And these Japanese people are very fond of porcelain from the Song Dynasty and before the Song Dynasty, especially the pottery utensils of the Tang Dynasty.

The reason why their tastes are so tricky is of course not because of how exquisite the ceramics of the Tang Dynasty were, but mainly because of their feelings.

After all, the Tang Dynasty can be said to be the Chinese dynasty that had the greatest influence on Japan, and it was they who sent a large number of envoys to the Tang Dynasty that made them begin to civilize and transition from a slave society to a feudal society.

Therefore, the Japanese still have a very deep affection for the Tang Dynasty, which also makes them very obsessed with all kinds of antiques and cultural relics in the Tang Dynasty.

It's a pity that when they became strong and came to China to share the cake, they found that those pottery utensils before the Song Dynasty in China were basically not divided by the European and American powers that arrived earlier.

When they tried to look for it, they were almost gone.

Speaking of which, I can't fail to mention a Japanese, this guy's name is Yokogawa Minsuke!

This guy, along with the aforementioned Takashima Kikujiro, and another Hirota Matsushi, can be said to be the three great collectors in Japan before World War II.

Their largest collection of antiques and artifacts, without exception, came from China, and after the war, all three of them became the three largest collectors of antiques in the Tokyo National Museum, except for the Imperial Family.

All of them have donated hundreds of exhibits to the Tokyo National Museum.

Including the white porcelain phoenix head bottle of the Tang Dynasty that Jin Muchen collected before, as well as the three-color applique double dragon ear bottle in front of him. It was all donated by Minsuke Yokogawa to the Tokyo National Museum.

After the Meiji Emperor's old lord Hachika, Japan experienced a brief Taisho period, and then entered the Showa period. It was during this period that the collection of Chinese antiques reached its peak, and it can be said that almost all of the famous Chinese artifacts that make up the skeleton of Chinese artifacts at the Tokyo National Museum flowed into Japan during this time.

One of the characteristics of the collections of this period is that almost all of them are of the highest quality.

And these collections, the largest collection, the best quality of the three people are Takashima Kikujiro, Yokogawa Minsuke and Hirota Matsushi.

Kikujiro Takashima and Minsuke Yokogawa were both famous industrialists in Japan at the time. Kikujiro Takaten, the president of Prince Paper of Japan, is known as the 'King of Papermaking' by later generations.

And that Yokogawa Minsuke is not far behind, he is the founder of Yokogawa Electric in Japan. As for Nahirota Matsushi, although he is not an industrialist like Takashima and Yokogawa, he also has his own specialty, and he was originally born to play antiques. At the time, he was running a business in the Tokyo area. The name of the family is a very famous art shop, and the name is called Huzhongju, so it is also a well-off family.

Because they have money on hand, these guys often travel back and forth between China and Japan, and every time they come back from China, they can bring back a lot of good things.

Not only did they go to China to loot, but they also had inextricable links with several Japanese antiquities dealers at that time. So many of the collections they collect are actually invisible.

So these three Japanese seems. Very great collectors, too, have a bad reputation in Chinese archaeology.

Even the reputation of a few of them is even more smelly than that of the previous Otani expedition, because these guys can definitely be said to have the most fine cultural relics scavenged from China.

And these three people can be said to have different preferences for Chinese antiques.

For example, this Yokogawa Minsuke, unlike Kikujiro Takashima, who prefers calligraphy and painting, has a soft spot for Chinese ceramics.

He collected countless pieces of Chinese porcelain in his life, and even now, no one knows how many pieces of Chinese porcelain he collected, but the number of Chinese ceramics he later donated to various museums in Japan reached more than 1,000 pieces, so because of this, there are many people in the Japanese collector circle, calling him the king of porcelain.

Moreover, his collection of porcelain is comprehensive, systematic and academic, and the Chinese porcelain that he donated to the Tokyo National Museum alone constitutes the skeleton of the Chinese ceramics collection of the Tokyo National Museum.

Moreover, because the Chinese porcelain donated to the Tokyo National Museum is of very high quality, which makes the Chinese ceramic collection of the Tokyo National Museum have the ability to compete with overseas museums, not only with some well-known museums in Europe and the United States, but even with Chinese museums.

And this is what has made Chinese archaeologists the most distressed.

This Yokogawa Minsuke is not only a famous Japanese industrialist, but also a well-known architect in modern Japan, and the Mitsui Bank in the Shibuya area is his masterpiece of architectural design.

Buildings such as the Imperial Theater and Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo are also classics that he has passed down to the world, and Yokogawa, the company he founded, is still a global leader in the field of industrial control.

Therefore, for a guy like him, the that we Chinese pass on by mouth, such as good and evil rewards, can only fool the domestic people useful, and for animals like the Japanese, it seems that it is useless at all.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, this Yokogawa Minsuke has been collecting Chinese ceramics.

At the beginning of the century, the construction of a railroad and the discovery of an ancient city attracted the attention of collectors from all over the world.

In 1903, the Qing government began to build the Bianluo Railway connecting Kaifeng and Luo@Yang, and when the project was carried out, a large number of ancient tombs of the Tang Dynasty were excavated along the railway.

A large number of ancient tombs have been rediscovered with the burial goods, and a large number of unearthed ceramics such as Tang Sancai and glazed pottery have appeared in the shops of Bei@Jing Liulichang.

At that time, Tang Sancai, the Chinese themselves did not like it very much, but European and American collectors and Japanese were particularly obsessed with this kind of thing.

For the sake of these Tang Sancai, Yokota Minsuke rushed to the capital from Japan several times to purchase these Tang Sancai pottery.

However, at that time, he was still in average condition, he was just an architect, and he had not yet founded Yokogawa, so his financial resources were limited, and in the competition, he could not compete with those European and American collectors with deep pockets, so he could only survive by picking up leaks.

But I also have to say that this guy has a vision, because at that time, the Tang Sancai market was hot, and fakes with Tang Sancai had begun to appear on the market, and many European and American collectors were recruited.

So the collection boom of Tang Sancai began to retreat, but at this time, this Yokota Minsuke, relying on his own eyesight, picked up a big leak in an antique store near the Liuli Factory, and this big leak is now the three-color applique double dragon ear bottle in front of Jin Muchen.

The shape of this double dragon ear bottle is actually a container shape that originated in Greece, during the Tang Dynasty, because of the strong national strength and the smooth Silk Road, there were more cultural exchanges with the Western Regions.

In addition, in the Western Regions at that time, there were many city-states left behind by Alexander the Great and his expedition to India, and these countries were not dyed green at that time, so they still retained many Greek living habits.

The shape of this double dragon ear bottle was introduced to the Tang Dynasty during that period, and then the pottery craftsmen of the Tang Dynasty, in order to cooperate with the nobles of the Tang Dynasty, had a penchant for exotic customs, so they made a large number of white porcelain or three-color pottery, this kind of double dragon ear bottle.

Therefore, this kind of double dragon ear bottle, in the early and middle Tang Dynasty, can be said to be popular.

The three-color applique double dragon ear vase in front of you is a typical work of the three-color glaze method in the early and middle Tang Dynasty.

Therefore, this three-color applique double dragon ear vase can definitely be said to be a representative work in the three-color pottery of the Tang Dynasty, and it can be preserved in such a good condition to this day, it can definitely be said to be a miracle.

You must know that now left to the Chinese, about the remains of the Tang Dynasty, I am afraid that only the tomb of Wu Zetian has not been dug up, and the remaining relics and cultural relics of the Tang Dynasty are probably not as many as the Japanese collection.

This is also a point that makes the Japanese extremely proud, and some people even think that their Japan is the true Zhengshuo of Chinese civilization!

Later, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the remnants of the Qing Dynasty who were driven out of the capital and hid in the Jinmen Concession began to sell their collections in order to support themselves.

This attracted overseas collectors, including Japan, to Tsumen and began to join the trend of bidding for antiques.

And it was in this bidding trend that this Yokogawa Minsuke received the white porcelain phoenix head bottle before, and the cost was not high.

And these two pieces of porcelain, after the end of World War II, before this Yokogawa Minsuke himself hung up, he donated them to the Tokyo National Museum!

And the precious Chinese porcelain he donated to the Tokyo National Museum is far more than that, you must know that the Chinese porcelain he donated to the Tokyo National Museum alone constitutes the skeleton of the Tokyo National Museum's collection of Chinese porcelain, which shows how many good things in China this old guy looted at that time.

So after Jin Muchen put away this three-color applique double dragon ear bottle, he continued to walk inside, and there were still many treasures donated by this old guy waiting for him.

Some of these exquisite porcelains were bought back to Japan by an old guy, and there were many that he got from China to Japan through very disgraceful means, so these things, no matter how they came, Jin Muchen had to take them all away. (To be continued.) )