The Japan Pavilions at the New York World's Fairs
in 1939-1940 and 1964-1965
in 1939-1940 and 1964-1965
The Japan Pavilions at the New York World's Fairs
in 1939-1940 and 1964-1965
Japan and New York both got into the expo game early. In the wake of the first Great Exhibition in London in 1851, there was a small exhibition in Bryant Park in New York in 1853. It included a few Japanese exhibits, some provided by the Dutch, others recovered from a shipwrecked junk. Thereafter, however, their enthusiasm for expos diverged.
Following its exposure to exhibitions in Europe in the 1860s, the new Japanese government was assiduous in using exhibitions both at home and abroad, to promote industry and exports and to advertise its growing empire. New York, by contrast, had little need of expos to cement its pre-eminence, with the city growing from nearly 600,000 in 1850 to nearly 7 million in 1930. Come the following decade, though, there were good reasons for both New York and Japan to turn again to an expo.
1876 Philadelphia: The pavilion included a Japanese house and garden, a bazaar, a residence for officials, and a 17,000 square foot display in the Main Exhibition Hall. Public Domain.
1893 Chicago: The Japanese Hō-ō-den Temple Complex at the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893. John George M. Glessner, photographer
1904 St. Louis, Missouri: the Enchanted Garden and a traditional Japanese house. Photograph, 1904. Wellcome Collection.
General motors exhibits 1939 New York World's Fair & Golden Gate International Exposition,
New York’s growth had finally begun to slow in the 1930s, in the wake of immigration restrictions and the Great Depression. The city now sprawled into the outer boroughs, however, and cars were taking to the streets. Both provided an opportunity for Robert Moses to build his power base, in New York and Albany, by transforming the urban landscape, first with parks, then bridges and tunnels.
The "valley of ashes," a sprawling refuse dump located in New York City during the 1920s. The dump was made famous in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby. Today, the area is Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens. New York (N.Y.). Bureau of Engineering Fairchild Aerial Camera Corporation (Photographer) - NYPL Digital Gallery — Catalog ID (B-number): b13985741. Public Domain.
The fair was not a Moses project. Following the success of the Chicago fair of 1933, why not exploit the 150th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration to lift American spirits and the local economy. The fair was also an opportunity to transform what had once been wetlands and become the Corona Ash Dumps into a new public park. Moses thought it was a splendid idea.
Queens Museum Archive.
When it emerged on site in April 1939, the fair marked an ongoing shift in the emphasis of international exhibitions. Until the First World War, they had been showcases of industry and empire, with exhibition halls filled with products and pavilions trumpeting national achievement in national pavilions. Now, agriculture and industry were giving way to science and technology, imperial achievement to corporate ambition, and historical architecture to modernist experiment.
Poster created by Joseph Binder (1898-1972) for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Public Domain.
Original Ticket to 1940 New York Worlds Fair. Public Domain.
At the centre of the site were the modernist symbols of the fair, the Trylon and Perisphere, connected by the world’s longest escalator. The Perisphere housed Democracity, a diorama depicting the “city of the future.” The vision was underlined by the industrial and corporate pavilions close by, not least Futurama, another model city, in the General Motors pavilion, and General Electric’s suggestions for the home of tomorrow.
General Development Plan, Flushing Meadow Park, ca. 1936. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Map of the 1939 World's Fair in New York that shows the location of Exhibits and access to the Fair by Train, Bus, and Automobile. Public Domain.
Foreign countries were further away. Twenty national pavilions clustered around the Lagoon of Nations, while another forty countries and colonies found space in the Hall of Nations, on either side of the Court of Peace. Japan exploited both.
New York Post, 1937. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
Come the late 1930s, Japan was facing Communist resistance in rural China and increasing hostility from the West. By 1938, however, the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression was working hard to convince America to stop arming Japan. By the same token, the New York and San Francisco world’s fairs, both being planned for the following year, were an opportunity to present its case. Japan was the only foreign country to build its own pavilion at both.
It followed a tried and trusted strategy, dividing its exhibits and their argument in two. The Japanese pavilion in New York, like almost all of its predecessors, used historical architecture to frame a story of timeless tradition and international amity. The pavilion itself was modelled on the Ise Shrine, “the purest expression of Japanese architecture.” The Grand Hall included copper-coloured, silk-
covered walls, and the largest lacquer screen ever made, with a copy of Ogata Kōrin’s irises on one side and a world map, centered on the Pacific, on the other. The Diplomatic Room displayed the Morse telegraph key presented by Perry in 1854, a reproduction of the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce, and a replica of the Liberty Bell made of silver and “thousands of perfectly formed, cultured pearls.”
Special Issue of Japanese-American Review for the fair. Queen Museum.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Japan Participation - Two women in traditional dress" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1935 - 1945.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Japan Participation - Kaname Wakasugi (Commissioner General) and Grover Whalen sign contract" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1935 - 1945. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a85a2b70-c545-012f-574b-58d385a7bc34
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Japan Participation - Building - Exterior" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1935 - 1945. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b91a6f00-c545-012f-e0ae-58d385a7bc34
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Japan Participation - Building - Construction - Exterior" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1935 - 1945.
The pacific message of the pavilion was underlined by official publicity efforts. The Japanese commissioners suggested that American newspapers might want to introduce the pavilion on their “woman’s page.” Its “pretty tea ceremonies and artistic flower arrangements” would present “a particular appeal to women fair visitors.” Japan Day, on June 2nd, saw the arrival of one Tsukimoto Akiko, in the role of “Miss Japan.” She brought with her a flame of friendship, lit from the “1500-year-old sacred fires of Izumo shrine,” which had been consecrated in Tokyo, flown across the Pacific, then reconsecrated in San Francisco and again in Los Angeles. She presented it to the fair’s president of the fair, before it was “enshrined” near the entrance to the pavilion. The day ended with a command performance of the “Grand Cherry Show” by the forty “performers (all girls)” of the “Takarazuka Theatrical Chain Corporation.”
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
The commissioners were eager also to exhibit Japan’s modern achievements, but to show how these had emerged organically from the country’s past. In the pavilion, therefore, the Silk Room suggested that modern industry, too, served traditional ends.
A “miniature factory in which eternities of silken strands are spun from cocoons” provided the raw material for traditional kimono and noh costumes. In the Hall of Nations a massive bronze statue of a workman pouring molten steel showed “a nation at work building a new and better structure upon the foundation of the old.”
Bauhaus-trained Yamawaki Iwao had designed photo-murals to chart the country’s recent progress in everything from aeronautic engineering to education and fishery. But the largest photo-mural in the exhibit and the world, 27 feet high and 108 feet wide, was one of Mt Fuji.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
News paper article Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
Advertisement for Silk. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
Japan was one of many attractions on site, modest next to larger, more assertive national pavilions, and paling next to the consumer goods that pointed to the world of tomorrow. Publicity materials underlined its “incomparable landscapes,” “colorful” traditions, and “cordial” relations with the US, as well as the “atmosphere of complete harmony” conjured by the story of silk. It only attracted fleeting mention in the press, however. In 1939, the New York Times highlighted the official emphasis on friendship, but the increasing suspicions of Japanese intentions in East Asia dominated its reporting the following year.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
Construction Permit signed by Matsui, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
Japan Day credentials.
Kozai Collection,
JAANY Archive.
Japanese community on Japan Day. Kozai Collection, JAANY Archive.
Members of the Japanese Association in front of the Japan pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. JAANY Archive.
Stamp featuring a pearl bell and the Japan Pavilion. Kozai Collection, JAANY Archive.
Nor did the fair attract much attention from the Japanese community in New York. It included Yasuo Matsui , who designed the pavilion, in consultation with Uchida Yoshikazu, and birthed an association to support the official efforts at the fair. However, the local Japanese-American newspaper, the Nichibei Jihō, made the fair’s relative importance clear. Before it opened, the fair only featured regularly in the paper’s English supplement, which advertised the plans for the pavilion and garden, and coming attractions, not least the Takarazuka tour. Once things were under way, there was more in Japanese, on the various ceremonies, the pavilion, and the goings-on in the supporter’s association. Come 1940, the paper suggested, the worsening international situation made it important to make a good showing at Japan Day.
For the local Japanese elite, however, the fair was only one of many opportunities to consolidate their social standing and economic interests, which would soon be overtaken by events. American suspicions were confirmed when Japan invaded Indochina a month before the fair finally closed in 1940. Matsui was arrested and interned on Ellis Island on December 8th, 1941, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor the previous day. Five days later, the New York Times noted that the city was going to demolish the pavilion. It had been given as a “monument of peace and good-will” and the Parks Department had intended to turn into a tea room, but now found it “unsatisfactory.”
Dismantling of the Japanese Pavilion, which had been gifted to New York. The New York Times Article:
Japan’s 1940 invasion of Indochina: Public Domain
The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor: Public Domain
Internment of the pavilion’s designer,
Yasuo Matsui (Internment Card): National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Internment of the pavilion’s designer,
Yasuo Matsui (Internment Card): National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Internment of the pavilion’s designer,
Yasuo Matsui (Internment Card): National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Internment of the pavilion’s designer,
Yasuo Matsui (Internment Card): National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
