Understanding the Guanxi Culture in Chinese Art Market: Okada Kosho and Shanghai Art World in the Late-nineteenth Century

Abstract

Shanghai art market had developed a strong international trade system since China was forced to have her gate ajar in the late-nineteenth century. In 1873, a Nagasaki doctor Okada Kosho (1821-1903) travelled to Shanghai and Suzhou. Thanks to the development of stochastic models for the analysis of social networks in contemporary statistics, the structure of Okada’s guanxi (social connections) in Shanghai and Suzhou in the late nineteenth century can be represented by the model, which illustrated that Okada was connected with a few “bridges”, including the Japanese artist Yasuda Rozan, Japanese Consulate Shinagawa Tadamichi, an official dispatched at the end of 1860s to Shanghai, Kumashiro Encho, and the prominent art collector of the Guoyun Chamber, and Gu Cheng, all of whom helped Okada Kosho to explore the Shanghai and Suzhou art world. Through the bridging ties spanned by these individuals, Okada interacted closely with a particular cluster of Chinese artists, art collectors and art dealers. This proved that the Chinese art community heavily relied on social connections of the “bridges” in advertising itself and spreading its reputation. This paper first outlines the Shanghai art market in the late nineteenth century based on Okada Kosho’ s Diaries of Shanghai and Suzhou (1890). It then argues for the opportunity and limitation of building guanxi in the context of the Chinese art market. Finally, it suggests research approaches based on viewing the late-nineteenth-century Shanghai art market in this new way.