Lecture by Miyuki Aoki Girardelli (Istanbul Technical University)
In the years 1904-1905, Japanese architect Ito Chuta (1867-1954) – the first architectural historian of Japan – visited the Ottoman empire during a world trip of 3 years and 3 months. His Anatolian and Middle Eastern voyage went on from Istanbul to historic sites like Ankara, Kütahya, Konya, İzmir, Ephesus, Priene, Crete, Alexandria, Cairo, Jerusalem, Baalbeck, Damascus, Aleppo and Tarsus. While in Istanbul, Chuta was introduced to the Levantine, cosmopolitan milieu around figures like Yamada Torajiro, manager of Nakamura Shoten, the Japanese shop in Beyoğlu, who had close relations to the Palace. During his travel, Chuta benefited from the British-Japanese alliance tied in 1902, which gave him access to the British diplomatic networks and to some Anglo-Protestant institutions. In the Ottoman territory, he visited Robert College (present Boğaziçi University) and the protestant establishments of Tarsus. With the aid of the architect’s original drawings, photographs and travel notes, the lecture will present Chuta’s unconventional perception and vision of the Ottoman world, and of the Levantine society.
Miyuki Aoki Girardelli is an art historian working on the Ottoman, Japanese and French cultural encounters in the 19th and 20th centuries. After undergraduate and graduate studies at Waseda University (Tokyo), she received her PhD from Istanbul Technical University (ITU) in 2004, with the doctoral dissertation “Léon Parvillée: a French Artist on the Threshold of Ottoman Modernization”. Her research work was presented in prestigious international institutions, including MIT, INHA (Paris) and the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Florence). She curated exhibitions like “Three Japanese in Istanbul” (Istanbul Research Institute, 2010), “Japanese Winds in the Ottoman Palaces” (Dolmabahçe Palace Art Gallery, Istanbul, 2013). Her monographic book on Ito Chuta’s travels in the Ottoman Empire (Wedge Inc., 2015) was recently reprinted.
Simultaneous translation in English
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