![]() ![]() Lavery is deliberate in her queering of the archive, which encompasses bonsais, paper, torture porn cinema, haikus, and swords, a wide range of Japanese signifiers that construct an extensive, though at times seemingly scattershot, understanding of Japan in the West. In this expansive contemplation of otherness, Quaint, Exquisite looks to reorient the discourse on Japanism, to consider how overlooked objects, interstitial identities, and various forms of marginalia participated in the Victorian manufacture of Japan. Building on Reed’s contention that sexual nonconformity can illuminate and inform an understanding of racial and cultural alterity, Lavery positions Japan as a signifier of broader notions of queerness within the Victorian context. ![]() Lavery looks to the trappings of Orientalism as both the focus and foil for her argument: the artists and authors she considers all conjure a vision of Japan that is civilized, though marginalized, both exquisite and eccentric, and, within the British context, also consistently queer. ![]() Lavery’s project is part of a constellation of compelling new scholarship on Japanism produced over the past five years, including Christopher Reed’s Bachelor Japanists: Japanese Aesthetics and Western Masculinities and Elizabeth Emery’s Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France (1852–1914). All three books reconsider the role gender and sexuality play in the formulation of late nineteenth-century Japanism, adding necessary nuance to a topic often plagued by essentialist concerns with the Western male ‘discovery’ of Japanese genius. Lavery’s recent book, Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan, signals a notable theoretical and methodological shift in the study of Victorian Japanism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan. ![]()
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