May 14, 2019
The Workshop: Framing and Platforms: Approaches to using Manchukuo postcards and other Visual Sources
The workshop started a few minutes past ten with 30 participants and eight panelists.
Kuniko Yamada McVey, librarian for the Japanese Collection of the Harvard-Yenching Library made a short introductory remark as a host of the workshop. She informed that the first workshop was held almost exactly three years ago at the same room in May 2016 to introduce the then newly acquired Manchukuo collection of the Yenching Library with the same guest speakers; Professors Toshiko Kishi and Paul Barclays. This second workshop focused on postcards and other visual materials. Yenching library digitized all 2683 postcards in the Manchukuo collection in 2018, which prompted the collaborative project to link with digital postcard collections of Lafayette College and Kyoto University. The common platform is under development and postcards of three institutions are linked with minimum metadata, which allows federated search. Kuniko showed some of Harvard examples where individual metadata needs more information to be discoverable in the federated search of the postcards.
Professor Toshihiko Kishi of Kyoto University made a presentation entitled “The Asahi Newspaper Stock-Photo Vault and its Relation to the Use of the Linked Archive of Asian Post Cards.” He made comparisons between selected images from over 70,000 pre-war stock photos and other contemporary photos and images of "Mongolia" representation in Manchukuo, while situating them in space and time in his analysis. His talk covered following topics: (1) Comparing information on how graphics and pictures are expressed and used internationally; (2) Examining the issue of censorship in visual materials; (3) Performing Statistical Analyses of Visual Works with Time and Space as the Axis―Especially Concerning “Mongol” Representation in Manchukuo.
Professor Paul Barclay of Lafayette College gave a talk entitled “Needs and Opportunities for Historical Research in Prewar Japanese Postcards: The Case for Institutional Cooperation and Digital Archiving.” Referring many years of his experiences creating and maintaining the East Asian Image Collection web site, Professor Barclay pointed visual resources were essential part of many cases in his research and publications including the forthcoming book chapter. Showing many postcards images in range of subjects Professor Barclay also touched on importance of postcard research for understanding Japanese imperialism: how the empire was imagined, sustained, and inhabited, which has been generally overlooked by historians.
After the presentations, 45 minutes Q & A session followed. Topics and questions include; facial recognition technologies that do not meet scholarly needs, Challenges to maintain old and original databases, rich experiences of managing the renowned postcard collection at the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston was shared by its curator, why visual materials are important in Historical studies