Ernest Fenallosa and the Preservation of Japanese Culture

In the late 19th century when many its own citizens failed to appreciate Japan's cultural heritage, Ernest Fenallosa a Boston Orientalist, played a key role in preserving artifacts from Buddhist Temples across Japan. With fellow Harvard man William Sturgis Bigelow and Japanese scholar Okakura Kazuko he tirelessly visited temples and store rooms cataloging and identifying the treasures of the country.

With the end of the Feudal Era many temples had lost their patronage and fell on hard times. In addition, the rapid changes in society led to reactions ranging from apathy in Westernized Japanese to open hostility by reactionary elements who viewed Buddhism as a foreign belief system.

Through his work on preservation and education Fenallosa kept alive centuries of Buddhist artifacts that would have been lost in oblivion or destroyed by fanatics. He helped to found the Imperial Musuem (now the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park) and with his associates collected the foundation of the Japanese section of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

In the West his books on Asian culture opened a window into unknown societies and helped to spread Japanese aesthetics. His writings, some coauthored with poets Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats, covered a variety of arts from Noh drama to the work of the Chinese poet Li Po (Rihaku).