As a medium of national expression, the architecture of international expositions, despite their planned obsolescence, guided lasting impressions of the world’s peoples and places. In the late nineteenth century, visitors accepted the Japanese buildings and gardens produced for major European and American fairs as authentic artifacts, not least for being created by materials and carpenters sent directly from the native land. Yet as scholars have argued, producing explicitly “Japanese” architecture overseas proved challenging for the government commissions; their choices of building types and styles were neither predictable nor conventional.

This presentation investigates the multiple demands on architectural design and expression at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Whereas architectural nationalism, which Mitchell Schwarzer defines as design that advances ideas of a nation, may have been a dominant concern for scholarship up to now, diplomacy, commerce, and amusement deserve in-depth investigation as well for pushing to create what looked and felt Japanese to an international audience on the fairgrounds.