2017 Volume 2017 Issue 27 Pages 603-609
Wu Changshuo’s “Yu-Gu-Wei-Tu与古為徒” Chinese Plaque, on the wall in the area of Oriental arts collection in Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, have been thought Okakura Tenshin, who was the head of Chinese and Japanese arts collection of the museum, had asked Wu Changshuo to make it. However, in fact, Nagao Uzan (he was a Okakura’s friend and Sinologist who lived in Shanghai,) asked Wu Changshuo as his neighbor to write, and put it in a Black Lacquer. Then, he sent it to Okakura in Boston. Since Nagao was asked to be an advisory staff at MFA by Okakura at that time, he sent the plaque as an inaugural gift, I think. Okaura’s contributions at MFA have been highly regarded, but nobody have mentioned there was cooperation by a scholar named Nagao, who had a relationship with Wu Changshuo and inherited the orthodox of Sinology. The purpose of this report is analyzing his works and finding out the signification of the cultural exchange between Japan, China, and the US, which have achieved success in modern times.
