The Guimet Museum was born from the great project of the industrialist, Emile Guimet (1836-1918), to create a museum of the religions of Egypt, classical antiquity and Asian countries. Travels in Egypt, Greece, then a world tour in 1876, with stages in Japan, China and India allowed him to gather important collections that he presented to Lyon from 1879. Reopened in January 2001 after four years of work, the Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet deploys its collections of Asian arts (India, Southeast Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Nepal and Tibet) which are among the richest people in the world.

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At the court of Prince Genji. A thousand years of Japanese imagination

22 November 2023 25 March 2024
Famous for the extreme refinement of its court art, imperial Japan of the Heian period (794-1185) notably gave birth to a major work of classical Japanese literature, the Tale of Genji. Written in the 11th century by a woman, the poet Murasaki Shikibu, it has generated an extremely rich iconography over a thousand years, influencing even contemporary mangaka....

This event exhibition invites visitors to immerse themselves in ancient Japan, discovering the Heian period (794-1185) and its court art. This period of freedom for women, with particularly rich artistic production, notably saw the emergence of a unique women's literature in Japanese history. They took up waka style poems which they wrote using a cursive writing system derived from Chinese and adapted to the Japanese language of the time. Freed from the Chinese model, they produced works mixing waka and prose, in the form of journals or told stories.

This exhibition is organized in partnership with the Franco-Japanese Sasakawa Foundation, which with this event celebrates thirty years of action for the development of cultural relations and friendship between France and Japan. The foundation is recognized as being of public utility.

Curator: Aurélie Samuel, heritage curator

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Phone : 01 56 52 54 17

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