FEATURES ARCHIVE

What experiences inspired you to enter the field of Japanese art?
My family has had an important influence. My father is a professor emeritus of Japanese art history and my mother is descended from a family of Shinto priests that has a very long history. As a boy in Tokyo, we attended traditional Noh and Kabuki theatre, and I was educated in the art of tea. My father also took me on trips to Kyoto to study the art and architecture of the great Buddhist temples. Ever the teacher, on the journey home he would quiz me on the details—artists’ names, dates and periods. My father, now 81, still calls me from Tokyo to point out the smallest typographical errors that he finds in our catalogues.

In 1991, I joined my father in New York when he came to research Japanese print collections in America during a sabbatical year. We studied the incredible collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and many more. In doing so I rediscovered my own love of Japanese art.

While in New York, I met Sebastian Izzard, who was then the head of Japanese and Korean Art at Christie’s (though I had actually first met him when I was thirteen and he a student of my father). He recruited me for Christie’s graduate training program in London and New York, after which I started out in Christie’s Tokyo office. I transferred to New York in 2000.

Tell me about one of the most memorable sales that you have handled since joining Christie’s.
That would be the Dainichi Nyorai sculpture attributed to Unkei, one of the greatest sculptors of the early Kamakura period who was working in the then-capital of Nara in the 1190s. This is the story I will write about when I retire! The consignor, who found the statue in a countryside antique shop, took it to a curator at the Tokyo National Museum, where x-rays showed three dedicatory Buddhist objects that had remained inside the hollow torso for 800 years. When Christie’s sold the sculpture in March 2008 for $14,377,000 (estimate: $1,500,000–2,000,000), it set a world auction record for Japanese art. Last year it was officially registered as an Important Cultural Property of Japan.

Who collects Japanese works of art?
Our collecting base is strikingly international. I would estimate that in 2009, three out of four buyers were non-Japanese clients and there has always been a strong, if select, collecting presence in America for Japanese art. By contrast, most buyers in the 1980s were located in Japan, during the economic boom there. Recent newcomers include collectors of Western Contemporary Art, perhaps because of the minimalist, modern appeal of the Japanese aesthetic.

How do you remain connected to your cultural roots now that you have been living abroad for ten years?
I am fortunate to be able to share with the world the beauty of Japanese culture, and in that sense I feel I function as a sort of cultural ambassador, both at Christie’s and through my work with the International Ukiyoe Society and the Japanese Art Society of America. My wife and I are very active in the practice of tea in New York and in hosting visiting Japanese scholars.

When you travel to Japan, what is your first art-world destination?
There are two places. First, my father’s library in my parents’ house in Tokyo because it refreshes such fond childhood memories. Second, the city of Kyoto, where my godmother lived. I feel very close to the city, especially given the famous Katsura River there, and also the Katsura Imperial Villa just outside the city.