Monika Hinkel, a specialist in Japanese art, will be speaking to us on "Constructing Tokugawa Authority: Castles, Temples, and Shogunal Visual Culture."If you have not yet let me know you would like to attend, there is still time.

Event details:

• Date: Saturday, 20th June 2026
  
• Time: 13:30 pm
  
• Format: Zoom
  

This talk examines the iconographies of shogunal authority in early modern Japan through the architecture, painting, and ceremonial landscapes of the Edo period (1603–1868). From the monumental interiors of Edo, Nijō, and Nagoya castles, adorned with Kanō school paintings, to the carefully choreographed spaces of daimyō (feudal lord) gardens, the Tokugawa regime cultivated a powerful language of prestige, hierarchy, and legitimacy. The lecture also considers the role of official shogunal temples in Edo and culminates at Nikkō, where the mausolea of the Tokugawa shoguns fused political authority with sacred memory. Together, these sites reveal how visual culture functioned not merely as decoration but as an enduring instrument of governance and shogunal power.

About the presenter:

Monika Hinkel is a specialist in Japanese art and a convenor and lecturer on the SOAS–Alphawood Asian Art Programme, University of London. She Editor-in-Chief of Andon, the journal of the Society for Japanese Art. From 1997 to 2000, she was Curator of Japanese Art at the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne, and from 2001 to 2004, a guest researcher at Gakushūin University in Tokyo. She received her PhD from the University of Bonn in 2006. Her research focuses on Japanese woodblock prints, particularly the influence of Ukiyo-e on modern and contemporary art, and the development of mokuhanga. In 2024, she curated the special exhibition Yoshida – Three Generations of Japanese Printmaking at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.