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This talk provides an examination of how intellectuals in Japan understood the magic lantern as a technology. It starts in the 1770s, when the instrument was first recorded in the country, and focuses on a group of scholars seeking to understand the complex mechanism of the human eye. Until the mid-1770s, this organ had been mostly understood to be a flat, two-dimensional disc. These scholars’ novel idea that the magic lantern represents a basic mechanical model of workings of the eye, and that the projection of a slide onto a screen simulates the way that an image is formed on the retina, became a recurring ophthalmological and technical motif in the nineteenth century. At this intersection between popular and intellectual culture, and between craftsmen and scholars, the very first domestically manufactured magic lanterns in Japan were created.

Dr. Lewis Bremner is a Teaching Associate in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He works on the history of science, technology, media, and visual culture, with a primary focus on Japan. He recently co-edited the volume Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Japan and the Wider World (Brill, 2024), and he is currently completing a book on the history of the magic lantern in Japan.

Department of Film and Media Studies, Global Media Childhood Studies RFG, Program in Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, Graduate Center for Literary Research (GCLR)

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