Japan–British Exhibition
international exposition
The Japan-British Exhibition of 1910 (日英博覧会, Nichi-Ei Hakuran-kai) took place at White City, London, from 14 May 1910 to 29 October 1910. It was the largest international exposition that the Empire of Japan had ever participated in. The exhibition was driven by the Japanese government's desire to shake off disparaging views of Japan in the Western world, legitimize Japan's rising prestige as an imperial power in Asia, and to generally develop a more favorable public image in the West following the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
Japan also hoped that the display of manufactured products would lead to increased Japanese trade with Britain. The formal annexation of Korea occurred during the exhibition in August 1910, and was celebrated with a lantern procession on the site. Through the exhibition and its colonial displays, Japan thus made a successful effort to display its new status as a great power by emphasizing its position as an ostensibly 'civilized nation' and an 'efficient colonial administrator' in a manner that paralleled Western empires.
Background
Hosting an international exhibition around the turn of the 20th century was a means for a rising empire like Japan to demonstrate it was a world power, showcasing its industrial might, prestige and hegemony, similarly to the 1850 Great Exhibition in Britain and the United States' hosting of the 1904 St Louis World's Fair. There had been earlier attempts prior to the Japan-Britain Exhibition, such as in 1890, to celebrate Japan's 2550th year of establishment. This was however, eventually shelved due to financial and political considerations as Japan was still trying to renegotiate its unequal treaties with the Western powers. After the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, there was yet another suggestion for an exhibition to be held in Tokyo.
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This entry incorporates text from “Japan–British Exhibition” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.