A Mode of Perception of Royal Spectacles:

From the Perspective of Japanese Monarchs in the Early 20th Century

Abstract

How did people in modern monarchies view or consume visual images of royal festivals transformed by industrial capitalism into commercialized spectacles? How did these visual experiences influence the makeup of people's national identities or mentalities as consumers? The aim of this paper, which takes as a case study the spectacles of the Japanese monarchy in the early 20th century, is to answer these questions from a sociohistorical viewpoint, and to reconsider the historical and social significance of spectacles of the monarchy at festivals as popular contemporary collective experiences.

This paper focuses on two points. First, modern Japanese people's visual experience of royal festivals was distinguished by a transient and quantitative demand for commercialized visual images of monarchs or rituals. Second, the expansion of these kinds of visual experiences often resulted in disregard for the national context of royal festivals. By positively identifying these points, this paper proposes that spectacularization of monarch festivals often impeded the development of nationalism.