Abstract

In his exploration of wartime and postwar Japan Shunsuke Tsurumi made interesting use of the reproducible image of a simple Japanese dish, known as oyako donburi. If a reproducible image of such a delectable Japanese dish could actually take on material form surely it would fall under copyright protection, guaranteeing that all usages serve only the interests of the proprietor. In fact, oyako donburi had a very particular application for enforcers of the Japanese “Maintenance of Public Order Act of 1928”, who used the test of one’s love for a mother to coerce excessively cosmopolitan “New Men” of the competitive examination system into complying, or enacting tenkō, to the nationalist government’s growingly jingoistic policies. David Brewer examined a similar test, one involving securing copyright proprietorship for William Hogarth over his own works, works increasingly seen as emblematic of an eighteenth-century notion of “English-ness”. This test was the 1734 Engraver’s Act, or Hogarth’s Act. Despite the historical and contextual distance interesting parallels between these two tests remain unexplored, pointing to the fundamental manner reproductions, both physical and mental, are not only held by cultural authorities but also contestable in the marketplace.