Page 25 - Christies March 15 2017 Fujita Museum

CHINESE ART
COLLECTING IN KANSAI

IN THE MODERN PERIOD

In the early 20th century, many collectors emerged in Kansai and formed unique and distinguished
art collections. As can be seen in the selection of works in the present sale, which includes archaic
bronze vessels from the Shang and Zhou dynasties and important paintings, the Fujita Museum’s
collection is one of the most prestigious in the Kansai region.

Aside from Fujita, many collectors in Kansai had a strong admiration for Chinese art and sought to
collect masterpieces. This essay will discuss the conditions that nurtured prestigious connoisseurs in
Kansai one hundred years ago.

There is a long history of appreciation of Chinese art in Japan. The items stored in the Shosoin
Repository (正倉院) attest to the fact that Chinese art has long been treated as treasure, and that
possessing Chinese art has been a status symbol amongst the Imperial family and aristocracy since
the Heian period (AD 794-1185). During the following Kamakura period (1185-1333), when the custom
of drinking matcha (抹茶 powdered tea) was introduced, Chinese art works were highly appreciated
as tea ceremony utensils by the Shogunate family. By the Japanese middle ages (15th-16th century),
Chinese art was used to decorate the tea room, the shoin (書院)-style room (a traditional study or
library-style room, also used as a living room) and temples, and was regarded as the highest-ranking
treasure by the ruling classes.

The Edo period (1603-1868) saw a new style of appreciating Chinese art as sencha (煎茶 steeped tea),
which is the Japanese interpretation of drinking tea practiced by the Chinese literati culture. In the
Sencha tea ceremony, people enjoyed seidan (清談 pure conversation), and they appreciated the study
of Chinese art. Sencha was practiced in a more liberal atmosphere than matcha, which is more formal
and the boundary between “utensil” and “art” is obscured. Sencha practitioners are intellectuals who
have a background in Chinese literature and philosophy which was generally known as kangaku (漢
学) in Japan. This new style of tea drinking was supported by a wide range of social classes, especially
by merchants in Kansai. The matcha tea ceremony, by contrast found support amongst the feudal
shogun and regional clans. During the period of political disturbance from the end of the Edo period
and into the Meiji period, the dominance of matcha began to wan and sencha began to gain popularity.
In the larger-scale sencha tea ceremony, exhibition space was sometimes arranged in addition to the
tea room in order to appreciate paintings and works of art. Through the sencha tea ceremony, a new
style of Chinese art appreciation, in which people enjoyed aesthetics and beauty in its purest form,
became the general trend.

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