‘‘It is not dawn yet in the courtyard, the moonlight seeps through the south window.
Sitting together by the lamp, the long silent mood endures.
Dedicated to my comrade Permyakov
in Tokyo on 19 August 1946, by Aisin-Gioro Puyi.’’

With those words, Puyi turned a simple fan into a unique collector’s item of extraordinary value.

Decorated with white flowers and a peak that resembles Mount Fuji, the Puyi fan’s central motif is

(with a dash of historical irony) typically Japanese.
 

This is because Puyi inscribed the fan as a gift to Permyakov while they were in Tokyo. ‘The handwriting, brushwork, style and manner of the inscribed literature confirmed that it was written by Puyi,’ Mr. Wang Wenfeng, author and researcher for the Palace Museum of the Manchurian Regime, writes in an internal report for Phillips. ‘Little of Puyi’s calligraphy is known to exist. This fan serves as an extremely rare—and in all aspects marvellous—example.’
 

The fan has its origins in one of the major events of post-war Japan: the International Military Tribunal of the Far East, known as the Tokyo Trials. From 1946–1948, the Allied victors, including the Soviet Union, tried 28 Japanese Imperial Army officers and government officials on charges of war crimes. A Soviet delegation that included Permyakov accompanied Puyi to Tokyo in August 1946. Bald-headed even in his twenties, Permyakov can be seen with Puyi and other Russians in video from the trial. LINK

In his testimony Puyi portrayed himself as a powerless pawn of the Japanese, forced to adopt the Shinto religion and unable to rule his ostensible realm.

‘‘Little of Puyi’s calligraphy is known to exist. This fan serves as an extremely rare—and in all aspects marvellous—example.’’
—Mr. Wang WenFeng

This lot includes a note, dated 4 April 2003, in which Permyakov relates the origins of the fan. After Puyi’s second day of testimony, on the evening of 19 August 1946, the interpreter sat with the prisoner in the garden of the Soviet embassy villa in Tokyo. Puyi was a ‘decent poet,’ Permyakov would recall. He asked the deposed emperor to compose poems on two fans.

Puyi inscribed a red fan for Permyakov and a blue one for the interpreter’s wife, Rimma. The couple eventually gave Rimma’s fan to the USSR Academy of Sciences, but they kept the red one.

 

Puyi inscribed the surface with a wuyan jueju (five characters quatrain), a classical Chinese poetry format with four lines to a stanza, each line consisting of five characters, Mr. Wang Wenfeng says.

 

By this time Puyi had spent only a year in the Soviet Union and had little understanding of the

government’s attitude toward him, Wang states. No doubt he sought to curry favour by offering precious gifts such as this fan with his personal inscription.