Collecting Japanese Antiques - Alistair Seton

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by foreigners, like furniture, are weak. On the contrary, when Japan is in the dumps, things liked only by Japanese plummet.

      An exception to this was the broad movement to bring Japanese antiques back to their homeland (satogaeri in Japanese). Museums, collectors, and dealers bid high prices for treasures like Kakiemon porcelain which had snoozed on shelves in Europe for centuries. This trend has petered out as many pieces have returned and the buyers are no longer Bubble-rich. They used to crowd auction houses like Christi e's and Sotheby's which issue attractive, well-documented catalogs with price estimates. These offer great information about auction goods and the prices they can command in the West, but the situation within Japan is more hidden. There is no large auction house and most auctions are uncatalogued. Besides, the auctions are open only to those in the trade.

      Japanese dealers are keen to promote their own business. They consider the knowledge they have garnered an important proprietary weapon in their battle to make a profit, so many are loath to publicize it. They fear that if everybody knew as much as they do, they could not sell or charge as much. (Some preferred not to give information for this book.) The quality of information in Japanese is also suspect, as most writers are also linked to the trade and may have an interest in the goods they describe. Critics rely more on established tradition and friends' opinions than on new facts.

      Fig. 17 Seated gosho ningyō showing three-part body with over-large head, presentation ribbon (mizuhiki) painted on forehead, ca. 1800, ht 15 in (38 cm). Rosen Collection. Photo courtesy Akanezumiya.

      Fig. 18 Tsutsugaki futon cover, with phoenix design, Kyūshū, ca. 1900, 5 ft 3 in (1.6 m) square. Photo courtesy Oriental Treasure Box.

      Fig. 19 Mori Yoshitoshi (1898-1992), "Tsunemasa's Superhuman Feat," stencil/lithograph, ed. 50, 1972,27 x 20 in (69 x 50 cm). Photo courtesy Tolman Collection.

      Investment Versus Fun

      Attractive things do tend to rise in price. Netsuke bought in the 1920s for £5 were sold at the 1995 Monzino auction in London for tens of thousands of pounds (or dollars). This may sound wonderful, but there is no sound reason for saying that the same will happen in the future with what you buy. Collectors back then were having fun and buying things they thought had intrinsic beauty and were worth much more. If you decide to buy things now for those reasons, you can be sure of enjoying yourself. At the same time, it is likely that your choice will make financial sense over time as well.

      Sometimes cowardice needs to be overcome. Just a year after my wife and I arrived in Japan, we saw a huge set of attractive Imari porcelain for twenty people in Kyoto. We drooled over it for a long time and imagined how it would transform our cramped, under-decorated hutch, but we were cowards. It cost a month's salary and we said we would think about it and call. We never did, and we missed the path to adventure. Sets of similar quality and size no longer appear, let alone for a relative song. My wife may be less partial to porcelain after the Kobe earthquake, but decades later we bitterly regret Robert Frost's road not taken, the one less traveled.

      A speculative approach is to guesstimate what museums and other major collectors are buying now and project that into the future. If screens by X sell well because they have been praised by Y and also appear attractive to your eye, then they are probably a good bet for the future. But Y may have been their owner, so be careful! Success all boils down to information, contacts, and taste. If you can equip yourself with friends or dealers who are knowledgeable, and pump yourself up with information about your chosen area, it is quite likely that you will make a killing-but this is no sure thing. Some fashionable British painters a century ago commanded fees higher then than sale prices now, despite the dismal things that have happened to the purchasing power of the pound sterling! If you hear that good quality furniture was cheaper years ago, and assume that the same will happen in the future, you may be right. Or wrong. I believe you are more likely to be right. Nevertheless, that is the wrong reason for starting to buy antiques. If you like old things, are ready to look around and learn lots about them, have money over and above what you need for day-to-day living, have enough space and a consenting family, then by all means buy and have fun.

      Creating New Worlds or "Playing House"

      Japan is a treasure chest of things new to the average Westerner. Finding out about them can be the most rewarding part of your time in Japan, a treasure hunt, a quest for the Holy Grail itself! If you find it a chore, pursue another goal. If you do decide to take home mementos, you will have fun explaining them to others at home, just as nineteenth-century travelers took home boatloads of curios and told their friends unlikely stories about their function and origin. This aspect of fun is very important.

      Michael Dunn, a specialist in fine Japanese art, was once asked to give an insurance valuation for an American family who had collected a house full of cheap knickknacks. Claiming that they had no value to him at all, he asked the parents why they had acquired all that stuff. He was charmed when they answered "for fun." They had not been thinking in terms of investment, and their collection remained a highlight of their time in Tokyo. That family never worried, but many others do. During the Bubble of 1987-90, firms and wealthy individuals assumed that land, house, and antique prices could only go up, so bought them at higher and higher prices without thinking about their intrinsic value.

      Many "valuables" bought then are in the hands of accountants, in the office of the original firm if it is still viable, or at the bank which accepted them as collateral. Accountants know nothing about art, so their bookkeeping value is counted as the purchase price plus the compounded interest incurred for their purchase. The tragedy is they will never sell for that, however long the accountants live. At some point, the speculator or his financial backer will have to bite the bullet and sell them for a fraction of the purchase price and forget the accumulated interest. Speculating on antiques without knowledge or taste is unwise, though it may work in a new field in which you are one of the few experts or can rely on one.

      Miscellaneous Collecting Areas

      It was hard to find the appropriate place within the schema of this book to describe some popular collecting areas, so they appear here to whet the appetite for the longer chapters to come.

      Fans

      Japanese fans (ōgi) need no introduction. Though fixed fans originated early in China, even most Chinese consider folding fans Japanese in origin, maybe dating from the tenth century. They have always been admired. With air conditioning, they are less important in Japan now, but in the theatrical, Tea, sumō, and dance worlds they remain de rigueur and, like a cigarette or pipe, are a way of projecting a person's individuality. Fans are one of the commonest motifs in art, especially on ukiyo-e and screens.

      A stylish book, Ōgi: A History of the Japanese Fan by Julia Hutt and Hélène Alexander, which introduces the Fan Museum of Greenwich, near London, and is largely based on Alexander's marvelous collection, has made lots of detail superfluous.

      Historically, China first used large, round ceremonial fans on long sticks and rigid screen fans which were held in the hand. The origin of the folding fan may have been a spontaneous scrunching up of paper or copying of a bat's wing or palm leaves. The two main forms are the folding paper fan, with little rods stuck between two sheets of paper (though some paper fans are unsupported by sticks), and the brisé fan, with slats of wood held together on the outside by flexible material like silk ribbon. In both forms, the slats gather in the middle where they are held by a rivet. The outer leaf may be harder and form a sort of guard to protect it from being rubbed or catching on something when put in your sleeve. Paper fans tended to have shorter lives. Sensu or ōgi are folding fans. Hiōgi are folding fans made of hinoki (Japanese cypress), often for the court. Suehiro indicates a wide-ended fan, so exclude those cheaper paper fans which open only some 90 degrees.

      Japanese fixed-form fans include roundish uchiwa (general) and gunbai (military/official fans, for example, for sumō matches, often attached to long poles or stands). Uchiwa get

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