Les échanges entre le Japon et l’Indochine française durant la seconde guerre mondiale : aux origines de la collection d’art khmer du musée national de Tokyo

Abstract

The Tokyo National Museum possesses the largest collection of Khmer art in the world after French and Cambodian museums. This collection was assembled in 1944, during World War II, through an exchange between Imperial Japan and the École française d’Extrême-Orient. During this period, the Imperial Museum of Tokyo acquired sixty-nine objects from French colonial institutions and in return offered them thirty-one ancient Japanese artefacts. This article will first seek to shed light on the origins of this exchange before exploring the objectives of the transaction for Japan and French Indochina. Finally, it will analyze the process used to decide which objects were to be exchanged.

Keywords

• Archaeology
• Art
• Colonialism
• EFEO
• Indochina
• Japan