Foreigner for hire Education of walking in tile-roofed country, late 1870s.

Foreigner for hire Education of walking in tile-roofed country, late 1870s.

The foreign experts invited to Japan around 1877 were not mere technology transferees. They were also like mirrors with an outside perspective for Japan as it sought to build a modern nation. Among them, the Italian sculptor Edoardo Chiossone, who was entrusted with banknote engraving and portrait creation, was in a unique position. He came to Japan with advanced Western technology, but the Japanese were not only looking for that technology.

At the time, Japan was in the process of rapidly losing its traditional culture while rushing to Westernization. Shrines, temples, and antiquities were in danger of being destroyed or drained away due to the abolition of Buddhism and the dismantling of the old system. Under these circumstances, the Japanese government began to take an aspect of trying to reaffirm the value of its own culture through Western eyes. The request for Kyosone to accompany them on a survey tour of antiquities throughout the country was a symbolic event.

The trip was not intended to explain Japan to foreign artists. Rather, it was an attempt to have them physically experience the environment of Japan itself. The tiled roofs, the undulations of the mountains and rivers, the layers of time preserved in shrines and temples, and the local customs and signs of life. By walking, seeing, and feeling these things, we tried to make them understand that Japan has a unique history and spirit that is not merely an imitation of the West.

Kyossone changed his position from teacher to learner in this process. Although he was already a technically accomplished craftsman, his exposure to Japanese art and landscape shook the assumptions of his own expression. The actual landscape of Japan differed neither from the classical European composition nor the Chinese ideal landscape, but emerged as a space where life and history were closely intertwined. This understanding is thought to have been reflected in his later portraits and banknote designs, as well as in his collecting activities in his later years.

Viewed in this way, the antiquities research trip was not an event in which Japan used foreigners unilaterally. Rather, Japan wanted foreigners to learn and understand, and through this understanding, to translate the image of their own country to the outside world. Kyosone's silence and affirmation were proof that this translation was going on inside. The experience of walking through the land of tiled roofs was a quiet but decisive education for foreigners to receive Japan not as a technological object, but as a culture with a history and spirit.