売立目録に猿猴図を求めて

できてしまった全国所在目録一覧の話

抄録

A Buddhist fable known as "A Monkey Reaching for the Moon" became a popular subject of suibokuga (Japanese ink painting) since the Kamakura period (1185-1333), when Chinese monochrome paintings of the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368) dynasties dealing with this theme were much sought after. The ways in which Japanese artists rendered the subject varied widely with time and school. I conducted researches into plates in uritate mokuroku (auction catalogues) in the hope that they would provide a clue to the history of these paintings. Since 1992 thus far, I have examined 19,789 catalogues housed in fifty-seven organizations, identifying 4,134 different catalogues. Among these, I have found 1,907 plates presenting monkey images in 1,281 catalogues, including 329 plates reproducing 275 different pieces dealing with the above-mentioned subject. These plates will serve as a basis for the bibliographical researches into the sources and history of the saying "A Monkey Reaching for the Moon".
During the research, examination of these organizations' lists of uritate mokuroku revealed that no version of the Nippon Cataloging Rules provided the necessary and sufficient standards for accurate description and identification of the auction catalogues. In order to compensate for this, I decided to compile an accurate record of the names (catalog titles) and dates of auction gatherings, as well as to use some other attributes for identifying the catalogues. These attributes were: the number of pages listing auctioned pieces; the number of items listed in a catalogue; and the number of plates. The result of such identification work lead me to conceive a plan for a union catalogue of Japanese auctions.