Reports on Conferences and Publications by Year

September 14-December 8, 2013

Exhibition: Soul of Meiji – Edward Sylvester Morse, His Day-by-Day with Kind-Hearted People

Conducted by National Museum of Japanese History (Okubo, "Overseas Locations Survey Team (General Survey)")

Venue: The Edo-Tokyo Museum

Organizers: The Edo-Tokyo Museum and Asahi Shimbun Company

Partners: National Institutes for the Humanities Inter-University Research Institute Corporation, National Museum of Japanese History, Ota City Local History Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Coordinators: Jun'ichi Kobayashi and Shuko Koyama (Okubo, "Overseas Locations Survey Team (General Survey)", National Museum of Japanese History)

Description:

The exhibition "Soul of Meiji – Edward Sylvester Morse, His Day-by-Day with Kind-Hearted People" was organized to share the project's findings to date with the general public. The Morse Collection is a large and diverse collection consisting of artifacts, sketches, photographic glass plates and other items that reveal day-to-day life among ordinary Japanese from the Bakumatsu to Meiji periods. The exhibition presents select items from the Morse Collection together with observations recorded by Morse himself.

More than 80,000 visitors attended the exhibition and it was mentioned widely in various media, including newspapers, television, and magazines. The exhibition was approached as an interim report en route to the creation of the database and as a means of reaching a broad public audience in order to give tangible form to the project's significance and call attention to its importance.

(Text: Kobayashi)


Soul of Meiji – Edward Sylvester Morse, His Day-by-Day with Kind-Hearted People exhibition catalog