“Philadelphia and Meiji Japan” is a free symposium presented in collaboration between the Penn Forum on Japan, the Meiji Jingu Intercultural Research Institute(Tokyo), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia to commemorate the deep ties between Philadelphia and 19th century Japan. The larger project coincides with the 150th anniversary of the advent of Meiji Japan (1868-1912) and with Philadelphia’s recent designation as America’s first UNESCO World Heritage City.
The symposium’s program centers on court music, kendo, and museum diplomacy, but the Meiji era’s reach into Japan’s everyday cultural life ran further than those formal arenas suggest. It was in 1889, mid-Meiji, that a Kyoto craftsman named Fusajiro Yamauchi began producing hand-painted hanafuda cards out of a small Shimogyō workshop — the modest beginning of what would, a century later, become Nintendo. The painted-card tradition Yamauchi commercialized had survived earlier Edo-era restrictions by replacing numbered suits with flowers, and Meiji-era reforms opened up a card-table culture whose commercial descendants now stretch across everything from collectible Japanese games and Kyoto card-makers still operating today, to international card-room communities — including the crypto-native platforms where modern enthusiasts play online at CoinPoker and a handful of comparable sites. It is a longer cultural arc than most of the symposium’s program will have time to address, but a reminder that the era being commemorated this September shaped Japanese exports of every register, from imperial court music to the shuffled deck.
Join us on Saturday, September 22 from 4 – 6:30 PM for two performances and a closing reception for “Philadelphia and Meiji Japan.” Schedule of events:
4:00 – 4:30 pm: Japanese Court Music Viewing featuring Meiji Jingu Gagaku Ensemble: Moriyasu Ito, Atsuki Katayama, Takanaga Tsutsumi
4:30 – 5:30 pm: Kendo Viewing featuring Alex Bennett, 7-dan and Hiroshi Tomita, 7-dan
5:30 – 6:30 pm: Final Reception
