Yamashiro, imagined home and the aesthetics of Hollywood Japanism: memory contained in architectural space

At the turn of the twentieth century, Boston was intimately involved in America's foundational understanding of Japanese art and culture through key figures like E.S. Morse and Okakura Kazuko. Morse produced one of the most influential written texts on Japanese architecture, Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings (1885), while Okakura, the first curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, prepared the American stage for Japan’s arrival through his books, Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Arts of Japan (1904) and The Book of Tea (1906). These written works spurred curiosity for Japanese aesthetics and critically meditated on the position of Asian art within the sphere of world art. Consequently, this trend led to the development of private Japanese art collections by collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner and John D. Rockefeller, as well as paved the path for major public institutions to curate and display collections of 'Oriental' art such as the renowned collection of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Such literature, collectors and collections became synonymous with Japanism and the history of Asian art in America. ❧ While extensive scholarship has been written on the popularity of Japanism in Boston and other major American cities such as Chicago and New York City, little has been written on its impacts and legacy in Los Angeles. Many scholars fail to specify that ‘Japanism in American culture' as we understand it, is more so connected to 'East Coast American' culture than it is to 'West Coast American' culture. From this lens, this thesis explores this distinction through the Yamashiro (1914), a Japanese-style home residence of Adolph and Eugene Bernheimer built in Hollywood, California. The home serves as a case study to examine the intersections of architecture and cultural identity and the formations of memory contained in space (private and public). The Yamashiro has long stood outside the conventional views of Japanese (and broadly Asian) art and architecture, therefore this study approaches the Yamashiro as a ‘living museum’ representative of a nostalgic era of a unique Hollywood Japanism in Los Angeles. It considers the deeper implications of preserving the home space as a form of memorialization and reexamines the space as an extension of the Oriental Pavilions at the World’s Fairs. This thesis ultimately explores how the Yamashiro constructed certain public perceptions and ideas of Japan and Asia-at-large through the architectural portrayals of Japan in Los Angeles.