Juyo Bijitsuhin Export

[Ray Singer]

The topic of legally exporting Juyo Bijitsuhin has been discussed in this forum on and off for the past few years. I thought it would be of interest to share a link to an article newly added to Fred's website, where the highly important Ju-bi Soshu Akihiro (and its export from Japan) is written about...

 

http://www.nihonto.com/soshu-akihiro-%E7%9B%B8%E5%B7%9E%E7%A7%8B%E5%BA%83/

 

"After acquiring this blade in the USA, I returned it to Japan for restoration and replacement of the missing and lost original Juyo Bijitsuhin (重要美実品) designation certificate. I also requested permission to properly and legally export it from Japan. After about a year, permission to export it was granted so now it can legally be owned outside of Japan. It should be noted that without such permission, blades of this designation are not allowed leave Japan."

 

- Fred Weissberg

 

 

Here is one of the previous threads:

http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/13787-prewar-kokuho-and-juyo-bijutsuhin/?hl=%2Bjuyo+%2Bbijutsuhin

[seattle1]

Hello:

 Well it is a super blade seen by some of us a few years ago at a US show after it returned to the States from just having been on a preceding round trip to Japan for a "restoration" and how much better it looks now! It is very interesting to hear that such material can now legally leave Japan and I would put that down to the growing reality of the internationalization of the market for Japanese swords - a good thing for all participants.

 Arnold F.

[christianmalterre]

i do not know if this is good eitherway...

did but mention mine thoughts already in Solingen-( those who have ben there these days ? certainly did met the discussions... ....so far..Well?- no new topic...just released...)

[Darcy]

It is very interesting to hear that such material can now legally leave Japan

Note the blade was sent to Japan by the legal owner at the time (Fred) and then took a year to get back to him.

 

It's not the same situation as someone going over and buying one.

 

The handful of Jubi that are out:

 

1. some were war booty that left in the chaos after the war

2. some left under unknown circumstances

 

Nobody has ever published any exportation documentation or application or correct method for them to go out.

I think if you want to draw any conclusion from this, it's that they ruled in favor of letting the legal owner / importer get his property back which is fair, because they shouldn't be stopping the legal owner from getting his property back on a paper who's status was revoked (now getting close to a century ago).

 

It is not the correct conclusion to jump straight to "oh it's easy to export Jubi now" from this example.

 

At some point I will try one if I can get a refund guarantee from whomever is going to sell it to me. I know it will be hard to get such a refund guarantee, because they will tell me it's not possible to do, to begin with. But if I can get someone to guarantee me a refund, I will try one, and if I try one, I will publish the method and the documentation.

 

Nobody has ever published the method or the documentation.

 

Without that, you can't conclude that it is a slam dunk to get any particular Jubi out, vs. a special case dispensation issued after a year of appeals to give the owner his property back.

 

I didn't want to post on this, when I saw the first post though I thought, uh oh, NMB is going to grab the ball and sprint for the end zone and that's immediately what happened.

 

What we need is for someone who has done it, to publish *all* of the details. I wouldn't recommend anyone who stumbles onto a treasure Jubi to immediately assume from this that they will be as lucky, nor would I recommend to people to run out and buy a bunch of Jubi and assume that it is a slam dunk process now.

 

It has nothing to do with "growing reality of the internationalization of the market". If that were so it would be possible to send a piece of tosogu from Tokyo to anywhere in the world, which is not something that can easily happen now.

 

I recently had a koshirae fail because it had a wooden tsunagi in it and so that triggered them to reject it for export.

 

So, really, honestly, don't grab the ball and run for the endzone screaming touchdown until you yourself successfully get one out after doing all the paperwork right. It's not a touchdown until the ball is in the endzone and the referees have reviewed the play.

[Katsujinken]

I had the pleasure of studying this Akihiro in San Francisco. What a treat.

[Guido]

There seems to be some confusion in regard to the designation of this sword: it’s not an "important cultural property" (jūyō bunkazai 重要文化財), but an "important art work" (jūyō bijutsuhin 重要美術品).

 

Kokuhō and jūyō bunkazai, according to the 1950 bunkazai-hogo-hō 文化財保護法, have to remain in Japan under penalty of law, while jūyō bijutsuhin (like Fred’s sword) can (and have been already) legally exported.

 

In order to get an export permit (kobijutsuhin-yushutsu-kansa-shōmei  古美術品輸出鑑査証明), the proper paperwork has to be submitted to the bunka-chō-bijutsu-kōgei-ka 文化庁美術工芸課 (Art and Craft Section of the Cultural Agency). Although the "old" form - that never was changed since originally issued (see attachment) - states that kokuhō, jūyō bunkazai and jūyō bijutsuhin can't be exported "as a general rule", the website of the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education (http://www.kyoiku.metro.tokyo.jp/pickup/p_bunka/jyuho-3-2.htm) doesn't mention jūyō bijutsuhin at all, only kokuhō and jūyō bunkazai. I never tried to export a jūbi myself  , so I don't know if there's a special form for important art work.

[Pete Klein]

OK - here's a couple for you to try on:

 

http://www.tsuruginoya.com/mn1_3/mn3_6_1.html

[Brian]

The fact that it took a year says volumes. Would love to know what happened back and forth within that year. I have a feeling this is not just an "apply and wait" process.
Would also like to know if that Juyo Bijitsuhin designation certificate was replaced.
I don't think the average person is just going to buy and export one. TJ is very far from Jubi.

[Ray Singer]

Not challenging Fred's article, but this is the first I have heard of the replacement of a Juyo Bijutsuhin certificate. I would be very interested to see a reissued Ju-bi paper.

[Ray Singer]

There is no confusion on my side about the designation of this sword, but have heard more than once that it may not be possible to re-export such pieces. Christie's stated that the export of Juyo Bijutsuhin is not possible when the Manno Museum collection was dispersed several years ago. Not that I consider Christie's to be an authority on this subject, but I would expect that they researched prior to the issuing that statement during the auction. There are to my knowledge several Juyo Bijutsuhin in private collections outside of Japan. Very curious to know of any other cases where such swords were imported for restoration and/or shinsa and had been able to easily re-export afterwards. As Brian mentioned, the one-year time span may indicate that this was not a simple process.

There seems to be some confusion in regard to the designation of this sword: it’s not an "important cultural property" (jūyō bunkazai 重要文化財), but an "important art work" (jūyō bijutsuhin 重要美術品).

[Jean]

Concerning Jubi, from several discussions, if I remember well, it was possible to buy them and export them but in this process they lose their status,

[Gakusee]

Interesting discussion. I have also heard that JuBi could, with the right connections, possibly be exported but will lose the JuBi status. However, why would one care that the status has been lost if one knew that the sword had previously been JuBi? That former status is sufficient testament to its importance.

 

I have also heard that TJ is actually at least on par with JuBi and sometimes higher in quality or rarity. Therefore, it is more straightforward for a foreigner to either acquire TJ or progress a Juyo through shinsa to become TJ rather than aim at JuBi; if the conditions for TB are present, that is.

This is a rarefied stratum we are entering here and hence the sparseness of tangible evidence or examples.

[seattle1]

Hello:

 Just to set the record straight on the post above that began with a quotation from my post: "It is very interesting to hear that such material can now legally leave Japan ..." and which led to a string of disjointed non sequiturs.

 1. There is a nuance of meaning in the English language which restricts the generality of a statement by the use of the word "such". The word means of that kind, or similar, and thus it was not an assertion that any and all other disestablished Juyo Bi blades can scoot right out of Japan. Each would be a special case unless some clarifying document is generated by the Japanese authorities which throws the net much wider and establishes a commonality of treatment.

 2. Who said: it is "the same situation as someone going over and buying on" ? - not me.

 3. Who said: "oh it is easy to export Jubi now" ? - not me.

 4. Who concluded: "that it a slam dunk..." - not me!

 5. I don't understand the issue of a year in process being somehow a determinant of the issue of a legal release for the Akihiro. The sword was seen by me a very few years ago, I believe at the Tampa show, and it had then returned from a round trip to Japan for restoration. The togi at that time did not, in the opinion of a number of people who saw it, present the blade in the full glory of its inherent quality, and under new ownership it went back to Japan. I don't know the exact chronology of it going back for a new togi, perhaps a new habaki, probably a new shirasaya, a sayagaki by Tanobe sensei, and then an application for legal export, which was granted. To me it would seem that a year is an amazingly short time!

 6. Finally on the issue of "internationalization," which I had termed a "growing reality", and it was dismissed by the claim that it is impossible to say send a piece of tosogu from Tokyo to anywhere in the world. It took a while to figure out what that "proof" was addressing. Internationalization, or intranationalization for that matter, only means that the legal and institutional relaxation of constraints on what Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations referred to as the "truck, barter , or exchange" of goods and services, are lessened. The generality of the process is not dependent on totality. The market for Japanese swords and tosogu has dramatically internationalized in the last quarter century. At least one well know Japanese dealer has perhaps the major fraction of his sales going outside Japan, the yearly Dai Token Ichi in Tokyo draws a large number of foreign collectors and dealers, Japanese dealers have once again begun to appear a US sword shows as buyers and as sellers or both, every month we see more collectors, or perhaps just the curious, posting on this Board from all over the world - their geography is varied, there interests are the same. No trade process or carting of goods here and there is free of constraints set by governments and that is not inconsistent with relaxation of barriers. On the issue of Juyo Bi's it is obviously in the interest of both buyers and sellers for such goods to move internationally, and it would not be surprising to see more such legal authorized examples in the future.

 Arnold F.

[Guido]

There is no confusion on my side about the designation of this sword, but have heard more than once that it may not be possible to re-export such pieces.

 

I understand that you weren't confused, but Fred himself seems to have mistaken jūyō bijutsuhin for jūyō bunkazai in the write-up on his website - and on FB a seasoned collector even stated the sword was one of the missing national treasures!

 

Anyhow, this is the first time I've seen a jubi certificate being re-issued after 1950 (but don't claim any knowledge in this regard, there might be other cases), but certainly the first time that it didn't loose its designation after leaving Japan (at least that's the impression I got from Fred's website).

 

In any case, I'll try to pull some strings and find out how the system works.

 

P.S. to the person who PM'd me: if you don't allow PMs to be replied to in your settings, I can't answer you.

[Guido]

I would be very interested to see a reissued Ju-bi paper.

 

Here you go: it says that the original paper was issued in 1941, and even to whom.

[Ray Singer]

Thank you Guido, I somehow managed to overlook that.

 

Here you go: it says that the original paper was issued in 1941, and even to whom.

[Darcy]

Arnold...

 

What I do not want to do is to is see applause on this site make it sound like a confirmation that this is a reliable, repeatable, and simple process for potential readers who put "export Juyo bijutsuhin" into Google. It's not an attack on you, it's an attack on making a conclusion based on one data point and this is a particularly serious one.

 

Nobody is mentioning the failure data points (I know of them, they exist, you don't know about them, without the permission of people who failed it's not within my comfort level to publish their failures), so the best I can do is write something here to try to in no uncertain words say, don't draw conclusions from this.

 

Avoiding the handwaving and repeating this:

 

It is very interesting to hear that such material can now legally leave Japan and I would put that down to the growing reality of the internationalization of the market for Japanese swords

 

I don't think it requires a degree in english literature to understand this and if you did embed all kinds of linguistic trickery into it, it still reads plainly on its face, that there is a conclusion here that "such material can now legally leave Japan" (you don't know this until you get a letter from the Ministry saying it can, and that this one was not granted a special dispensation because it came in from outside of Japan) and then you went so far as to attribute the reason why of it.

 

That's simple english and the conclusion is wrong, as well as the attribution of cause of the conclusion, it's nothing more than pulling things out of the air.

 

Anyone at all here can write to the ministry of education and ask them the correct process for exporting these and if it is 100% reliable to do so, and if so the matter will be clarified and then you can make the statement you did.

 

Nobody has done this yet and since only apparently one or two people have ever gotten these out of Japan in even small quantities, this leaves the "correct" approach a mystery. A secret owned by only these people? Who knows. Certainly not you, and certainly not me.

 

The fact that this blade came out means nothing until the process is published, and/or examples shown, about how it is done. 

 

Otherwise it's like that time I dated Christie Turlington. 

 

I would very much encourage our members who are in Japan to make inquiries and find out if it is possible on a regular basis, and if the answer is no, then the best case scenario is that someone granted an exception for a foreign own blade that got sent to Japan and allowed it to be returned to their owner. 

 

There is no reliable information here being presented that is of any use to any collector, and it is defense of one blade being exported. In my opinion Fred owned it and Fred deserved to have it back and the right thing was done.

 

I write what I write, only so that someone doesn't google into this thread and see a bunch of NMB members talking about how great it is now that you can export Jubi and so get the wrong idea in their head.

 

This, as mentioned, can be clarified should someone simply write a single page letter, in Japanese, to the Ministry of Education asking for the correct forms and process. Should someone do that, now we have useful information for collectors. This here has nothing valid that can be taken home from it, nothing that applies to you or me or anyone else other than the person who exported this particular blade.

 

Get that information and now you can make useful sweeping conclusions, like it's good to know that things like this can now leave Japan and it's because the Japanese changed their mind about it.

 

And honestly it's no fun to me to be the guy sitting here with multiple counterexamples in my head that I can't share while the applause is going on. 

 

I don't want to have the fights and pissing matches on this board about this kind of thing, having to hold cards in my hand I can't put down, and have arguments with people that don't have direct experience.

 

So, this is my last post. Not on this thread, but on NMB.

[seattle1]

Hello Darcy:

 My initial point, a fairly obvious one I thought, that the Akihiro example, perhaps only n = 1, demonstrates that in such situations, to be determined in individual cases, at least former designated blades of Juyo Bi level may be able to legally leave Japan; and further that that is a phenomenon linked to market internationalization.

 What is interesting about the NMB is its provision for the civil exchange of ideas, observations and opinions. Your posts have provided a rich assortment of interesting and educational contributions and I for one certainly hope your last statement in the above will be swiftly reconsidered.

 Arnold F.

[Ken-Hawaii]

Darcy, please don't take this single point of disagreement as any reason or rationale to depart NMB. We need people like you with high-end experience to educate us, & to help keep us on the right side of illiteracy.

 

Please reconsider. 

 

Ken

 

[Curran]

D,

 

It would greatly diminish the community. Do not go.

Losing central pillars is usually very bad for a structure.

[Jean]

It is like losing backbone....

[Stephen]

It would be like missing volumes of NKoza...but hes a big boy...dont beg him!

Respect!

[Guido]

Time to take a deep breath, and going back to facts.

 

First of all we’ll have to keep in mind that not all kokuhō, jūyō bunakazai, and jūyō bijutsuhin are swords – there are many more paintings, ceramics, lacquer, armor, textiles and so on – 20% of all kokuhō are even buildings like castles, shrines, and temples.

 

About 8,200 items received the jūbi status until 1950, the year that designation became obsolete; less than 1,100 of them are swords, sword fittings and mountings.

 

Kokuhō, jūyō bunakazai, and jūyō bijutsuhin can be temporarily exported if they go on loan to a foreign museum; swords are not de-licensed in this case, they retain their original tōrokushō, and of course their government designation.

 

Once a year a committee / shinsa gets together at the bunkachō to decide on export permits of jūyō bijutsuhin that are intended to leave Japan permanentely. If this permit is granted, the status is revoked, and in the case of swords, the tōrokushō has to be handed in. The criteria for granting an export permit are not on public record, and between 1950 and 2008, only 25 export permits for jūbi were issued.

 

The attachments show an original monbushō certificate issued in 1939, and a replacement monbushō certificate issued in 1949.

 

[Guido]

P.S.:

 

Please note that I have no horse in this race. I’m not in the business of exporting swords of any designation/rank, and I’m certainly not going to comment on methods to circumvent the relevant Japanese laws, of which rumors are floating around for many years. There’s a reason why “regular” export permits are more carefully scrutinized recently; not only the tōrokushō number, but also measurements etc. are checked very thoroughly.

 

Kudos to Fred for sticking to the law, his patience in waiting for the export permit, and willingness to risk that his sword wouldn’t have been allowed to leave Japan anymore.

 

[Pete Klein]

Guido -- THANK YOU!

[Ray Singer]

Much appreciate the additional information, thank you.