“Furnishing the Modern Metropolitan”

Teasley, Sarah. “Furnishing the Modern Metropolitan: Moriya Nobuo’s Designs for Domestic Interiors, 1922-1927.” Design issues, vol. 19, MIT Press, 2003.doi:10.1162/074793603322545064.

Sarah Teasley’s Furnishing the Modern Metropolitan Analyzes the relationship between Modernization, interior design, and The Japan/West dichotomy during the Meiji restoration. She does this by analyzing two key points in Moriya Nobuo’s career – Small Interior Art and Kinome-Sha – Through the lens of the Japanese and Western aesthetic dichotomies and the working class/upper-class dichotomy.

Nobuo’s Small Interior Art was an exhibition consisting of three model rooms; A “sleeping beauty” bedroom, a study, and a dining room, all designed with artistic excellence, modern ideals, and utility in mind. All three of these rooms utilized varying levels of Japanese, Western, and “other” Asian influence, fusing Euro/American, modern furniture with Japanese and Asian prints and varnishes. This was a reversal of the Japonisme movement we learned about in class and a contradiction to the Japan/West dichotomy that Teasley mentioned earlier in the article and is common among scholars of the Meiji restoration. The pictures of the room that Teasley provided were in black and white, so it was difficult for me to see the Japanese and Asian details (especially the Red Varnished dining room furniture), which made the Western form of the furniture (chairs, beds, desks, etc.) seem much more prominent than her writing suggested. That being said, if I were to see the works in their original form, I’m sure I would have better understood her writing.

Kinome-sha, on the other hand, was a furniture company designed to make modern Western furniture more accessible to the working class. Unlike the furniture featured in Small Interior Art, this furniture was designed mainly for utility purposes, being easy to manufacture and compatible with features in Japanese-style homes (like Tatami floors), making the furniture inexpensive and accessible to people who could not upgrade their homes to a more modern Western style. Since this furniture relied less on fine artistic details, it was easier for me to see what Teasley was writing about, especially with more prominent features like sliders on the bottoms of the chairs designed to prevent scuffing on tatami floors.

Overall, I think that Teasley provides a compelling argument against the Japan/West dichotomy that is commonly used and believed in analyses of the Meiji restoration. I also find her analysis of class dynamics in modernity compelling – her conclusion that artistry and fine craftsmanship are an aspect of modernity solely available to the rich forces us to consider who can access the benefits of modernity and who gets left behind by efforts towards progress.