A three-year collaboration between faculty and students in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL), scholars in Japan, and the Honolulu Museum of Art has borne fruit: a bilingual cross-platform publication that focuses on 18th century scrolls recently discovered inside a collection at the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA).
Nestled within the Lane Collection, an archive curated by the late art dealer and UH Mānoa alumnus Richard Douglas Lane, lay a two-scroll set known as the Jūban Mushi-awase, or A Match of Crickets in Ten Rounds of Verse and Image.
“These scrolls depict a literary event in 1782 Edo (Tokyo), where poets and painters gathered to explore the relative virtues of two humble insects—the bell cricket and the pine cricket,” said Robert Huey, a UH Mānoa EALL professor emeritus. “In East Asian literature, these insects have long symbolized the sadness of autumn and the pain of separation.”
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Seeds of collaboration
The project’s seeds were planted in 2020, when EALL scholars Huey, Assistant Professor Andre Haag, PhD students Hilson Reidpath, Tanya Barnett and alumna Francesa Pizarro teamed up with researchers in Japan to explore the rare scroll set.
“Many of the Japanese scholars we were collaborating with were specialists in these 18th century literary figures and the forms of poetry we were examining,” said Barnett, a PhD candidate who specializes in modern Japanese literature. “The breadth of their knowledge was astounding and a real privilege to learn from.”
Minami Kiyoe, who oversees the Lane Collection at the museum, works closely with the UH and Japan research teams.
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Showcasing scholarly perspectives
Thanks to a generous grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the teams officially embarked on their collaborative journey in 2021. This spring, their efforts culminated in the publication of bilingual book The Heian Cultural Revival in Edo: Reading the Jūban Mushi-awase Scrolls in the Honolulu Museum’s Lane Collection.
The book features a transcription of the original text, a modern Japanese translation and a full English translation. In addition, all the team members wrote essays or research papers related to some aspect of the work.
“These elements together fulfilled one of the goals of the project, which was to truly showcase distinct approaches taken to the same material by Japanese and American scholars,” said Huey.
On display
This April, HoMA included the scrolls in the exhibit “Miyabi: Renaissance of Court Culture.” The exhibit runs through July 28.
For more go to the EALL website.
All images of paintings in this article are from the Collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Purchase, Richard Lane Collection, 2003 (TD 2011-23-415).
