The True Value of Japanese Antiques

You may have heard tales of tansu out on the streets of Tokyo on trash day in the sixties, or perhaps your great uncle bought an Edo period fireman's jacket for fifteen dollars at the Kyoto flea market in the early seventies. You may have even bought a nice Meiji era Ikebana basket for one or two hundred dollars just a few years ago. To us these may sound like stories of El Dorado, but they are usually true. But alas, those days are gone. Like everything else, antiques cost more today than they have in the past and will of course cost more in the future. The question is not will they cost more but how much more and are they actually inexpensive now.

In the last one hundred years the Japanese culture has changed drastically. At the end of the Edo period (1868) the class structure that had been in place for hundreds of years was shattered. In the rush to modernize and catch up to the rest of the world the cities industrialized and the traditional crafts and agrarian culture began to dissolve. The average farmer or basket maker was valued by Japanese society as much as a wagon wheelwright would be in Los Angles today. Early in this century when Soetsu Yanagi coined the term "Mingei" and offered his collection to the Tokyo Museum he was rejected. After the Second World War the artists of Japan were all but disappearing when General Douglass MacArthur and the occupational forces in Japan suggested the idea of creating the "National Living Treasure" award for artists in Japan. This award refocused some attention on the disappearing arts and crafts of Japan but in a country rebuilding itself the attention came from a cultured few. The vast majority until very recently saw little or no value in folk arts and crafts. The Japanese of today are too far removed to feel any nostalgia for the old days and their parents too close to remember them fondly. The change came to the Japanese so fast that periods of economic development that lasted 200 years in the west occurred within one generation. Whole families abandoned their historical residences of three or four hundred years to move into new crowded concrete apartments in Tokyo. When they departed they left all of their traditional ways and tools behind never to be used again. It was at times like these that you could buy a whole farmhouse still furnished for less than $2000.

Today in Japan things are starting to change. There are national debates about the past and how to preserve their heritage. Almost every major city now has its own Mingei-kan (Folk Art Museum). A number of the great Japanese antiques purchased in this country are finding their way back to Japan. The number of mid level quality pieces are becoming harder and harder to purchase for the American market where the appreciation for these pieces is not keeping up with the increase in newfound Japanese appreciation. It is not as many would say, that there are fewer pieces available, it is the reality that there has always been a finite amount. What is simply occurring is a market correction. What has been undervalued in the past is now being realized for the cultural gold that it is.

A good example is Tansu chests. Tansu as a form of craft can really be dated to a 60-year period between 1850 and 1910 basically spanning the Meiji era. Prior to this period there are very few remaining examples and after which industrialization occurs and the hand made chest becomes a thing of the past. During this time a finite number of chests were made. It is not difficult to understand that with a demand driven economy and a finite supply, when 30 or 40 million Japanese decide that their grandmother's chest is a treasure instead of trash the prices will rise and the availability will decrease. This is happening now. It has of course begun with the more collectable tansu first. Sea chests for example have easily tripled in value in the last ten years. The value of chests from distinctive towns like Sendai and Yonezawa are also beginning to show a tremendous rate of growth. On many items dealers in America are discovering that they cannot replace their inventory in Japan for what they sold it for in America in just the space of a single year.

In reference to the antiques of just about any nation of the world you will find that one of the largest collectors of its antiques are its natives. This has not been the case in Japan and that will not be the case for long. The question is not when will Japan wake up to what is and has happened, because it is awake, it is simply how long will it be before objects you desire are out of your price range.