On September 26 this blog introduced Ninagawa Noritane (1835–1882), the antiquities scholar who edited the "Edo Castle Photo Album" containing the "Tokyo Castle Map" on the Takebashi monument diagonally opposite Palaceside Building. Any account of him must include his role in bringing Japanese culture to the world.
Ninagawa is often praised as a bureaucrat who helped establish Japan's museums, but his personal research produced Kanko Zusetsu: Ceramics, volumes 1–7 (1876–80). More catalog than monograph, it was Japan's first systematic classification of ceramics and seems to have sparked foreign interest in the excellence of Japanese pottery.
Volume 1 relates to the American zoologist Edward Sylvester Morse (1838–1925), familiar from the Omori shell mound discovery in Tokyo = photo =. Invited to the University of Tokyo as a retained scholar, Morse took to Japanese pottery; Ninagawa taught him connoisseurship, is said to have gifted more than 1,000 ancient pieces, and joined him collecting in town. Boston-area elites, influenced by Morse, funded the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' purchase of his collection of 4,000 to 5,000 Japanese ceramics, preserved as the "Morse Japanese Pottery Collection." Searching "Morse Collection" on the museum website returns 5,020 items including Korean ware (http://www.mfa.org/search/collections?keyword=Morse+Collection&objecttype=14). Morse is also known for donating 12,000 volumes from his personal library to rebuild the Tokyo University Library after the Great Kanto Earthquake.
Less familiar in Japan but equally important is Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826–97) of the British Museum in London, who built its Japanese pottery collection. After 45 years at the museum, including as keeper, he was influenced by Ninagawa's Kanko Zusetsu, collected more than 2,000 Japanese ceramics, and laid the foundation for the museum's 3,500-piece holdings. Franks' acquisitions span Jomon to the present, especially strong in Kofun excavations, early-to-mid Edo porcelain, and late Edo to early Meiji wares. Nicole Romainville, director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, notes records showing Ninagawa sold Japanese pottery to Franks.
Princess Mikasa (Princess Takamado), who earned an Oxford doctorate on Japanese art the British Museum collected in the 19th–20th centuries, is said to have compared the Morse and Franks collections when speaking abroad during her studies: the former as "ceramic collecting as scientific specimens," the latter as "collecting as an antiquities connoisseur" — a contrast recorded on a student's blog who heard her lecture.