The first Japanese clients to appear in the Louis Vuitton archives are the politicians Goto Shojiro and Itagaki Taisuke. Shojiro, a samurai, was a leader of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement who, alongside Taisuke, helped form the Jiyuto (Liberal party) in 1881. He would later become minister of agriculture and commerce in the second Ito Hirobumi cabinet before being implicated in a financial scandal and forced to retire. He died at his summer home in Kanagawa in 1897.

Having survived an assassination attempt in 1882, Taisuke went on to become home minister in two governments before retiring from public life in 1900. He died in 1919; his portrait has appeared on 50-sen and ￥100 banknotes issued by the Bank of Japan.

One may not know the circumstances that found the two gentlemen at the sales desk of the luxury leather goods manufacturer in Paris in 1883, but we know that in 1853, after more than 200 years of isolation, Japan reopened trade with the west. We know also that millions of Europeans had their first taste of eastern culture at a pavilion dedicated to Japanese arts and crafts at the 1867 Paris world fair, and that Japanese tourists, businessmen and public figures were a growing presence in European life.