Travels by Ship and Rickshaw, from Ōkawa Michihisa (attrib.), Kisogawa kikō
(Picturesque Journal on the Survey of Kisogawa), 5–6 May 1873
From 1873 to 1876, a group of Japanese professionals, trained in the science of triangulation by experts from Scotland, set out to survey three regions of their country and recorded their experiences in a set of pictorial diaries that have been carefully preserved at Skaill House in Orkney.
By turns serious and humorous, these “Picturesque Journals” throw fascinating light not just on Meiji-era scientific cartography but also on early encounters between young, sophisticated city-dwellers and the scenery and people of rural Japan.
Joe Earle was invited to study these beautifully illustrated journals and will present his findings in Orkney, where he is continuing his research, paying special attention to role of the journals’ original owner Henry Scharbau (grandfather of the 11th Laird of Breckness), a German-Scottish hydrographer who conducted several surveys in Japan from 1874 to 1876.
He will be joined by Colin David McVean Houston, whose ancestor Colin Alexander McVean played a key role as one of the foreign experts in Meiji Japan.
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Presented in partnership with Orkney japan Association and Skaill House with support from Orkney Islands Council Culture Fund, Japan Society of Scotland and several donors who wish to remain anonymous.
Joe Earle was Director of Japan Society Gallery in New York until 2012 and has held leadership positions in Asian art departments at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Over the past 40 years he has curated, organized, or written catalogues for numerous exhibitions of contemporary Japanese art, craft, and design, including ‘Japan Style’ (London, 1980), ‘Japanese Ceramics Today’ (the Kikuchi Collection, London, 1983), ‘The Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art’ (London, 1986), ‘Visions of Japan’ (London, 1991), ‘Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan (Wilmington Del. and Portland Ore., 1999 and 2002), ‘Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century’ (Boston and New York, 2005 and 2006), ‘New Bamboo’ (New York, 2008), ‘Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design’, (New York, 2009), ‘Bye Bye Kitty!!!: Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art’ (New York, 2011), ‘Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers’ (New York, 2011), ‘New Forms, New Voices: Japanese Ceramics from the Gitter-Yelen Collection’ (New Orleans, 2017). He is now based in London, and has recently completed a catalogue of 323 works of Japanese bamboo art in the Naej Collection and a translation of The Soul of Gold by Living National Treasure metalworker Ōsumi Yukie.
Colin Houston has worked in tourism in Scotland for over 37 years. He is currently an international tourism consultant and co-founder of Aurora Spirit Distillery, situated in Arctic Norway. Colin has a keen interest in genealogy and tracing his family history, one particular fascination is in his Great-Grandfather, Colin Alexander McVean, who spent 8 years in Japan. When Colin’s aunt died in 1998 he discovered boxes of diaries, papers and also a unique photo album from his Great -Grandfathers time in Japan. With assistance Colin has set about transcribing and digitising much of this archive material and also exploring the early Meiji period and the assistance of many Scottish engineers. To date some 14,000 scans have been made of documents and letters and the 140 unique photographs from the period have been restored and digitised.
