Understanding the Mechanisms of the Art Market — The 7th Seminar Held by the Department of Art Research, Archives and Information Systems
Among the important book collections held by the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo, is that of uritate mokuroku (sale catalogues). These catalogues were booklets produced and distributed for the purpose of selling artworks owned by private individuals or distinguished families through uritatekai (sealed-bid sales). The Institute currently holds a total of 2,532 such catalogues published from the late Meiji period through the Showa period. This constitutes the largest collection of its kind among public institutions in Japan and is used on a daily basis for provenance research and other art-historical investigations.
In these uritatekai, artworks were traded through a unique bidding system mediated by facilitators and fudamoto (agents responsible for handling bids). This system differed significantly from auctions in which prices are driven upward through openly competing bids, and was instead grounded in traditional Japanese commercial practices. Today, however, while the catalogues themselves are frequently consulted, the institutional background and operational realities of the sales system are not always fully understood, and cases in which uritatekai are mistakenly equated with Western-style auctions are not uncommon. The Japanese art market has developed and evolved within a distinctive framework of transactions different from those of Europe and North America. To provide researchers with an opportunity to understand these mechanisms and deepen their comprehension of related materials, the 7th Research Meeting of the Department of Art Documentation and Archives, entitled “Understanding the Mechanisms of the Art Market,” was held on October 9.
The meeting was moderated by Mr. TASHIRO Yuichiro (Department of Art Documentation and Archives), who also organized the event. First, Mr. KAWASHIMA Tadashi (Chairman, Tokyo Art Dealers Association; President and Representative Director, Mayuyama Ryusendo) delivered a lecture entitled “On Uritate and Kokankai (Exchange Sales),” in which he explained the characteristics of the Japanese-style art market. This was followed by a presentation entitled “On Auctions” by Mr. YAMAGUCHI Katsura (President and Representative Director, Christie’s Japan), who introduced the Western model of the art market. Through these presentations, the structural differences between the Japanese and Western art markets emerged clearly. A question-and-answer session was held afterward, making the meeting a valuable opportunity for researchers to learn about the mechanisms of the art market, an area with which they rarely have the chance to engage in depth.
Art-historical research is not sustained solely by the knowledge of professional researchers such as museum curators and university faculty members. It is hoped that the Research Meetings of the Department of Art Research, Archives and Information Systems will continue to provide opportunities to incorporate diverse perspectives and to acquire insights broadly beneficial to scholarly research.
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Uritate Mokuroku Digital Archive:
https://www.tobunken.go.jp/japanese/uritate.html
Reservation for dedicated terminals:
https://www.tobunken.go.jp/joho/japanese/library/application/application_uritate.html