Boya Guo (Critical Conservation ’18; DDes ’20) has been awarded a January Term Research Grant by the Asia Center to conduct a cross-cultural comparison to build an understanding of the similarities and distinctions between Chinese copying and Japanese copying. She will conduct on-site research on examples of “copycat” architecture looking at Western forms as well as more traditional communities in Wuxi and Hangzhou in China and Kyoto and Hakodate in Japan.
Within the broad similarities in attitudes toward “copy” between the East-Asian tradition and that of the West, the differences between Chinese copying and Japanese copying offer potential insights into the understanding of how East Asian identity is constructed in the 21st century. Boya’s research looks at a cross-cultural comparison of the tradition of copying in contemporary China and Japan because it reveals the relationship between cultural inheritance from the past and cultural communication with the West. This will lead to understanding how the process of contemporary East Asian copying is both an agent in the continuity of each country’s historic identity as well as an agent for the modern transformation of its identity.