“A Pirate's View of the History of Art Commerce: Beyond an Oceanic View of Civilizations,”
Shigemi Inaga ed., The 50th International Research Symposium:
A Pirate's View of World History―A Reversed Perception of the Order of Things From a Global Perspective,
A Pirate’s View of the History of Art Commerce
第50回国際研究集会，International Research Center for Japanese Studies 国際日本文化研究センター,
August 31, 2017, pp.107-125.

Chapter 12

A Pirate’s View of the History of Art Commerce:
Beyond an Oceanic View of Civilizations 1
Inaga Shigemi
1. Redefining Piracy
1.1 The Battamon DisturbanceLet’s begin with the battamon disturbance. In 2010, Okamoto Mitsuhiro’s “Battamon” series was
exhibited at the Kobe Fashion Museum (fig.1). While the etymology of the term is uncertain,
in Japan’s western Kansai region it refers to a product that is sold without going throughauthorized distribution routes. Batchimon, on the other hand, refers to a counterfeit or imitation
item. In Japanese, batta also refers to grasshoppers (including locusts). With this in mind,
Okamoto created migratory locusts clothed in leather from brand products. However, Louis
Vuitton complained that this exhibit was equivalent to engaging in counterfeit sales, and it was
halted. Tano Taiga engraved original bags out of wood with exactly the same pattern as those of
Louis Vuitton, and it is said that a public museum had to hide their logo marks when they wereput on display.2 The obstinacy of brand distributors not trying to understand jokes might invite
contemptuous laughs. In this paper, I will consider the currents of world history lying behindsuch incidents,3 and refer to this approach as a “pirate’s view of world history.”
Today, when one hears of piracy, what comes to mind? Perhaps the bands that attack ships
passing through the Strait of Malacca, or the professional groups off the coast of Somalia that
attack commercial ships, take hostages, and demand sizeable ransoms. These pirates are likeprivate soldiers that exist outside of state-approved armies. What about the Strait of Hormuz?
If it is closed off by Iran’s army, then the crude oil supply from Persian Gulf oil-producing
1This paper is part of the book I am currently working on, tentatively entitled Bunka hon’yaku no chikaku
hendō, bunka-kan kattō no kishōgaku josetsu 文化翻訳の地殻変動、文化間葛藤の気象学 序説. English
Title: Beyond an Oceanic View of Civilizations, Towards a Tectonics in Trans-cultural Transactions (TTT) &Climatology of Cultural Conflicts (CCC).
2
Fukuzumi Ren 福住廉, “Minkan kigyō ni yoru aratana ken’etsu: Rui viton ga hikiokoshita sakuhin tekkyo
jiken” 民間企業による新たな検閲：ルイ・ヴィトンが引き起こした作品撤去事件 (A New Case of
Censorship by Private Companies: The Artwork Removal Incident Brought About by Louis Vuitton) Aida
あいだ (Between) 173 (20 June 2010): 9–18.
3
Yamada Shōji 山田奨治, Nihon no chosakuken wa naze konnna ni kibishii no ka 日本の著作権はなぜこんなに厳しいのか (Why is Japan’s Copyright so Strict?) (Kyoto: Jimbun Shoin, 2011). At the end of this work,
the text of Japan’s copyright law is reproduced. However, in order to “correctly” understand it, the explanationof an attorney with considerable experience working in related court cases is necessary. Inaga Shigemi 稲賀繁美, “Bunka isan to shite no CM no hozon to kōkai o kangaeru” 文化遺産としてのCMの保存と公開を考える (Considering the Preservation and Public Release of Commercials as Cultural Assets) (Shikō no gūkei 思考の隅景 [The Corner Shadows of Thought] Series, no. 89), Tosho shinbun 図書新聞 (The Book Review Press)
2773 (6 May 2006).
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Inaga Shigemi

countries will be blocked. In order to prevent this, the United States’ navy and others engaged
in military action. What distinguishes piracy from state-backed military action? Furthermore,
what is the basis of the judgment of the “international community” that deems Somali piracy
and Iran’s activities as criminal acts, and for what reasons is this seen as “right”? 4
1.2 Minor and Major Pirates
Here, let us abruptly turn to the painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). Was this untamed
painter who moved to the Southern Pacific island of Tahiti a pirate? His former friend Camille
Pissarro spoke negatively of him, stating that Gauguin until recently had been pilfering from
Persians and Japanese, and is now engaging in piracy in the Southern Pacific.5 Gauguin’s Tahiti
depictions actually appropriated a motif from a mural at the Saqqara burial ground in Egypt
and borrowed from Hokusai sketches. He also based his image of a woman standing on asouthern small island on a Buddhist image from Borobudur. While 1980s feminism censured
him,6 Gauguin, in reality, was just a “small-time robber” who escaped to Tahitian society, at thefringes of the colonial rule based on Western imperialism’s conquest of the world. He was not a
great evil, that is, the Western domination itself that constructed such world hegemony.7
Let us go back in history. In 1494, two years after Christopher Columbus “discovered” theAmerican continent, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed (fig. 2). It was an absurd act of piracy
which tried to divide the entire earth equally between Spain and Portugal based on the principlethat lands to the west would belong to the former and the east to the latter. This was a time atwhich the difference between the New World and India was unclear, and thus of course theexistence of the Pacific as well. Due to confusion regarding the latitude line lane that marked
their domains, Brazil would end up as part of the Portuguese-speaking world, as it continues to
be today. In fact, arguments and feuds would frequently erupt around this dividing line: on one
side, in the Caribbean Sea (1508) and the eastern coast of Brazil (1521), and on the other sidein Malacca Strait (1505), Batavia (1519), and the Maluku Islands and Manila (1571). Judging
from it one may say that, the modern world order was created by piracy. Portugal occupied Goa(on India’s western coast) in 1511. Even Vasco Da Gama’s ocean voyage did not open a boatroute in a virgin land’s ocean that had no commerce: for centuries Arab merchants’ dhows had

4

5
6

7

“Kaizoku wa kyōtsū no teki” 海賊は共通の敵 (hostis humani generis: “Beichū haken no jidai”) (米中覇権の時代 [An Era of US-China Battles Over Hegemony] Series, no. 2), Mainichi shinbun 毎日新聞 (20March 2012). Here Proudhon’s What is Property? (1840) comes to mind. Property (propriété) also refers topossessions. In the same year Proudhon wrote The Philosophy of Poverty (1846), which Marx would purposely
misread as The Poverty of Philosophy. The issue will be further analyzed in sections 2-2 to 2-4. See also Takeda
Isami 竹田いさみ, Sekai o ugokasu kaizoku 世界を動かす海賊 (Pirates who Change the Whole World)(Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2013).
Camille Pissarro, Lettres à son fils Lucian (Paris: Albain-Michel, 1950), 318.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Gone Native: Paul Gauguin and the Invention of Primitive Modernism,” Art inAmerica 77 (July 1989): 118–129.
Shigemi Inaga, “Tahiti et la migration des signes, Représentation du paradis terrestre chez Paul Gauguin etquête de la créolité dans le language plastique au tournant des XIXe et XXe siècle,” in Multiculturalisme et
identité en littérature et en art (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002), 11–24.

108

A Pirate’s View of the History of Art Commercecrossed the Arabian Sea. The Portuguese were the pirate intruders.8 Do the descendants of thesepeople really have the right to criticize Somali piracy as unethical?
Of course, Southern Europe began ocean-based exploration in search of India andSoutheast Asia’s resources and riches. The reality of the Mediterranean Ocean being ruled overby the Islamic world stood in the way. Granada fell in 1492, the same year as the “discovery of
the New World.” Yet, the expression “Reconquista,” which refers to Christians recovering lost
territory on the Iberian Peninsula, is rather dubious insofar as Christians had not ruled over itin the past. Christian countries would take control of the Mediterranean Sea ninety years later,
after they had emerged victorious over the Ottoman Empire in 1571.9
1.3 Ambitions for World Domination
During this era, Philippe II (1527–98), taking advantage of the unity of Spain and Portugal,
reigned over the “empire on which the sun never sets.” Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–98) lived at
the same time (fig. 3). Spain had advanced to Taiwan, and built Fort Zeelandia in Tainan andFort San Domingo in Tamsui (located in the northernmost part of Taiwan). Hideyoshi, who
had went on expeditions to Korea from 1592 to 1593 and 1597 to 1598, had originally aspired
to conquer the “Great Ming Empire,” and was hoping to go to Taiwan next. These conquerorsof East and West who had ambitions for a worldwide empire could have led to a confrontationin Taiwan in the international situation of the day. In the background to this desire for conquestof Japan’s military unifier was the reality of the Ming having its plate full with defending itself
from northern threats.
Immediately after Hideyoshi, the Date Domain’s Hasekura Tsunenaga (1571–1622)
would cross the Pacific Ocean, pass through Mexico from Acapulco to Veracruz, and then, after
crossing the Atlantic, have an audience with the Pope in Rome. Since during his voyage theEdo shogunate had adopted a so-called isolationist policy, him and his party were left stranded
in Manila until they received permission to return to Japan in 1620, seven years after they had
departed the country. Here as well we should not make the mistake of thinking that Tsunenaga
went on an ocean voyage that no man had gone on before. Portugal had already occupied
Macao in 1557, and Spain, which was Portugal’s rival, then took over Manila in 1571. Soon
thereafter the galleon route to Acapulco would be opened, thus shaping Tsunenaga’s itinerary.
At the time the advancement of Japanese towns in Southeast Asia was pronounced. As if tointersect with this, the Netherlands would first in 1613 open a trading post in Hirado, andin 1618 build a fort in Batavia, Java. In 1623, on Amboyna (part of the Maluku Islands), a
gruesome incident occurred in which the Dutch massacred Englishmen, partially due to mutual
misunderstandings of the parties dispatched to the East-Indies. Around twenty Japanese people
8

9

Yajima Hikoichi 家島彦一, Umi ga tsukuru bunmei: Indoyō kaiiki sekai no rekishi 海が創る文明：インド洋海
域世界の歴史 (Civilization Created by Oceans: The History of the World of the Indian Ocean Waters) (Tokyo:
Asahi Shinbunsha, 1993); Kaiiki kara mita rekishi: Indoyō to Chichūkai o musubu kōryū shi 海域から見た歴史：
インド洋と地中海を結ぶ交流史 (History as Seen from Ocean Waters: The History of Exchange Connecting
the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea) (Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2008).
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1995 [1949]), vols. 1 & 2.
109Inaga Shigemi

become mixed up in it and lost their lives. It is an episode that narrates for us the scale of tradeand human movement at the time.
1.4 The “Pre-Modern” Asian Seas
In the preceding century, in the Ming under the Yongle Emperor Zheng He 鄭和 (1371–1434)
went on seven expeditions (1405–1433). In Japanese these are currently referred to as the “Great
Expedition” (daiensei 大遠征; in China the endeavor is called “Great Voyage”). On his final
voyage, Zheng, a Semu (色目) eunuch, is said to have made a pilgrimage to Mecca. His massive
undertakings are thought to each have mobilized 26,000 people. They used existing commercial
boat routes of Chinese merchants up through the Strait of Malacca and relied on the pilotingof Indians and Arabs from the Indian Ocean onwards.10 Sometimes referred to as the silk roadof the ocean, this route was a main artery of the trade of goods between the East and West,which can be seen by, for example, the Fustat Ruins in the suburbs of Cairo. Fustat is famous
for the massive amount of ceramic pieces that were unearthed there. Almost fifteen percentof these fragments, which span from the eight to seventeenth century, are Chinese ceramics.
Furthermore, it is thought that many of the unearthed fragments were created in imitation ofChinese products.11
Insofar as we believe The Travels of Marco Polo, a century before Zheng He during theYuan dynasty, Marco Polo (1254–1324) used an ocean route from Quanzhou when returningfrom the Yuan. While it was a voyage that ended up requiring two years due to him waiting for
trade winds, the Venetian merchant could use it because it had been an excellent establishedtrade route. Baghdad, where Marco Polo stopped by on his way home, in the past had boasted apopulation of one million people. However, it had fallen in 1259 at the hands of Hulagu. Kublai
is well known in Japan for attempting to invade the country twice, once in 1274 and again
in 1281. He also attacked Java’s Singhasari Kingdom in 1292. After the Mongolian invasions,people near the shores of China and the Korean peninsula would frequently be harmed by thepirates called wakō 倭寇 (Ch. wokou; Kr. waegu). It is thought that amongst them were many
people from Fujian and other places who had been mobilized for the Mongolian invasions.12
10

Miyazaki Masakatsu 宮崎正勝, Tei Wa no nankai daiensei: Eirakutei no sekai chitsujo saihen 鄭和の南海大遠征：永楽帝の世界秩序再編 (Zheng He’s Great Southern Seas Expedition: The Reconstruction of the

Yongle Emepror’s World Order) (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron sha, 1997), 104–105; Louise Levathes, When China
Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
11
For a classic work written for a general audience, see Mikami Tsugio 三上次男, Tōji no michi 陶磁の道 (TheWay of Ceramics) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1969).
12
See section 1 “Wakō to Higashi Ajia tsūkōken” 倭寇と東アジア通交圏 (Japanese Pirates and the Zone ofFriendly Relations Between Countries in East Asia) in Higashi Ajia tsūkōken to kokusai ninshiki 東アジア通交
圏と国際認識 (The Zone of Friendly Relations Between Countries in East Asia and International Perception),ed. Tanaka Takeo 田中健夫 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1997). The political conflicts between Japanand Korea and debates surrounding views of Japan’s wars of invasion have been projected onto academic
disputes regarding the ethnic makeup of wakō, which can be divided into an early period and later period.
Since scholars cannot do away with their political positions, it has become very difficult for them to come up
with objective academic interpretations with regard to this issue. See, for example, Hatano Yūsuke 秦野裕介,“Wakō to kaiyōshi kan” 倭寇と海洋史観 (Wakō and Views of Ocean History), Ritsumeikan Daigaku Jinbun
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Oliver Wolters, an authority in research on the ocean of Southeast Asia, has argued that the riseand fall of powers in this ocean area around Southeast Asia’s islands can be likened to a mandala.
Each regional power’s sphere of influence would repeatedly expand and shrink in accordancewith the rise and fall of its authority. These multiple spheres of influence would exist alongsideeach other, sometimes serving as a magnetic field for conflict. Authority rarely took the form of
lasting dominance that asserted naval supremacy.13
1.5 The Background to the Establishment of “International Law”
Having provided a quick overview of Asian oceans before Western powers invaded, let us once
again return our viewpoint to the Western world. Before the Battle of Lepanto, Christiancountries located on the borders of Europe were actually taking great pains to benefit from the
Ottoman Empire. Francois I (1494–1547) lived during the same time as Süleyman (1494–1566)(fig. 4). The former would acquire from the latter exclusive capitulation rights as a blessing
on the grounds that he was a Person of the Book. However, when European powers gained
strength, this would become a pretext for encroaching on Turkish territory.14 This trick would
be repeated: by cleverly using such privileges as diplomatic ones (like consular jurisdiction),
European powers would throughout the Far East establish settlements, and, with them as theirbase, unexpectedly acquire colonies.15 These were acts of piracy that pretended to be legal.16
Here, the establishment of the legal thought known as “international law” becomes an
Kagaku Kenkyūsho kiyō 立命館大学人文科学研究所紀要 (Bulletin of Ritsumeikan University’s Institute of
Humanities) 81 (2003).
13
Oliver Wolters, History, Culture, and Religion in Southeast Asian Perspective (Institute of Southeast AsianStudies, Singapore, 1982); Shiraishi Takashi 白石隆 , Umi no teikoku: Ajia o dō kangaeru ka 海の帝国：アジアをどう考えるか (The Empire of the Ocean: How Should We Think About Asia?) (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron
Shinsha, 2001), 46–47, 209–210.
14
Matsui Masako 松井真子, “Osuman Teikoku no ‘jōyaku no sho’ ni miru saikei koku jōkō” オスマン帝国の「条約の書」にみる最恵国条項 (Most Favored Country Clauses in Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire), in
Osuman teikokushi no shosō オスマン帝国史の諸相 (Various Aspects of Ottoman Empire History), ed. Suzuki
Tadashi 鈴木董 (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppan, 2012), 128–149. As of 9 April 2012, the Wikipedia English
language article “Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire,” has very little information on the relationshipbetween the Ottoman Empire and Western European countries. Furthermore, there is no Japanese article on
the subject.
15
A famous incident involving misunderstandings by the Western world regarding China’s tribute system is theKing George III's British envoy George Macartney’s audience with the Qing's Qianlong Emperor 乾隆帝 inRehe 熱河 (1792). While after the Ming dynasty, a tentative schema regarding tributary relationships in the
Qing can be found in Hamashita Takeshi 浜下武志, “Chūgoku no gin kyūshū ryoku to chōkō bōeki kankei”
中国の銀吸収力と朝貢貿易関係 (China’s Power to Suck in Silver and Tributary Trade Relationships), in
Ajia kōekiken to Nihon kōgyōka アジア交易圏と日本工業化 1500–1900 (The Asian Trade Sphere and Japan’s
Industrialization: 1500 to 1900), ed. Hamahista Takeshi and Kawakatsu Heita 川勝平太 (Tokyo: Libro Pōto,
1991). For a survey from a European-American perspective, see Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in The Age ofCommerce 1450–1680 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, 1993).
16
While as part of Tōyō Bunko’s series “Jikū o koeru hon no tabi 2” 時空をこえる本の旅２ (A Book Trip
Transcending Time and Space) we find the small booklet Higashi Indo gaisha to Ajia no kaizoku 東インド会社とアジアの海賊 (The East India Company and Asian Pirates) (Tokyo: Tōyō Bunko Museum, 2012), it
should have been titled Higashi Indo gaisha wa Ajia no kaizoku (The East India Company Were Asia’s Pirates).
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issue. Grotius (1583–1645) is known as the father of international law. His 1625 On the Law
of War and Peace was a legal theory surely crafted with very realist concerns in mind amidst
the struggle with England over ocean supremacy. The young Grotius’ The Free Sea (1609) waspresented as a counter-argument to England’s ocean supremacy. Even some years later it wasforced to fight opposing discourses such as that found in John Selden’s Closed Sea (1635).
Behind On the Law of War and Peace was the waiting-to-erupt issue of the Netherlands’
capturing of Portuguese boats in the Singapore Strait, regarding which Grotius engaged in a
debate with Scotland’s William Welwood. His legal theory would, after his death, form thetheoretical foundation of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, and be seen as contributing to the endof the tragedy that was the Thirty Years’ War.17 While the independence of the Netherlands wasrecognized de facto with this treaty, in On the Law of War and Peace Grotius defined the highseas, and incorporated the right to wage war in them into state power.18
What reality was lying in the background to Grotius’ work? Put straightforwardly, it
was rampant privateering, which was equivalent to lawlessness. England undermined Spain
and Portugal’s dominance, and the raging privateering (such as that of Captain Drake) being
carried out with the official recognition of Queen Elizabeth contributed to this.19 It is true that,having defined piracy as an illegal act, Grotius’s theory offered a very effective legal framework.
And yet, if this is the case, a clear fact also becomes apparent: in the Western World before
the establishment of international law, there was basically no permanent legal framework for
restricting piracy.
In the aftermath of the Amboyna massacre, England washed its hands of the waters aroundthe Maluku Islands, and focused on its colonization and management of India for nearly two
centuries. England would not again extend its tentacles to the east until Raﬄes’ occupation ofSingapore (1819). A record remains with us of a speech Raﬄes (1781–1826) gave to the sultansof the Malacca coast. He famously stated that just like piracy is not an embarrassing undertaking
for them, trade is not an embarrassing act for the English. Therefore, the English public servant
asked that the local “Malays” cooperate with English-led trade.20 It is surely already clear to thereader what happened here: based on the international law framework nurtured by Grotius,
17

For a textbook written for a general audience, see page 110 and onwards in Kawakatsu Heita, Kindai wa
Ajia no umi kara 近代はアジアの海から (Modernity: From Asia’s Oceans) (Tokyo: Nihon Hōsō Shuppan
Kyōkai, 1999).
18
See, for example, Ōta Yoshiki 太田義器, Gurotiusu no kokusai seiji shisō: shuken kokka chitsujo no keisei グロ
ティウスの国際政治思想：主権国家秩序の形成 (Grotius’ International Political Thought: The Formationof the Sovereign States Order) (Kyoto: Minerva Shobō, 2003). To be more precise, however, the Netherlands
has never declared independence in the circumstances mentioned above.
19
Sakurai Shōichirō 櫻井正一郎, Joō heika wa kaizoku datta: Shiryaku de tatakatta Igirisu 女王陛下は海賊だった：私掠で戦ったイギリス (The Queen was a Pirate: The England that Fought Using Privateers) (Tokyo:
Minerva Shobō, 2012).
20
Tsurumi Yoshiyuki 鶴見良行, Marakka monogatari マラッカ物語 (The Story of Malacca) (Tokyo: Jiji Tsūshin
sha, 1981), 95. Refer to the section entitled “Kaizoku” 海賊 (Pirates) in chapter two of this work “Umi ni ikiru
hito bito” 海に生きる人びと (People Living in the Ocean) for the state of piracy and the author’s perspective
on it. For a reading of the same episode from the perspective of international politics, see Shiraishi, Umi no
teikoku (above, note13), 93–102.
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piracy in the Malacca Strait was branded illegal, and ocean supremacy for trade was definedas just and legal. Is it too ironic to say that Raﬄes hypocritical sense of justice was supported
by nothing other than the “international law” that had been supposedly inaugurated since thePeace of Westphalia?
2. Various Methods of Writing World History
2.1 Venice and Sakai
Here, let us quickly review the ocean-based historical view of civilizations advocated by
Kawakatsu Heita. While relying on Umesao Tadao’s ecology-based historical view of civilization,
he points out that it lacks a perspective on ocean-based commerce. Umesao’s theory was centeredon the desert region that separated the center of the Eurasian continent into East and West, anddivided Eastern and Western civilization into four spheres. He hypothesized that in Japan andWestern Europe, which are located at the edges of the East and West, parallel phenomena canbe found in their civilizations’ ecological transitions. When one reflects on Umesao’s theory ahalf century later, its split seams become apparent. He crafted it in the 1960s, when Japan was
experiencing amazing economic growth, and also at the historical point in which in the Old
World so-called modernization had only happened in Western Europe and Japan.
We could certainly criticize him for making questionable intellectual leaps and bounds to
explain this phenomenon while using the trappings of ecology. Kawakatsu commendably points
out that Umesao’s ecological suppositions completely ignore the physical distribution of goods
by humans, and tries to supplement Umesao’s schema by adding such routes.21 Both Umesao
and Kawakatsu to an extent were trying to argue against the Marxist developmental view ofcapitalist history during a time in which its validity as grand theory of world history was still
believed in.22 In addition, let us mention here Hayami Akira’s academic theory of historicaldemography and economic history, known as “Industrious Revolution.”23 Hayami, using Japanas a model, engaged in wordplay to present a concept rivaling the “Industrial Revolution”
of Western modernity that began in England. To empirically prove this idea, he statisticallymeasured increase in agricultural production relative to population.24
Traditionally the academic view of the “takeoff” of Western European modernity has held
Kawakatsu Heita, Bunmei no kaiyōshi kan 文明の海洋史観 (An Ocean-Based Historical View of Civilization)(Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Sha, 1997); pocket ed. with a new post face by the author and comment by Kimura
Shigeru (Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 2016), 327–356.
22
A classic work from Japan arguing against the application of Marxist notions to conceptions of world history
is Miyazaki Ichisada 宮崎市定, Tōyōteki kinsei 東洋的近世 (Eastern Early Modernity) (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron
Shinsha, 1999 [Osaka: Kyōiku Taimusu sha, 1950]). From the perspective of industrial and trade history, see
Kawakatsu Heita and Hamashita Takeshi, Umi to shihonshugi 海と資本主義 (The Ocean and Capitalism)(Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinpō Sha, 2003).
23
Hayami Akira, “‘A Great Transformation’: Social Economic Change in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century
Japan,” Bonner Zeitschrift für Japonologie 8 (1986): 3–13; Jean de Vries, The Industrious Revolution (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
24
Hayami Akira 速水融, Kinsei Nihon no keizai shakai 近世日本の経済社会 (Early Modern Japan’s Economic
Society) (Kashiwa: Reitaku Daigaku Shuppankai, 2003).
21

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that it was secured by the development of the complementary triangular trade: the export ofslaves from Africa to South America, the export of sugar and cotton from South and North
America to Europe, and the export of textiles, spirits, and weapons from Western Europe.
However on the backside of this was the movement of a massive amount of silver from Peru
to Europe and Japan to China. The excess of exports from Europe and China were in this way
settled with enormous amounts of silver (fig. 5).25
2.2 Orthodoxy and Deviation
While a somewhat arbitrary choice, it is interesting to compare Venice and Sakai as port cities
that played a symbolic role in this. At the end of the sixteenth century, the many voyagers
who arrived in Japan from Southern Europe called Sakai the Venice of the East in light of its
prosperity.26 While perhaps an assessment a bit too much favorable to Japan, it is certainly not
impossible to read into the fortunes of these two cities a comparison between Europe, where
capital-intensive finance had developed, and Japan, where the labor-intensive use of fortunes was
carried out. In 1898, the Venice Biennale, an art festival that continues today, began. Then, in
1906 Okakura Tenshin (Kakuzō) (1863–1913) published The Book of Tea, which he had written
in English in Boston. This work, which compares—without refraining from exaggeration—
the material prosperity of the Western world with the spirituality of the East, ends with the
anecdote of the suicide of Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591), the legendary tea master from Sakai.27
Here we find Okakura’s persistent will to trumpet to Western society an aesthetics that was thepolar opposite of finance capitalism.
In 1986 Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) participated in the Venice Biennale as a representativeof the United States. The “Slide Mantra”—a large marble swirling slide—that he displayed
received high acclaim as a sculpture. However, the “Akari” sculptures that he exhibited withconfidence were sharply criticized for being nothing more than a lamp and having mistaken
design for art. It was even rumored that this led to him not receiving the grand prize. These
sculptures, drawing from Gifu paper lanterns, were hollow bamboo frames surrounded by
Japanese paper. At this stage it was not seen as proper “art” in the West. A value judgment was atwork here that held paintings and sculpture but not lanterns from Japan to be “art.”28 Japanese
aesthetics were not considered appropriate for a European art biennale exhibition.
A similar value judgment has in very recent times repeatedly manifested itself. When El
Anatsui, a sculptor residing in Africa who was similarly invited to the Venice Biennale in thefirst decade of the new millennium, was going to have solo public exhibitions in 2011 in Japan,
25

For more historical details, which the present paper has to omit due to space limitations, see Iwata Shuzen
岩田秀全, Gin no Sekaishi 銀の世界史 (The World History of Silver) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2016), esp.
64–67, 71–92. See also Takeda Isami, Sekaishi o tsukutta kaizoku 世界史をつくった海賊（Tokyo: Chikuma
Shobō, 2011).
26
This commerce and influx of wealth can be reconstructed with festivals still held today. Tsuruoka Mayumi 鶴
岡真弓, ed., Kyōto ikoku isan 京都異国遺産 (Kyoto’s Foreign Country Heritage) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2007).
27
Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea (New York: Dover Publications, 1964 [New York: Duffield 1906]), 64–65.
28
Douzu Masayo ドウズ昌子, Isamu Noguchi: Shukumei no ekkyōsha イサム・ノグチ：宿命の越境者 (Isamu
Noguchi: Destined Transgresser of the Borders of Fortune) (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2000 [2003]).
114

A Pirate’s View of the History of Art Commercea dispute occurred (fig. 6). Along with several art museums, Osaka’s National Museum of
Ethnology was chosen as a venue. Specialists in the field from North America and West Africa
voiced intense opposition to this.29 While in the past discrimination made the likes of placing
African primitive art alongside Western European Renaissance Art out of the question, today
this has changed, and it now has become an item of belief that African modern art is consideredsomething that should only be displayed in art museums, definitely not ethnology ones.
On the other hand, it was decided that in 2008 a large-scale exhibition of Japanese mingei 民藝 (translated as both “folk crafts” and “folk art”) was to be held in Paris. However, itsvenue was to be not the Louvre Museum, a sanctuary of classical art, or the Pompidou Centre,
a shrine of contemporary art, but the Quai Branly Museum, which primarily exhibits art fromAfrica and Oceania.30 When this was announced, it was rumored that at first there were voicesof discontent from the Nihon Mingeikyōkai 日本民藝協会. In the past Okakura Kakuzō
advocated tea ceremony to counter Western art, but, somewhat ironically, this Japanese mingei
organization that was founded by Yanagi Sōetsu—who worked to revitalize tea ceremony—now
disapproves of being placed alongside African and Oceanic art. From a circle that overlappedwith that of the mingei movement was published a book entitled Nanpō kyōeiken no mingei 南
方共栄圏の民藝 (Mingei of the Southern Co-Prosperity Sphere) when Japan was advancing to
the south during World War II. In other words, during this time the mingei movement stuck to
a set of values that saw Southeast Asian popular art as brethren of the same rank as themselves.31
Then, from when exactly did mingei part ways with non-Western people’s folkways, and tried torise in the world to hold exhibits at venues fit for Western art?
2.3 Hegelianism’s Transmigration
The set of values that sees Western traditions as the “orthodox” and locates the non-West on
their margins is referred to as Western-centrism. While it would be too harsh to accuse a single
person as having been the root of this evil, often times this has been done to the German
philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831). Him seeing the embodiment of the Weltgeist (world
spirit) in Europe and his discussion of the Zeitgeist has exerted a worldwide influence in thelatter half of the nineteenth century. However, Hegel’s Eurocentric view of history was not
Inaga Shigemi, “Chōkoku kara haihin saisei kinzoku orimono e” 彫 刻 か ら 廃 品 再 生 金 属 織 物 へ (From
Sculpture to Reclaimed Metal Textile), Aida 178 (20 November 2010); Saitama Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan
埼玉県立近代美術館, Chōkokuka Eru Anatsui no Afurika-ten kinen shinpojiumu “Ibunka no hyōshō to tenji
kūkan no seijigaku” hōkokusho 彫刻家エル・アナツイのアフリカ展記念シンポジウム「異文化の表象と展
示空間の政治学」報告書 (Summary Papers of Symposium “The Politics of Exhibition Space” A Case of the
Exhibition “A Fateful Journey: Africa in the Works of El Anatsui”: Japanese-English bilingual publication)
2011. Also refer to Shigemi Inaga, “Bricolage: Toward a Scrapture [sic]: A Proposal of A New Concept,”
Critical Interventions, no. 9/10 (Spring 2012): 49–68.
30
L'esprit Mingei au Japon, de l'artisanat populaire au design, 30 sep. 2008-11 jan. 2009, Galerie Jardin, Musée
Quai Branly.
31
For the poet Tagore’s reminiscences regarding this same kind of attitude, see, R. Tagore, “On Oriental
Culture and Japanese Mission,” address to the members of Indo-Japanese Association, Tokyo, 15 May
1929. The passage is quoted and commented on in Rustom Bharucha, Another Asia (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 170.

29

115

Inaga Shigemi

something that only could be applied to Europe. The Ideals of the East, the English work which
the aforementioned Okakura wrote in India, applied Hegel’s theoretical framework to read theself-development of Eastern art into the history of Japanese art.32 This attempt was inheritedby Ernest Binfield Havell’s The Ideals of Indian Art, and, similarly, the Sri Lankan Ananda
Coomaraswamy—who advocated a pan-Indianistic view of Indian art—also tried to see theembodiment of the Indian ideal in Indian art using the same logic.33 We could say that Hegelian
aesthetics offered an unexpected theoretical backing to (ethnic) nationalism in modern Asia,
contrary to Hegel’s own agenda.
Is the chronological framework that manages the flow of Western history really compatible
with that of Eastern history?34 When considering this problem, we could carry out an EastWest comparison of the word “revolution.” In his Révolution, histoire d’un mot, Alain Rey, aninternational authority in lexicography, avoids examining the Chinese word for revolution geming 革命 on the grounds that the philosophy behind revolution in the West differs from thatof the yixing 易姓 revolution.35 It is certainly true that the way of thinking that sees dynasty
change as boiling down to the will of Heaven is different in nature than the philosophy behindcitizens’ political action that seeks to overthrow existing authority. With that said, if one uses
the phrase “Chinese Cultural Revolution,” then “revolution” and geming would be treated asinterchangeable based on the same terminological standard. Similarly, if the French Revolution
is translated into Chinese using geming, it would be understood based on this Chinese concept.
However, we should not flatly prohibit this. Chen Jiangong 陳建功, a former red guard who
became the head of the Chinese Writer’s Association (Zhongguo wenbijia xiehui 中国文筆家協会), confesses that he was surprised to find out thirty years after the fact that China’s Cultural
Revolution occurred at the same time as the Western world and Japan’s student uprisings.36
2.4 Anachronism and Transmigration
Accidental simultaneity also reminds us of the fictional nature of world histories based on amechanical chronology. England’s John Onians has compiled the Atlas of World Art in order toescape traditional Hegelian Euro-centric historical narratives of world art (fig. 7).37 However,32

For Okakura’s assessment of academics in the Western world, see Kakuzo Okakura, Collected English Writings(Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1984), vol. 2, 132.
33
Inaga Shigemi, “Okakura Tenshin to Indo” 岡倉天心とインド (Okakura Tenshin and India), in Modanizumu
no eikkyō 1; ekkyō suru sōzōryoku モダニズムの越 境 I：越 境する想 像 力 (Modernism’s Border-Crossing
I: Border Crossing Imagination), ed. Modanizumu Kenkyūkai モダニズム研究会 (Kyoto: Jimbun Shoin,2004), 80–86. This paper, originally written in English and translated into Japanese by the author, isretranslated into English by Kevin Singleton and published as, “Okakura Kakuzō and India: The Trajectoryof Modern National Consciousness and Pan-Asian Ideology Across Borders,” Review of Japanese Culture andSociety 24 (December 2012): 39–57.
34
Shigemi Inaga, “Is Art History Globalizable?” in Is Art History Global?, ed. James Elkins (New York:
Routledge, 2007), 249–279, 384–390.
35
Alain Rey, Révolution: histoire d’un mot (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).
36“60 nendai no seinen undō” 60 年代の青年運動 (The Youth Movements of the 60s), Ajia yūgaku アジア遊
学 (Intriguing Asia) 42 (July 2002).
37
John Onians, ed., Atlas of World Art (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2004). Relatedly, see David116

A Pirate’s View of the History of Art Commercesuch an undertaking actually shows that the establishment of the framework of world art history
was nothing more than a process that progressed hand in hand with the unfolding of Europe’s
perception of the world.38 As early as 1987 China’s Huang Yong Ping 黄永砯 put on exhibition
as an artwork a lump of pulp entitled The History of Chinese Painting and the History of Modern Western Art Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes. We could say that in order tounify Western art and Chinese art—which evolved with almost no mutual interaction until thegeneration of Giuseppe Castiglione—while contrasting them, the quickest way would be to inthis way create a tabula rasa by washing them.39
Now, let’s once again consider how Hegelianism is demonstrating a limited effectivenessin the construction of world art history. The negotiations between European art history andthe non-European world from the nineteenth century onwards can be summarized as follows:
Orientalisme, Japonisme, and Primitivisme, to use the French spellings of the terms. Orientalisme
was the stage at which the Western European world depicted the Eastern world using its own
painting grammar, Japonisme the one at which Western Europe renewed its self-expression using
the different aesthetic of an Other, and Primitivisme the one at which the Western world, having
materially conquered the world, searched for an unknown spirituality in the depths of Africa
and the bosom of Asia. This is easily understood if one pictures the genealogy spanning from
Delacroix to Van Gogh and then Pablo Picasso.
At the summit of the world history conceived as the phenomenology of this developmentof the Western world’s self-expression lays anachronisme. Georges Bataille is a straightforward
example. For Bataille, the oldest murals in human history that were discovered in the Lascaux
caves possessed the most contemporary nature in that they were the newest case of somethingthat renews the visual experience of humankind.40 That which is the oldest acquires the newest
value. Origins point to the summit. Aby Warburg was a heretical scholar possessed by themadness of experiencing this reversal as that which survives from ancient times—or, put more
precisely, has “life after death” (Nachleben)—in Renaissance Art. According to him primitive
aesthetic experience is revived like a ghost in the renaissance via physical experience. The French
art historian Georges Didi-Huberman defined this as conscious methodological anachronism.41
Summers, Real Spaces, World Art: History and the Rise of Western Modernism (London: Phaidon Press, 2003);
and Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
38
Regarding the shift of the center of Western European art history from Germany to the North American
Anglophone world, see Michael Ann Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1984); and Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey, Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies(Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2003). Regarding the geographicalmovement of academic paradigms, see Nakayama Shigeru 中山茂, Rekishi to shite no gakumon 歴史としての学問 (Academics as History) (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Sha, 1974 [1986]).
39
A useful related discussion can be found in Terry Smith, What is Contemporary Art? (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2009).
40
Georges Bataille, Lascaux ou la naissance de l’art (Genève: Skira, 1955).
41
Georges Didi-Huberman, L’image survivante, Histoire de l’art et temps des fantômes selon Aby Warburg(Paris: Minuit, 2002). For a reading of this text, see Inaga Shigemi, “Imēji wa ikani umare, denpashi, taiken
sareru no ka” イメージはいかに生まれ、伝播し、体験されるのか (How are Images Born, Propagated,
and Experienced?), Tosho shinbun 2789 (September 2006); and “Imēji kaishaku gaku no inpei ni seiō 20
117Inaga Shigemi

To put this logic in Buddhist terms, it is transmigration. Of course, a person cannot knowwhom they are the reincarnation of. If we follow the example of Mishima Yukio (1925–1970),
who left us a tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, the third volume of which is inspired by a Bangkok
Theravada Buddhist temple, Temple of Dawn, we could say that descriptions of art history as thewanderings of a transmigrating soul also generally cannot be deemed a more fantastic attemptthan Hegel’s phenomenology of the spirit.
In fact, we could say that the art of the Aboriginal people of the Australian continent
demonstrates the last spiritual discovery by the descendants of Hegelian phenomenology, in thesense that a primordial undertaking had its rights restored to it in reference to Western modern
aesthetic set of values:42 at the cost of the redemption of the paintings of Aborigines on theAustralian continent, which was appropriated by England’s piracy, a historical self-awarenessrooted in the West discovered a mindful domain of spirituality that was the polar opposite of
territorial domination.43 The souls of native people’s ancestors’ have been reborn today throughthis recognition.
3. The Contemporary Practice of Piracy and Precedents in Commerce
3.1 The Politics of Fake Writing
As we have covered above, the five hundred years of the piracy of the Western world—fromSouthern Europe to England—forms the grounding for Hegelian conceptions of world history.44
seiki bunka shi no hanzai o tekihatsu suru” イメージ解釈学の隠蔽に西欧 20 世紀文化史の犯罪を摘発す る (Exposing the Crime of 20th Century Western European Cultural History in the Cover-up of Image
Exegetics), Aida 128 (20 August 2006): 22–26. Retitled “Joruju Didi-Yuberuman cho Zanzon suru imēji:
Abi Vāruburuku ni yoru bijutsushi to yūrei tachi no jikan o yomu” ジョルジュ・ディディ ＝ ユベルマン著『残存するイメージ アビ・ヴァールブルクによる美術史と幽霊たちの時間』を読む (Reading Georges
Didi-Huberman’s L’image survivante, Histoire de l’art et temps des fantômes selon Aby Warburg), Aida 132 (20December 2006): 8–27.
42
Yawarra Kuju, The Canning Stock Route, National Museum of Australia, 2012.
43
Adrian Tucker: “Spirituality is more than the awareness of one’s self. It is the awareness of and responsibility
for knowing your place and role in the world. It is about being aware of the interrelatedness of all that was,is and will be. It is about knowing your responsibilities for the past, present and future” (Newtown, 1997).
From the Panel at the National Museum of Australia, Sydney, 2012.
44
For discussions regarding world literary history that can serve as a useful reference, see Franco Moretti, Atlasof the European Novel, 1800–1900 (London: Verso, 1998); Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary
History (London: Verso, 2005); and Franco Moretti, ed., The Novel, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2006). For my argument against these contemplations and proposed alternatives, see Inaga Shgemi,“Chirigaku teki sōzōryoku kara chigaku teki sōzōryoku e: Sakai Naoki shi no kōen ‘Hon’yaku to chizu
sakuseijutsu teki sōzōryoku’ o kiite” 地理学的想像力から地学的想像力へ：酒井直樹氏の講演「翻訳と地図作成術的想像力」を聴いて (From Geographical Imagination to Geological Imagination: Upon Hearing
Sakai Naoki’s Lecture “Translation and Map-Creating Creativity”), Tosho shinbun 2879 (26 July 2008). Also
see Inaga Shigemi, “Ima ‘sekai bungaku’ wa kanō ka? Zenkyūka no naka de nijū isseiki no hikaku bungaku
no genzai o tou” いま〈世界文学〉は可能か？：全球化のなかで二十一世紀の比較文学の現在を問う (Is“World Literature” Possible Now? Questioning the Present of Twenty-first Century Comparative Literature
Amidst Globalization), Hikaku bungaku kenkyū 比較文学研究 (Comparative Literature Research) 92 (2008):
104–121. Particularly see note 15 for an argument against wandering universalism.
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A Pirate’s View of the History of Art Commerce

On this political topography, while on the one hand the principles of the Western world wereseen as orthodox, the values in an inferior position that were eliminated from it were sullied
as “piracy.” This unequal value consciousness now functions having sunk itself into the depthsof the non-Western world's self-consciousness.45 Today, the endeavor called world art and thecommercial market that supports it is a mirage nesting in this dual structure.46
Ever since the art history of the West and China was denatured and mixed into a pulp witha washing machine, the artists of China and other East Asian countries have sought to enter
the Western orthodox art market from non-Western (“black”) markets.47 Therein what kind of
traces of piracy survives? What kind of legalizing baptism did piracy undergo?
Xu Bing 徐冰 is famous for having exported fake Chinese characters that he himself
had invented to the Western art market. They cover his artworks. In recent years he has cometo assert that there is a system to these characters and that if one studies properly they arecomprehensible. Here we find a careful strategy.48 First we cannot overlook the fact that heis two-tongued in a sense. On the one hand, he makes a show to his brethren in the Chinesecharacter cultural sphere about how the characters he has created are just fake. At the same time,even if the European and American audience and critics (who are his primary target) know that
his characters are fake, they cannot perceive this from literacy-based knowledge. They cannot
understand via reading that they are looking at unreadable Chinese characters. We could saythat Xu Bing’s “convinced crime” consists of his showing off counterfeit bills or a fake pirated
text while stating that it is a pirated text. The secret to the creation of counterfeits succeeding insociety lies in whether or not one adopts effective strategies not just towards those who cannot
tell that something is counterfeit but also one’s partner who knows that it is counterfeit. Xu
Inaga Shigemi, “Toporojī kūkan no naka no 21 seiki sekai bijutsu shi” トポロジー空間のなかの 21 世紀世界
美術史 (21st Century World Art History in a Topological Space) (Part 4), Aida 148 (20 May 2008): 27–32.
46
Imafuku Ryūta 今福龍太 has worked to undermine the hegemony backed by this intellectual-material senseof territory using the metaphor of an archipelago in his Guntō-sekairon 群島 ‐ 世界論 (An Archipelagic
Worldview) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2008) and (with Yoshimasu Gōzō 吉増剛造 ) Ākiperago: Guntō to shite
no sekai e アーキペラゴ：群島としての世界へ (Archipelago: Toward the World as an Archipelago) (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 2006).
47
Regarding the predominance of Western values in art perception, see Inaga Shigemi, “Kindai no kokka
korekushon to minkan korekushon no keisei: Tōyō / Nihon bijutsu no shūshū, tenji, roshutsu to sono
gyakusetsu” 近代の国家コレクションと民間コレクションの形成：東洋／日本美術の収集・展示・露出とその逆説 (The Formation of Modern State Collections and Private Collections: The Collection, Display,and Exposure of Eastern / Japanese Art and Their Paradox), Kigō kenkyū (Studia Semiotica), Special Issue“Korekushon no kigōgaku” コレクションの記号学 (The Semiotics of Collections) 21 (2001): 75–101.
48
This should be unraveled as an issue of strategy in cultural interpretation. Inaga Shigemi, “Hon’yaku no
kyori to hikaku bungaku no zensen” 翻訳の距離と比較文学の前線 (The Distance of Translation and theFront Lines of Comparative Literature), in Ekkyō suru koto no ha 越境する言の葉 (Border-Crossing Words),
ed. Nihon Hikaku Bungakukai 日本比較文学会 (Tokyo: Sairyūsha, 2011), 23–30. See (especially the
introduction to) Yonaha Jun 与那覇潤, Hon’yaku no seijigaku: Kindai higashi ajia sekai no keisei to nichiryū
kankei no hen’yō 翻訳の政治学：近代東アジア世界の形成と日琉関係の変容 (The Politics of Translation:
The Formation of the Modern Asian World and the Transformation of Japanese-Okinawan Relations) (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 2009). Yonaha’s dissertation is rich in insights regarding a pirate’s view of history and theissue of translation.

45

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Inaga Shigemi

Bing has worked adequately to make those from the Chinese character cultural sphere whoknow that his characters are fake be satisfied with his work as well.
On the other hand, he then makes use of the principles behind the ideograms that are
Chinese characters to increase the number of his fake characters (fig. 8). Chinese characters,
which produce meaning by their combination of radicals, construct a complicated system
via the dynamics which exist within them due to the compounding of basic terms. Xu Bing
conceived new set of “Chinese characters” by the combination of alphabet. Thus, new fakeletters were invented which are decodable and easy to learn, even by non-initiated Westerners.
The dynamics within the system do not judge whether the products born as a result of this arelegitimate or fake. This entirely depends on recognition as legitimate by external authority.49
The Chinese character cultural sphere had overwhelming power; what could be called fakecharacter notation methods were fabricated in surrounding areas: kana in Japan and eonmun 諺
文 (hangul ) in Korea. Furthermore, in the Jurchen script and Khitan scripts there are rich tracesof the surrounding cultural spheres’ inferiority complexes driving people to carefully constructover-complicated script systems. For an artist that tried to cross borders by constructing bridges
between the Chinese character cultural sphere and cultural spheres outside of it, the inventionof a fake script is certainly not a deviant act. Thus a piratical theory of fake character culture isneeded.50
3.2 Potato-Shaped Ceramic Pieces Running Rampant
Ni Haifeng 睨海峰 is another artist similarly known for having started from fake characters (fig.
9).51 He named a wall of neon lights made out of indecipherable picture characters “Trojan
Horse,” an excellent metaphor for border crossing. An act of piracy in which the perpetrators
disguise themselves and successfully break through the line of defense overlaps with Ni’s
entry into Dutch society. Ni had his wife draw a zaffer blue and white pottery pattern on his
naked body, and by this camouflage of a detachable, or perhaps we should say erasable, tattoo,
transformed himself, both hiding his origins while showing them:52 cobalt pigment was asynonym for Chinese ceramics, as well as an indicator that pointed to his Chinese roots.
In the end he began to paint the same pattern on egg-sized ceramic chunks. Bringing tomind the expressions of delftware, this makes the viewer look back on the commerce between
49

Regarding Japan’s cultural perception and its reliance on the recognition apparati of the Western world,
see Inaga Shigemi, “Roran Baruto aruiwa kyokō to shite no Nihon” ロラン・バルトあるいは虚構としての日本 (Roland Barthes, or Japan as a Fiction), in Hyōshō to shite no Nihon 表象としての日本 (Japan
Represented), ed. Yamanouchi Hisaaki et al. (Tokyo: Hōsō Daigaku Kyōiku Shinkōkai, 2004), 251–253.
50
Inaga Shigemi, “Monogurui, utsuwa mawashi, maai, asobi” ものぐるい、うつわまわし、まあい、あそび (Madness, Utsuwamawashi, the Right Time/and Space, and Play), Lecture given on 18 April 2009 at theMonogaku, Kankaku Kachi Kenkyūkai モノ学・感覚価値研究会 (Academic Society for the Study of Things
and Sensory Values), 2nd Art Division Meeting, http://mono-gaku.la.coocan.jp/happyou4.htm#45.
51
Regarding Ni Haifeng, see Kitty Zijlmans, The Return of the Shreds: Ni Haifeng (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008).
52
Regarding the meaning of the peripherality of tattoos in cultural history, see Christine Guth, Art, Tea, andIndustry: Matsuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); and Miyashita
Kikurō 宮下喜久朗, Irezumi to nūdo no bijutsu shi 刺青とヌードの美術史 (The Art History of Tattoos andNudes) (Tokyo: Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 2008).
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China and the Netherlands in the distant past. At the same time, these balls are also substitutes
that imitate potatoes using ceramics. In Japanese, potatoes are referred to as jagaimo ジャガイモ, an abbreviation of jagatara-imo ジャガタライモ, or “Jakarta potato.” Potatoes producedin South America were carried all the way to the Netherlands through Java, and have now
become a naturalized plant indispensible on Dutch dining tables. By tracing this route, theartist was presenting a narrative of his admission into Dutch society. The tactile nature of Ni’s
ceramic chunks—they can be grasped in one’s hand—also served to counter Western art, whichtends to biased towards the visual. Furthermore, the shape of them that brings to mind thewater dropper, one of the items related to the so-called four treasures of the study in East Asiancalligraphy, presents a subdued counter-argument against Western aesthetics from ImmanuelKant onwards, which holds that art cannot be for practical use.53 Furthermore, as a toy thatcan be rolled around on the palm of one’s hands they could be useful as a practical everyday
health tool for the longevity of the elderly. When it comes to art, generally implacability anduniqueness leads to scarcity value, yet at the same time people want to acquire the things
resembling treasures that are owned by their neighbors. Ni’s works resemble each other, yet no
two of their potato shapes are the same, and they thus are ideal for satisfying this contradictory
desire. If each citizen were to have one of Ni Haifeng's works, he would acquire citizenship in
Dutch society, so to speak. Yet at the same time his name would probably advance to the level ofa trademark officially approved by citizens. In fact, in recent years Ni Haifeng did an excellent
job at becoming a brand as seller of ceramic gardening furniture items upon which zaffer
patterns were drawn.54
3.3 Piracy and the Integrity of Lacquerware for Export
However, is this kind of piratical business method a phenomenon unique to contemporary
times? This question brings to mind Chinese ceramicrware (“china”) on the one hand andJapanese lacquerware made for export (“japan”) on the other. As has been shown by existing
research on its distribution, in Jingdezhen 景徳鎮, China Japanese Imari 伊万里 porcelain
fakes were made, and Jingdezhen ware imitations were exported from Arita 有田 , Japan (where
Imari was made).55 The Sir Percival David Collection donated to London University’s museum
narrates for us that the truth of ceramic commerce lies in nothing other than mutual shrewd
bewitching. Turning our gaze to the world of makie 蒔絵 , Japanese lacquerware decorated withgold or silver powder, we know that nanban makie 南蛮蒔絵—makie for the Portuguese (fig.
10) —transformed into kōmō makie 紅毛蒔絵—makie for the Dutch—around the seventeenth
century.56 While the Portuguese wanted Bible lecterns, receptacles to store holy images, as well
53

54

Regarding physical sensation and its different
value standard, see Monogaku, Kankaku Kachi Kenkyūkai モ
モノ ケ イロノ学・感覚価値研究会 , ed. Monokeiro 物気色 (Tokyo: Bigaku Shuppan, 2010).

Inaga Shigemi, “Toporojī kūkan no naka no 21 seiki sekai bijutsu shi” (Part 3), Aida 147 (20 April 2008).
Cf. Angela Schottenhammer, ed., Trade and Transfer Across the East Asian “Mediterranean” (Wiesbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz, 2005).
56
See chapters two and three in Hidaka Kaori 日高薫, Ikoku no hyōshō: Kinsei yushutsu shikki no sōzōryoku 異国の表象：近世輸出漆器の創造力 (Foreign Country Representations: The Creativity of Early Modern Exported
Lacquerware) (Kunitachi: Buryukke, 2008). The makie box from the Victoria and Albert Museum appearing in
55

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as chests with semicylindrical mother of pearl inlays, the Dutch that replaced them enjoyed hiramakie 平蒔絵 in the form of flat-surfaced chests with imperial dynasty genre paintings. While
makie products are supposedly unique to Japan and authentic, in reality they freely changed
their form in response to customers’ demands and interests.
Let’s also consider a large gorgeous chest intended as a gift that appears to have passed
through the hands of François Caron, who worked as the head of the Hirado Trading Post (fig.
11). On the Victoria and Albert Museum’s so-called Mazarin Chest, which is of an extraordinarysize, one finds detailed hira makie designs that appear to be from picture scrolls regarding
imperial dynasties. However, even experts today cannot decipher the stories used as its subject
matter. The truth is probably that those who made it knew that what they were creating was forexport and used nonsensical pictures. Here we find a legitimate pirate edition, or the invented
legitimacy of a piratical business method sham.57 In short, they were made by the ancestors of
Xu Bing and Ni Haifeng. Xu and Ni are the reincarnations of such artists. Or, to return to thebeginning of this paper: these were the original makers of battamon.
We should probably touch upon the appropriation carried out by the legendarycabinetmaker Bernard II van Risenburgh (fig. 12). Using what is now an unclear secret method,
he would peel off the lacquer surfaces from the base boards of exported makie and skillfully
attach them to the curved surfaces of rococo furniture. With this skin graft surgery, he gave
a new life to exported lacquerware that had gone out of style in the mansions and palaces ofEuropean nobility and royalty. They were granted life after death and underwent a magnificent
rebirth. The exported lacquerware makie do not complain about the unfairness of their rebirth.
Despite this, why is the skin grafting onto migratory locusts shapes of leather upon which
the brand names Gucci, Fendi, and Channel have been printed judged to be piracy? Can thetruth of history not be glimpsed within the spread and metamorphosis of merchandise throughtrade routes? Here, we have been able to clearly grasp within a panoramic view of five hundredyears of human world history the origins and structures of hegemonic dominance, which allow“the polite society” to censure and condemn this truth in history as piratical evil business.
In closing, let us add a system-accommodating conservative statement. In order tosuccessfully carry out piracy, one should know the interplay of “règle de jeu” (rule of the game)and “jeu de règle” (margin of the rule). In other words, transgressions have their own strict
rules to observe: there is a need to understand without error what will be an illegal act, or elsethe distribution of battamon will meet the tragic experience of being deemed and sentenced toillegal operation: such is the destiny of commerce.58
the photograph on this book’s cover is a typical example. Such pieces were displayed at the exhibition entitled“japan makie” (japan 蒔絵 ) held at the Kyoto National Museum and the Suntory Art Museum (2008–2009).
In the catalogue, see Nagashima Meiko 永島明子, “japan makie: Kyūtei o kazaru, tōyō no kirameki” japan 蒔絵：
宮廷を飾る 東洋の燦めき (Japan Makie: The Sparkle of the East Decorating Royal Courts).
57
Inaga Shigemi, “In’yu to shite no urushi makie” 隠喩としての漆蒔絵 (Lacquer Makie as a Metaphor), Bijutsu
forum 21 美術フォーラム 21 (Art Forum 21) 19 (2009): 115–119. The restoration of piracy and counterfeit
routes of distribution are indispensable when recreating history.
58
A non-fiction style novel about Idemitsu Sazō, the founder of Idemitsu Kōsan who took a leading role in
the importation of crude oil after Japan’s loss in World War II, has recently been receiving a lot of attention.
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A Pirate’s View of the History of Art Commerce* This is a summary of a lecture given at Taiwan University on 7 October 2012. Its Japanese version has
been printed in Taiwan by Xu Xingqing 徐興慶, ed. Kindai Ajia no aporia 近代東アジアのアポリア(Modern Asia’s Aporia) (Taipei: Taiwan Daxue Chuban Zhongxin, 2014), 123–152.

Hyakuta Naoki 百田尚樹, Kaizoku to yobareta otoko 海賊とよばれた男 (The Man Called a Pirate) (Tokyo:
Kōdansha, 2012). We should probably take note of the following: the social conditions in which a successful
businessperson would be called a “pirate” in a book’s title, that the real pirates in the historical context wereno one other than the CIA, and the main character’s piracy broke through major market domination and in
the end legally secured Japan's rights. Ben Lopez’s Negotiator: My Life at the Heart of the Hostage Trade (NewYork: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011) has been published in Japanese as Negoshieitā: Hitojichi kyūshutsu e noshinri sen ネゴシエイター：人質救出への心理戦, trans Tsuchiya Akira 土屋晃 and Kondō Takafumi 近藤
隆文 (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō, 2012).
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Fig. 1 Mitsuhiro Okamoto, Batta-mon, 2011

Fig. 2 Treaties of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494
source: 山川出版社『詳説世界史』

Fig. 3 Felipe II (1527–1598) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi(1537–1598)

Fig. 4 François I (1494–1547) and Süleyman I (1494–1566)

Fig. 5 Major Circum-Global Trade Routes, 1400–1800
Source: Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient, 1998; 山下範久訳、
藤原書店、
2000

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Fig. 6 El Anatsui, Solo-Exhibition,
The National Museum of Ethnology,
Suita, Japan, 2011

A Pirate’s View of the History of Art Commerce

Fig. 7 John Onians, Atlas of World Art, 2004; Japanesetranslation; Huang YoungPin, The History of Chinese Painting
and the History of Modern Western Art, Washed in the
Washing Machine for Two Minutes, 1987

Fig. 8 Xu Bing, Art for the People, 2011 © Xu Bing

Fig. 9 Ni Haifeng, Delfware Potatoe © Ni Haifeng

Fig. 10 Namban Coffer covered in Pearl Shell Plaques, ca.1600–
1640, Private Collection, Lisbon

Fig. 11 “Mazarin Chest”, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Fig. 12 Commode with Pavilions in Landscape, attributed to
Bernard II van Riesenburgh, Victoria and Albert Museum,London125