Place: British Embassy The Annual General Meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, January 21st at the ambassador's residence, No.1 House, the British Embassy, 1 Ichibancho, Chiyoda-ku (exit 4 from Hanzomon subway station, inside the Diamond Hotel), by kind invitation of Sir Stephen and Lady Gomersall. It will be graciously attended by our patrons, T.I.H. Prince and Princess Takamado. The speaker on this occasion will be Mr. Yoshinobu Tokugawa, and his subject is "The Tokugawa Art Collection: An Illustrated Lecture". The lecture will be preceded by the usual brief formal business of approving the reports and electing a new Council, and will be followed by a reception hosted by Lady Gomersall. Members in Japan will already have received a letter explaining the procedure necessary for attending the meeting (which differs slightly from that outlined in the previous Bulletin); please note that the deadline for replies is January 7th. As the office will be unattended over the holidays, the ASJ fax machine (03) 5549-4751 may become overloaded; if you cannot get through, please fax Hugh Wilkinson at (03) 3475-1195.

Information: ASJ Office

The Tokugawa Art Museum, which houses the Tokugawa art collection, was established in 1935 by Marquis Yoshichika Tokugawa, the 19th descendant of the Owari Tokugawa family, under the non-profit Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation, which he had set up in 1931 and to which he had donated almost all of the household treasures. The Museum was established in Nagoya as that city had been the capital of the Owari Tokugawa territory. The Museum's collection consists of the possessions of a daimyo which were successively handed down the Owari branch of the Tokugawa family, who, based on their castle seat in Nagoya, maintained the closest family and political ties with the ruling shoguns throughout the Edo period, 1603-1868. The Museum ranks as the third-oldest privately-endowed museum in Japan, and is unique in two aspects: it not only preserves almost the whole of a daimyo family's household treasures but also includes a collection of many family documents, catalogues, inventories and other records. At the core of the collection are objects inherited from the first shogun, Ieyasu, but the Owari family also treasured the art coming from earlier generations. In this talk, while introducing the collection of the treasures of the Tokugawa Art Collection illustrated with slides, Mr. Tokugawa also intends to give an insight into "What is a daimyo?" and why a daimyo had to maintain such a variety of treasures.

Mr. Tokugawa, who belongs to the 21st generation of the Owari branch of the Tokugawa family, received his B.A. in Economics from Gakushuin University in 1956. After working for five years with the Bank of Tokyo, he spent the next four years as a research student at Tokyo University and as a researcher at the Tokyo National Museum. He then became Executive Director and subsequently President of the Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation, and from 1976 has also been Director of the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya. At the same time he has been a lecturer at a number of universities and colleges in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, and is at present a visiting professor at Tokai Gakuen University in Nagoya. In December 1991 he was presented with an award from the Minister of Education, Science and Culture, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Museum Law.

Adapted from "The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin No. 1", January 2002, compiled by Prof. Hugh E. Wilkinson and Mrs. Doreen Simmons.

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