Kiritsu Kosho Kaisha

• Established: 1874, Matsuo Gisuke and Wakai Kenzaburô
• Japanese: 起立工商会社 (Kiritsu koushou kaisha)

The Kiritsu Crafts and Trading Company was a Japanese crafts manufacturing and trading company that played a significant role in the official Japanese participation in three World's Fairs held in Australia.

The company was founded in 1874 by tea trader Matsuo Gisuke (1837-1902) and art dealer Wakai Kenzaburō (1834-1908). The previous year, the two had been entrusted by the Japanese government with handling the sale of the Japanese Pavilion from the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair to the London-based Alexandra Park Company, to be used for establishing a sort of “Japanese crafts village” in Alexandra Park, London, where Japanese crafts and craft techniques were to be displayed. Establishing their own company in 1874, Matsuo and Wakai then focused on commissioning Japanese artisans to create works for a global market. They went on to play a major role in Japanese representation at all three Australian world’s fairs.

References

• Jennifer Harris, "'Odd and Bizarre': The Export of Japanese Aesthetics to Nineteenth-Century Australia," in Harris and Tets Kimura (eds.), Exporting Japanese Aesthetics, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press (2020), 47.