Collecting China: The Japanese Empire Shops in the Chinese Art Market

Di Yin Lu
Harvard University, History

     Full text: PDF
     Last modified: May 15, 2008

Abstract
During the early twentieth century, Japanese art dealers and collectors used their formidable buying powers to fundamentally change the Chinese art market. The watershed confluence of a series of international events – the fall of the Qing dynasty, the occupation of Chinese territories, the looting of ancient tombs in Anyang, the discovery of ancient Buddhist relics in Tianlongshan (known to Japanese collectors as Tenryūzan), Emperor Puyi’s defection to Manchukuo, and the collaboration between the Japanese Empire and sinologists Luo Zhenyu and Naitō Conan – redefined Chinese art collecting. Collectors not only sought out Chinese art objects for their rarity and fine craftsmanship, but also because Chinese art collecting became a politically and patriotically charged act. For Japanese art collectors, Tōyō (East Asia) ideology manifested into a keen interest in acquiring their own pieces of China. Buying Chinese art allowed members of the Japanese Empire to portray themselves as the champions of East Asian culture. In turn, Chinese art dealers and collectors began to see their collections in national terms, and maintained a surreptitious, but concentrated effort to keep Chinese art in China.

The Japanese Empire’s state and military encroachment on China gave Japanese buyers an advantage over Chinese art sellers. Between 1911 and 1945, these art dealers used their superior access to money and information to aggressively acquire the best art objects from Liuli Chang, Beijing’s premier art and antiques market. The Japanese occupation of Manchukuo in 1931 led to the wholesale military and administrative takeover of Shengyang Palace, a three hundred years old imperial retreat in Liaoning province. Upon defecting to Manchukuo, Emperor Puyi moved prized art objects from the Forbidden Palace art collection to the Northeast, resulting in the sale of fine art all along the road from Beijing to Fengtian. The Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1937 further galvanized a “hide or sell” frenzy among Chinese art collectors in Shanghai; some collectors even recall the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) commandeering family collections. By the 1940s, the Japanese so thoroughly took over the Chinese art market that Chinese art dealers could not recall any other foreign presence in Liuli Chang. Even as the IJA left China, the empire continued to haunt the art market – with sometimes devastating effects among local residents.

Although Chinese art dealers, collectors, and museums remember and promulgate this event vividly, Japanese museums and collectors hardly discuss imperial coercion when referring to their Chinese art acquisitions. One prominent example of this willful omission is the Tokyo National Museum (TNM)’s presentation of the Yokogawa Tamisuke ceramics collection, acquired between 1932 and 1945. Yokogawa Tamisuke amassed an extensive collection of East Asian ceramics, particularly Chinese ceramics, during the first half of the twentieth century. This museum benefactor started purchasing in the early Taishō era, when the Japan Empire began building its sphere of influence in China, and continued acquiring pieces until his death in 1945, shortly after which the Japanese Empire collapsed. Despite the telling intersection between contentious moments in Sino-Japanese relations and Yokogawa’s collecting, the TNM makes no reference to these connections. This notable lapse in national memory questions what legacies the Japanese Empire’s elite consumers left behind, in Japan as well as China.