Huang Goodman · Art Forgotten

Art Forgotten

Art from public museum collections. A mismatched real Japanese law, and some other factoids.

Every object, image and description comes from the museum's own catalogue record, and every object links to its original. Japanese records are machine-translated into English; the museum's Japanese is kept beside the translation because it is the authoritative form. Each law carries its official number and links to e-Gov 法令検索, the Japanese government's statute database.

Hotohoto Festival at Izumo Grand Shrine, from the series Views of Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces
{Hotohoto Festival at Izumo Grand Shrine, from the series Views of Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces · Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797–1858) · 1853 · Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0}

Izumo Shrine is a Shinto shrine on Honshu Island. The Japanese believe that Shinto kami (divine spirits) leave their own shrines for a month in October or November—depending on the lunar calendar—and travel to Izumo Shrine. During this time, a festival is held in which celebrants carrying lighted torches lead the kami to the shrine.

View the original at Cleveland Museum of Art →
The law
文化財の不法な輸出入等の規制等に関する法律
Act on Controls on the Illicit Export and Import of Cultural Property
平成十四年法律第八十一号 · Act No. 81 of 2002

Japan implementing the 1970 UNESCO Convention. When a foreign state reports that cultural property has been stolen from an institution, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs notifies the education ministry, which designates the object as specified foreign cultural property, after consulting the trade ministry. Importing a designated object then requires approval under the foreign exchange and trade law.

The cool part. Article 6 quietly rewrites private law. Under the Civil Code a good-faith purchaser is normally secure against a recovery claim after two years. For designated stolen foreign cultural property, the victim may demand recovery from two years after the theft until ten years have passed. Buying in good faith does not settle the question for a decade, which is roughly how long it takes a stolen object to surface on a legitimate market.

Verify at e-Gov 法令検索 →

Use it A motif small enough to blind-deboss, which is where restraint actually shows.

Description source: museum curator text — not generated