Akiko Mabuchi – författare

This is the seventh part of the successful series which provides art historians and students with primary-source materials relating to the Western reception of Japanese arts from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.It is now common knowledge that art collectors in Europe around the end of the nineteenth century played a very important role in the development of Japanese influence on Western art, in particular on the Impressionists who became acquainted with Ukiyoe by Hokusai, or other Japanese artefacts, many of which were imported from Japan by art dealers for their clients in Europe. The majority of those collections of Japanese art held by individual art lovers were dispersed on their deaths, but some were acquired by museums in Europe and America and are now valued as treasures which often form the core of their collections of Japanese art.It is not easy to trace precisely what objects were brought from Japan to the West and in what way some of them are housed today by Western institutions, but one of the most useful tools for art historians are the auction catalogues of those pioneer Japanese art collectors through which they are able to assess the very early phase of Western reception of Japanese arts. However, as such catalogues are mostly published by auction houses for their customers only and are not widely available, very few of them are held or systematically collected by academic libraries. To remedy this omission, this collection brings together sixteen catalogues of auctions which took place around the turn of the century for the sale of collections by eight leading French collectors. Together, they provide academics and students in the subject with a unique and rare primary source. All the catalogues are reproduced with numerous pictures and plates, together with foldouts as originally published.

This collection is a three-volume facsimile edition in large folio format of the complete catalogues of the series of 6 major exhibitions of Ukiyoe Hanga, Japanese woodblock prints, held in Paris over the period 1909 to 1914. Organized chronologically from the early Ukiyoe period of 17th century through to the 19th century, the exhibitions featured more than 2,300 works by around 130 Japanese artists. They were selected from 66 collections of reputed art critics, such as R. Kœchlin, artists, including H. Rivière and R. Collin, art dealers and many connoisseurs of Japanese art as well as Musée du Louvre and Musée des Arts Décoratifs which widely covered the prints by minor but important artists as well as famous names like Sharaku, Hokusai, Utamaro, Hiroshige. No such exhibitions in the subject both in scale and in comprehensiveness have ever been repeated. The catalogues, reprinted here complete for the first time, include around 1060 black and white plates and 60 in colour. They were originally published each year of the exhibition in limited numbers, 100-130 copies only, and are not easily accessible in libraries, both in Japan and in the West. Ukiyoe is a key aspect of Japonism, and the reception of Japanese arts in the Western culture is now studied extensively. These catalogues will provide an extensive source for scholars and researchers of the history of Japanese art, the history of modern art, impressionism and the history of print.

This is the sixth part of the successful Edition Synapse series (available outside Japan from Routledge) which provides art historians and students with the primary-source materials related to the Western reception of Japanese arts from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.This collection brings together for the first time the works by Félix Régamey, a leading artist and book illustrator of the Japonism movement in France. Régamey first came to Japan with Emile Guimet in 1876 and together they travelled around Japan and published Promenades japonaises, with Régamey’s illustrations of Japanese life and manners throughout the book. Régamey’s passion for Japan never diminished after the trip and he began to publish his own books about Japan, many of which were fully decorated by his illustrations. This collection includes all of his six books related to the Japanese. They are reproduced in facsimile reprint format with colour illustrations. Okoma, one of those six and renowned as one of the most beautiful ‘Japonism’ books of the period, is reprinted here with all pages in full colour.