Exclusive visit in Musée Guimet of the exhibition « At the Court of Prince Genji, 1000 years of Japanese imagination »
Dear members of Club HEC Développement International, of Club HEC Culture, of Comité d’Echange Franco-Japonais and of Dousoukaï, we are delighted to be able to invite you to participate to a special evening visit of the exhibition called A la Cour du Prince Genji. 1 000 ans d’imaginaire japonais., which is now running until March 25th presented at Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts (Musée Guimet), Paris. The four rolls shown in this exhibition will have to rest in the Museum’s reserves for four years!
This visit will be special as the Museum will be completely privatized for us to on Wednesday February 28th, from 7.00 p.m. until 9.45 p.m., and will include a 45 minute long guided tour (with three professional guides, two of them being English speaking ones) of the exhibition, and the possibility to visit as well the Japanese and Himalayan sections of the Museum (until 8.45 p.m).
The visit will be followed by a cocktail in the Museum, allowing all visitors not only to eat and drink together (“nominication”!), but also to meet, exchange and get to know each other in a very artistic and friendly Franco-Japanese atmosphere.
This special visit would not have been possible without the full and generous support of Fondation Franco-Japonaise Sasakawa, which is the sponsor of this exhibition about The Tale of Genji which is the most representative work of classical Japanese literature, neither without the full cooperation of Musée Guimet, which has been extremely helpful in the organization of this event. It will also receive a special support of JETRO, which will arrange a Japanese sake tasting session at the time of the cocktail.
This special visit will take place
on Wednesday February 28th, from 7.00 p.m. to 9.45 p.m.
at the Musée Guimet, located 6, place d’Iéna 75116 Paris (M° Iéna)
For security reasons, the total number of participants to this event will not exceed a maximum of 150 persons, all organisers included. Registration will be done on a “first come first served basis” untill Sunday February 25th, unless the above mentioned figure of 150 PAX has been reached before that date, in which case it will immediately be stopped.
The participation fee for this event, for one person, has been set at €55 per person.
The musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet is the largest museum of Asian art to be found in Europe, extraordinary collections are presented, showing the diversity of the Asian continent. The museum offers a tremendous reach, both chronologically, around 5,000 years of Asian art history, and geographically, with works coming from all parts of Asia from Afghanistan to Japan.
Fondation Franco-Japonaise Sasakawa is a recognized foundation of public utility. Its mission is to develop cultural and friendship relations between France and Japan. Since its creation in 1990, it has supported more than 1,000 projects in a wide variety of fields: scientific, artistic, performing arts, youth exchange, publishing, etc., with prestigious partners such as museums, universities, schools, private companies.
JETRO, or the Japan External Trade Organization, is a government-related organization that works to promote mutual trade and investment between Japan and the rest of the world. Originally established in 1958 to promote Japanese exports abroad, JETRO's core focus in the 21st century has shifted toward promoting foreign direct investment into Japan and helping small to medium size Japanese firms maximize their global export potential.
HEC Alumni has been created in 1883. It gathers a total of 80.000 alumni, who have graduated one of the programs proposed by HEC Paris. It is organized around 1563 hubs, clubs and chapters. Its motto is “We SHARE. We DARE. We CARE.”
Club HEC Développement International is one of the clubs which belong to HEC Alumni Association. It counts 4175 members, and organises a lot of conferences on international subjects, one afterwork every month (one country being the central theme each time, such as China in December last year, and Japan and Lebanon in January and February this year) and one trip abroad every year (UAE in 2022, Sénégal in 2023 and South-Korea in October 2024).
Club HEC Culture is also a club belonging to HEC Alumni Association. It currently counts 2861 members, and is dedicated to all the alumni who are or want to be active in cultural fields. It organises many events, including a lot of them in museums or cultural centers. It has thus organised a comprehensive and magnificent visit of Musée Guimet in June 2022.
Le Comité d’Echange Franco-Japonais has been created by the Paris Ile de France Chamber of Commerce. Its members include Japanese business people working in Paris, as well as French business people interested in Japanese matters. It is very active in organising conferences and gathering events, allowing the Japanese and French business communities to gather and develop good personal and business relations.
Dousoukai is an informal association which gathers alumni of the best Japanese universities (Keio, Waseda, Hitotsubashi, Todai, Kyodai, Sophia…) and of the best French “Grandes Ecoles” (Business schools and Engineering Schools)
Description of the exhibition: “At the Court of Prince Genji ... A thousand years of Japanese imagination”
• At the heart of the Musée Guimet, the exhibition invites us to dream of the Japanese imperial court around the influence of a seminal novel, "Genji Monogatari”.
• We are soon immersed in the Heian era (794-1185) and its courtly art.
• This was a unique period of freedom for women in Japanese history, when the arts and literature were promoted.
• "The Tale of Genji" was born in this context. It is considered one of the most important stories in Japanese culture.
• Written in XIth century by the poetess Murasaki Shikibu, it has generated for a thousand years an extremely rich iconography that influenced even contemporary mangaka.
• The novel recounts the life of one of these imperial princes, an extraordinaryhandsome poet and charmer of women.
• All the ingredients of romance are present: there is the courtesan, the unrepentant seducer, the fascination of power, the different social classes, money, and even the scorned wife and jealous husband...
• The exhibition shows the influence of this novel on creativity: the range includes fabrics, kimonos, sculptures, paintings and precious objects, including the lacquer boxes of an illustrious collector ... Marie-Antoinette!
• Gold lacquer, silk, mother-of-pearl and silver inlays ... everything is refinement.
• To continue, a whole room is devoted to animated films and the presentation of mangas that still inspire artists to tell this story in the 21st century.
• The second part focuses on Itarô Yamaguchi (1901-2007), a master weaver from Kyoto's Nishijin district. Here, we discover the meticulousness of the 4 rolls he weaved for 30 years on the theme of "Genji Monogatari". A jewel on display for the first time.
