Traveling Matryoshka

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Other Title
  • 旅するマトリョーシカ
  • 旅するマトリョーシカ : 移動するおみやげのルーツとルート
  • タビ スル マトリョーシカ : イドウ スル オミヤゲ ノ ルーツ ト ルート
  • Routes and Roots of <i>Omiyage</i> on the Move
  • 移動するおみやげのルーツとルート

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Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the movement of people and objects, specifically Russian handicraft souvenirs, with the Matryoshka doll as the focus. In previous studies, souvenirs have been discussed from a process point of view, in which tourists take home objects. However, most of the souvenirs sold around the world are goods that arrive at a destination via various transnational movements in time and space, and existing research has overlooked the plurality of movement of souvenirs. There has not been sufficient research examining the logic that prescribes objects produced for tourism, despite ongoing discussions on the comparison of souvenirs with their “originals.” In this study, instead of exploring the roots of Matryoshka dolls before they become souvenirs, we attempt to analyze the route of a series of world-scale relocations of Matryoshka in the past 100 years, including Japan in the Edo period, Russia in the early nineteenth century, France, modern China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and modern Japan. The research demonstrates that souvenirs are not objects that deviate from their “original appearance” because of tourism, but that the objects are “on the move” in a global network of people, things, and images. Souvenirs are objects that exist with a form and meaning that are continuously reconstructed.

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