Japan’s Okada Museum of Art is selling works from its collection because its founder, Kazuo Okada, needs to settle a $50 million legal bill that stems from his long-running feud with casino magnate Steve Wynn. Okada, an 83-year-old billionaire, is the former chairman of Tokyo-based Universal Entertainment Corp.
Sotheby’s Hong Kong has landed the 125 works, which are set to hit the auction block on November 22. The collection includes Katsushika Hokusai’s iconic The Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa (1830–32), a rare Qianlong “Eight Treasures” vase, and a pair of 16th-century six-panel screens by Kano Motonobu from the Muromachi period. Several works are expected to fetch several million dollars.
Decades ago, Wynn and Okada became friends and founded the Las Vegas-based hotel-casino operator Wynn Resorts together in 2002. However, relations soured a few years later when they accused one another of questionable payments to public officials in Asia. In 2012, Okada was ousted as Wynn Resorts’ vice-chairman, and the company redeemed Universal Entertainment Corp’s 20 percent stake in the business at a discount. The latter disputed the redemption amount in court, and Okada eventually prevailed in 2018, reaching an out-of-court settlement in which Wynn and Wynn Resorts agreed to pay $2.6 billion.
When Okada’s law firm, Bartlit Beck, sent him its $50 million bill, though, he claimed it was too hefty. The firm successfully pursued it in a binding court arbitration, and Okada now needs to pay.
“This is possibly among the finest such collections,” Nicolas Chow, Sotheby’s Asia chairman and worldwide head of Asian art, told the New York Times. “What we have is basically 3,000 years of some of the greatest ceramics, craft and paintings across China, Japan and Korea.”
The Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa, arguably the world’s most famous Japanese woodblock print, is part of Hokusai’s prized “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” series. London’s British Museum owns three works from the series, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has four, and the Maidstone Museum in the UK has one.
The New York Times reported that online information for the Sotheby’s sale notes that the artworks have been consigned “by an agent of the court appointed receivers over the shares of Okada Fine Art Limited” based on court orders issued in Hong Kong.
Located in forest surrounding the mountain region of Hakone in Japan’s Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park west of Tokyo, the Okada Museum opened in 2013. Its collection has been built over 30 years with the help of Kochukyo Co., a prominent Japanese art dealership founded by the late antique dealer Hirota Matsushige.
The museum did not respond to ARTnews’s request for comment by time of publication.
