“The Sole Guardians of the Art Inheritance of Asia”: Japan and China at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair

On a frigid winter night in St. Louis in 1903, a man named Blackmer sat in a deep, brocade-covered chair sipping brandy and puffing on a thick cigar in front of a crackling fire. He was an experienced exposition planner who had gained his reputation at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and his hosts were entrepreneurs interested in the operation of lucrative concessions at the upcoming St. Louis World’s Fair. A “Chinese Concession [would be] a failure,” Blackmer asserted. “People won’t go. [It would be] the most uninteresting thing I’ve ever seen.” A Japanese concession, he explained, “would be a winner . . . because the interest of the world is centered on Japan.”1 Blackmer was right. The Japanese had the attention of the world and earned bemused respect both on and off the St. Louis fairgrounds. They transformed their country into a military industrial power complete with an expansionist agenda and mastered the Western mode of exhibitionary