Page 13 - Christies March 15 2017 Fujita Museum

Fujita Denzaburō, 1901. FUJITA DENZABURO¯
藤田傳三郎，攝於1901年。
COLLECTOR

Fujita Denzaburō (1841–1912) represented the new breed of industrialist collectors in Japan
who emerged in the late nineteenth century. Like his powerful contemporary Masuda Takashi
(1848–1938), the frst director of the Mitsui Trading Company and an early business associate, he was
grounded in traditional Japanese culture and focused on Sino-Japanese arts. As a collector, Fujita was
rough, proud, competitive. He seized every opportunity.

Fujita was born in Hagi in Chōshu province (modern Yamaguchi Prefecture), the son of a merchant
family operating a soy sauce brewing business and sake brewery, among other ventures. In 1869, a
year after the Meiji Restoration, he moved to Osaka—noted as a center for wealthy merchants since at
least the seventeenth century—to make his fortune. At the age of about thirty, he had his frst success
selling military footwear to Chōshu warriors who were charged with forming the new army for the
Meiji government. Then, during the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, working with Yamada Akiyoshi, a
fellow nationalist from Hagi, Fujita made huge profts as a purveyor of military uniforms. That revolt of
disafected samurai from the Kyushu domain of Satsuma was the last in a series of armed uprisings
against the new imperial government.

The Japanese people united behind the government’s all-out eforts to catch up with the advanced
nations of the Western world. Fujita branched into business enterprises that helped modernize Japan
at this critical juncture in its history. He had a construction business in Okayama; operated the Kosaka
mine in Akita; and helped establish a newspaper, textile mill, electric power plant and railroad in
the Kansai area. From 1885 to 1889, he was a founding member and the second head of the Osaka
Chamber of Commerce (Osaka Shoko Kaigisho). A distinguished leader of his community, he was also
the frst civilian to be awarded the title of baron (danshaku).

In 1909, on his spacious estate in scenic Amijima, Fujita began building three modern, Japanese-style
houses for himself and his two sons, Heitarō—his successor—and Tokujirō. Situated alongside the
Yodo River, in the heart of Osaka City, Fujita’s residence served as headquarters for his business and
political activities. His home was equipped with a Noh stage (he trained in the Kanze School of Noh),
billiard room and some tearooms. Most of the buildings on the property were destroyed during the fre
bombing of Osaka in 1945. Only a seventeenth-century wood pagoda and—miraculously—the three
large storehouses with his art collection survived. The collection is housed today in a small museum
on the Fujita property that opened to the public in 1954. The garden is dotted with an artifcial
miniature hill, waterfall, gorge and pond, as well as some ffty cornerstones of ancient Nara-period
temples and some stone pagodas and lanterns of the Kamakura period.

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