinking about this statue as a copy, its authenticity might seem important – not necessarily whether it is authentic in being a ‘good’ copy as opposed to a ‘bad’ one, rather whether it might fall into the category of being authentically a copy of the Japanese tradition.  Indeed, Japan has been referred to as ‘a society of copyists’ (Schwartz 2000, 368) due to their long traditions of ritual, creating likenesses, and their reputation for replicating (and improving upon) technology with utmost precision.  However, this is only one of the significant aspects of a ‘copy’.   By ‘copy’, I refer simultaneously to the accuracy with which something is duplicated but also to what Law describes as ‘being perceived to work’.  Law tells the story of when she visited a shrine where the Hōjō-e was being re-enacted.  Hōjō-e, ‘Rite for the Release of Living Beings’, is widespread in Japanese Buddhism: ‘small birds and fish are released into fields and streams to show one’s compassion and awareness that other sentient beings [are] related to oneself’ (Law 1994, 325).  In another publication, Law recounts her own experience:

[T]he priest at the [...] shrine presenting the rite insisted on the “authenticity” of the contemporary ritual.  Though his claim for authenticity was in part attributed to how carefully he had “copied” the original rite, his real claim for authenticity was that puppets continued to be possessed by deities.  In short, the “copy”, a historical re-enactment of sorts, was real because it was still perceived to work as ritual (Law in Cox 2008, 42).

It is easy to see that one facet of such a ‘copy’ is fidelity to form (the accuracy the priest displays in his re-enactment or the fidelity of the form of Masakichi’s sculpture).  The other facet of ‘being perceived to work’, on the other hand, might be well explained for the priest insisting that deities still occupy puppets but, for Masakichi, requires further explanation as it draws upon particular concepts that interpret inanimate objects as nevertheless alive and Masakichi’s sculpture as ningyō.  Ningyō (written with the two characters signifying ‘person’ and ‘shape’ and commonly interpreted as ‘doll’, or less commonly ‘puppet’).  ‘The same characters, read in another way, are pronounced hitogata and this word was historically used to refer to small sticks or bundles of grass offered as ritual substitutes for actual people in rites of purification (Law in Cox 2008, 40).  In another publication, Law states that such a thing is ‘a body substitute’ for the deceased (Law 1997, 202).

Hair seems not to be an unusual material in art-work but Masakichi, in allowing himself to ‘live on’ for his lover, went farther by using more than merely a lock of his own hair.  This aspect of the sculpture presents itself as a particularly obvious kind of authentic copy.  Early Japanese ‘robotics’ of the 18^th Century onwards valued another kind of authenticity, however: that of an inanimate object being somehow alive.  One of the earliest ‘robots’ was a ‘kimono-clad boy servant carrying a cup of tea’.  The machine would be ‘wound up and aimed [at a person.  It would then] “walk” towards [him] carrying [the] cup of tea and nodding its head.  When the recipient lifts the cup from its hands to drink, the doll will stop and wait until the cup is replaced.  Then it will about-face and carry the cup back to its starting point’ (Schodt 1988, 55).  This particular aspect of the history of robotics is, it seems, shared with puppetry and ningyō.  This goes some way to defining the texture and flavour of, as well as logic behind, the Japanese belief that inanimate objects are in some sense peculiarly alive.

The Japanese appreciation for life imbuing inanimate objects goes further still, however, with kuyō.  In La Fleur’s Liquid Life, the Japanese custom of kuyō is explained as something that, ‘though readily understood by Japanese, might prove next to incomprehensible to Americans [“Americans”, presumably, standing in for any non-Japanese people]’ (La Fleur 1992, 144).  Kuyō is a Buddhist term referring to a ritual practice that is ‘at once a worship service, a formal apology and an expression of gratitude, an appeasement rite, and a funeral. [...]’ (Law 1997, 201-202).  La Fleur quotes from Wagatsuma:

The women pray that these needles may now enter into a deserved Buddhahood.  There in the temple or shrine they pass these through a block of bean-curd (tofu, an eminently soft substance).  In effect they say: ‘You needles have spent your lives doing hard work.  You unstintingly gave of yourself by again and again going through tough pieces of cotton cloth – even suffering in such labors [sic].  Now lie down on this mattress of bean-curd and take your rest.’ In this way the women humanize their treatment of even a piece of metal. (quoted from Wagatsuma in La Fleur 1992, 144-145)

Until the late nineteenth century, puppets and dolls could not be thrown away or even recycled (in fact, as suggested above, this extended to needles, calligraphy brushes, household cleaning instruments, and even underwear).  Likewise, they could not be placed into art collectors’ cases as examples of art.  Instead, these objects are brought to a temple or shrine where a kuyō is conducted.  ‘[T]he people who brought them make a series of invocations and statements of apology or gratitude as above, and the objects are then ritually disposed of in a way that concretizes the feelings of the people who used them’ (Law 1997, 201-202).  Thus a unique category not quite living yet not quite dead is recognised.  Inanimate objects are treated as living beings with some kind of soul that can be worshipped, apologised to, appeased, et cetera.  So, ningyō are not simply regarded as being alive and yet are not entirely dead; whilst they are inanimate, there is a spirit of sorts which animates them in the imagination.  It is noteworthy that this treatment of pseudo-living objects is preferred to the humiliation that must be associated with being preserved as pieces of ‘folk art’ (a humiliation that Masakichi, due to his wish to be preserved, probably did not feel).  It is thus rare for a Japanese ningyō to be displayed as a curiosity piece in an American ‘odditorium’.  Having been bought by Robert Ripley, Masakichi’s sculpture became what a Japanese ningyō would never be.  Moreover, the sculpture is said to have been damaged in an earthquake and is currently undergoing restoration (Anon., n.d.).  The ‘Western’ need to preserve and resurrect surely is strong.

By lending his own bodily excrement to the statue, Masakichi’s being persisted, albeit in an inanimate form: ‘ningyô can be used as representational equals of a particular person or animal, with ningyô serving as surrogates for actual people [...]’ (Law in Cox 2008, 43).  The use of Masakichi’s body parts attaches him to the sculpture in myriad ways but there must be some particularly poignant significance in transferring his own body parts to his sculpture.  When considering inanimate objects as living beings, in this way, the use of bodily excreta along with wood takes on a new significance that is, in a sense, brought to the ‘Western’ audience by the very reality – or hyper-reality – of the statue.  The Japanese conception of ‘reality’ indeed has been marked as different from the Western one.  The framing of Masakichi’s sculpture is thus complicated but relies heavily on the notion of the copy and those concepts that make the inanimate live.

It might be suggested, therefore, that the significance and authenticity of the puppet/ doll/ statue/ copy of Masakichi is not in its status as an art object – still less in its framing as a self-portrait – rather in its meaning as a ritual being occupying the complex status of inanimate vessel for a departed being.  This, combined with the ‘Western’ aesthetic appreciation as a self-portrait ‘status’, makes for a complex web of inter-relating references.  By viewing Masakichi’s statue as a ritual re-enactment of his being in inanimate form, it is a copy rather than a self-portrait.  This lends an authenticity to its living-inanimate object status, thus to its Japanese root.  That the copy could be considered ‘authentic’ is central, as an ‘authentic’ copy, in this case, means that the sculpture might be considered as being ‘authentically’ Japanese, rather than falling into the ‘self-portrait’ tradition in which it is currently framed.

The sculpture was constructed in Japan during the Meiji Restoration and, as the hair style of Masakichi suggests, was influenced by Western values, at least passively, if not actively and significantly.  However, there is evidently a heavy Japanese tradition that could be drawn upon, particularly that of copying as applied to ningyō and kuyō.  Masakichi’s sculpture would therefore seem to be located between Japanese and ‘Western’ views of the real and the represented; the membered and the re-membered; the dead and the alive.  It is a copy by construction and history but a self-portrait by framing and presentation.  Being a sculpture with complicated references from Japan and ‘the West’, Masakichi’s sculpture acts as a palimpsest onto which the impact of the events of the Meiji period are presented in a cluttered space, as traditional Japanese values, continually written over as the statue continues to be venerated, stored, and restored in the ‘Western’ odditorium.  To adopt and adapt Daikichi’s phrase summing up the Meiji period, Masakichi’s statue truly is born of Japanese spirit and Western significance.

List of Works Cited

Anon. (n.d.), Which is the Real Masakichi, online at http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Death/Masakichi.html.

Cox, Rupert (2008), The Culture of Copying in Japan, London: Routledge.

Daikichi, Irokawa (1970, trans. Jansen, Marius B., 1985), The Culture of the Meiji Period, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Elsner, J and Cardinal, R (1994/1997), The Cultures of Collecting, London: Reaktion.

Foer, Joshua (2009), Whatever Happened to the Self-Portrait of Hananuma Masakichi’, online at http://boingboing.net/2009/06/17/whatever-happened-to-1.html

Gross, Linda P and Snyder, Theresa R (2005), Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition, San Francisco: Arcadia.

Henny, Sue, et al (1985), Karakuri Ningyō, London: Barbican Art Gallery.

Huber, J Richard (1971), ‘Effects on Prices of Japan’s Entry into World Commerce after 1858’ in The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 79, No. 3, May – June 1971, 614-628.

Joly, Henry L (1908), Legend in Japanese Art, London: John Lane the Bodley Head.

Kinneir, Joan (1980), The Artist by Himself: Self-portrait drawings from youth to old age, London: Granada Publishing.

La Fleur, William R (1992), Liquid Life, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Law, Jane Marie (1994), ‘Violence, Ritual Reenactment and Ideolgy: the Hōjō-e (Rite for Release of Sentient Beings) of the USA Hachiman Shrine in Japan’ in History of Religions, Vol. 33, No. 4 (May 1994), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 325-357.

Law, Jane Marie (1997), Puppets of Nostalgia: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of the Japanese Awaji Ningyō Tradition, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Mooney, Julie (2005), Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Encyclopedia of the Bizarre, New York: Black Dog.

Pearlstone, Zena, and Ryan, Allan (2006), About Face: Self-Portraits by Native American, First Nations, and Inuit Artists, Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

Seidensticker, Edward (1983), Low city, High City: Tokyo From Edo to the Earthquake, 1867-1923, Middlesex: Penguin.

Schodt, Frederik L (1988), Inside the Robot Kingdom, New York: Kodansha International Ltd.

Schwartz, Hillel (1996), The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles, New York: Zone Books.

Tipton, Elise K (2002/2008) Modern Japan: A Social and Political History, London: Routledge.