Exhibitionist Japan

Angus Lockyer's Exhibitionist Japan traces more than 1,300 industrial, regional, and local exhibitions across 150 years to show how Japan used exhibitions as catalysts for modernization.

The book examines the varied actors—governments, exhibitors, organizers, and visitors—and their different investments and expectations in expos.

Lockyer argues that although exhibitions rarely fully achieved stated aims, they were repeatedly useful instruments for infrastructure, economic promotion, and identity formation.

The study situates Japanese practices within global exhibitionary traditions and shows how Japan's model was later adopted elsewhere.

It combines archival anecdotes, case studies from the Meiji through the postwar era, and analysis of continuity and change across imperial, wartime, and postwar expositions.