Bias calls gold for the few specific artists and their works that count.
Japan is currently experiencing an unprecedented ‘treasure’ boom. The whole nation is on the lookout for treasures.
Antique dealers are welcoming this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fool the amateurs.
Antiques need to be identified as genuine or fake, which is why people like Mr Seinosuke Nakajima are so proud of themselves.
The bias is based on the vanity of thinking that you actually have a ‘great treasure’.
And 99% of the time, the enthusiasts are given fakes, and a huge amount of money is lost in the dubious world of antiques.
Simply put, the older a ‘treasure’ is, the rarer and more valuable it becomes.
Quite a lot of objects from the Edo period remain, but almost none from before the Kamakura period.
Therefore, if an object from the Kamakura period or earlier is found, it alone commands an eye-watering price.
Also, the value of an object changes drastically depending on whether or not it was made by a famous person in the field of art.
A pot by First Kakiemon, which belonged to a famous German family, was valued at 500 million yen.
If it had been a Kuriemon instead of a Kakiemon, it would have cost ¥500.
Looking at art almanacs, one is surprised to see how many artists there are in Japan! I am amazed.
It is also surprising that the price of each artist and his work is determined in detail.
And once an artist gains fame, their reputation remains high. Is that thanks to the Art Almanac?
Vincent van Gogh was so poor during his lifetime that he could not even buy paints.
His paintings did not sell at all and he did not earn any money, so he had no choice but to remain indebted to his brother Theo for the rest of his life.
When it sold worldwide fame, a single painting fetched hundreds of millions of dollars, but only after his death.
The originality of his paintings and the excellence of his use of colour are universally acknowledged, but there are plenty of painters in the world who can paint as well as he did.
On some occasion, his story attracted attention, and there was a bias in both his fame and the price of his paintings.
In art, too, once fame is achieved through bias, it tends to become fixed.
In order to favour and honour artists with outstanding achievements in various fields of art, there is a national honours organisation, the Art Academy, in Japan.
Members also receive a pension.
And it is a truism from all ages and cultures that creative art cannot be produced when life is stable.