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‘Not So Japan-Easy’

The British Reception of Japanese Dress in the Late Nineteenth Century

Bibliographic Data

ID19188191
AuthorsElizabeth Kramer (0000-0001-6488-0025, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume44
Issue1
Pages3-24
Publication date2013-05-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTextile History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0040-4969 • E-ISSN: 1743-2952
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1179/0040496913z.00000000017
OpenAlexW1988295259
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited12

This article examines British responses to changes in Japanese dress during the Victorian period. The disapproval of the Japanese adoption of European clothing is shown to be linked to British anxieties regarding their political relationship and cultural engagement with Japan. The ways in which the kimono served as a touchstone for the British understanding of the country, representing an unchanging and romanticised view of the cultural identity of its Japanese wearer, is also explored. However, the kimono did not only signal ‘Japaneseness’, but was assimilated in British fashion as well. This article further explores how the kimono was related to issues of late nineteenth-century dress reform in Britain as well as to British unease about the cultural changes that they themselves had experienced in the wake of industrialisation

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Clothing · Identity (music) · Industrialisation · Period (music) · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law

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  • Introduction

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  • A handbook for travellers in Japan

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  • Splitting Hairs

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Citations per year0.56
Citation span2017 - 2025 (9)
Highly citedNo

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