After putting away this celadon wheel flower bowl from the Song Dynasty, Jin Muchen continued to move forward, knowing that there are more than a few exquisite Chinese porcelain donated by Yokogawa Minsuke to the Tokyo National Museum.

These are just a few of the more than 1,000 pieces of fine Chinese porcelain he donated.

And among the porcelain he donated, there are many top porcelains from the Ming and Qing dynasties, and these porcelains are not to be missed for Jin Muchen.

For example, the Qing Yongzheng pastel plum tree pattern plate he saw next was a top-quality Chinese porcelain donated by Yokogawa Minsuke.

Yongzheng pastel plum tree pattern plate, the workmanship is extremely exquisite, the plate depicts the plum tree is in full bloom, the plum blossom pink and white contrast, the remaining white part of the inscription has a smooth line of calligraphy, and the seal is also painted with pastel paint.

The style of this work is extremely delicate and meticulous, and the style is very elegant, which can be said to be one of the pinnacles of Qing Dynasty painted porcelain, and its artistic value and collection value are very high.

If it is taken to the Chinese auction market, Jin Muchen estimates that such a porcelain plate can be auctioned for a price of 30 to 50 million yuan.

In fact, there are many collectors of Chinese porcelain in Japan, but these people have very strange tastes and can be said to be very single-minded.

As I said before, they are very fond of Chinese ceramics from the Song Dynasty, or before the Song Dynasty, so most of their collections are from those eras.

On the contrary, the Ming and Qing dynasties, the peak era of Chinese porcelain, and the porcelain of the Yuan Dynasty, which opened the peak of Chinese porcelain, are not particularly fond of these people.

Yokogawa Minsuke's style of collecting is different from that of these Japanese collectors.

His collection is mediocre though. But one of the most special features of his collection is: There are also collections that represent the materials of each era.

Of course, this is also related to the idea of the Yokogawa Minsuke Collection. He also hopes to show the history of the development of Chinese ceramics by collecting porcelain works from various periods in China.

This is especially evident in his collection of porcelain from the Ming and Qing dynasties in China.

In the turbulent years of the late Qing Dynasty, many of the original Qing Dynasty royal relatives and nobles lost their hardcore crops because of the Chinese revolution, because they were usually a group of children of the Eight Banners who swaggered through the market every day and did not produce. So once the imperial court is overturned, it becomes a problem for them to even eat.

So they had to take out the family money that their ancestors had saved for hundreds of years, and during that time, the overpass, Liulichang and other areas in the capital could often be seen and traced the precious porcelain of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

During this period, a large amount of porcelain from the official kilns of the Ming and Qing dynasties in China flowed into the antique market, but the Japanese at that time did not like this type of porcelain because of the cultural imports of China's Tang and Song dynasties. The influence on Japanese culture is huge, so the Japanese have always had a feeling of the Tang and Song dynasties. Therefore, they prefer the porcelain works of the Tang and Song dynasties.

On the other hand, it is also because the Ming Dynasty is weak, and the later Qing Dynasty is a court established by the Manchu Dynasty, the Japanese dislike it even more, thinking that they are not the Zhengshuo inheritors of the Tang Dynasty culture, and the Ming Dynasty is the culprit that led to the loss of the Central Plains civilization in the hands of the Tatars, so they don't like the porcelain of the Ming and Qing dynasties very much, and it can even be said that they hate it.

Therefore, at that time, although there were many precious porcelain from the Ming and Qing dynasties in the Liulichang area of the capital, there was a lack of interest from the Japanese for the first time, and not many people were willing to buy it.

However, unlike other Japanese collectors, Yokogawa believes that this is a necessary part of the study of the history of Chinese ceramics, and that it should be properly evaluated regardless of likes and dislikes.

It was this decision that led Yokogawa to travel back and forth between the capital and Japan during that time, and he bought many precious porcelains from the Ming and Qing dynasties, which is the main reason why there are many extremely fine official kiln porcelains in his collection.

Later, before he died, it was after World War II, and the Japanese also had a deeper understanding of Chinese porcelain, and their dislike for the Ming and Qing dynasties had long been left behind, and Yokogawa Minsuke's collection became a treasure coveted by many Japanese political and business predators.

It's okay to say when Yokogawa Minsuke is alive, because he is highly respected in the Japanese antique collecting world, and everyone doesn't dare to be presumptuous, but once he stretches his legs, then everyone will sharpen their knives, after all, Yokogawa's descendants don't have his status and fame.

And Yokogawa Minsuke before he died, he also realized this, he knew that if he died, if all his collections were left to his children and grandchildren, it would not be to leave them wealth, but to leave them a bane, so he simply donated his collection of fine porcelain from the Ming and Qing dynasties to the Tokyo National Museum, and it was his donation that greatly enriched the collection of Chinese ceramics in Japan and built the skeleton of the Tokyo National Museum's collection of Chinese porcelain.

After putting away this piece, Yongzheng pastel plum tree pattern plate, Jin Muchen did not stay too long, but continued to move forward.

Among the porcelain masterpieces donated by Yokogawa to the Tokyo National Museum, he has already collected some of the most essential ceramic works.

The rest of the porcelain, he was not in a hurry, on the one hand, because the capacity in his purple jade space was limited, so many exquisite porcelain, he definitely couldn't take it all away.

Therefore, he can only choose a few top-notch and most elite ones to take away, and on the other hand, it is also because the top-notch fine ceramics donated by Yokogawa Minsuke have been searched by him.

However, another collection giant on the same level as Yokogawa Minsuke, Hirota Matsushige, donated fine Chinese porcelain to the Tokyo National Museum, he has not yet patronized.

Speaking of the Tokyo National Museum's collection of Chinese ceramics, in addition to Yokogawa Minsuke, another name that cannot be ignored is Hirota Matsushi.

Hirota Matsushigeru entered the Tokyo area as a teenager, studying as an apprentice at a famous antique shop and working part-time.

At the age of twenty-seven, because of the accumulation of some family foundation, coupled with years of honing in the antique shop, the technology has been a small achievement.

So he went out on his own and founded an art shop with a few like-minded friends, called Huzhongju.

Of course, although the name of this store is called an art store, it is actually an antique store that deals in antiques, and the main business is Chinese ceramics.

During the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, he was active in a number of well-known Chinese antique markets, such as the Liuli Factory in Beijing and the Dahutong Antique Street in Jinmen.

Even where, he also broke into a certain fame, because his eyesight was accurate enough, plus he was insidious enough, often used some indiscriminate means, from the hands of Chinese buyers, forcibly grabbed, so he also had a certain reputation in the Chinese antique industry, of course, not a good reputation, this can be known from the Chinese to give him a nickname, the Chinese antique dealers who dealt with him at that time did not have a good impression of him, and gave him a nickname, called Vicious Dog.

Because if he makes a price for something he likes, and you are not satisfied and unwilling to do business with him, he will collude with some local ruffians and hooligans to go to you to take it by force.

If those ruffians can't stop you, then he will contact some Japanese B Society, or ronin.

Because the Japanese had a lot of power in China at that time, many people did not dare to offend these Oriental little noses easily, so they suffered under his hands, and they could only pinch their noses and admit it, but over time, this guy's reputation in China also stinked.

As soon as many people heard that he came to the door, they simply closed the door and did not do his business, and in the end, this guy was good, so he didn't show up directly, but only through some agents to make acquisitions for him, but the means were still the same dirty and despicable.

However, although this guy is abducted and deceived in China, he does all kinds of evil, but in Japan, he is a law-abiding citizen, because he is just an ordinary antique dealer in Japan, and the social status of well-known industrialists like Takashima and Yokogawa is not comparable at all, so he has always been a man with his tail between his legs in Japan.

And because of his despicable methods, he also scavenged a lot of good things from China, so that in the end, in the Japanese collecting world, he was able to achieve the same status as Takashima and Yokogawa, and became one of the three outstanding representatives of Chinese antique collecting in Japan at that time.

But like Yokogawa, he also realized that when he was dying, he knew that if his collection was left to his descendants, it would be a curse, so he picked out a lot of fine works from his collection and donated them to the Tokyo National Museum.

When he was dying, he donated a total of 294 pieces of Chinese porcelain to the Tokyo National Museum, and although the porcelain he donated was not as comprehensive and systematic as the collection donated by Yokogawa, there were many gaps in the history of ceramics, but there were many fine ones.

As an antique dealer, Hirota Matsushiger did not intend to collect Chinese porcelain on a large scale from the beginning, after all, he did not have the same financial resources as Takashima and Yokogawa, and he only bought some of his favorite works while running his antique shop.

But even so, as an antique dealer, he has an aesthetic vision and experience that collectors like Yokogawa Minsuke do not have, so the Chinese porcelain collected by Hirota Matsushiro is of a very high standard in terms of artistic achievement.

For example, the porcelain that appears in front of Jin Muchen now is the Chinese porcelain collection donated to the Tokyo National Museum by Hirota Songfan, and the most famous is a porcelain from the official kiln of the Southern Song Dynasty: a celadon cong-shaped vase. (To be continued.) )