punch bowl with bamboo and wisteria, Hirata Jūkō VII

Exhibition Label:
"Nature/Natural," Jul-2014, Kris Ercums
This punch bowl was gifted to Henry Willard Denison (1846–1914) from his Japanese collegaues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Gaimushō外務省) in Tokyo. Denison moved to Japan in 1869, and after 1880 worked as a legal consultant, assisting the Meiji government to revise unequal treaties and eliminate extraterritoriality—a kind of diplomatic immunity which exempted foreigners from Japanese laws. Through his legal briefs, he defended Japan’s involvement in the Sino-Japanese War (1884–95) and helped draft the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ceded Taiwan and other territories to Japan and recognized the suzerainty of Korea, laying the foundations for its annexation by Japan in 1910. For his services Denison was posthumously awarded the Grand Cordon of Order of the Rising Sun (on display in this case), the first foreigner ever accorded this privilege.

Exhibition Label:
"Tradition and Modernity: Japanese Art of the Early Twentieth Century," Jan-2005, Hillary Pedersen
The inscriptions on the base of this silver punchbowl indicate it was intended as a gift for “Mr. H. W. Dennison, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his entrance into the service of His Imperial Majesty’s government from his gaimusho friends” and is dated “Tokio May 1, 1905.” Each of his “friends” mentioned in the inscription, probably his colleagues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, signed their names in cursive Roman script in the center of the base. The inscription may refer to Henry Willard Denison (1846-1914), an American who served in the Japanese Foreign Ministry as a legal adviser for thirty-four years and participated in the treaty proceedings of the Russo-Japanese War (1903-1905).