As the Great Race for antiquities heated up-- and as if the Europeans weren't having enought trouble with each other-- a mysterious Japanese team appeared on center stage.
It was not the first time, of course, that the Japanese played a part in the events along the Great Road. Indeed, perhaps of all the peoples who have played a part in the history of the Silk Road, it is the Japanese who played one of the most significant roles of all. While not traders or missionaries-- in fact, the Japanese were not even among the active participants in the unfolding of Great Events along the Road; and yet, their service in preserving the riches of the Road, cannot be over overstated. For without the Japanese, there is so much that would have been lost forever.
Their almost obsessive antiquainarism began during Tang dynasty times, and, indeed it continues right down to today. For example there are dances and musical compositions, which while have completely vanished in Central Asia and China, are preserved and even performed as part of the Imperial Calendar events within the Japanese Imperial Household today (see this post for the music and dance preserved in Japan).
The Japanese were quietly there practically from the beginning-- and this participation in events was in no manner diminished during the period of intense rivalry for antiquties that ocurred at the start of the 20th century. Yes, the Great Game.
From the perspective of stunning triumphs, the Japanese came home in 3rd place with the 3rd greatest haul of loot. In terms of scholarship, no country has played a greater role than Japan (and from London's point of view its too bad all the scholarship is being done in Japanese).
Peter Hopkirk paints an almost comical picture of the role of the Meiji Period Otani Mission, describing how the British had them tailed for a year, believing them to be spies sent by the Mikado. Hopkirk sets the stage:
In the autumn of 1908, around the time when Pelliot was shipping his treasures home from Central Asia, British intelligence chiefs in Simla began to take an interest in the movements of two young Japanese archaelogists who had turned up on the Silk Road. Although unaware of it themselves, the men had been observed from the moment they entered Chinese Turkestan overland from Peking. In true KIM fashion they were shadowed for over a year by a succession of Moslem traders, native servants and others on the payroll of the Indian {British} government
The two men were ostensibly Buddhist monks, but they didn't act very Buddhist (reportedly being cruel to the natives everywhere along the way). In addition, they kept drawing things (which is something, of course, archaelogists actually do!) It was the Otani Mission, in fact, that first discovered what is one of the most important artistic discoveries of that period: the splendor of the Kizil Gottoes. Not only are these cave murals the oldest cave grottoes in China, but they are considered to be by many people the most beautiful.
Located not far from Kucha, the Japanese team was tremendously lucky to find them. However, that luck turned on them when a very powerful earthquake ocurred which caused them to have to leave the site empty-handed. In the chaos of the disaster they even lost their notes and photographs, and this was all the window of time necessary which allowed the Germans (who were right on their tail) to move in and take the glory.
The German team was led by Albert von Le Coq (who was independently wealthy and served as assistent to the Director of what was Berlin's famous Ethnology Museum). Hopkirk paints a picture of tension that existed between Le Coq and the Director, who had a more conservative approach to Le Coq's "penchent for wholesale removal." Le Coq was not on the losing side of the argument as the German team hauled back three hundreds of crates (360 kilograms) of art during their three expeditions at Kizil.
You are probably wondering just how does one cut out paintings which have been painted on to thick rock inside caves 1500 years ago? Well, they used very sharp knives to cut around the paintings and then jimmed in pickaxes to create the space necessary to get their saws in. After huge chunks of rock had been removed, the paintings were further cut down for transport.
Le Coq's published catalog Alt-Kutscha can be seen in very high definition on this Japanese site. Note the saw marks on the murals-- which one has to admit were carefully done given the environment of the caves.
It is apparent from Le Coq's writings that he remained deeply impressed by what he found in the caves. His first impression was of the astounding beauty of the blue pigment used in the paintings decorating the cave walls.
“…the extravagant use of a brilliant blue – the well-known ultramarine which, in the time of Benvenuto Cellini was frequently employed by the Italian painters, and was bought at double its weight in gold."
As Le Coq explains, this ultramarine pigment was the same blue so beloved of the Renaissance painters, which was actually made from ground up lapis luzli. Victoria Finlay, in her breathtaking book, Color: A Natural History of the Palatte, begins her chapter on blue with these words:
One Day many years ago somebody told me that all the true ultramarine paint in the world came from one mine in the heart of Asia.
It's true all the ultramarine paint in the world was painstakingly derived from the lapis luzli rocks mined from one place in northeast Afghanistan. Located not far from Bamiyan, from there, donkeys transported the expensive pigment in rough scaks over mountain ranges East to Central Asia and beyond, and West to Venice and beyond.
In Europe, the precious pigment was so expensive that it was worth more than gold, and the legnedary painters of the Renaissance were forced to wait till their patrons provided them the pigment before they could apply the heavenly blue to Mary's robes-- for this ultramarine pigment was Mary's. Finlay says in today's money, a pound would cost about $3000. The color is truly heavenly-- just look at the Wilton Diptych-- shown left. That is all lapis luzli from the Sar-e-sang mine in Afganistan.
Le Coq was with good reason stunned to see the precise same shade being used in the cave paintings of Kizil-- the famed ultramarine of the Renaissance. More precious than gold, Le Coq was surprsied not only by it being present this far East, but also by the abundant use of the extremely costly pigment.
He was even more taken aback by the content of the paintings and wrote that “there was … not the slightest sign in the paintings of any East Asiatic influences.” That is to say that "despite its geographic proximity to China, the Buddhist art there did not show any Chinese elements, but more Indian and Persian (Iranian) influence."
The people depicted in the paintings surprised him as well, for red haired light eyed peoples dominated the pictures. He thought their looks and their swords were highly reminiscent of his own Frankish culture and was one of the earlier proponents of a Caucasian Buddhist culture in Central Asia. He wrote:
Such more striking are representations of red-haired, blue-eyed men with faces of a pronounced European type. We connect these people with the Aryan language found in these parts in so many manuscripts.. These red haired people wear suspenders from their belts.. a remarkable ethnological peculiarity!
**
So, what of our supposed Japanese spies? Well, while they missed the boat at Kizil, they managed to come away with the third largest collection of Central Asia art-- only beaten by the British and Germans. The Otani team got its name from a certain Count Otani Kozui (picture at top). It is hard to say whether they were spies or not since many secrets remain secrets in Japan.
Otani himself had a fascinating life.
The son of the 21st Abbot of one of Japanese Buddhism's most important sects, Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land Buddhism) Otani was actually sent away for a Western-style education in London as a young man. There he met several of the adventurers and scholars whom I have been writing so much about like Marc Aurel Stein (of Dunhuang infamy) and Sven Hedin of Sweden. It is not at all had to imagine the young man coming under their spell-- for these adventurers were the toast of London. You can well imagine how, more interested in adventure than Buddhism-- he vowed that one day he too would make his name through discovery and adventure.
Hopkirk doesn't discuss this aspect at all, but I think it's also relavent to also keep in mind that an essential aspect of East Asian Buddhism is grappling with the problem of translation. Buddhism was so much harder to translate into various langauges than the Bible or the Koran, for example, and truly huge problems had to be overcome. First, of all, the written tradition does not depend on a bible or book of revelation, but rather is a highly sophisticated system of philosophy and is therefore not easily understood in its original language.
But the early languages used to write down the Buddhist texts, particularly Sanskrit, had tremendously rich vocabularies for expressing philosophical content. Sooil used to tell me about Sanskrit's unparalled vocabularly. He said that English still does not have all the finely nuanced philosophical vocabulary as Sanskrit. Even worse than English were Chinese and Japanese-- both of which quite simply did not have the native words necessary to express the obscure concepts. So from the very earliest days of Buddhism, there were really large issues concerning viable translations, and monks and scholars would seek to find the answers by traveling back to the source of the religion.
Indians like to say that "all roads lead back to Ajanta." Well, they at least lead back to Dunhuang.
For that reason alone, I wouldn't find it odd that Otani would have sunk a vast fortune of his own money into these expeditions which brought back Buddhist sculpture, documents in several of languages, countless artifacts and several 2000 year-old mummies. As a Buddhist, I do not think it ought that he would be in Central Asia as he had more of a reason, perhaps, than any of the Westerners out there digging in the sands.
The Russians remained absolutely convinced they were up to no good and maybe they had their reasons. In the end, though, Otani's project caused he, his family and his temple grave financial hardships. He lost his post as Abbot of the Temple and had to sell off vast holdings-- including his beloved villa full of two-thirds of his art collection.
The part of the colection that Otani kept hold of, eventually was scattered here and there into various collections in Japan. The Japanese government during the 1960's sought to track down as many of the pieces as it could and finally gathered a substantial amount of Otani's personal hoarde together where they were brought together and are now kept at the Tokyo National Museum. More remains out of the Tokyo collection as in it, and to try and see the Otani Collection in its entirity you would have to travel to more than a dozen museums in three countries. Many pieces remain unaccounted for as well.
After his financial difficulties, Otani shifted his base to China-- closer to the Lost Cities he still dreamed of. He took a large part of his collection with him to Shanghai and Lushun. These pieces mostly ended up in museums in China (History Museum in Beijing and the Lushun Museum).
Of those pieces left in his Villa in Kobe? Well, an industrialist was the person who bought Otani's villa along with all its contents-- including the art, and this clever businessman (?) sought to barter the precious treasures for mining rights in Korea. It was in this way that another third of the collection ended up in Seoul, where it still sits, I believe in storage boxes in the National Museum there.
French Medievalist (wouldn't you love to be called a French Medivalist?) Michel Pastoureau wrote a book called Blue: the History of a Color in 2001 that I really liked-- reading it twice in a row in fact! While the Japanese have had a love affair with the color blue right from the very start-- having died in indigo for centuries. In Europe, blue had a much rougher start. In fact, in antiquity it wasn't even acknowledged as a color at all. It wasn't until the middle Middle Ages (around the 12th century) that blue rose to fame, becoming associated with the Virgin Mary. I tend to prefer French scholarship as it greatly resembles Japanese scholarship's preference toward lyrical narative over logical argument. It also does great service to the art of studying minituae-- Pastoureau's book is highly recommended.
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