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      JAPAN'S ART HERITAGE

      Art in Japan has a long and glorious history that compares with that of any civilization. This book is not a history of Japanese art. After a short survey of many interesting features, old things are looked at with a collector's eye and an awareness that most ancient masterpieces are in temples and museums and are therefore unavailable for purchase. Yet those areas also deserve to be known and studied, like those to which collectors gravitate either from choice or fate. The aim is to provide some historical background, then examples and analysis in areas where collecting is feasible. Information and advice is offered to the would-be collector or the simply curious.

      Japan as a Storehouse

      Japan is a kind of attic of ancient art. Ever since the building of the Shōsōin Imperial Storehouse in AD 756, leaders have deliberately preserved as much as possible of the past. One might say that a kura (a fireproof storehouse built near the houses of the wealthy) is an apt image for the whole country. Wars may have devastated Kyoto, and the "flowers of Edo" (a term used to describe terrible, dangerous city fires) burnt much that was beautiful in Tokyo, but much too has been kept or rebuilt. The scope of the Imperial Collections attests to the desire to retain good things from the past. Even after taking power from the court, the shōgun (military dictators) proved they were men of culture, building on past achievements and patronizing great artists. Temples and shrines also played a vital role in preserving treasures against time, theft, and fire.

      An astonishing number of Heian era (794-1185) and older objects remain in the safekeeping of shrines and temples, and important families. Much is owed to the generations of priests and others who kept the flame alive. They could have made their own lives easier by selling off the past but managed against the odds to save a great artistic and cultural heritage for the future.

      Hōryūji, a great seventh-century temple near Nara, is particularly famous for hoarding the past. A thirteenth-century catalogue reveals its secret vaults hold 1.32 tons of gold, 10,000 copper roofing tiles, and 30,000 mirrors. Although the location is known, the priests will not open the vaults. Tradition says Regent Shōtoku Taishi (574-622) ordered them not to be opened for a thousand years after his death, and only later if finances were dire. Hōryūji has faced penury but still the priests refused to open them to historians. According to Ishikawa Takeshi in Traditions: A Thousand Years of Japanese Beauty, it sold thousands of the pagodas given by Empress Shōtoku in 770; each contains a mystic prayer verse or dharani. These mystic prayer verses are the oldest extant printed matter in the world. Hōryūji still has 40,300 of the 100,000 bequeathed!

      Another statue of Kan'non (Goddess of Mercy) had been kept sealed since the

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