Encounters in Japan

After its success at the Castello del Buonconsiglio, the exhibition dedicated to Japan will stop in the rooms of Castel Stenico from 27 May, where it will be open until 8 October 2023.

For a long time Japan remained virtually unknown to Europeans. The only place of trade and cultural exchange with Europe since the country had closed in 1641 was the artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki, where the Dutch East India Company was based. It was not until 1859, as a result of pressure from Western forces, that it opened again to foreign trade, and its ports began to welcome merchants and travelers from all over the world. The fascination of this reality of the Far East and its culture deeply touched the Western world, arousing passions that soon resulted in the so-called "Japanism": bronzes, ceramics, lacquerware, fans, screens, armor, swords, textiles, and prints not only entered the homes of Europeans, who competed to buy, collect and exhibit them, but also influenced the arts in many ways.

The exhibition, curated by Pietro Amadini and the museum's director, Laura Dal Prà, recounts the Japan of that time through photographs and art objects collected by Giuseppe Grazioli, the Trentino clergyman and agronomist who traveled to Yokohama from 1864 to 1868 in search of healthy silkworm eggs, which had become unavailable due to the spread of pebrina, the disease that had compromised silkworm production throughout Europe. Each year on his return from his travels, Grazioli donated the works he had acquired in the Japanese city to the Museo Civico di Trento, whose collections were then granted on deposit by the city to the National Museum, which opened in 1924 in the Castello del Buonconsiglio.

Encounters in Japan is thus an opportunity to narrate Grazioli's extraordinary adventure through a never-before-seen selection of important artifacts from his collection from maps, to paintings, prints, lacquers, bronzes, weapons and everyday objects, punctuated with precious photographs by well-known professionals of the period, collected at the stages of the long journeys he undertook, the prolonged stops in Yokohama along with other semai, and meetings with Western diplomats and Japanese residents.

The exhibition enjoys the Patronage of the City of Trento, the Consulate General of Japan in Milan and the Italy Japan Foundation.

Source: https://www.buonconsiglio.it/index.php/en/Buonconsiglio-Castle