Michael North
Michael North (1954), who started his career as assistant curator at the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, has been Professor and Chair of Modern History at the University of Greifswald. He has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Szczecin and of Tartu, was director of the Graduate Program “Contact Area Mare Balticum” from 2000 to 2009, director of the International Graduate Program “Baltic Borderlands” from 2009 to 2019, and is Speaker (i.e., director) of Interdisciplinary Centre for Baltic Sea Region Research (IFZO). His many international publications include: A World History of the Seas. From Harbour to Horizon (London/New York 2021); Globalizing Borderlands Studies in Europe and North America (ed. together with John W.I. Lee, Lincoln 2016); The Baltic: A History (Cambridge MA 2015); Meditating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia (ed. together with Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann); The Expansion of Europe, 1250‐1500 (Manchester 2012); Material Delight and the Joy of Living: Cultural Consumption in Germany in the Age of Enlightenment (Aldershot 2008) and Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven/London 1997).
University of Greifswald
Session
This paper revises the contemporary discussions of borderlands. It suggests to replace borderlands* by boundaries of mind and culture and elucidates this by an example of Japan and the painter Shiba Kōkan.
Shiba Kōkan (1747–1818), a Japanese painter and lover of all things Dutch (Rangaku-sha) grew up in Edo (present-day Tokyo). He started making traditional colored woodblock prints and in the 1770s gradually became interested in Western art techniques. With the help of a friend who could read Dutch, he studied Dutch books and experimented with European techniques. In 1783, Kōkan made the first copperplate etching in Japan. It shows a river landscape with the Mimeguri shrine. The Sumida River is busy with shipping and people are walking along the shore. The technique of copperplate engraving and etching had been brought to Japan by Portuguese Jesuits, but had been lost after the expulsion of the Christians and the Portuguese at the beginning of the 17th century. Kōkan noticed that the Dutch books and the illustrations therein were so realistic that you only needed to observe the image to understand the contents. This showed him the brilliance and superiority of Western art, and he proceeded:
Nobody in Japan knew the method of copperplate etching. I reached back to a book by a Dutchman called Boisu. I consulted it together with Ōtsuki Gentaku (1757–1827), who helped me with the translation of the text. In this way, I could make copperplate images in Japan. In 1783, I made the first etching.
*For borderland definitions see Lee and North(eds.), Globalizing Borderland Studies in Europe and North America (also available in Korean)