Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World in 100 Objects
from BBC Radio 4.
In the early 19th Century, Japan had been effectively isolated from the world for almost 200 years.
It had, quite simply, opted out of the community of nations.
Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures describes the secluded and calmly self-contained country in 1853,
just before American gunships forced its harbors to open to the world.
In the middle of the world we float. In the middle of the sea.
The realities remain remote. In the middle of the sea.
Kindles are burning somewhere. Wheels are turning somewhere.
Planes are being built and wars are being won.
Films are being done somewhere out there. Not here.
Here we paint screens. Yes, here we paint screens.
It’s vintage Sondheim caricature.
The dreamy and aesthetic Japanese, serenely painting screens,
while across the seas, the world industrializes and political turmoil rages.
Indeed, it’s an image the Japanese themselves have sometimes wanted to project.
And it’s how the most famous of all Japanese images, Hokusai’s Great Wave, is sometimes read.
This best-selling woodblock print was made around 1830 by the great artist Hokusai,
as one of his series of 36 views of Mount Fuji.
At first sight, it presents a beautiful picture of a deep blue wave curling above the sea,