Every three years, Tokyo’s most trusted art dealers select some of the rarest items from private collections and exhibit them at the Antique Dealers’ Fair & Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan’s oldest art fair, according to the Tokyo Art Club. This weekend, the event returns 60 years after first launching for its 22nd iteration.
The event was first held under the patronage of Prince Mikasa in 1964 to coincide with that year’s Tokyo Olympics. The foreword of the inaugural catalog promised “an opportunity for visitors to the Games not only to see, but also to acquire worthy antique objects of art.” The event, still held at the Tokyo Art Club, also marks the 100th anniversary of the Tokyo Art Dealer Association.
Over three days, 65 stores selected from dealers belonging to the association (part of Tokyo Art Club) will exhibit and sell art from Japan, China, Korea and elsewhere. Among a wide range of antiques, such as tea ceremony utensils and swords, pieces on display include a small but rare sculpture from the Nara Period (710-94), hanging scrolls by haiku poet Matsuo Basho (1644-94) and Handeishi Kawakita tea bowls.
Isao Setsu, a member of the organizing committee of the Antique Dealers’ Fair & Exhibition and owner of Setsu Gatodo Gallery in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi neighborhood, plans to utilize his booth to intertwine the threads between Western and Japanese art, choosing to exhibit paintings by Tawaraya Sotatsu and Paul Cezanne.
“The centerpiece will be an Aizen Myo’o (an esoteric Buddhist deity representing both love and wrath) from the Heian Period,” Setsu says.
The art at the fair will be displayed in specially constructed booths resembling small galleries or museums, often curated as in Setsu’s case. In fact, many of the antiques here end up purchased by art museums in Japan and abroad. What makes the fair different from a regular exhibition or a visit to a museum is that you can actually touch, examine and buy the artworks. Open to the public, this event is an opportunity to take a close look at artworks with a long history.
“I feel like antiques are a time machine,” Setsu says. “I had a tea bowl that belonged to (one-eyed daimyo) Date Masamune, so I used to serve tea in it and have my clients keep one eye closed, to see the tea bowl like he would have. To be able to have tea in the same bowl — it’s amazing.”
Should such priceless works of art be resold in the first place? To Setsu, finding the right buyer can be its own act of conservatorship.
“An antique goes to the person who loves it the most and will cherish it and protect it for the next generation,” he says.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced exhibition organizers to hold a much smaller event than they hoped for in 2021, so they’re pulling out all the stops this year. Flower artist Hiroko Takeda has created arrangements representing the five elements and spread across the four floors of the venue. Hotel Okura will supply food, and tea will be served with a view of the Tokyo Art Club’s Japanese garden. The tatami-covered second floor is dedicated to tea culture antiques, while other floors are classed as miscellaneous.
A special exhibition is set for the third floor: “Exhibition of Masterpieces from Tokiwayama Bunko Foundation.” Here, visitors can view 11 pieces of calligraphy, paintings and ceramics, some of which are designated national treasures not normally on display (the collection has been closed to the public since 1982).
The renowned painter Hiroshi Senju will give a talk at 3 p.m. on Oct. 12, and curator Sarah Sato and Tokyo Art Dealer Association head Tadashi Kawashima will give a joint tour of the special exhibition on Oct. 13 at 3 p.m.
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