Art, Tea, and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle. - book reviews

The subtext of Christine Guth's remarkable volume Japan's role in the centuries-old traffic in misunderstanding and discord between traditional, non-Western societies and the aggressive, technologically advanced nations of the West. Japan began to experience these tensions in the 1540 at the dawn of the Age of Exploration. Guth takes up the story in the 1860 when Western warships forced Japan to reopen itself to trade and diplomatic relations. Its reaction, of course, was single of the most remarkable in recent history. In less than forty years Japan restructur its management and financial institutions, created a vast industrial base, and opened a mighty army and navy. Defeating Russia in 1904-05 it became the first Asian nation since Ottoman Turkey to decisively humiliate a major European power in war. by the agency of the late 1930s, when the author's account extreme points Japan was expanding its hegemony onto the mainland, beginning to eject European colonialists, and proclaiming a of recent origin East Asian economic and cultural sphere.

Concentrating upon the art-historical aspects of this dialectical exert one's self the author traces the career of Masuda Takashi (1848-1938) a leader of the giant Mitsui manufacturing and financial combine and individual of the most accomplished art collectors of the fresh era. Indeed, it is in the careers of magnates like Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) or J P Morgan (1837-1913) that suitable analogues of Masuda's achievements may be found

The son of a low-ranking samurai official, Masuda was given a traditional Confucian and Buddhist education. While still in his teen however, he studied English and smooth met America's first consul general in Japan, Townsend Harris (1804-78) In 1864 Masuda accompanied his father to Paris as part of a delegation seeking to shut up the port of Yokohama to foreign trade. In 1868 he enlisted in a cavalry number in service to the crumbling Tokugawa military conduct In the same year, however, that regime was overthrown by means of one headed by the emperor Meiji. The industrialization of Japall had begun.

Guth describes a certain quantity of of the transactions by which Masuda successfull mastered foreign business techniques and sought to redefine Japan's perception of' its national inmost nature [i]or[/i] substance (kokutai), its cultural identity. At first the unemploy former samurai mov from piece of work to job. For awhile he was an interpreter in foreign import-export firms, where he learned Western accounting processs and made life-long friends. His sister went to academy in the United States, became a Christian, and renounced her native ways. Masuda worked for the mint in Osaka, became friends with the influential cabinet official Inoue Kaoru (1835-1915) and, in 1876 at Inoue's direction, took above a trading company that was by and by absorbed by the Mitsui combine.

Astute in business and a evil judge of human character, Masuda quicklu climbed the ladder of corporate ranks. He expanded Mitsui coal mines and its superintendence of resources in China. In 1901 he became a director of the central Mitsui organization. admitting nominally retired in 1913, he remained an adviser and major influence in the company until his death a quarter hundred later. Though he was by the agency of no means the richest of the plutocrats of the novel Japan, his fortune was great enough to enable him to dip deeply into the art market.

According to the author, Masuda bought his first work of art in 1878 a lacquer chest for writing implements. Collecting was in mode among his friends in regulation and business, most notably Kido Takayoshi (1833-77) an early leader of the Meiji regulation and a passionate devotee of literati painting and calligraphy. Indeed, as Guth displays political and cultural authority were as closely linked in the fresh Japan as they had been in the advanced in years for the expectation that ones of high status should demonstrate virtue from one side mastery of arts and alphabetic characters was deeply rooted in traditional Sino-Japanese statecraft. smooth hereditary warriors had been wait fored to combine martial skills with cultural attainments, and Guth present to views how Meiji leaders applied this ancient ethical principle to the of recent origin industrial-commercial ethos.

Masuda and his friends traveled abroad and were keenly aware of the glories of European art and architecture - its cathedrals, palaces, museums, office buildings, and department stores. In a competitive spirit, they wanted japan to create equally splendid remembrancers but they also sought to affirm their nation's uniqueness and cultural identity. Art collecting, as the author present to views became an important part of the proces of self definition, as Masuda and his circle established a fresh canon of masterworks and master artists from the past. In fact, abundant of today's image of premodern Japanese (and Chinese art) was created by means of Masuda and such like-minded collectors as Dan Takuma (1858-1932; mining engineer and administrator), Kawasaki Shozo (1837-1912; shipbuilder), Nezu Kaiichiro (1860-1940; railroads and manufacturing), and Okura Kihachiro (1837-1928; mercantile interests).