Page 229 - Japanese Art Nov 9 2017 London

During the 1870s, large, multi-sectioned
bronzes, often in pairs, were commissioned
by the newly installed Meiji government
from Tokyo and the provinces for display
at international expositions; at Philadelphia
in 1876, for example, the entrance to the
section dedicated to the Empire of Japan
was flanked by two elaborate five-foot-high
vases of this type, as can be clearly seen in
a contemporary photograph; see Joe Earle,
Splendors of Imperial Japan: Arts of the Meiji
Period from the Khalili Collection, London,
Khalili Family Trust, 2002, p.32.

Many of the early Meiji exhibition bronzes
came from the workshop of the great caster
and entrepreneur Suzuki Chokichi (1848-
1919), who submitted a large incense-
burner—featuring scenes from myth and
legend including the famous episode of
Yoshitsune and Benkei at the Ataka Barrier—
to the Philadelphia event, while a photograph
of works assembled a few years earlier for
despatch to the Vienna Weltausstellung
(World Exposition) of 1873 includes a bronze
by Hokugakuo Takashige from Kanazawa in
Kaga Province featuring Ino Hayata’s master
Minamoto Yorimasa unsuccessfully shooting
the nue, in other words the episode prior to
that depicted on the present lot; see Tokyo
Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyujo (Tokyo National
Research Institution of Cultural Properties),
Meijiki bankoku hakurankai bijutsuhin shuppin
mokuroku (Catalogs of objects exhibited at
international expositions in the Meiji period),
Tokyo, Chuokoronsha, 1997, no.F-510
, Earle, op. cit., cat. no.1 and Yokomizo
Hiroko, ‘Meiji shoki no hakurankai o kazatta
kinzoku (On Metalwork Shown at International
Expositions in the Early Meiji Era’, Museum,
492 (March 1992), pp.32-33, figs.1-2 and no.
425. By the end of the 1870s, however, this
extravagant type of bronze was going out of
fashion, giving way to pieces with more subtle
decoration that reflected contemporary trends
in painting.

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