MEIJI PERIOD (CIRCA 1900)

Models of Buddhist temples and famous buildings were in vogue in Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, spearheaded by scholars anxious to preserve and record rapidly deteriorating Buddhist sites. In 1910, the Japanese government gave this trend an antiquarian spin by appropriating their past as evidence of a venerable architectural heritage equal to that of Western powers. They sent scale models of the Yomeimon Gate and the inner precincts of the temple Todaiji in Nara, including twin seven-story pagodas, to London for the Japan-British Exhibition. That model of the Nikko Yomeimon Gate is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which has a notable collection of scale models of Japanese architecture.