The idea of a museum as an institution engaged in collecting, studying, storing and exhibiting objects that are monuments of natural history, material and spiritual culture, as well as educational and popularizing activities, that is, in the generally accepted sense for European and American countries, Japan got acquainted even before the Meiji restoration. This happened during the so-called Bakumatsu period, when Japan, still under the yoke of the military-feudal government and closed to communication with foreigners, but already seething in anticipation of future changes in all areas of life, the so - called "Dutch sciences" of rangaku penetrated through the closed Dutch trading post on Deshima Island-the achievements of Europeans in the field of natural sciences and partly humanities.

Keywords: Wakimura Yoshitaro, museums, collecting, worldview, tradition.

After the conclusion of the Japanese-American Treaty of friendship and trade on July 29, 1858, a group of Japanese received permission to go to America. Japanese people, amazed by the difference in their own lifestyles and those of Westerners, were greatly impressed by museums and the role they played in society. In Europe, the British Museum in London (1753) and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (1765), the Vatican Art Collection (1769) and the Royal Collection of Vienna (1770), the Royal Collection of Dresden (1770) and the National Museum of Science in Madrid (1771) were already well known. in Paris, in 1793, the Louvre, which became the first large public museum. By the end of the 18th century, public museums had become an integral part of public life in many European countries.

As you know, European museums have their origins in cabinets and galleries, which since the XVII century were provided for the construction of palaces specifically to house collections of paintings, sculptures, books and engravings. Fashion for cabinets and galleries began in the XVI century in Italy and gradually spread throughout Europe. In Germany, along with art objects, they began to create collections of unusual things - Wunderkammer. Galleries and offices were initially used for the personal pleasure of their owners, but by the end of the XVII - beginning of the XVIII century, many of them acquired public significance.

There was nothing even remotely similar in Japan. For the sake of justice, it should be noted that Buddhist monasteries kept local handicrafts worthy of being called examples of applied art, which were periodically put on public display. But these collections were not collections in the full sense of the word, i.e. they were not collected purposefully and were not systematized. They were updated from time to time.

In some ways, the exception is the Sesoin treasury of the Todaiji Monastery in Nara, the collection of which is the oldest museum collection in the world.

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The history of its origin dates back to 756, when Empress Kome (701-760), commemorating her husband Emperor Shōma (701-756), under whom Buddhism actually became the state religion of Japan, presented as a gift to the Great Buddha, whose sculptural image is installed in the main temple of the Todaiji Monastery - Daibutsuden (literally the temple of the Great Buddha) in Nara, a part of the city of your personal items. Over the course of several years, she presented gifts to the Great Buddha five times. It was decided to store the gifts of the Empress in the sesoin-a storeroom for storing especially valuable items. Similar storerooms existed on the territory of all Buddhist monasteries, but over time, for various reasons, they all collapsed and gradually ceased to exist. Only the sesoin of Todaiji Monastery has been preserved and became a proper name (Sesoin) for the treasury, which was significantly expanded in subsequent years, especially during the Heian period (794-1185), with utensils and objects used during religious rituals brought from other monasteries. The Sesoin collection includes musical instruments, weapons, clothing, theatrical masks, manuscripts and rarities from China, India, and Persia that came to Japan along the Great Silk Road.

After the Meiji Restoration (1867), in the light of state reforms, the collection was transferred to the government, and after World War II to the Management of the Imperial Court. Currently, the entire collection is not accessible to the public, but once a year in the fall, some of the items included in it are displayed in the Nara museums. There are no other cases in Japan where collections would be a starting point for creating museums. It can be assumed that the sesoins of other monasteries were not preserved precisely because, unlike the Todaiji sesoins, they did not store the same valuable items in such large quantities and did not pay special attention to their maintenance. In other words, collecting, a widespread activity in the West, was unknown to the Japanese. To clarify the reasons for this circumstance, it is necessary to focus on some features of the Japanese worldview. However, before that, it should be emphasized that in the West, which has a long "museum history", the first museums were those in which works of art were displayed. Educational museums appeared later - at a time when grandiose scientific discoveries began to be made, the general level of literacy increased, and interest in science was shown regardless of social origin.

In Japan, the opposite was true: first there were educational museums that performed educational functions, and almost half a century later - art museums.

After the Meiji Restoration, when Western-style reforms were being implemented in all areas of Japanese life, Baron Tanaka Yoshio (1838-1916*), one of the first researchers of Japan's natural resources, a biologist, zoologist and naturalist, together with the first Japanese botanist Ito Keisuke (1803-1901), urgently demanded the government's assistance in creating museums that could be used as a museum in Japan. it would help to expand the population's knowledge in the field of natural sciences. Their efforts were crowned with success, and in Japan began construction of a building in which it would be possible to store systematized relics of ancient eras.

However, in 1871, even before the construction was completed, thanks to the efforts of enthusiasts from the Ministry of Education, who were fully aware of the need to introduce the broad masses to the sciences, until recently called "Dutch", the first exhibition in Japan was organized in Tokyo in the Yushima district, where minerals, fossils of animals and plants, as well as local handicrafts, were presented. The exhibition was so popular, and the positive results of its visit were so obvious, that a special department was created under the government, which was supposed to deal with the creation of a permanent museum under state control. So, in 1873, the Tokyo State Museum appeared. And one by one, museums began to open in Japan: in 1877, a museum called

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"Enlightenment" (literally, Museum for Education Keiku hakubutsukan) in Ueno Park, known today as the Japanese National Science Museum, with displays dedicated to physics, chemistry, zoology, botany and folk crafts; in 1897-the National Museum of Agriculture and Trade; in 1902-the Postal Service Museum; in 1897 In 1905 it was renamed the "Trade and Exhibition Hall", and in 1905 it was renamed the "Patent Exhibition Hall".

Art museums in Japan were the last to appear. But one should not think that the samples of Japanese fine and decorative arts were left without attention. The Department of the Imperial Court in 1886 began to consider the creation of a central museum, which would be collected specifically works of art. In 1889, the Nara Imperial Museum and the Kyoto Imperial Museum were founded, which were renamed the Nara National Museum and the Kyoto National Museum in 1952.

The Nara National Museum was opened to the public in 1895, and the Kyoto National Museum in 1897. The Nara National Museum has a wide range of Buddhist art objects-sculptures, altars, paintings, including mandala paintings, ritual utensils. In 1914, a department was opened at the museum, which managed the treasury of Sesoin, which was mentioned above.

The National Museum of Kyoto was originally conceived as a museum that will collect objects worthy of being called works of art, stored in numerous temples and shrines of the city. Later, the collection was expanded with items received as a gift from the Imperial Court. Today, it impresses with an abundance of masterpieces created in Japan mainly before the Meiji period. It is interesting to note that both museums, although they belong to the category of "art" - bidzyutsukan, as they say today in Japan about art museums, in Japanese, in their names they contain the word hakubutsukan, usually applied to museums of an educational nature.

Even the first private art museum created in 1917, which displayed items from the Okura house's home collection-screens, Noh theater masks, old books, paintings, ceramics, and sculptures-was literally called " The House where Antiquities are Collected "(Okura Shukokan).

Baron Okura Kihashiro (1837-1928) is one of those figures in the new history of Japan that should be considered, even at the risk of moving a little away from the topic. He is known in Japan as a major entrepreneur of the Meiji period, the creator of the financial giant Okura zaibatsu, the founder of the Commercial College (Okura sege gakko), transformed in 1949. to the Tokyo University of Economics (Tokyo Keizai Daigaku). Okura came to Tokyo from Niigata Prefecture a few years before the events that marked the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, worked for three years, opened his own grocery store in 1857, which he kept for eight years; when the situation began to escalate and the hour of the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate was approaching, he took part in the arms trade. During the Meiji era, he became one of the richest and most influential people in Japan, investing heavily in various projects, including the Imperial Hotel (completed in 1890), a luxury European-style hotel. At the same time, seeing how foreigners appeared in Japan to buy up Japanese antiquities, and regretting that Japan is losing its material cultural heritage, he began to acquire noteworthy items, thus collecting a brilliant collection, which was placed in a specially built five-story building. During the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the museum suffered significant damage. In 1928 its building was rebuilt according to the project of the famous architect Ito Chuta 1 and today it is next to the museum,
1 Ito Chuta (1867-1954), a leading architect of the early 20th century. According to his designs, the Heian Jingu shrines in Kyoto and Meiji Jingu in Tokyo, Umeda Station in Osaka and many other structures recognized as national cultural heritage were built.

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The Okura Hotel, a luxury hotel belonging to the world-famous Okura hotel chain, has been built to preserve the name Okura Shukokan and house 2,000 exhibits of Oriental fine art (including a wooden statue of Buddha Samantabhadra, recognized as a national treasure) and 35,000 copies of ancient Chinese books.

Returning to the history of art museums in Japan, it is interesting to note that the first museum to which the word bidjutsukan was applied was the Ohara Museum of Art Ohara bidjutsukan - a private museum in the city of Kurashiki, owned by an industrialist named Ohara Magasaburo. This happened in 1930. It is important to emphasize that this was a museum of Western art. Its exhibits were mainly works by French painters and sculptors of the X1X-XX centuries. Currently, the collection has been significantly expanded. It includes works by Renaissance masters, Dutch and Flemish masters of the 17th century, as well as famous American and Italian artists of the 20th century.

In 1961, two wings were added to the museum: one housed works by Japanese masters of painting of the first half of the XX century (Fujima Takeji, Aoki Shigeru, Kishida Ryusei, Koide Tarushige, etc.), and the other housed pottery works by Kawai Kanjirb, Hamada Shoji, Tomimoto Kenkichi. The following year, a wing was added that displayed the works of woodcarver Munakata Shikbo and fabric dyeing master Serisawa Keisuke. Interest in Japanese art during this period was universal. Private museums were opened. The most famous of them are the Yamatane Museum, which is based on a collection of Japanese paintings of traditional genres belonging to the rice merchant Yamazaki Taneji (1893-1983), and the Idemitsu Art Gallery, which contains a collection of East Asian art belonging to the oil magnate Idemitsu Sazo (1885-1981), known in Japan as one of the heroes of the "economic miracle". and a fan of the art of Sengai Gibeon 2. The name of these museums already includes the word bidzyutsukan ("artistic"). It is obvious that the concepts of "art" and "artistry", which were unknown to the Japanese until the mid-19th century, i.e. before they were introduced to Western scientific methodology, including various aesthetic theories, 3 by this time organically entered the consciousness of the Japanese [Gerasimova, 2013].

The long absence of the "artistic" status of museums most likely means that the Japanese still did not perceive their own works of art as such, since the motivation for creating them was completely different, and their purpose was seen differently. As exhibits, they characterized the era, social environment, etc., as well as the degree of skill of their creator, evoking cognitive interest rather than a sense of aesthetic pleasure, since this was not their original purpose (for more information, see [Gerasimova, 2014, pp. 140-159]).

If in Europe art was always perceived as something that stands above the ordinary, in Japan it was inscribed in everyday life. In the West, art was practiced either to fill their leisure time, to enrich their spiritual world, or to express their vision of the world around them, an object, phenomenon, or experience. In any case, the occupation of art and everything connected with it was "above everyday life", it was considered incompatible with the concept of "ordinary life". The Japanese did not seek to rise above everyday life, this would be a violation of the law.-

2 Scngai Gibon (1750-1837) was a Japanese monk of the Rinzai Zen school.

3 The word geijutsu, which denotes all that is called "art" in European languages, and the word bidjutsu, which denotes fine arts, became common only in the Meiji era (1867-1911), but even today, when it comes to art in the high sense of the word, the Japanese usually use the English word Art. The word "artistic" is still missing, and sometimes English artistic is used, but, as a rule, its translation into Japanese is always approximate and depends on the context. For more information, see [Gerasimova, 2011].

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th course of events. Creativity, a creative attitude to work, was developed as a result of a peculiar understanding of the relationship in the Human - Nature system and the resulting desire to sensually know the world around us.

Man's perception of himself as a part of the whole, called Nature, combined with the Shinto belief in the existence of the soul in everything that surrounds a person and what he encounters in life, led to the emergence of the concept of monono aware4 - "the charm of things", which underlies any phenomenon that determines the uniqueness of Japanese culture. "The fascination of things" should be understood as a person's fascination with a thing, as an emotional response that occurs in him when he comes into contact with "things", remembering that "thing" means not only an object, but also a phenomenon, and even an abstract concept. As for the actual" thing " made by man, it was perceived as belonging not only to the physical, but also to the spiritual world, not just as a useful object, but also as an object that carries the beauty of Nature, revealed by the master who made it, whose emotional response is also imprinted in it. It was assumed that when a Japanese person undertook to make a thing, first of all, he reacted to the natural material, responded "soulfully" to its natural essence and sought to reveal it. Thus, the production of anything has always been a creative act, and the manufactured object has always been unique, unique as Nature itself, and perceived not only as utilitarian, but also as an image that is significant in itself. Translating this into a modern pragmatic language, we can use the words of the president of Matsushita Electric Industrial, Nakamura Kunio, that "the Japanese, due to the peculiarities of their national character, are particularly successful in monozukuri (lit., "making things" - M. G.). In an article devoted to the problems of overcoming the economic crisis in Japan, Nakamura wrote that " Japanese monozukuri is more than just a production... Monozukuri for the Japanese is the act of creating a new "value", a value not only material, but also spiritual.

Traditionally, it was believed that the creation of a new value, according to Shinto beliefs, was pleasing to the gods, and the manufactured object was supposed to serve as confirmation that it was not the result of mechanical labor, but in some way an expression of Shuko5 This, in turn, indicated that the intention of the gods who created the source material was understood and their creative work continued. A thing did not lose its charm for a person if it had a utilitarian meaning, as was often the case in the West. Moreover, the thing created by man became a link in the system of Man-Nature. It was believed that things connect everyone who came into contact with them, and the organizing principle in this universal interconnectedness is Nature, perceived as an eternal and infinite personification of beauty and harmony, which gave people the material for making things. In other words, the things that the Japanese surrounded themselves with were seen as a link in the chain of universal interconnectedness. The non-violation of this interconnectedness is the key to a harmonious existence in the bosom of the Universe. Therefore, it never occurred to anyone to "remove" a thing from its natural environment and present it on its own.

With such an attitude to the creation of things and to the thing itself, when it is perceived as a link in a certain chain of facts, phenomena, both natural and social, there could be no question of collecting, since this would violate their natural interconnectedness. An item that is part of a collection, also known as a museum item

4 For more information on mono-no avare, see [Anarina, 1984; Gerasimova, 2008; Grigorieva, 1979; Dolin, 1995; Konrad, 1974; Mikhailova, 1992; Sokolova-Dslyusina, 1992].

5 For more information, see [Gerasimova, 2014].

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an exhibit is a thing taken out of context. It has no other function than cognitive and aesthetic.

As Japan became integrated into the world community, the Japanese acquired concepts characteristic of Western European civilization, including the concepts of "art" and"artistry". After the war, since the 60s of the XX century, as already mentioned, art museums began to be created in large numbers. These were museums of Japanese art, foreign art, classical art, and modern art. The interaction and mutual influence of cultures produced their own results, but they would not have been so significant if it had not been for Wakimura Yoshitaro (1900-1997) in Japan.

The role played by Wakimura Yoshitaro, a well-known Japanese economist who worked for a long time as a professor of economics at the University of Tokyo, who successfully combined teaching economics with art history, art collecting and educational activities, in the economic and cultural development of Japan in the post-war period is so great that it deserves special consideration.6 He is considered a representative of the "new cosmopolitan elite".

Thanks to Wakimura, many large and small museums were created in Japan (about 200 in total). His efforts were aimed at creating conditions that would stimulate interest in art among the masses and increase its importance in the life of society. He believed that an interest in art could be a lever for regulating the relations of potentially antagonistic social groups existing within Japanese society, and considered museums as a fundamentally new space in which relations would be built according to the laws of equality.

As an economist, he is remembered in Japan for the fact that, as a professor at the University of Tokyo, he brought up many new generation economists. In addition, Wakimura was one of those employees of the economic department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, who already at the beginning of August 1945, i.e. before Japan recognized defeat in the war, began to develop a well-known project in Japan to restore the country's economic condition. This project made it possible to establish higher wages for industrial workers and reduce rents everywhere, which played an important role in bringing the country out of the state of post-war devastation and moral confusion.

Wakimura and his associates supported a campaign aimed at weakening the power of large monopolies, believing that they were responsible not only for the outbreak of war in China, but also for the poverty in which a large part of the Japanese population lived. He considered it his duty to explain not only to students, but also to officials and representatives of the business community the inexpediency of concentrating power in the hands of large corporations. Wakimura considered art to be a means of educating Japanese people in the spirit of democracy.

Art museums, he believed, can participate in the regulation of socio-political culture, performing its integrative and communicative functions. The former, as is well known, helps to reach agreement between different social circles within the existing political and economic systems, helping to:-

6 Professor Laura K. Hcin of Northwestern University of Illinois pays much attention to Wakimura Yoshitaro in her work. In particular, the article "Modern patronage and democratic citizenship in Japan" is devoted to his work [Hcin, 2010]. She also wrote the book "Reasonable People, Words that have Power: Political Culture and Competence in twentieth-century Japan" (Hcin, 2004). It tells the story of six friends-classmates, graduates of the University of Tokyo, " citizens of the Showa era "(one of whom is Wakimura Yoshitaro), who played an important role in the post-war history of Japan.

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The first one combines their efforts to achieve certain socially significant goals, while the second one "works" to establish a relationship between the participants in the political process.

Wakimura Yoshitaro was one of those who directly participated in the formation of the new social infrastructure in Japan, trying to reform the state and society of Japan, relying on social sciences. Even in high school, he realized the importance of the work of the writers of the Sirakaba group, 7 who sought not only to know and reflect the life of the people with all its difficulties, but also to suggest ways to overcome them. Later, at university, Wakimura became interested in Marx's economic teachings. At the same time, he was greatly influenced by the works of the English writer, poet and artist John Ruskin (Ruskin), who paid equal attention to the transformation of society as a whole, and the theory of art. He was impressed by the views and life position of this Honorary Professor of Art at Oxford University, who was very popular among artisans and the working class. It is known that Raskin saw a special beauty in objects made by hand and sought to reveal to workers the deep meaning of handicraft labor, while arguing that by creating art and industrial workshops where only creative manual labor is used, it is possible to overcome the dehumanizing consequences of mechanized labor.

Raskin's recognition of art as a means of revealing the individual in each person, coupled with left-wing economic ideas, and his conviction that an aesthetic sense and understanding of beauty are essential to creating an environment in which the individual experiences positive feelings and a community of people builds a just society, were of particular interest and sympathy to Wakimura.

Wakimura's idea that museums would help solve a number of social problems, in particular to harmonize society, was born in 1921, when he visited an exhibition of French paintings in Osaka. The exhibition was sponsored by the newspaper "Asahi", which provided its own office space for the exhibition due to the lack of exhibition halls in Japan. The paintings were from the collection of industrialist Ohara Magosaburo, who opened Japan's first European art museum in 1930.

Getting to know the owner of the collection, who was not only interested in new spiritual food for his fellow citizens, but also in daily bread, was also important for the young man: Ohara Magosaburo was the head of the Institute for Social Research founded by him, whose activities were mainly limited to the struggle for higher wages and better working conditions. Many of the institute's economists were friends of Wakimura's. Educated and patriotic people at that time (the 20s of the XX century) were most concerned with the question of how much the consciousness of their compatriots had changed, whether they were ready to live in bourgeois democracy or whether they were still held captive by feudal orders. As already mentioned, Wakimura considered the awakening of their interest in art to be a means of educating Japanese people's sense of personal independence, since the free formation of their own taste and preferences makes it possible to feel like an individual. Later, in the mid-1930s, while in London, he confirmed this opinion. Here

7 Since the second half of the 1910s, democratic tendencies have intensified in Japanese society, marking the beginning of the so-called Taiss democracy. The activation of these trends has affected the work of many writers, the most significant of whom have united in the group "Sirakaba" ("Birch").

8 From an interview with Sakai Tadayasu, a member of the Board of the Advisory Council for Art Museums in May 2006. For more information, see: [Hcin, 2010, pp. 821-841].

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he studied the intricacies of financial and market management, improved his skills as an economist, and at the same time became familiar with the developed European bourgeois culture, in which everyone, whether an artist, viewer, reader, or beholder, was free to have their own aesthetic preferences and express them openly. Wakimura was particularly sympathetic to the Bloemberians, who defended the principles of artistic search, independence in life and art, believing that this would contribute not only to the democratization of the political and cultural spheres, but also create conditions under which the era of capitalism would end and be replaced by post-capitalist forms of social development.

When Wakimura returned to Japan after spending two years in Europe, he took the reality of his home country as wild. In Japan during this period, as the imperialist ambitions of its rulers increased, nationalist tendencies intensified. Every thought of one's own was cruelly suppressed, and there could be no question of any freedoms. However, it is known that Wakimura refused to lead students to the Meiji Jingu Shrine to pray for victory over China. He said that the purpose of his trip to London was to acquire new knowledge and spread it in Japan, and that he was going to stick to this goal in the future and did not intend to condone the policies of the ruling circles. Such actions could not go unnoticed, and soon the authorities recalled the essays published by Wakimura between 1930 and 1932, in which he criticized Japanese capitalism and plans to conquer China. In 1938, Wakimura was arrested on charges of violating the country's so-called heiwa hozen-ho laws. In 1939, he was released on bail, but was acquitted only in 1944.

In militaristic Japan, everything, including literature and art, was put at the service of the state ideology. Cultural figures were required to contribute to the propaganda of the war of conquest and glorify the unique "Japanese spirit"with their creativity. At this time of praising the "specifically national" Wakimura understood that" whatever " Western fine art, as Laura Hein put it, was "the only platform from which one could strike from the rear" [Hein, 2010, p. 821-841] without the ideological campaign of official circles, but in wartime, "museum activity" was limited. impossible.

After the end of the war, noting the strengthening of the position of the middle class in Japan, Wakimura, convinced that it would be accompanied by an interest in art, launched a rapid activity aimed at creating a space in which representatives of different social groups could freely communicate, united by a common interest. Museums, in his opinion, were an ideal platform for this.

In 1950, Wakimura's book was to be published, in which he intended to fill in the lack of knowledge of his compatriots both in the field of economics and financial markets, the history of their formation, and in the field of arts. He wrote it as an economist and sociologist, hoping that it would contribute to a successful inter-class dialogue. For reasons that can only be guessed, this book, titled " The Value of Taste "(Shumi 9-no kachi), was not published until 1967.Written vividly and replete with interesting facts, it became a bestseller.

The book describes the history of the global art market and the Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses. The author also examines the interaction between elite and mass cultures in different countries of the world from the point of view of the economy, market and art. The Japanese reacted vividly to the information that auctions were known in Europe since the XVI century.-

9 The word city can also have the meanings of "interest", "hobby", etc.

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they visited them, as this was the only opportunity to see the treasures that were kept in the homes of aristocrats. Over time, some of them became rich and began to take part in auctions. The capitalist market weakened the power of the aristocracy, but it preserved contradictions that were offset by a genuine interest in art - this conclusion was suggested from everything described in the Value of Taste.

Wakimura relied on a genuine interest in art to implement his plans. He maintained quite close relations with representatives of various political parties that were associated with art or collecting. The interest in art was a point of contact with people of very different professions and political views. They lent him paintings from their collections for exhibitions. One of his "partners" in this case was Ishida Hirohide, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, who served as Minister of Labor in the 1960s. Ishida was known for promoting the adoption of laws and reforms aimed at "humanizing" capitalism. For example, when discussing working time standards, he stressed that everyone has the right to a cultural life, and he should not only be given the opportunity to exercise this right, but also create conditions for him to use them as fully as possible, and for this it is necessary to give him one free day a week. He shared Wakimura's view of the role of museums in regulating socio-political problems in post-war Japan, agreed that companies had imposed too strict a regime for workers, and that the task of social institutions was to pay more attention to the needs of the working population and meet them.

The first museum that Wakimura participated in was the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura. During the creation of the museum, he was the main consultant on all issues, and later, from 1969 until his death in 1997, headed its management. Today, the museum is known for thematic exhibitions that reflect important moments in the history of the formation of certain phenomena in art in connection with the general historical development of society.

Wakimura's deep conviction that museums as public organizations can play an integrative role in the life of society did not prevent him from promoting the creation of private museums. He met with the heads of all zaibatsu, and often these meetings gave the desired results. So, in the early 1960s. Wakimura was invited to Mitsui's house to take inventory of the property and discovered that the family owned a rich collection of art objects, including tea utensils. The collection was assembled by Mitsui's founder Masuda Takashi 10 during the Meiji era. In addition, he got acquainted with priceless archival documents here. The Mitsui Trading House has a rich and long history dating back to the late 17th century. Representatives of this house were successful both in trade and banking. They carefully preserved and passed down from generation to generation transaction documents, accounting reports, business letters, etc. Thus, an archive of unprecedented information content and volume has been compiled. Wakimura suggested that the family donate all this to the cultural foundation, which resulted in the creation of the Mitsui Bunko Archive in 1965. It was created as a research center, to which all documents of historical value were transferred. The Mitsui Bunko Library and exhibition halls are free to visit. Later, in 1985, a khudo was opened next to Mitsui bunko-

10 Baron Masuda Takashi (1848-1938) was an entrepreneur who started out in the Meiji period and successfully continued sho during the Taisho and Showa periods. He also founded the newspaper Chugai Sege Simpo ("Trade Development in Japan and Beyond"), which was later renamed the Nihon Keizai Shimbun ("Japan Economic Newspaper").

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a public museum that exhibits items from the Mitsui House collection collected by family members throughout its history. The collection is extremely diverse. It includes not only decorative arts and crafts such as screens, screens, boxes, vases, utensils, masks, calligraphy scrolls, but also furniture, decals, stationery, clothing and accessories, dolls, paints and dyes, swords, postage stamps, and much more. Wakimura helped develop the museum's strategy, expand and organize the collection.

Kara Tani, president of the Tokyo Denki Corporation, later renamed Toshiba, helped establish the museum in downtown Tokyo, convincing him that a well-organized exhibition in the city center would attract a huge number of visitors. The museum opened with a demonstration of paintings by Maurice Utrillo, which was replaced by an exhibition of works by Fujita Tsuguharu, a native of Japan, ranked as a member of the Paris School of Painting and Graphics.

Wakimura has served on the directors of the Yamatane Art Museum in Tokyo, the Kasama Art Museum in Ibaraki Prefecture, and the Idemitsu Museum.

He insisted, and not without success, that Japanese collectors display their collections in public museums and that the tax system adopted in Japan should not be an obstacle to this. He saw this as a benefit not only for the Japanese population, but also for the state as a whole, because he believed that in this way Japan would be able to change its image acquired during the war in the eyes of the world community. Sincerely convinced that the attraction to real art contributes to the democratization of society and the introduction of new forms of bourgeois culture, he not only sought to attract government officials and businessmen to his activities, but also generously sponsored exhibitions and sought all possible ways to arouse the interest of his compatriots in art. For example, to this end, in 1984, he persuaded the Iwanami publishing house to publish the diary of the artist Kishida Ryusei, timed to coincide with the opening of an exhibition of his works.

About the activities of Wakimura Yoshitaro, it can be said that he did everything possible to make museums in Japan a place where Japanese people, regardless of social background, material wealth and ideological beliefs, could freely communicate with each other directly. For this purpose, he urged, insisted, advised, sacrificed his money and paintings, and encouraged others to do the same, because he sincerely believed that in this way it would be possible to develop political culture in the most progressive direction. The question of the interaction of art with political culture is a topic of special research, but it is an indisputable fact that today there are a great many museums in Japan, including state, prefectural, municipal, and private art museums, and the majority of museum visitors around the world are Japanese.

list of literature

Anarina N. G. Japanese Theater No. M., 1984.

Gerasimova M. I. Novoe ob izvestnom [New things about the known]. Ch. I, II. Yearbook 2006, 2008.

Gerasimova M. P. Characteristics of the Japanese artistic culture // Japan. Yearbook 2011.

Gerasimova M. II. Izmenenie massovogo soznaniya v yaponskom obshchestve [Changing mass consciousness in Japanese society]. 2013. Vol. 6. No. 2.

Gerasimova MP. Shaping Japan's artistic culture//Japanese Society: changing and Unchanging, Moscow, 2014.
Grigorieva T. N. Japanese Art Tradition, Moscow, 1979.
Dolin A. A. Predislovie [Preface] / / Sobranie starykh i novykh pesni Yapanii [Collection of Old and New songs of Japan], Moscow, 1995.

Konrad N. I. Japanese Literature, Moscow, 1974.
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