Karamono: Chinese and Asian Antiques Found in Japan, and How to Read Them

In 808 a Japanese court document banned entertainers from using karamono, goods from China. It is the first recorded use of the word. For the next thousand years Chinese objects, and later objects from across the continent, were treasured, traded, given as rewards and sold off in hard times in Japan. Some of what was gathered in those centuries, and much that arrived later, is still in Japanese houses, temples and dealers' rooms, and it reaches our shelves in Tokyo.

Our thesis: a Chinese or Asian object found in Japan carries two histories, the one it was made in and the one it was kept in. The second is often easier to read, and it should be read first, because it tells the collector how the object was valued, by whom and for how long. This guide sets out the Japanese history of karamono, the main kinds of object on our shelf and how we describe them.

At a glance

Word	Karamono, Chinese goods prized in Japan; kara means China broadly, not the Tang dynasty
First recorded	808, in a court ban
Tea and Zen	From the Kamakura period, tea utensils become the leading karamono
Shogun's collection	Higashiyama gomotsu, selected by the Ashikaga connoisseurs
Edo trade	Through Nagasaki; karamonoya dealers from the 1620s and 1630s

A thousand years of collecting

The word kara first meant a nearby kingdom and widened to mean the continent; by about the eighth century it meant China. In 756 Empress Kōmyō dedicated more than 600 objects to the Great Buddha at Tōdai-ji in Nara, and the treasure house that holds them, the Shōsō-in, still keeps continental arts of that age. In the early Heian period karamono were status symbols and important gifts at court, and the court sent officers to Dazaifu in Kyushu to buy the best of what foreign ships brought.

From the Kamakura period, Zen Buddhism and tea drinking spread, and tea utensils became the most important karamono. In the Muromachi period the Ashikaga shoguns' connoisseurs, the three generations of Nōami, Geiami and Sōami, chose the best pieces and recorded their values; after the Ōnin War the shogun Yoshimasa sold pieces from the collection, and objects with that pedigree are known as Higashiyama gomotsu. In the Momoyama period Oda Nobunaga collected Chinese tea utensils and gave them as rewards, and many were lost with him at Honnō-ji. In the Edo period trade ran through Nagasaki, and from the Kan'ei era dealers called karamonoya sold imported goods, first fine art for the tea room and later everyday imported wares.

Two points matter for collectors. Song-dynasty painting, tea caddies, tenmoku tea bowls and celadon flower vases were the classic karamono. And karamono-style objects made in Japan were also called karamono, a confusion that troubled collectors from the earliest times.

What reaches our shelf

Bronze, gilt bronze and censers

Incense burners are among the most common Chinese objects in Japanese collections, because they served temples, tea rooms and household altars alike. A copper-alloy quatrefoil censer with a Qianlong reign mark and a bronze and cloisonné Guanyin censer are examples. Our Lexicon entries on the kōro, gilt bronze and cloisonné explain the forms and techniques.

Ceramics

Celadon from the Longquan kilns was exported across East Asia from the 13th to the 15th century, and Jian ware tea bowls, called tenmoku in Japan, were so highly valued here that many of the best examples were collected in Japan. Blue and white porcelain, sometsuke in Japanese, followed. Our guide to Japanese porcelain and ceramics sets the Japanese wares beside them.

Jade and hardstone

Jadeite, most of it of gem quality from northern Myanmar, came into significant use in China only towards the end of the 18th century. A jadeite carving of lions, bats and ruyi belongs to that later taste.

Buddhist sculpture

Gilt bronze and copper figures from China, Tibet and Korea, and grey schist sculpture in the Gandhara manner, form a large part of the shelf. Gandharan Buddhist art flowered under the Kushan Empire, when the first devotional images of the Buddha were made in the first to third centuries AD. A grey schist head offered as Gandhara, Kushan shows how we title such a piece.

How we describe attribution

Chinese taste has long revered the past. Reign marks, first applied to imperial porcelain under the Yongle Emperor in the early 15th century, were copied on later wares, and the history of Chinese ceramics is full of revival, imitation and outright fakery, the three often hard to tell apart. Our Lexicon entry on the reign mark explains how to read one. For that reason our titles separate three things:

• Offered as. In our titles, "offered as" marks an attribution that came with the piece, such as Gandhara, Kushan or Qing, which we report but have not confirmed.
• Style and revival. "Ming dynasty style" or "Qing revival" marks a piece made in an earlier manner, not of that date.
• Mark. A reign mark is described as a mark, not as a date.

In our reading, a Japanese storage box, an old inscription on it or a dealer's label can be as informative as the object, because it records how a Japanese owner understood the piece; our entry on kintsugi shows another way Japanese owners left their mark on Chinese wares.

What we checked and left out

The Japanese history of karamono comes from the Japanese-language source below, in our translation; the dates for ceramics, jade and Gandharan art from the other sources. We make no claims of age or origin beyond what each piece's title states, and we give no values.

Further reading

• Chinese Buddhist art: our reference page.
• Asian antiques found in Japan and Chinese decorative arts, the two shelves.

Sources

1. Karamono, Japanese-language encyclopaedia entry (our translation), for the meaning of the word, the 808 ban, Heian court buying, tea and Zen, the Ashikaga connoisseurs and Higashiyama gomotsu, Nobunaga, Nagasaki and the karamonoya, typical karamono and Japanese-made karamono. ja.wikipedia.org
2. Shōsō-in, encyclopaedia entry, for Empress Kōmyō's dedication of 756. wikipedia.org
3. Celadon, encyclopaedia entry, for Longquan celadon and its export from the 13th to the 15th century. wikipedia.org
4. Jian ware, encyclopaedia entry, for tenmoku and its value in Japan. wikipedia.org
5. Jadeite, encyclopaedia entry, for northern Myanmar and jadeite in China from the late 18th century. wikipedia.org
6. Greco-Buddhist art, encyclopaedia entry, for the Kushan period and the first Buddha images. wikipedia.org
7. Jingdezhen porcelain, encyclopaedia entry, for reign marks under Yongle and for revival, imitation and fakery. wikipedia.org

Last reviewed 15 November 2026. The Japonista Curation and Concierge Team, Tokyo, Japan.