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Visual Technologies of Imperial Anthropology:

Tsuboi Shōgorō and Multiethnic Japanese Empire

Inhye Kang

Throughout the late nineteenth century, at a time when many national lead-
ers considered the “Westernization” of Japanese society a matter of national
survival, many of Japan’s scholarly activities became institutionalized in
keeping with Western social sciences. This nationwide reorganization led to
the rise of the discipline of modern anthropology in Japan. Tsuboi Shgor,
in particular, became a founding father of modern Japanese anthropology,
establishing the field by offering the first anthropology courses at Tokyo
University.1 Whereas previous Japanese scholars of anthropology had focused
on textual analysis with a reliance on mythical sources, Tsuboi and his
scholarly group, the Tokyo Anthropological Association (hereafter TAA),2
stressed the importance of fieldwork and systematic documentation, prac-
tices borrowed from Western anthropology.
Tsuboi’s contribution to the establishment of Japan’s modern anthropol-

positions 24:4 doi 10.1215/10679847-3666026

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ogy lies primarily in his systemic and comparative approach to race and eth-
nicity, which was primarily possible through his emphasis on visual meth-
ods. Tsuboi actively encouraged researchers to use visual techniques such as
sketches, photographs, and graphs when reporting their fieldwork, to sup-
port their arguments more objectively and evidentially.3 The recent studies
in Japanese modern anthropology also pointed out that use of visual media,
for Tsuboi, was clearly effective in explaining his anthropological research
more easily.4 The TAA’s official journal, Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi ( Jour-
nal of the Anthropology Society of Tokyo; hereafter Journal), was thus full of
visual images including photographs, illustrations, and even various survey
maps. As David Green claims, “scientific knowledge was held to be com-
mensurate with the recording and accumulation of empirically verifiable
regularities, the result of a process of disinterested contemplation in which
the perceiving subject interposes minimally, and then always passively,
between reality and its representation. . . . In many ways, pictorial represen-
tation became the most adequate metaphor of an epistemology based upon
empiricist metho­dologies.”5 The main concern of this article is how Tsuboi
Shgor and the TAA, at the dawn of Japan’s imperial expansion, employed
these visual technologies to study and exhibit ethnic others.
What is distinctively interesting about Tsuboi’s anthropological practices
is that his use of visual images helped him to conceptualize the multiethnic
aspect of the Japanese empire. Tsuboi and the TAA were strong supporters
of the mixed-­nation theory of the origins of the Japanese. During Japan’s
imperial engagement in other Asian nations, there had been disputes over
whether Japanese people originated from one pure race or were mixed with
other Asian ethnicities. As Oguma Eiji and other scholars have pointed out,
Tsuboi was one of the leading propagandists for the mixed-­nation theory at
the time of Japan’s imperialist expansion.6 In this article, I examine how the
use of visual methods not only helped Tsuboi to investigate and characterize
the various ethnic groups in the Japanese empire but also led him to theo-
rize about the Japanese empire as a composite of multiple ethnic nations,
with each group keeping its own customs and culture.
I argue that the diverse visual materials Tsuboi and the TAA collected
and displayed and their modes of exhibition followed Timothy Mitchell’s
conceptualization of the “world-­as-­exhibition,” in which “everything [is] col-

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lected and arranged to stand for something . . . everything set up, and the
whole set-­up always evoking somehow some larger truth.”7 According to
Mitchell, the world-­as-­exhibition is “not an exhibition of the world but the
world organized and grasped as though it were an exhibition.”8 In keeping
with his argument, I am concerned with the ways in which visual images
refer to their concrete, real subjects, or “external reality,” and the way visual
imagery functions as a frame through which we see the world.
Tsuboi and his fellow TAA members considered anthropological exhi-
bitions, among other visual technologies, to be important venues for pop-
ularizing the emerging discipline of anthropology, and indeed they were
involved in staging many of them. Yet, most discussions of the practices of
museums and exhibitions — especially in displaying other ethnicities — have
focused on how different cultures were “misrepresented” by exhibitors,
mostly in order to justify colonial domination. Moving beyond the existing
focus on distortion and misrepresentation in the study of exhibitions, this
article pays more attention to the mechanisms of the visual technologies
that Tsuboi used — notably his composite image technique, wherein diverse
ethnicities were at once assimilated and differentiated under the rubric of
“empire.”
A number of scholars have studied Tsuboi’s and the TAA’s interest in
anthropological exhibitions. While Matsuda Kyko and Yamaji Katsuhiko,
scholars of Japanese anthropology, have explored the colonial expositions
organized by Tsuboi within the context of the history and theoretical devel-
opment of Japanese anthropology, this study attends to the expositions’ use
of visual methods in representing the other. In the first section of this article,
I analyze Tsuboi’s use of composite photography, which epitomizes the way
that he constructed anthropological “type images” of certain groups, and
suggest that the ways that he combined the multiplicity of the images into
one probably led him to the concept of Japan as a composite empire of mul-
tiple ethnicities. The second section discusses how anthropological exhibi-
tions reframed generalized images of the ethnic other within a different
temporal scale, primarily a hierarchical time frame; and the third section
investigates how the display practices employed in the 1912 Colonial Exposi-
tion attempted to visualize a composite image of multiethnic Japan.

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Visual Technologies:
Composite Photography and the Production of General Types

Visual images played a major role in reorganizing the existing academic ac-
tivities in the modern social sciences, primarily when it came to new meth-
ods of observation, analysis, and documentation. Tsuboi’s experiment with
composite photography, among other visual techniques, is especially use-
ful in elucidating his perception of the relations between visual media and
race and ethnicity. Tsuboi came to learn about composite photography while
studying at Tokyo University, where a couple of professors were experiment-
ing with this new visual method.9 His interest in composite photography
technology was mostly derived from criminal anthropology, which was just
being established as a scientific discipline at the time. He even participated
in the Congress of Criminal Anthropol-
ogy held in Brussels in 1892, and he tried
to introduce criminal anthropology to
Japan upon his return.10
Composite photography was invented
in the 1870s by Francis Galton, an En-
glish Victorian eugenicist. It uses the
technique of superimposing a number of
portrait photographs (fig. 1) by laying one
image on top of another. The sensitized
plate can capture a composite of all the
images taken of a group of people; the
final image will thus represent certain
“typical” characteristics belonging to that
group of people, revealing commonali-
ties.11 The result of this process is that un-
shared distinctive features will fade away,
and only those features that group mem-
Figure 1 Composite portraitures
bers have in common will remain. This
suggested by Francis Galton. Francis process was designed to extract the typi-
Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty
and Its Development, 2nd ed. (London:
cal physiognomic features from a given
Dent, 1908), n/a group of people (fig. 2). Galton produced

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Figure 2 A method of composite portraiture explained by Francis Galton. Francis Galton,

“Composite Portraits, Made by Combining Those of Many Different Persons into a Single Resultant
Figure,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 8 (1879): 134

this method in his effort to isolate specific physical attributes particular to

certain types of criminals.12 Introduced in 1877, Galton’s composite images
became widely used in the field of criminology by the 1890s. Tsuboi himself
also explained and practiced with Galton’s composite photography technol-
ogy by using his own diagram (fig. 3). In this picture, he explains, by lowering
or lifting a mirror (ハ), and by letting “a couple of other images superimpose
onto a plate of (ニ), you will be able to make composite images possible.”13
Like Galton, Tsuboi’s initial interest was criminology, and in 1894 he
published an article called “Kasane tori shashin’ no jutsu wo riyshitaru
kansho” (“A Physiognomic Judgment Using Composite Photographs”),
using superimposed photographs that were based on his experiments at a
reform school. In this article, Tsuboi showed composite images of each juve-
nile delinquent found guilty of a certain offence, for example, larceny or

Figure 3 A method of
composite portraiture
explained by Tsuboi
Shōgorō. Tsuboi Shōgorō,
“Kumita shashin no wa”
(“Note on Composite
Photography”), Tokyo
Jinrui gakkai zasshi 1,
no. 10 (1886): 33

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Figure 4 Composite
photographs
experimented by
Tsuboi. Appeared
in Tsuboi Shōgorō,
“ ‘Kasane tori
shashin’ no jutsu wo
riyōshitaru kansōho”
(“A Physiognomic
Judgment Using
Composite
Photographs”), Tōyō
gakugei zasshi 11,
no. 157 (1894): n/a

idleness (fig. 4). He claimed that knowing the characters of the prisoners was
useful to prepare policies appropriate to their behaviors.14 His perception of
the relation between this method of superimposition and race and ethnic-
ity is more clearly illustrated in his detailed description of how the process
should be used for physiognomy. In another essay on composite photography
published in the Journal, Tsuboi specifically elaborated the uses of this new
visual method as follows:
1) By superimposing portraits from the same region, we obtain a repre-
sentative image of the region (for example, when saying whether someone
is from Sassh region or Shinshu region).

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2) By superimposing portraits from the same tribe, we acquire a represen-

tative image of the clan (for example, when describing whether a person
belongs to the Tokugawa family or Maeda family).
3) By overlapping portraits from the same racial group, we can have a
typical image of that group (for example, in case we describe whether a
person is Ainu or Taiwan aboriginal).15
In another essay, titled “Kumita shashin no wa” (“Note on Composite
Photography”), Tsuboi similarly claimed that by using a number of portraits
that “share commonalities,” you can gain a “total representative image of
scholars, or the images of laborers, those of the wise man or the fool. . . .
You can even understand to what extent one person’s psychology shows in
their appearance; or to what extent parents’ appearances are related to that
of [their] children.”16
These analyses demonstrate Tsuboi’s positivist attempt, by way of overlay-
ing a large number of images, to produce general visual characteristics of a
certain group as well as to classify and compare them. The composite images
thus reflect the visual positivism of the time, when it was believed that picto-
rial representations could enable empirical analyses and cataloguing.
In this regard, Allan Sekula correctly points out that Galton’s composite
image was born out of “the attempt to merge optical and statistical proce-
dures within a single ‘organic’ operation.”17 Galton’s methods were ostensi-
bly grounded within the emerging field of social statistics in the 1830s and
1840s, and his composite photography claimed to produce a pictorial version
of the “average man” (l’homme moyen), a concept that was articulated by the
Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet. Galton was thus hailed for inventing
a powerful method of visualizing Quetelet’s composite character; to borrow
Sekula’s words, “the symmetrical bell curve now wore a human face.”18
Galton and Quetelet shared two important assumptions. First, they held
a strong belief in “social mathematics” — the idea that exact numbers and a
large amount of empirical data can determine certain social laws or general
facts. Quetelet argued that “the greater the number of individuals observed,
the more do individual peculiarities . . . become effaced, and leave in a
prominent point of view the general facts.”19 Here there was an abrupt move
from an individual body to a general type, supported by a large aggregate
of empirical data. Second, both Quetelet’s and Galton’s composite characters

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were based on the premise of a certain unified schema. All of the individual
data were classified and placed within an amalgamated and geometric sys-
tem. For instance, Galton suggested that the photographs “must be similar in
attitude and size, but no exactness is necessary in either of these respects . . .
in such a way that the eyes of all the portraits shall be as nearly as pos-
sible superimposed; in which case the remainder of the feature will also be
superimposed nearly enough.”20 In other words, facial parts were laid on
top of corresponding parts shown in the image within the unified frame,
leading to the production of a general “type” image (fig. 5). Tsuboi’s com-
posite figures also share similar foundations. In his article “A Physiognomic
Judgment Using Composite Photographs,” he collected dozens of images of
offenders from officers at the reform school and classified them into several
types, creating composite images to represent each offense. For example, in
figure 4, the image on top represents idleness and was made on the basis of
fifteen offenders; the image on the right visualizes larceny, based on pictures
of twelve felons; and the picture on the left shows us a sexual offender, based
on the photographs of thirteen convicts.21 With regard to the framing of
these pictures, Tsuboi stressed the importance of imposing a homogeneous
format by ensuring that the images were the same size, with all the figures
looking in the same direction.22 The resulting images would enable viewers
to easily compare respective offender types. The accumulated empirical data
and their arrangement within this combined format seemed to guarantee
the analytic and objective certainty of the resulting image. Another illus-
tration (fig. 6) from Tsuboi’s “Note on Composite Photography” similarly
shows how poor correspondence among the images of facial features from
the middle of the forehead to the mouth will lead to blurry and confusing
images.23
Much more important than the alignment of figures is that the compos-
ite image also shows the process whereby multiple images are integrated
into one. The sensitized plate in this method functioned as a blank, all-­
embracing field where all the data could be collected and simultaneously
combined into one. In other words, superimposing techniques not only pro-
duced general-­type images; they also mediated various images, which had
been collected as samples, into one. In the sense that superimposing pho-
tography demonstrates how multiplicity is merged into one, I argue that the

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Figure 5 A method of composite portraiture explained by Francis Galton.

Galton, “Composite Portraits,” 133

Figure 6 A method of composite

portraiture explained by Tsuboi
Shōgorō. Shōgorō, “Kumita,” 33

composite technique represents the technology of a “multiethnic” empire,

where diverse ethnicities are integrated into one. In later sections, I will
specifically argue that this combination of diversity and integration of mul-
tiplicity is analogous with imperial policies of differentiation and assimila-
tion.24 Although composite portraiture aims at combining multiple images
into one, the mechanics are premised as much upon the distinctiveness of
the images as their resemblance to each other. As the blurriness of composite
images indicates, composite technology urges assimilation between images
and yet keeps traces of distinctiveness and difference rather than completely
erasing them.
Even though Tsuboi’s employment of composite photography did not
solely aim at racial figures — the portraiture illustrated here features primar-
ily Japanese youth — the way he crystallized specific group features can also

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be expanded to the visual register of other races and ethnicities. Given that
the visualization of other races historically started from state-­sanctioned
experiment on the other — criminals, deviants, the working class, and so
forth — the technique of Tsuboi’s superimposed photography could be
equally applied to the representation of other ethnicities in the Japanese
empire. The following section will explore how various exhibitions orga-
nized by Tsuboi classified and compared attributes of specific ethnic groups
while simultaneously integrating them all together, just as his composite
photographs did.

The 1904 Specimen Exhibition

After returning from his study in Britain and France, Tsuboi became
engaged with a number of anthropological exhibitions as a director of
TAA. In a report from Paris titled “Pari tsshin” (“Correspondence from
Paris”), Tsuboi had referred to “places worthwhile visiting in terms of the
anthropology field at the Paris Exposition Universelle as follows: various
architectures showing the development of human dwellings, native villages
of savage races, museum site of anthropology, etc.,” suggesting that many of
the exhibition practices he employed upon his return to Japan were influ-
enced by those anthropological exhibitions he had observed during his stay
in Europe.25
In 1904, the TAA organized the Anthropological Specimen Exhibition
at the University of Tokyo, which spanned three days from June 3 to 5.
Although the exhibition took place within the university, it was open to
the public. Surprisingly, records show that as many as six thousand visitors
attended over the course of three days (figs. 7 and 8).26 Tsuboi offered a
detailed explanation of the exhibition at the university in an essay he contrib-
uted to the Journal. He stated that the show’s intention was to demonstrate
the general vision of anthropology to the public.27 According to Tsuboi, the
first of the specimen show’s two showrooms was meant to explain the show’s
purpose and introduce anthropology as an academic field, while the second
was devoted to various anthropological objects.28 Upon entering the sec-
ond room, visitors were faced with a number of anthropological objects on
display, including folkloric articles and photographs showing physiological

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Figure 7 The 1904 Specimen Exhibition at the University Figure 8 The 1904 Specimen Exhibition at the University
of Tokyo. Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi 19, no. 219 (1904), n/a of Tokyo. Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi 19, no. 129 (1904), n/a

attributes of each nation. The main specimens consisted of objects from five
aboriginal groups associated with Japan, including the indigenous people of
Taiwan, the Malay Aborigines, the Aboriginals of the South Sea Islands,
the natives of New Guinea, and the Ainu. Each ethnic group was repre-
sented by four types of objects: photographs, physical ornaments, native tools,
and weaponry (fig. 9). The displays for each nation were spread horizontally
across the room, with the objects from each culture arranged vertically for
comparison.29
The four different kinds of artifacts embodied certain elements that
Tsuboi considered to be useful tools in investigating and classifying elements
of other races — including their physical type, physiology, language, customs,
and habits.30 Each ethnic group’s exhibit of photographs, ornaments, tools,
and weaponry in the show corresponded to these broad categories. Nota-
bly, after seeing a couple of physiological portraits and pictures of ethnic
customs, the audience was guided to compare each categorized object with
those of other nations in order to understand which attributes were differ-
ent and which features were common to a certain group — a process that
led to the creation of a typological image. Based on empirical data and a
unified comparative system, the exhibits in the specimen show functioned

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Figure 9 Display plan for the

1904 Specimen Exhibition. Tokyo
Jinrui gakkai zasshi 19, no. 219
(1904): 338

like three-­dimensional composite photography. While the types represented

in Galton’s pictures were defined on the basis of their physical attributes,
these three-­dimensional composite characters were a compound of physiol-
ogy and cultural customs. More importantly, these “type” images, owing
to the method of their extraction and their overall generalization, seemed
to be not only scientific representations of observable reality but also conve-
nient tools for classification, taxonomy, and comparison. Coupled with the
composite character of the exhibits, they furthermore represented the world
as an exhibition, the large quantity of collected materials standing in for
“external reality.”
The selection of the exhibits in the display, which mainly included
objects from other Asian nations surrounding Japan, was not accidental.
For instance, about the objects from Korean folk customs, including earth-

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enware, spathic iron mirrors, and fragments with gold plating, Tsuboi com-
mented as follows: “In terms of materials from both countries [Korea and
Japan], the comparison of their earthenware, in particular, seems very inter-
esting since it enables us to investigate the relations of the two countries.”31
As such, this exhibition was continuous with Tsuboi’s mixed-­nation theory,
in which these Asian nations were believed to be racially related, originating
from the same ancestor.
As is elucidated by the title of the event, the TAA wanted the exhibition
to appear to be a scientific study of the human race. In the first place, it was
situated within a setting reminiscent of a laboratory against a plain white
backdrop, giving the exhibits an air of objectivity and academism. More-
over, because the artifacts at the event were labeled “hyhon” (specimens),
the exhibition appeared to be showing the results of scientific experiments.
According to Elizabeth Edwards, the idea of type specimens — one of the
most significant elements in the field of nineteenth-­century anthropology —
was borrowed from the natural sciences, which had already established the
idea in eighteenth-­century Europe.32 Like the concept of a specimen in the
natural sciences, the idea of the type specimen denies, isolates, and sup-
presses the specimen’s context so that its physical characteristics and opti-
cal differences can be easily accentuated against a plain background. The
resulting images, thanks to their simplified contexts, are easy to compare,
classify, and categorize.
With regard to the type image, Edwards’s argument that photography is
the “insistent dislocation of time and space” is useful.33 In her introduction
to Anthropology and Photography 1860 – 1920, Edwards discusses the nature of
photography as temporal and spatial dislocation — mainly in terms of pho-
tography’s ability to freeze past moments and bring them into the present —
and examines the medium as a technology of framing the world. Like pho-
tographs used in anthropology, the very power of the visual technology
working at the exhibition was its “ability to appropriate and decontextualize
time and space and those who exist within it.”34 Importantly, this practice
of dislocating easily leads viewers to register a sense of temporal distance
between “us” — that is, exhibiting countries in general — and “them” — that
is, the other cultures on display.
The ways in which the specimen show displayed the artifacts of other

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nations in conjunction with Japanese objects elucidate this differentiated

temporality. The specimens from Japan — “the Japanese Stone Age” and
“Japanese Ancient Times” — were displayed on two tables located in the
west end of the event room. Ancient Japan was visualized through vari-
ous archeological objects such as stone implements, clay figures, round jade
stones, and Yayoi pottery, which had been excavated from the Japanese
archipelago.35 As Matsuda has pointed out, what was important was that
these objects from Japan’s prehistoric times were intentionally juxtaposed
with the contemporary tools and machinery of the other five Asian native
ethnicities, allowing visitors to easily compare Japan’s antiquity with the
present lives of aboriginal peoples.36 Tsuboi wrote about this in detail:
When these antiquities are looked [at] in line with the north and south
direction, it can be assumed that the racial relations between these tribes
are not unrelated. . . . there is a crescent-­shaped jade on display, which
was from Japan’s ancient times, on the one hand, and there are various
ornaments made out of jade on display, which are currently being used in
Taiwan. . . . When studied like this, there is a lot to learn.37
The current ways of life of other Asian nations, explains Matsuda, were here
meant to be compared directly with Japan’s past. In other words, people
living in other parts of Asia were instantly regarded as “living fossils” that
were useful in illuminating Japan’s past. Although the exhibit featured the
diverse racial origins of the Japanese, in association with multiplex ethnici-
ties, the contemporary existence of the exhibitor was largely distinguished
from the present time of the exhibited.38 This is what Johannes Fabian has
called the “denial of the coevalness.”39
Throughout the TAA’s scholarly practices and exhibitions, artifacts from
Japan’s Stone Age in particular were often juxtaposed with those used by
the contemporary people of Hokkaido or Taiwan, with comparisons drawn
between the visual patterns and shapes of the objects.40 This view was predi-
cated upon the hypothesis that other Asian nations, judging from their cur-
rent social and political situations, were temporally less advanced than Japan
within the hierarchy of racial order. The next section will investigate the
ways in which these temporally differentiated other ethnicities were brought
together again as “new citizens” of the Japanese empire. Like the use of

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superimposing technology, the representation of a multiethnic Japanese

empire aimed not only to assimilate divergent ethnicities but also to promote
and sublate them within the sphere of the empire.

The 1912 Colonial Exposition: The Celebration of Multiethnic Empire

Emerging from the late nineteenth century, domestic expositions were apt
arenas in which to present various social issues of state or regional govern-
ments. 1912 was a significant year in Japan, since it marked the full-­blown
stage of Japanese imperialism in the wake of its annexation of Korea in 1910,
and the turning point from the Meiji to the Taisho period. The 1912 Colo-
nial Exposition (Takushoku hakurankai) functioned as a venue for satisfy-
ing Japanese curiosity and concerns surrounding the new colonies and new
era.41 The exposition was held in October and November of 1912 at Ueno
Park in Tokyo. Though Japan had had a number of national expositions that
featured its colonies and its sphere of influence prior to this one, the 1912
Colonial Exposition marked the first full-­fledged “colonial exposition.”42 An
article from Fzoku gah (Customs and Manners Illustrated) commented that
“with the unprecedented expansion of our country further into Korea and
Taiwan,” the purpose of the event lay in providing an opportunity to show
“lively information” about the newly incorporated territories “beyond the
map.”43 Tsuboi and the TAA were again involved in the preparations for
this exposition, particularly in setting up its “native villages” section.
According to Takushoku hakurankai jimuhkoku (Official Report of the
Colonial Exposition; hereafter, Official Report), the Hall of Tourism stood in
the center of the event site, surrounded by the pavilions of Taiwan, Korea,
Sakhalin, Kwantung leased territory, and Hokkaido (figs. 10 and 11).44 The
main exhibits featured industrial, agricultural, and ethnic products as well
as tour guides to each of those places. Additionally, a particular section
called “Inviting Various Races” was set up, with aboriginal people from
the colonies and built replicas of native villages where these people actually
lived and performed, as they had in the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition
in Osaka in 1903.45 A total of eighteen natives were exhibited in these liv-
ing displays, including seven Taiwan aboriginals, eight Karafuto Ainu, and
three Hokkaido Ainu.46 As Tsuboi’s “Correspondence from Paris” illumi-

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Figure 10 Display plan for the Colonial Exposition. Figure 11 A poster image of the 1912 Colonial Exposition.
Takushoku hakurankai jimu hōkoku (Official Report of the Official Report, n/a
Colonial Exposition) (Tokyo: Takushoku Hakurankai Zanmu
Toriatsukaijo, 1913), n/a

nates, the idea of native village sections “where the primitives were actually
living in groups” had come from the Paris Exposition Universelle,47 which
Tsuboi had observed in person. The Official Report from the 1912 exhibition
noted that this special section was possible especially “under the guidance of
Professor Tsuboi” and was intended to let people “observe the personalities
or living conditions” of the newly incorporated regions.48

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The Official Report goes on to stress that this special section was created
on the basis of academic research:
Toward this plan, the house structures of these native peoples were
investigated and their materials were collected, and native families were
invited. Ishida Shuzo left for Hokkaido and Sakhalin on July 23 for this
investigation, and no Entar for Taiwan and Korea on July 24, and they
returned around early September. The native housing and villages were
built on the basis of the information collected through their fieldwork.49
The report’s reference to well-­known anthropologists and scholars served to
bolster the claim that the event was premised upon educational values and
authenticity. This was seen as important because a similar native village
built at the 1903 Fifth National Exhibition in Osaka had faced accusations
of being merely for amusement. The anthropology pavilion that the Tsuboi
group organized in 1903, originally titled “Jinruikan” (Pavilion of the
Human Race), was changed, in the Fifth Industrial Exhibition, to “Gaku-
jutsu jinruikan” (Scientific Anthropology Pavilion) in response to severe
protests by those groups who were being exhibited.50 The Osaka Exhibition
caused a great sensation in part because it was one of Japan’s first attempts
to build native villages and bring human beings from colonies in for display.
The 1912 exhibition’s emphasis on the fieldwork done by anthropological
scholars was in part to ensure that the section would be credited with a cer-
tain authenticity grounded in scientific and professional knowledge.51
The purpose of displaying the colonized people in this exhibition was not
so much to highlight their primitive aspects; rather, it needs to be viewed in
terms of Tsuboi’s promotion of multiethnic theory through visual technolo-
gies. A newspaper article’s portrayal of this event, describing its inclusion
of “Hokkaido and Karafuto in the north, Taiwan in the south, and Korea
and Kwantung territory in the northwest area,”52 reveals the exhibition’s
unabashed desire to embrace the Japanese empire’s full variety of ethnicities
as well as to celebrate its multicultural aspects. The exhibitors furthermore
organized a social gathering for these various Asian nations, in which ethnic
groups were gathered together to watch films about the scenery of Karafuto
and the customs of Chosŏn.53 The gathering was held as part of the twenty-­

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Figure 12 The storage of Ainu people at the Figure 13 The Ainu home at the 1912
1912 Colonial Exposition. With permission Colonial Exposition. With permission of
of the University Museum, the University of the University Museum, the University of
Tokyo Tokyo

eighth general meeting of the TAA, and Tsuboi gave a public lecture
entitled “Meijirendaito nihonzuhan naino jinsh” (“Diverse Races under
the Roof of the Japanese Empire within the Colonial Exposition”).54 In his
speech, Tsuboi spelled out in detail the characteristics of each ethnic group,
with a particular emphasis on how such characteristics marked them as dif-
ferent from the Japanese. The Ainu people, for example, were described as
having “sunken eyes and dark eyebrows, and the men have a fair amount
of hair, and their strong hair is very rare among all the races all over the
world. . . . Their houses are built on Hottate-­bashira with thatched roofs,55
surrounded by thatch, and the interior is made up of two rooms, a smaller
one at the entrance and a bigger one in the back” (figs. 12 and 13).56 Of the
Taiwan aborigines, Tsuboi said, “The way in which Taiwanese aborigines
do their hair is not fixed, but males usually wear hats, and females usually
wear a piece of black cloth. They both wear earrings anywhere, and facial
tattoos are seen only among Atayal tribes. . . . Their houses are usually made
of wood, and the roofs are made of thatch, bamboo, hinoki, and cut boards”
(fig. 14).57 As for the Orokko and Giriyāku people, one male Orokko as well
as two male and one female Giriyāku participated, and Tsuboi gave similar
descriptions of their appearances. In this way, Tsuboi’s oral portrayals — and
textual depictions — provided vivid typological images for each ethnic

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Figure 14 A picture from the Taiwanese native village section. Official Report, n/a

group, as in the “Specimen” exhibition. Furthermore, the living specimens

presented at the exposition site not only confirmed his descriptions but also
functioned as immediate sample images.
Through the natives’ immediate presence, this exhibition literally gath-
ered and combined all the sample images of divergent ethnicities within one
space. Tsuboi’s lecture was meant to elucidate how Japan should be seen as
diverse and multicultural as a result of its imperial expansion. He concluded
his lecture with the following:
Considering the expansion of our land, there are many nations, and it is
remarkable to note that those different ethnic nations became Japanese
during the Meiji era. . . . Even if our influence grows from now on, and
no new nations are added, they will all be the same races as those who

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have been already added to Japan. All the nations that are meant to be
Japanese have become Japanese. We now can understand how it is impor-
tant to see that all these races, who had not been [known] before, were
added to Japan during [the] Meiji Era. This is something to commemo-
rate and to be stressed in our era.58
Tsuboi’s closing remarks clearly declared that the ethnic groups on display
were to be included under the umbrella of the new empire as Japanese and
not simply as “colonized” peoples. This lecture was in line with Tsuboi’s
celebration of the multiethnic aspect of the Japanese empire. In a similar
essay, contributed to the journal Taiy (Sun), he further defined the Japa-
nese empire as almost “equal to that of America,” in the sense that it had
become “mixed with all different kinds of other ethnicities.”59 Yet, what
is notable is that these respective ethnic groups were described in terms of
how distinctive they were from citizens of the Japanese nation. This exposi-
tion, in other words, aimed to bring all these ethnicities to one place and
display them from the point of view of a Japanese empire celebrating its
multi­ethnicity. The unique lifestyles and customs of these outsiders were
guaranteed to constitute their own ethnic cultures, and yet these ethnici-
ties were integrated and sublated within the Japanese empire; through this
operation of assimilating and merging while simultaneously highlighting
each group’s distinctiveness, the exhibition attempted to display a composite
image of Japan as a multiethnic empire.
The empire’s multicultural aspects were illustrated in other sections of
the exhibition as well. Although it is true that the TAA group only officially
participated in constructing the native village sections, it can be assumed that
displays in other sections and pavilions were also done under the guidance of
Tsuboi and the TAA. According to the Official Report of the exposition, the
techniques for displaying and decorating each exhibit were chosen to feature
the specific cultural traits that could contribute to the notion of multiethnic-
ity. The Official Report states that “the decorations for the objects on display
are mostly left to the exhibitors, and . . . intended to represent their own cul-
tures peculiar to each colony.”60 So, if the Taiwanese pavilion was decorated
with a tea garden and arbors unique to that colony (fig. 15), the Karafuto
(Sakhalin) pavilion was occupied by a wilderness scene (fig. 16), and the

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Kang ∣ Visual Technologies of Imperial Anthropology 781

Figure 15 A picture from the Taiwan pavilion. Figure 16 A picture from the Karafuto pavilion.
Official Report, n/a Official Report, n/a

Figure 17 A picture from the Korean pavilion.

Official Report, n/a

Korean pavilion was adorned with re-­created models of Namdaemun (the

Southern Gate) and Sŏkuram grotto, various traditional architectural fea-
tures from the country, and temples and pagodas from Kyŏngju (fig. 17).61
As the record of how each colonial pavilion was decorated indicates, the dis-
play of each ethnic group, while highlighting cultural attributes particular
to each colony and distinctive from Japan, was designed to contribute to the
picture of multiculturalism as seen from the Japanese perspective.
However, the strange absence of a Japanese pavilion within the exposi-
tion actually allowed it to render itself as the all-­seeing eye. By displaying

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all the various aspects of the colonies’ ethnic cultures while strategically not
showing the empire itself, Japan emerged as the encompassing viewpoint
for the exposition. Like the sensitized plate in the composite photography
technique, Japan functioned as a blank space, merging all the multiplicity
into one place and presenting the composite image. The problem was the
distance between Japan as the seer and the multiple colonized ethnicities as
the seen, the other “constitut[ed] as something picturelike — as an object on
exhibition.”62 In other words, these newcomers to the Japanese empire were,
in fact, exhibited less as valued members of the empire than as something
to be looked at and as educational materials for the metropole.63 Whether
these multiplex ethnicities were displayed as other or presented as members
of the empire, the issue is that they were all seen from a particular point of
view, a position “set apart and outside.”64 Thus it is not strictly important
whether the view toward the colonies was inclusive or exclusive because
these opposing orientations functioned as two sides of the same coin: the
view of the empire.
Based on my analysis of the anthropological exhibition techniques and
photographic practices used by Tsuboi and the TAA, I have argued two
points: first, that these visual technologies presented a general type image of
other Asian peoples, who were viewed as racially related to the empire — the
idea of Japan as a mixed nation — but existing within a different temporal-
ity; second, that the techniques of colonial exhibition presented a composite
image of a multiethnic empire. Whereas the existing studies on the anthro-
pological exhibitions designed to display the colonies have focused on how
those exhibitions misrepresented the colonized, this study has instead sought
to understand the visual methods used by Tsuboi and the TAA from the
view of how they visualized the colonized nations not merely as the primitive
other but as members of the multiethnic empire. In discussing the multi­
ethnicity of the Japanese empire, this study has not attempted to portray
prewar Japan as a multicultural empire, as the United States is now con-
sidered to be. As is well known, it is not that racism and racial issues are
less important in multiethnic societies; rather, given the fact that the multi-
culturalism of the United States has played a role in concealing its racism,
a discussion of the multiplex ethnicity of the Japanese empire will help us

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Kang ∣ Visual Technologies of Imperial Anthropology 783

to reveal the process whereby racial issues arose and were concealed.65 If, as
Naoki Sakai pointed out, the self-­perception of Japan as a mono-­ethnic soci-
ety in the postwar period left the Japanese “not aware of their own racism”66
and thus removed any possibility of discussing the racism that operated in
the prewar era — then I have tried to revisit the issues of race and ethnic-
ity with an approach that foregrounds the multiethnicity of the Japanese
empire alongside its use of visual technology.
Interestingly, Tsuboi once compared the multiethnicity of the Japanese
empire to the anthropological museum: “If you arrive at Hokkaido in the
north, there are Ainu people who are famous for being hairy; if you reach
the Ryky in the south, there are also Okinawans who treasured jade mar-
bles. . . . Given that there are a great number of materials in the studies of
appearances and physical traits or knowledge and language, it can be said
that we are now located within [an] anthropological museum or anthropo-
logical laboratory.”67 Just as in the museum, it was through visual images
that Tsuboi conceptualized and celebrated the multiplicity of the ethnicities.
For the Japanese empire in the early twentieth century, emerging as full-­
blown empire with a number of the colonies outside its territory, this praise
of multiethnicity was necessary not only to persuade its own citizens that the
expanding sphere was a positive development but also to incorporate all the
resources that the colonies would bring. As such, these multiplex and multi-
cultural aspects of the museum of the Japanese empire were glorified solely
from the perspective of the museum viewer, not from the side of the exhib-
ited. Tomiya Ichir cuts to the heart of the power dynamics of exhibition
when he asks, in response to Tsuboi’s comments, whether the Japanese were
themselves on display in Tsuboi’s metaphorical museum. Where the Japa-
nese race, during the modern period, had been an object to be observed and
studied by the Western anthropologists such as E. S. Mores and H. Siebold,
in this museum, they are no longer being seen and studied, and thus their
vision is now identified with the gaze from the West toward the other.68 In
other words, the visual technologies of Tsuboi’s multiethnic empire worked
to create a space where all the “others” were embraced and mediated, while
simultaneously allowing Japan to ascend to the powerful role of incorpora-
tor of all the various ethnicities.

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Notes

Completion of this article would have been impossible without the support of the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship. I am also indebted to Paul D.
Barclay, Hyung-­Il Pai, Tomiyama Ichir, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable
comments on earlier drafts. I want to thank Thomas LaMarre for his interest in and sup-
port of the project.
1. Matsuda Kyko, Teikoku no shisen: Hakurankai to ibunka hysh (The Gaze of the Empire:
Expositions and the Representation of the Other Culture) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kbunkan,
2003), 143.
2. The TAA was at first titled Jinruigaku No Tomo (Friends of Anthropology), but with
the launch in 1886 of its official journal, Jinrui gakkai hkoku (Anthropological Society
Bulletin) — later renamed Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi (Journal of the Anthropology Society of
Tokyo) — the group became an official anthropological institution. Eiji Oguma, A Genealogy
of “Japanese” Self-­images, trans. David Askew (Melbourne: Pacific, 2002), 7 – 9.
3. Torii Ryz is especially well known for his use of photographs in his fieldwork. See Hyung
Il Pai, “Capturing Visions of Japan’s Prehistoric Past: Torii Ryz’s Field Photographs of
‘Primitive’ Races and Lost Civilizations (1896 – 1915),” in Looking Modern: East Asian Visual
Culture from Treaty Ports to World War II, ed. Jennifer Purtle and Hans Bjarne Thom-
sen (Chicago: Art Media Resources, University of Chicago, 2009), 265 – 93; Ka F. Wong,
“Entanglements of Ethnographic Images: Torii Ryz’s Photographic Record of Taiwan
Aborigines (1896 – 1900),” Japanese Studies 24, no. 3 (2004): 283 – 99. In Japanese, see Komei
Sasaki, ed., Minzoku gaku no senkakusha Torii Ryz’ no mita Ajia (Suita-­shi: Kokuritsu
Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan, 1993); Torii Ryz, Kanpan ni kizamareta sekai (Tokyo:
Tokyo Daigaku Sogo Kenky Shiryokan, 1991).
4. See Sunami Sichiro, “Mono wo zuka suru koto: Zukakijutsu to sono kyiku kara mita
nihon jinruigakushi to shokumichi,” in Nihon no jinruigaku: Shokuminchi shugi, ibunka
kenky, gakujutsu chsa no rekishi, ed. Yamaji Katsuhiko (Nishinomiya: Kansei Gakuin
Daigaku Shuppankai, 2011), 416 – 21.
5. David Green, “Veins of Resemblance: Photography and Eugenics,” Oxford Art Journal 7, no.
2 (1985): 3 – 4.
6. Oguma, Genealogy, 53 – 58. See also Sakano Tru, Teikoku Nihon to jinrui gakusha:
1884 – 1952-­nen (Tokyo: Keis Shob, 2005).
7. Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 6.
8. Ibid., 13.
9. Tsuboi Shgor, “ ‘Kasane tori shashin’ no jutsu wo riyshitaru kansho” (“A Physiognomic
Judgment Using Composite Photographs”), Ty gakugei zasshi 11, no. 157 (1894): 542 – 52.
10. Sakano, Teikoku Nihon, 48.
11. See also Tsuboi Shgor, “Kasane shashin’no jinruigaku j no y,” Tokyo Jinrui gakkai
zasshi (Journal of the Anthropology Society of Tokyo) 19, no. 222 (1904): 461 – 64.

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Kang ∣ Visual Technologies of Imperial Anthropology 785

12. Green, “Veins,” 11. See also Francis Galton, “Composite Portraits,” Journal of the Anthropol-
ogy Institution 8 (1878): 134.
13. Tsuboi Shgor, “Kumita shashin no wa” (“Note on Composite Photography”), Tokyo Jinrui-
gakkai zasshi 2, no. 10 (1886): 31 – 35.
14. Tsuboi, “Kasane tori shashin,” 550 – 51.
15. Tsuboi, “Kasane shashin’no jinruigaku,” 463.
16. Tsuboi, “Kumita,” 33.
17. Allan Sekula, “The Body and the Archive,” October 39 (1986): 44.
18. Ibid., 48.
19. Adolphe Quetelet, A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties, trans. R. Knox
(Edinburgh: Chambers, 1842), 6; cited in Sekula, “Body,” 20.
20. Francis Galton, “Composite Portraits, Made by Combining Those of Many Different Per-
sons into a Single Resultant Figure,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland 8 (1879): 133 – 44.
21. Tsuboi, “ ‘Kasane tori shashin,’ ” 549 – 50.
22. Ibid.
23. Tsuboi, “Kumita,” 33.
24. This part is particularly inspired by Professor Thomas LaMarre’s suggestion.
25. Tsuboi Shgor, “Pari tsshin” (“Correspondence from Paris”), Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi 4,
no. 43 (1889): 524.
26. “Zapp” (“Miscellanies”), Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi 19, no. 219 (1904): 369.
27. Tsuboi had a great interest in popularizing the newly emerging discipline of anthropology
in Japan at the time. See Sakano, Teikoku Nihon, 31 – 35.
28. Tsuboi Shgor, “Jinruigaku kyshitsu hyhon tenrankai chinretsu mokuroku,” Tokyo Jin-
rui gakkai zasshi 19, no. 219 (1904): 353 – 65.
29. Tsuboi, “Jinruigaku kyshitsu,” 337 – 38.
30. Matsuda Kyko, “Seiki tenkankini okeru ‘Jinsh’ wo kataruti – jinruigakusha Tsuboi
Shgoro no jinsh gainen wo megute,” Nihon shisshi kenkyukai kaih 16 (1998): 12 – 13. See
also Sekiguchi Yoshihiko, “Kindai nihon jinruigaku to ainu/koropokkuru jinsh hysh:
Tsuboi Shgoro no jinsh gainen no kent kara,” in Nihon no jinruigaku: Shokuminchi shugi,
ibunka kenky, gakujutsu chsa no rekishi, ed. Yamaji Katsuhiko (Nishinomiya: Kansei
Gakuin Daigaku Shuppankai, 2011), 217 – 18. Sekiguchi explains that Tsuboi, moving away
from the purposeful methods of Western anthropology, used more of a synthetic analysis,
based on multiple elements.
31. Tsuboi, “Jinruigaku kyshitsu,” 339.
32. Elizabeth Edwards, “The Image as Anthropological Document: Photographic ‘Types’: The
Pursuit of Method?,” Visual Anthropology 3, nos. 2 – 3 (1990): 240.
33. Elizabeth Edwards, introduction to Anthropology and Photography: 1860 – 1920 (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press in association with the Royal Anthropological Institute, London,
1992), 7.

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34. Ibid.
35. Tsuboi, “Jinruigaku kyshitsu,” 337 – 38.
36. Matsuda, Teikoku no shisen, 162 – 63.
37. Tsuboi, “Jinruigaku kyshitsu,” 337.
38. See also Matsuda, Teikoku no shisen, 162 – 63. About the political aspect of allochronic visual
discourse within a Taiwanese context, see Paul D. Barclay, “Peddling Postcards and Selling
Empire: Image-­Making in Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule,” Japanese Studies 30, no.
1 (2010): 81 – 110.
39. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1983), 32.
40. See Sait Tadashi et al., eds., Nihon kkogaku sensh, vol. 2, 1971 (Tky: Tsukiji Shokan,
1971 – 86), 158 – 85.
41. The Colonial Exposition was supposed to take place in September 1912 in Tokyo, but due to
the sudden death of the Meiji emperor on July 30, it was held from October 1 to November
30 instead.
42. Yamaji Katsuhiko, Kindai nihon no shokuminchi hakurankai (Tokyo: Fukyosha, 2008), 52.
43. “Takushoku hakurankai,” Fzoku gah (Customs and Manners Illustrated), no. 439 (1912): 12.
44. Takushoku hakurankai jimu hkoku (Official Report of the Colonial Exposition) (Tokyo:
Takushoku hakurankai zanmu toriatsukaijo, 1913), hereafter Official Report, 45. However,
detailed explanations about displays of the entire exhibition do not exist today.
45. The Anthropology Pavilion of the Fifth National Industrial Exposition, held in Osaka,
was the first exhibit organized by the TAA. The details of how the pavilion was set up are
known today through Akira Matsumura, “Osaka no Jinruikan,” Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi
18, no. 205 (1903): 289 – 92. For general information about the Osaka Fifth National Exhibi-
tion, see It Mamiko, Meiji nihon to Bankoku hakurankai (Tky: Yoshikawa Kbunkan,
2008), ch. 3; and Matsuda Kyk, Teikoku no shisen: Hakurankai to ibunkahysh (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 2003), chs. 4 and 5. See also Sakamoto Hiroko, “Chgoku minzo-
kushugi no shinwa — Shinkaron, jinshukan, hakurankai jiken,” Shis 849 (1995): 61 – 84.
46. The living display of native villages had been popular in international fairs. A number of
the Expositions Universelles held in Paris throughout the 1890s and 1900s brought living
people for displays, and thus the native village became a sort of genre in ethnographic dis-
plays in Europe and the United States. According to Anne Maxwell, the aim of human dis-
plays was initially “to make the world appear measurable and knowable by offering displays
that invoked the scientific, philosophical and moral discourses of imperialism and portrayed
every aspect of the empire as realistically as possible.” Anne Maxwell, Colonial Photography
and Exhibitions: Representations of the “Native” and the Making of European Identities (Lon-
don: Leicester University Press, 1999), 19; see also Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair:
Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876 – 1916 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984), ch. 6.

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47. Tsuboi, “Pari tsshin,” 524.

48. Official Report, 63.
49. Ibid.
50. See Matsuda, Teikoku no shisen, chs. 4 and 5.
51. On the confusion and distinction between the scientific, anthropological display of human
beings and the popular use of native villages for entertainment, see Annie E. Coombes,
Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian
and Edwardian England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 84 – 108.
52. “Takushoku hakurankai kaijo,” Tokyo Asaihi shinbun, October 2, 1912.
53. Official Report, 240; see also Yamaji, Kindai Nihon, 57.
54. Tsuboi’s lecture was published in the Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi in 1914. See Tsuboi Shgor,
“Meijinendai to nihonhanto naino jinsh” (“Diverse Races under the Roof of the Japanese
Empire within the Colonial Exposition”), Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi 29, no. 1 (1914): 1 – 12.
55. This refers to a structure whose pillars are embedded directly into the ground.
56. Tsuboi, “Meijirendaito,” 4.
57. Ibid., 8. According to Barclay, Han Taiwanese made up 91 percent of the population, but
here the indigenous minority alone was exhibited as a representative of the entire Taiwanese
race. To borrow from Barclay, this “overrepresentation” is an “allochronic” attempt. See
Barclay, “Peddling Postcards,” 86 – 87.
58. Tsuboi, “Meijirendai to,” 19 – 20.
59. Tsuboi Shgor, “Teikoku hanto uchi no jinshu,” Taiy (Sun) 12, no. 13 (1906): 161.
60. Official Report, 71.
61. Ibid., 71 – 74.
62. Timothy Mitchell, “Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order,” in Colonialism and Culture,
ed. Nicholas B. Dirks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 305.
63. Masanori Konishi, “Takushoku hakurankai ni okeru jinshu tenji to tokyo jinrui gakkai no
yakuwari ni tsuite,” Kokugakuin daigaku hakubutsukan kiyo 29 (2004): 8 – 9.
64. Ibid. See also Tomiyama Ichir, “Kokumin no tanj to ‘Nihon jinshu,’ ” Shis 845, no. 41
(1994): 39. Tomiyama discusses how, in Japanese anthropology, other ethnicities become
objects to be viewed and surveyed distinctively in terms of the self-­identity of the Japanese
and how different/similar they were from/to the Japanese.
65. Naoki Sakai, “Introduction: Nationality and the Politics of the ‘Mother Tongue,’ ” in Decon-
structing Nationality, ed. Naoki Sakai, Brett de Bary, and Iyotani Toshio (Ithaca, NY: East
Asia Program, Cornell University, 2005), 31 – 33.
66. Ibid., 31. See also Naoki Sakai, “Darega ajiajinnanoka,” Sekai, no. 683 (2001): 234 – 48.
67. Tsuboi Shgor, “Jinruigaku tkon no arisama: Dai ippen,” Tokyo Jinrui gakkai zasshi 2, no.
18 (1887): 274.
68. Tomiyama Ichir, Bryoku no yokan: Iha fuy ni okeru kiki no mondai (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 2002), 98.

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