At the end of the 19th century, Denmark, like Meiji Japan, was asserting itself as a modern nation. By probing distant coastal communications, this essays seeks to push the edges of our map to the north, to consider the ways in which Japonisme was mobilized in Danish identity making. Beginning with the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain manufactory and its relationship to Japanese imagery and the celebrated Hirado porcelain factory in Kyushu, I explore a rush and pull of the tides, the dissemination first of the technology of the porcelain itself, and then a second overlay of imported meaning through imagery, translated and retranslated. I then briefly consider a single monument that has been a significant feature of the Copenhagen landscape for well over a century: The Japanese Pagoda at Tivoli Gardens. Through these examples, “The Porcelain Edge” investigates the way Japan acts as a lens for Danish self-conceptions, with a powerful double-valence, both of nostalgia for an independent Scandinavian identity and of an exciting and cosmopolitan modernity.
