Lost Japan (10 page)

The
kuge
were descended from the Fujiwara family, who ruled every aspect of court life during the Heian period. They controlled almost all the important court posts, reducing the Emperor to puppet status. It was the Fujiwara nobles and related families who built fantasy pavilions like Byodoin near Nara, and penned the poems and novels for which the Heian period is famous. After several hundred years of Fujiwara dominance, the extended family grew so large that it became necessary to distinguish between the various branches. So people started calling the branch lineages by their street addresses in Kyoto: for example, the Nijo family, the Karasumaru family, the Imadegawa family, etc. Over time, there grew to be about one hundred families, called the
kuge.
They were seen as having semi-Imperial status, and were carefully distinguished from the
buke
, or samurai families.

When the samurai class overthrew the system of noble rule at the end of the twelfth century, the
kuge
lost all their lands and revenue. They had no choice but to find work, but after four hundred years of writing poetry by moonlight, the only work they were able to do was in the field of the arts. So they became teachers of poetry, calligraphy, court dance and ritual. Over time, they developed a system of hereditary franchises, in which each family purported to be the holder of ‘secrets' passed down to the head of the house. Outsiders could only acquire these secrets by paying for them.

The next step, naturally, was the proliferation of secrets. The
kuge
organized their secrets into hierarchies, with lesser secrets for beginners and more profound secrets for advanced students, on an ascending pay scale. This was to become the prototype for the ‘schools' of tea ceremony, flower arrangement and martial arts predominant today. Typically, these schools have a hereditary grand master, a system of expensive titles and licenses granted to students, and ranks (such as the different colored belts in karate and judo).

With the coming of peace and prosperity at the beginning of the Edo era in the early 1600s, a renaissance of
kuge
culture occurred in Kyoto. Each family taught its specialty, the Reizei concentrating on poetry, the Jimyoin on Imperial calligraphy, the Washio family on Shinto music, and so on. The one art they all had in common was their delicate calligraphy, which they wrote on
shikishi
and
tanzaku
at tea parties and poem festivals.

The
kuge
lived in cramped quarters in a village surrounding the Imperial Palace. They never had money. The story goes that right up until World War II, they would pay a visit to their neighbors just before the New Year, when all debts must be settled. ‘I am very sorry,' the
kuge
would say in polite accents, ‘but our family will not have enough money to pay our debts by the end of the year, so we will have to set fire to the house and flee in the night. I hope that will be no trouble to you.' This was a disguised threat, since setting fire to one house in the crowded inner city of Kyoto might destroy an entire district. So the neighbors would take up a collection and bring the money over to the
kuge
on the last day of the year.

All the impoverished
kuge
possessed was their memory of the Heian era's refinement, so they developed ways of living elegantly in poverty. Examples of this can be seen in every
kuge
art, and it exercised an incalculable influence on the city of Kyoto. For example, the construction of teahouses such as the famous Katsura Detached Palace, the utensils of tea ceremony, even the dainty displays one sees today in store windows can be traced back to the
kuge.

People who come to Kyoto hear much about Zen and tea ceremony. But Kyoto is not just Zen and tea; it was also the center of the culture that grew from the fine-grained sensibility of the
kuge.
When the capital was moved to Tokyo in 1868, many of the
kuge
moved north with the Emperor. Their village around the Imperial Palace was razed, leaving the large open spaces you see today surrounding the palace. As a result, almost nothing
tangible remains of
kuge
history, and their culture never became a tourist attraction; there is very little written about their world, so most people are hardly aware that it ever existed. Nevertheless, their romantically delicate sensibility survives in
waka
poetry, incense ceremony, geisha dance and Shinto ritual. But if I had not purchased a few 5000-yen
shikishi
on a whim, I would never have discovered it.

As the years I spent in Kyoto went by, the scope of my collection grew. The next step from
shikishi
and
tanzaku
was hanging scrolls, and then folding screens, ceramics, furniture, Buddhist sculpture, and more. My collection expanded to include not only Japanese art but pieces from China, Tibet and Southeast Asia as well. However, no matter how underpriced the folding screens or Buddhist statues were, they never cost Mere hundreds or thousands of yen, so collecting began to involve real money. In order to pay for it, I began to sell or trade pieces to friends, and before I knew it, I had become an art dealer.

As the business grew, I eventually found my way into Kyoto's art auctions; in Kyoto, these auctions are called
kai
, or ‘gatherings'. These gatherings are a closed world known only to dealers. They are completely unlike Christie's or Sotheby's, where the auction houses research the pieces and publish a catalogue in advance, and buyers can examine objects at their leisure before bidding. In a Kyoto
kai
, no information is made available, and there is no time to even get a close look at the work. With a flourish, the auctioneer unrolls a handscroll across a long table, and with no mention of the work's author or date, the bidding commences. Buyers have only an instant in which to look over the seals and signature on the work and to examine the quality of the paper and ink before placing their bids. So participation in these auctions requires a highly trained eye, to say the least. At first I found myself utterly at a loss.

Rescue came in the form of my scroll mounter, Kusaka. At eighty, Kusaka had close to sixty years' experience of the Kyoto
auctions, and over that time had seen tens of thousands of screens and hanging scrolls. I had sent him some of my screens for repair, and through this connection, he allowed me to accompany him to the
kai.
As a mounter, Kusaka could judge paper and ink with the eyes of an expert, and he had an encyclopedic memory of signatures and seals. Muttering, ‘No signature, but that's the seal of Kaiho Yusho – looks like the real thing …' or ‘The characters have vigor, but the paper is dubious. Maybe you ought to pass this one by …', Kusaka became my teacher at the
kai.
In this fashion, I was able to acquire knowledge that decades of university study could never bring.

There are two types of antiques. One consists of objects already circulating in the art world, in good condition and with artist, period and provenance well documented. The other type is made up of objects which in Kyoto are called
ubu
(literally, infant).
Ubu
objects are those surfacing in the art world for the first time; very often they have sat for years in old storehouses. These storehouses, called
kura
, have defined the special character of the Japanese art market.

Traditionally, most houses in Japan of any size or wealth had a
kura
built alongside. These storehouses were necessary because of the ‘empty room' ethos. Furniture, paintings, screens, trays and tables appeared in a Japanese house only when needed, and varied by season and by occasion. I was once shown into a
kura
belonging to a prominent family in the mountains of Okayama. The mistress of the house explained that she kept three full sets of lacquer trays and bowls there – one for the household, one for guests, and one for VIPs. Well-to-do families needed a place, separated from the house itself, where they could store such things. You can spot
kura
by their unique architecture: tall, squarish structures with peaked roofs, a few tiny windows and walls of thick white plaster. The plaster walls protected the building against damage from the fires and earthquakes that were the scourge of Japan.

There was a strong taboo against entering the
kura
unless you were the head of the house. In Kyoto, a maid would boast about her status by saying, ‘I'm the number-one maid. I'm allowed to enter the
kura.
' Even in the prewar years, when Japan's culture was still more or less intact,
kura
were rarely entered, and obscure objects inside tended to get forgotten. And after the cultural shock of World War II, there was suddenly no need at all for the trays, plates and screens kept inside them, so their huge wooden doors were shut for good. Their present-day owners, caught up in the rush for modernization, deem the
kura
and their contents almost completely worthless: when it comes time to tear down an old compound, the owner calls in an antique handler, or ‘runner', who buys the entire contents of the
kura
in one lot, more or less as scrap. The runner carts it all away in a truck and delivers it to the auctions, where dealers such as myself see it for the first time. These things are
ubu.
When an artwork which has been sleeping for years in a
kura
arrives at auction, it is as if it has popped out of history. Sometimes I open a screen – stiff from mildew, damp and insect damage – and realize that I am likely to be the first person to see it in a century. At such times, memories come welling up of a child unwrapping straw rope from Imari plates in Motomachi long ago.

Ubu
objects are the ultimate risky venture for an art collector. There are no guarantees, and huge problems of repair and restoration. But this is where the excitement lies. David Kidd once said to me, ‘Having a lot of money and using it to buy great pieces of art on the world market – anyone can do that. Not having money, but still being able to buy great pieces – that's fun.'

Which brings me to the secret of how ‘the impossible was possible' for David and me. Neither of us had much money at first, but we were able to build art collections wildly out of proportion to our means. And we didn't achieve this in some poverty-stricken third-world country, but in an advanced economic superpower. It was possible because of the lack of interest of the Japanese in
their own cultural heritage. Chinese art maintains its value on the world market because as the Chinese get rich, the first thing they do is invest in traditional cultural objects; there is a large community of Chinese art collectors. In prewar Japan there existed such a community, in which Japanese collectors vied with each other for fine paintings, calligraphies and ceramics. They were the ones who stocked the
kura.

After the war, this community evaporated, so today there are almost no significant private collectors of Japanese art. The only exception is tea masters. The tea-ceremony world is still very active, so utensils such as tea bowls, scoops and scrolls for the tearoom are highly valued; in fact, they are very often overvalued, and command ridiculous prices. But step outside the world of tea, and Japanese artworks sell for a song. For example, I made quite a collection of handscrolls, some of them with calligraphy by artists greatly prized by tea masters. Handscrolls roll sideways and can be ten or even twenty meters long. Unlike hanging scrolls, they are difficult to use in the tearoom. So they sell for a fraction of the cost of hanging scrolls, although they have equivalent, or even greater, artistic and historical value.

I once acquired a handscroll of the Kabuki play
Chushingura
(
The Forty-Seven Samurai
), an enormous piece just over one meter high and ten meters long. It was originally a banner illustrating each of the eleven acts of the play, and was probably used by a traveling Kabuki troupe in the mid-nineteenth century. On doing some research, I found there was nothing comparable in any of Japan's museums, and that possibly I had chanced into ownership of the finest
Chushingura
scroll in all Japan. But being young and very poor I had no choice but to sell the work.

I first approached my friends in the Kabuki world. But these actors spend their daily life immersed in Kabuki trappings, and they told me that the scroll was hardly what they would want to relax with at home. I could see their point, so I then tried selling the piece to Shochiku Inc, the entertainment giant that produces
movies and manages Kabuki. They weren't interested. Foreign companies in Japan often display gold screens or folk art in their lobbies, so I thought Japanese firms might do the same. I took every opportunity to look around the premises when I happened to be visiting an office building. But everywhere I turned, Western Impressionists hung from the walls, and I could only conclude that Japanese companies had zero interest in the traditional art of their country.

Next, I decided to try my luck with Japan's art museums. However, on hearing of this, my veteran art-dealer friends in Kyoto were quick to dissuade me. Without proper introductions, there was virtually no chance that these museums would give a young foreigner like me a hearing. I tried other avenues, such as approaching the Sengaku-ji Temple in Tokyo, which is dedicated to the memory of the forty-seven samurai, but received only a brusque rebuff on the telephone. In the end, an American friend bought the scroll for the absurdly low price of $4000, and it went to Fargo, North Dakota.

Most people assume that Japan's cultural properties left the country during the nineteenth century, when people such as Ernest Fenollosa, who helped to create the collection of the Boston Museum, saved Nara-period statues from destruction in the wake of the
haibutsu
anti-Buddhist movement. There is also a belief that foreigners capitalized on Japan's disastrous situation after World War II, which is true to some extent. But what few people realize is that the flow of cultural assets out of Japan continues today.