UTokyo / ENS-PSL digital partnership

The Datart_Asie project

In the continuity of GeoMAP, DatArt_Asie studies the market for Asian objects in Paris since the middle of the 19th century. Indeed, the forced economic opening of China and Japan in 1860 led to a boom in trade with the West and, from the 1870s, to the vogue for "Japonism". While this phenomenon is largely documented by studies, essentially monographic or devoted to a short period, it is necessary to analyze, over a long period of time, the evolution of these commercial relations with Asia based on homogeneous and diachronic data.

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The DatArt_Asie is based on a twofold corpus:

• The Bottin du commerce, published annually from 1815 onwards, presents the various dealers established in Paris according to a classification by category, mentioning their addresses and, optionally, a short description of their activity. The entirety of the "chinoiseries (marchands de)" and "japoneries (marchands de)" sections has been analysed and georeferenced, thus forming a corpus of 432 companies between 1868 and 1954
• On the Japanese side, the Japan Directory, published in 1868, is currently being analysed in the Yokohama departmental archives.

DatArt_Asie data is displayed on an interactive map. Each point corresponds to a single dealer, an address and a given date. The description of the activity in the Bottin du commerce is displayed in a pop-up window.

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It is possible to filter the dealers according to their heading ("chinoiseries" and/or "japoneries"). Their counters in Asia are also displayed, when the Bottin du commerce mentions them. When a company has, for the same period, several stores or counters, these different addresses are linked together by a line on the map. Finally, addresses located on the street are distinguished from those located in the city.

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Team

Database:

• Léa Saint-Raymond (ENS-PSL) : retranscription and georeferencing of "chinoiseries dealers" and "japoneries dealers" in the Bottin du commerce, between 1865 and 1954.
• Torahiko Terada (UTokyo) : retranscription of the Japan Directory from 1868

Programming and web design : Quentin Bernet.

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The DatArt_Asie project will be presented in February 2023 at a symposium organized at UTokyo by Torahiko Terada.