Japan for All Seasons
The 2009 Japan year
Made in Japan
- Japanese Dolls from the Vienna World Exposition 1873
Inv.-nos.: 197-212
Collection of the University of Vienna’s Institute for East Asian Studies, Japanese Department
Vienna World Fair 1873
To commemorate the 2009 Japan year, which marks the 140-year jubilee of the commencement of official relations between Japan and Austria-Hungary, the Museum of Ethnology – in collaboration with the Department of East Asian Studies/Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna, and with the support of the Japanese Embassy in Austria - has planned a yearlong program series, "Japan for All Seasons".
The focal point is the exhibition "Made in Japan", assembled from the most important Japanese collections in the Museum, which will illustrate cultural contacts between the two countries.
Beginning with early artifacts from the period before the opening of Japan (1853/54) and from the Vienna World Exposition of 1873, the range of the exhibition includes recently acquired objects.
The establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Austria-Hungary was sealed through the amity and commerce treaty of
October 18 1869. This document could be secured as loan by the Austrian State Archive.
In addition to the numerous collection highlights presented, the object ensembles in this exhibition are designed to provide views of everyday life for various social strata in Japan from the end of the 19th century until the present, emphasizing the ethnographic character of the collection.
The Siebold Collection 1889
- Statue of a Nichiren Buddhist Monk
Inv.-no.: 36802
Siebold Collection 1889
Heinrich von Siebold (1852-1908) was the second son of the renowned German doctor Phillip Franz von Siebold, who spent many years during the Edo period in Dutch service in Nagasaki and is considered one of the co-founders of Japanese studies. Born in Boppard am Rhein, Heinrich von Siebold spent his youth in Bonn and Würzburg. Following his father’s example he went to Japan, without completing secondary school or university study, a year after the Meiji Restoration in 1869. There he worked for thirty years as a translator and diplomat, in the service of the Austro-Hungarian embassy in Tokyo.
Several European museums have profited from Siebold’s insatiable passion for collecting, including the Imperial and Royal Court Natural History Museum, to whom he made a generous donation in 1889 of over 5,100 inventory numbers. Today the Siebold collection comprises more than forty percent of the Japanese objects in the Museum of Ethnology. In gratitude, the previously stateless Siebold was conferred Austrian citizenship and the title of baron.
- Two sides of a fan
Inv.-no.: 112242
Este Collection 1893
Este Collection 1893
The heir to the Austrian throne and nephew of Emperor Kaiser Franz Joseph I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand von Österreich-Este (1863-1914) embarked from Trieste with a large retinue on December 5 1892 aboard the cruiser SMS Empress Elisabeth, on a world voyage lasting nearly two years. A passionate hunter, he assembled a sizable collection of prepared animals, and also acquired numerous ethnographic objects. Of the 14,541 items listed in the original inventory, over 5,600 were from East Asia, the majority from Japan.
From his extensive Japanese collection, which included both artistic highlights and objects long considered inferior souvenirs and largely ignored, ca. 2,100 objects are today part of the Japan collection of the Museum of Ethnology.
The Kreiner Collection 1964, 1966 und 1969
Josef Kreiner (b. 1940) was initially active as a professor and board member at the Department of Japanese Studies, University of Vienna. He was later appointed to the University of Bonn, where he remained until his retirement. A large number of the acquisitions from the years 1964 to 1972 derive from his collective ventures. As the museum possessed few objects from Japan’s agricultural milieu, with the exception of a few raincoats, straw hats and shoes, and models of agricultural implements from the Siebold collection, Kreiner aimed to compensate for this absence of folk culture objects through intensive collecting of agricultural devices and agrarian household goods.
In 1965-66, Kreiner lived in the Fukui prefecture for half a year performing fieldwork, where reports reached him of the Izumi valley within the mountains. The valley floor was a morass due to the construction of one of the then-largest dams in Japan. Kreiner seized the chance, collecting in the sometimes already abandoned farmsteads or purchasing old, useless equipment from farmers leaving their farms. A singular collection was formed, which - with those already mentioned - yielded a complete set of agricultural implements and agrarian household goods.
- Winnowing machine from the Village of Izumi in Fukui
Prefecture
Inv.-no.: 145.758
Kreiner Collection 1966