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Description: Art, Tea, and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle
Acknowledgments
PublisherPrinceton University Press
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00024.003
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Acknowledgments
This book had its beginnings in a visit to Richard and Peggy Danziger, the owners of several tea utensils that once belonged to Masuda Takashi. At the time, I knew Masuda simply as a name attached to a large number of exceptionally fine Buddhist paintings and sculptures. It was the Danzigers who first suggested that Masuda might be a good focus for a study of art collecting in Japan. In the years following that first visit, they were unfailingly generous in allowing me to study the teawares in their collection, often in the company of students or visiting scholars. In 1982 they agreed to loan a selection of works from their collection to a small exhibition entitled “Tea Taste in Kyoto” held at the Princeton Art Museum. The process of selecting and arranging objects for that exhibition was my introduction to tori awase, the “mixing and matching” that is essential to chanoyu. My interest in tea was whetted still further by visits to the Danzigers in the company of Professor Kumakura Isao of Tsukuba University. Following one visit, Professor Kumakura presented me with a copy of Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū. His discussion of the role of Meiji industrialist art collectors in the development of chanoyu offered both inspiration and guidelines for my own work.
In the research and writing of this study I have been assisted by many friends and colleagues in Japan and the United States. In Tokyo, Suzuki Takako, Shirasaki Hideo, and Iida Konichidō helped me locate and examine works that had belonged to Masuda, and the staff of the Mitsui Bunkō was kind enough to allow me to make copies of photographs of Masuda and other Mitsui men in their archives. For many of the personal photographs of Masuda and members of his family, I must thank Masuda Takashi’s great-niece, Hatakeyama Hisako. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Takeuchi Jun’ichi, chief curator of the Gotoh Art Museum, who provided me with photocopies of many rare publications, suggested avenues of research I might not otherwise have considered, and even sent me his copy of Daichajin Masuda Don’ō, a rare and indispensable publication I had been unable to locate in any library.
Over the years, many people have read and offered helpful comments on various parts of this book. In the early stages of my research, Professor Sidney deVere Brown was kind enough to answer my queries about Kido Takayoshi and his activities as a collector. Felice Fischer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art arranged for the loan of rare Meiji and Taishō era publications by Takahashi Yoshio in the museum’s library. Mrs. Kim of the Gest Library at Princeton University arranged for interlibrary loans and helped identify my “Meiji mystery men.” Karen Brock, Martin Collcutt, Louise Cort, Marius Jansen, Sandy Kita, and Melinda Takeuchi read and commented on preliminary versions of various chapters. Julia Meech and Thomas Rimer also offered many helpful suggestions. I owe a special word of thanks to Andy Watsky and, especially, Greg Levine, graduate students at Princeton University, for their thoughtful observations about both the form and content of the manuscript. I would like to express my deep gratitude also to Ellen Conant for her encouragement and, above all, willingness to engage in lively debates that helped me identify many of the issues that would become central to this book. I am also grateful to Beth Gianfagna at Princeton University Press for her careful oversight of the production of this book. The final words of thanks must go to my husband Tom, without whose advice and encouragement this manuscript could not have been completed.
Travel and research for this book were assisted by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and Social Sciences Research Council and from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Acquisition of photographs and photographic rights was supported by the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies. Publication has been assisted by the Hiromi Arisawa Award Fund.
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