Articles
The Making of a Mnemonic Space: Meiji Shrine Memorial Art Gallery 1912-1936
Abstract
This paper argues that Meiji Shrine Memorial Art Gallery (Meiji Jingu Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan) was constructed as a mnemonic space, and that its construction concerned the making of history. The purpose of the gallery was to provide a historical narration of the Meiji period through 80 paintings depicting Emperor Meiji's life. It took over 20 years from the initial planning of the gallery to its completion in 1936 and, throughout the course of its creation, different acts of remembering took place both inside and outside the space of the gallery. It was the lengthy process of gallery construction, rather than the place itself that shaped what was to be remembered. Historiogra phers and painters strove to portray "real" history in the gallery's paintings. Historiographers investigated historical facts and determined the gallery's picture topics. Importantly, most of them were responsible for compiling two national historiographies, Dai Nihon ishin shiryō in the Ministry of Education and Meiji tennōki in the Imperial Household Agency. For the painters, the challenge lay in determining "realistic" styles of painting adequate to the representation of "real" history. Furthermore, physical constructors of the gallery played a part in perfecting its narrative structure, such as spatial arrangement of the pictures. The contrast between the expectations of the gallery's creators and the experience of the visitors, in terms of how the gallery was viewed as well as how it was to be viewed, is also the subject of this paper.