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An Englishman in the Shogun's Service: The Remarkable Story of William Adams - July 16, 2024 (10:00 JST)

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An Englishman in the Shogun's Service: The Remarkable Story of William Adams - July 16, 2024 (10:00 JST)

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Kabuki: Inside the Japanese artform with its biggest star, Ebizo (60 Minutes)

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Kabuki: Inside the Japanese artform with its biggest star, Ebizo (60 Minutes)

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/ CBS News

If the story of coronavirus has dominated your thoughts -- and how could it not? -- here's a story that likely hasn't... Before the global pandemic, Japan was set to confer one of its highest honors on one of its most towering celebrities, a man who was supposed to be a kind of ambassador at the Tokyo Olympics. But Ebizo -- so big he goes by only one name -- is not an actor, a singer or an athlete. Actually, he's all three. He's the brightest star in the cosmos of Kabuki, the eccentric theater art unique to Japan. Kabuki stars are not just made, they're born into dynasties, distinguished families passing the craft and that trademark Kabuki glare from one generation to the next. Jon Wertheim went to Japan last February, before travel bans and social distancing, to meet the man breathing fresh life into this beguiling 400-year-old art form.

Kabuki is, well, what isit exactly? Performed exclusively by men, it is equal measures drama and melodrama, at once volcanic and tempered, part opera, part dance, part pro wrestling. And it is, proudly, more than a little over the top.Kabuki has been called "a masterpiece of heritage," by no less than the United Nations. And here's a good sign you've reached the pinnacle of this art: You have a personal "spritzer" perfuming the path to your dressing room. So it goes for Ebizo Ichikawa, Kabuki's biggest star. He invited us backstage for a rare look at preparations before a show.

No ritual here is more elaborate, more central, than the application of makeup, which the actors do themselves.

Jon Wertheim: When you go through that ritual of putting on the makeup, what do you go through?

Ebizo (Translation): The makeup brings you into the role. It's a time for you to step into that role and become the character.

If you think his makeup looks heavy, get a load of Ebizo's costume; one hundred thirty pounds and packed with ice, to keep him cool for hours on stage.

And the guy knows how to make an entrance.

In this production he plays a faithful lieutenant, ironic since, in real life, Ebizo is the center of attention.

Yet, for all the extravagant trappings, Kabuki came from humble origins.

In 1603, right around the time Shakespeare first started staging his plays in London, here in Kyoto a woman named Okuni came down to the river and began performing interpretive dance dramas which, like Shakespeare's plays, found an audience among the common folk. These stylized performances, once banned, grew to become a national art form: Kabuki... derived from a Japanese word meaning something a little off-kilter.

Kyoto is where we met Kabuki's crown prince, 42 years old and looking every bit the modern pop star in designer glasses and a tailored suit.

Jon Wertheim: What is it like performing here?

Ebizo (Translation): Being able to perform something that started as an entertainment for the masses in front of so many people, is a great honor and pleasure.

Mere days before social distancing, they showed up en masse for Ebizo's sold-out run here, one stop on his national Kabuki circuit. But, in a country with an aging population, the groupies aren't teenagers. One longtime fan admitted to being a little nervous to see the star in person.

After the show, a crush of well-dressed patrons, overwhelmingly female, waited to send him off.

His longtime friend Denjiro Tanaka, the lead musician on stage, performs with Ebizo every day.

Jon Wertheim: What distinguishes him as a performer, as you see it?

Denjiro Tanaka (Translation): I would have to say his aura is something which is very unique. Which you can sense almost coming out of him. It's the power of his eyes and of his gaze.

Yes, the eyes have it.

That stare is called a "mie" and it's Ebizo's signature move, like John Wayne's walk. The mie is meant to draw the audience in, conveying a character's raw emotion, while the crowd goes wild.

But when we asked him to tell us more, Ebizo politely declined.

Jon Wertheim: Could you teach it to me?

Ebizo (in English): No. Difficult.

Jon Wertheim: Family secret?

Ebizo (Translation): Yes, basically.

We traced Ebizo Ichikawa's family secret all the way here, to the Naritasan Temple, outside Tokyo.

This Buddhist priest told us the famous stare was inspired by this god, Fudo. In the 1600s, Ebizo's ancestor, Ichikawa Danjuro the 1st, an early Kabuki talent, came here to pray to Fudo for a son. His prayers were answered. A son was born and with him, a family dynasty: the Ichikawa Danjuro line. Through the centuries, they would canonize a repertoire of 18 classic plays.

Ebizo's grandfather, Danjuro the 11th, and father, Danjuro the 12th, were bona fide Kabuki matinée idols, famous as much for their good looks as their skill.

Ebizo trained under his father and performed with him until his death seven years ago. Last year, Ebizo announced that he would take on the Danjuro name, the 13th man of the Ichikawa lineage to take on that title.

Jon Wertheim: What does that mean to you?

Ebizo (Translation): Well, I think the time has come.

Jon Wertheim: Why do you say that?

Ebizo (Translation): It's my fate, you know. This is the house I was born into, what I have trained for.

Jon Wertheim: Is there one quality shared by all the men with the Danjuro title?

Ebizo (Translation): I think really holding the whole future of Kabuki on your shoulders.

Jon Wertheim: That's how you feel?

Ebizo (Translation): Yes. It's not just about me. I really need to think about the whole enterprise.

Mark Oshima, an American living in Tokyo, translates Kabuki plays into English and has followed these Kabuki bluebloods.

Mark Oshima: I mean, Ebizo looks like a Kabuki actor. And he comes from what people think of as a pure Kabuki family. So people all say, "He's a thoroughbred." And Japanese love thoroughbreds.

That said, Kabuki has never been an especially profitable enterprise, given massive overhead: giant casts on ornate sets. The hope is that Ebizo will be a one-man boom to the industry.

Jon Wertheim: What's going on in the audience during performances?

Mark Oshima: It's just like a sports crowd.

Mark Oshima: You know, there are times when you have your beers and hot dogs, and times when you cheer...

Mark Oshima: Times when you pay attention to what's going on and times when you don't.

Jon Wertheim: You'll also hear audiences during these performances yelling out, "Narita-ya."

Mark Oshima: This is something called a yago, or house name. If I were going to cheer you on, I would say "60 Minutes!" Now you may-- every-- everyone would know that. Ebizo's yago comes from the temple at Narita, which has been very, very important to generations and generations of-- of-- Danjuro.

Jon Wertheim: So there's real connoisseurship here.

Mark Oshima: Connoisseurship.

Jon Wertheim: You should feel free to yell out the 60 Minutes yago anytime you want.

For all its idiosyncrasies, Kabuki is grueling business. Actors perform for hours every day, sometimes twice a day, month after month.

Ebizo (Translation): Every morning, I have to assess my condition.

Ebizo (Translation): I have to figure out: can my body do this today? Can it do that?

Jon Wertheim: You speak like an athlete. Do you think of yourself as an athlete?

Ebizo (Translation): Yes, but with no off-season.

Not unlike some athletes, Ebizo indulged in his share of nights out in his youth, once getting into a nasty bar brawl. An entire country worried the injuries to his face would thwart the trademark stare. His friend Tanaka recalls this rebellious phase.

Denjiro Tanaka (Translation): Yes. When he was young, he was a bit of a bad boy, you could say. He was quite famous in the Kabuki world for that. But I think to be a superstar, in a way, you do need to be a bit of a bad boy. Otherwise, getting up on stage in front of thousands of people, you wouldn't be able to charm them with your performance.

Leaving his bad boy days behind him, Ebizo proved himself last summer in Tokyo, taking on 13 roles in a four-hour production. He could be seen slipping offstage as the dutiful wife and reappearing seconds later as the warrior.

Jon Wertheim: Can you name the roles? Do you remember?

Ebizo (Translation): Ehhhh (laugh). Yeah, I can't remember them all right now. There are too many of them.

And Ebizo plays yet another role full time: single dad.

It was ten years ago, with fanfare befitting a royal wedding, that Ebizo married a popular Tokyo newscaster, Mao Kobayashi. In short order, they had a daughter and a son. But in 2014, Mao was diagnosed with breast cancer.

When she passed away three years later, all of Japan went into mourning.

Jon Wertheim: What would you like people to know about her?

Ebizo (Translation): About Mao. I just think about my son and daughter, the way they are maturing, without Mao, none of that would have been possible. She was a human overflowing with love and I hope people won't forget that.

He told us he tries his best to balance performing with parenting.Made a little easier when his son Kangen, now seven, announced that hewould follow his father into Kabuki.

Jon Wertheim: Kangen is now in the same line of work as you are and your father and his father. How do you feel about that?

Ebizo (Translation): At the moment, he's talented. He's very cute. But I'm sure one day he'll face some struggles in his life, in Kabuki. And so I need to make sure I can support him... without being overprotective.

His son Kangen is already adept at tapping into his emotions as an actor.

Watch how his eyes well up while he rehearses a scene about a boy who's separated from his father.

Jon Wertheim: I've seen Kangen already does connect with the audience. Did you teach him that?

Ebizo (Translation): No, I think it really comes naturally to him.

Also a natural gift: Kangen's ability to sneak in a nap during makeup.

As for Ebizo's 8-year-old daughter Reika, a dancer in training, going into the family business is not as straightforward. Women are banned from most Kabuki stages, though perhaps not for much longer if you ask her father.

Jon Wertheim: Does any part of you regret that she won't be able to have a career as a Kabuki actor?

Ebizo (Translation): It's not set in stone that she can't one day become a Kabuki actor herself.

Jon Wertheim: You'd like to see more women involved in Kabuki?

Ebizo (Translation): It used to be that everybody was, you know, "Kabuki, you know, it's only for men." But I think that's quite an old-fashioned way of looking at it.

If anyone can modernize the art form, it's Ebizo. His influence in Japan transcends Kabuki; his face moves magazines.

His multi-million dollar endorsement portfolio includes McDonald's.

And case in point: he recently adapted Star Wars for Kabuki. But the future, as they say, will have to wait.

Kabuki theaters, like theaters across the world, went dark last March.

As they wait for the lights to come back up, this source of continuity, the man who will braid together Kabuki's past and its destiny, also waits, proudly, an artist in full bloom.
Produced by Nathalie Sommer and Vanessa Fica. Field producer, Lucy Craft. Broadcast associate, Cristina Gallotto. Edited by Jorge J. García. Intern, Justin Stevens.
More from CBS News

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Kabuki: Inside the Japanese artform with its biggest star, Ebizo

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For centuries, Japan has celebrated a unique art that brings together acting, singing and athleticism, performed before audiences that, at times, act like they're at a sporting event rather than a theater. Jon Wertheim reports on the "off-kilter" world of Kabuki.

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Teach with GIS | GIS Lessons for Science & Social Studies Classes

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Teach with GIS and bring interactive digital maps to your classroom. Find GIS lessons for science, social studies, literature & math classes. Build critical thinking skills with online maps.

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Fordham University Internet East Asian History Sourcebook

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Fordham University Internet East Asian History Sourcebook

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Internet East Asian History Sourcebook

Editor: Paul Halsall

There is no way of avoiding the fact that China is the central culture of Eastern Asia. Massively larger than any of her neighbors, China may have developed its cultural forms in relative isolation, but since the advent of Buddhism has both absorbed outside influences and disseminated its own culture. Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese cultures are not comprehensible without taking into account thepower of Chinese culture in art, literature and religion.

Chinese culture itself is highly complex, and the other East Asian cultures also reflect local circumstances and traditions. For instance the (later) Chinese ideal of a scholar-gentleman contrasts strongly with Japanese warrior ideals. It is not going to far to suggest that the very different responses of the various East Asian to the Western intrusion of the past two centuries reflect the variety of previous historical developments.
***
This page is a subset of texts derived from the three major online Sourcebooks listed below, along with added texts and web site indicators. For more contextual information, for instance about Western imperialism, or the history of a given period, check out these web sites. Since it was created in 1996 many of the primary sources and texts linked to have gone off line. Where possible links to the Internet Archive versions of these documents have been substituted as they should still be of use to teachers and students.

Notes:
In addition to direct links to documents, links are made to a number of other web resources.

2ND

Link to a secondary article, review or discussion on a given topic.

WEB

Link to a website focused on a specific issue.. These are not links to every site on a given topic, but to sites of serious educational value.

Contents

Cultural Origins
General Yellow River Valley Cultures
Japan
Back to Index Religious Traditions
General
Chinese Traditional Religion Shinto
Japanese Creation Myth [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]
From Genji Shibukawa: Tales from the Kojiki, 713 CE
Confucianism

WEB Confucius Page [At Internet Archive, from UKY]

WEB Confucius Page [At Internet Archive, from Albany]

Selections from the Analects [Lun Yu], complete, topically arranged selections from the Confucian classic. [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Confucius (5th Century BCE?): Analects [Lun Yu] [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Confucius: The Analects [Lun Yu], selections [Was At Internet Archive, from CCNY]

The Analects [Lun Yu], complete [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

The Great Learning [Da Xue Ta-Hsüeh] (3rd Century BCE): [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

The Great Learning [Da Xue Ta-Hsüeh] (3rd Century BCE) complete [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Great Learning,[Da Xue Ta-Hsüeh] (3rd Century BCE), complete, translated by Charles Muller 1995 [Was At GOL, now Internet Archive]

The Doctrine of the Mean [Zhong Yong] complete [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Doctrine of the Mean [Zhong Yong], complete, translated by Charles Muller 1995 [Was At GOL, now Internet Archive]

Mencius/Mengzi: Selections from the Mencius [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Mencius Mengzi: complete, translated by Charles Muller 1995 [Was At GOL, now Internet Archive]

Xunzi/Hsun-tzu: Selections from the Xunzi [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Legalism

Examples of Filial Piety (14th Century CE) [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Image: People: Picture of Confucius

Image: People: Confucius

Image: People: Mengzi

Image: People: Zhuxi - founder of 'neo-confucianism'

Wang Yang-Ming: The Philosophy, excerpts, c. 1525 CE

Daoism

WEB Daoism Information Page [Was At Taoism Information, now Internet Archive]

Laozi/Lao Tzu (5th Century BCE??): Selection from the Dao De Jing [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Laozi/Lao tzu: Dao De Jing Tao Te Ching, selections [Was At CCNY, now Internet Archive]

Laozi/Lao Tzu (5th Century BCE??): Tao Te Ching, excerpts, [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Laozi/Lao Tzu (5th Century BCE??): The Dao De Jing Tao Te Ching*, version 1, an Interpolation by Peter A. Merel based upon the translations of: Lin Yutang, Ch'u Ta-Kao, Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English, Richard Wilhelm and Aleister Crowley. complete, taken from internet site. [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Laozi/Lao Tzu (5th Century BCE??): The Dao De Jing Tao Te Ching*, Tao Te Ching, version 2, complete, taken from a version on the internet. [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Laozi/Lao Tzu (5th Century BCE??): The Dao De Jing Tao Te Ching*, Tao Te Ching, version 3, complete, taken from a version by S. Mitchell.[Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Zhuangzi/Chuang tzu: Selected Chapters, translated by Lin Yutang andLin Yutang's Introduction [Was At Taoism Information, now Internet Archive]

Zhuangzi/Chuang tzu: Story of Three Friends [Was At Taoism Information, now Internet Archive]

Zhuangzi/Chuang tzu: Selections from the Zhuangzi [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Zhuangzi/Chuang tzu: Selections [Was At CCNY, now Internet Archive]

The Deification of Lao Zi, 666 CE. [At this Site]
(Inscribed in the Temple at Lao Zi's Birthplace)

The Yin Fu King, or Classic of the Harmony of the Seen and Unseen, c. 800 CE [At this Site]

The Thai-Shang Kan Ying Phien, or Lao Zi's Book of Actions and Their Retribution, c. 1000 CE [At this Site]

Image: People: Laozi

Image: Divinity: Three Daoist Gods

Image: Divinity: The God of Wealth in His Civil Aspect

Image: Divinity: Wen-ch'ang, the Daoist God of Literature

Buddhism

Wikipedia: Buddhism

General

The Buddha

Theravada/Hinayana Texts

The Dhammpada [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

The Dhammapada extracts, [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Wikipedia: The Dhammapada, with excerpts

The Dhammapada, trans. by John Richards [Was at EAWC, now Internet Archive]
"An anthology of 423 Buddhist verses embodying ethical and spiritual precepts arranged by subject."

The Dhammapada,Wisdom of the Buddha, translated by Harischandra Kaviratna, Full Text [At Theosophical University Press] [Internet Archive versionhere]

The Buddha Foretells the Gradual Decline of Religion ('Anagatavamsa') [Was At Eliade Page, now Internet Archive]

Gotama Buddha Talks of his Ascetic Practices ('Majjhima-nikaya,'XII ['Maha-sihanada-sutra']) [Was At Eliade Page, now Internet Archive]

Gotama Buddha Practiced the most Severe form of Ascetism ('Majjhima-nikaya,' XXXVI ['Maha-saccaka-sutra']) [Was At Eliade Page, now Internet Archive]

Sutta Nipata, selections from the Pali text translated by John D. Ireland. [At Purify Mind] [Internet Archive versionhere]

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness [At BuddhaNet] [Internet Archive version here]
Part of the Satipatthana Sutra.

Culasunnata Sutta[At well.com] [Internet Archive versionhere]
A lesson on sunyata (emptiness)

Mahayana Texts

Sunyata

Buddha's Sermon on the No-Self [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

The Heart Sutra [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

WEB Kalavinka
Contains very long excerpts from Nagarjuna's Treatise on The Great Perfection of Wisdom (Mahaapraj~naapaaramitaa Upadesha), "an immense exegesis to the Mahaapraj~naapaaramitaa Sutra in 25,000 lines. Classically, it is preserved only in a 100-fascicle Chinese edition translated from Sanskrit in 405CE by Kumarajiva, the brilliant and prolific translator-monk who was the premier transmitter to the Chinese of the Maadhyamika teachings of Nagarjuna."

Maitreya

Pure Land/Amidism

Chinese/Japanese Buddhist Texts

The Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters [Was At Sacred Texts, now Internet Archive]
The first Buddhist text taken to China, c. 67 CE.

Wikipedia: Sutra of the Forty-Two Chapters

Pure Land

Wikipedia: Pure Land Buddhism

The Sutra on Amida Buddha, [Was At Amida Net, now Internet Archive]
Delivered by Shakyamuni Buddha, translated by Hisao Inagaki from (1) From Kumarajiva's Chinese translation and (2) from Huan-tsang's Chinese translation.

Extract from the Lotus Sutra: The Nature of the Buddha [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Extract from the Lotus Sutra: On Faith [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Kûkai's Initiation in the Esoteric Buddhism ('Kobo Daishi Zenshu,' I, 98 ff.) [Was At Eliade Page, now Internet Archive]

2ND Kuya, 'the Saint of the Streets' [Was At Eliade Page, now Internet Archive]

Honen and the Invocation of Amida [Was At Eliade Page, now Internet Archive]

Shinran: 'The Nembutsu Alone is True' ('Tannisho,' selections) [Was At Eliade Page, now Internet Archive]

Nicheren

Chan/Zen

Modern Renditions

Images

Tibetan

Chinese Art

Japanese Art

Unsure [!]

Judaism Christianity Islam Back to Index
Imperial China
General

Mandate of Heaven [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

2ND Chinese Dynastic History [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

2ND China - Basic Facts [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

2ND Chinese Ethnography [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Image: The Yangzi River

Map: China - Linguistic Regions Map [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

2ND Chinese Language and Pronunciation [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

2ND Chinese Language and Writing [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

2ND Pinyin/Wade-Giles Equivalencies [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

2ND Chinese Logographic Writing [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Chronology [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

The Zhou The Qin The Han The Sui and Tang The Sung The Mongols [Yüan]The Ming The Qing Chinese Technology Literature

Chinese Poetry: Tu Fu, Li Po, Po Chu-i, Fu Hsuan, Mei Yao Ch'en, Su Tung-p'o [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Li Po (701 762 CE): Drinking Alone by Moonlight [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Old Poem, on warfare [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Liu Hsün's wife (3rd C. CE): The Curtain of the Wedding Bed [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

The Han Koong Tsu, or Autumn of the Palace of Han
Full text of a play about the threat of the Mongols (Tartars) to the Chinese empire, and the use of a marriage strategy to avoid conflict. [At this Site]

Luo Guanzhong (14th Century): Romance of the Three Kingdoms [Wikisource]

Shih-fu Wang (fl. 1295-1307): Romance of the Western Chamber, excerpts, [Was At CCNY, now Internet Archive]

P'u Sung-ling: Painting on the Wall [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Li Ju-chen (1763-1830): The Land of the Great, 1828 [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Education in Traditional China Chinese Views on Other Cultures Other Cultures' Views of China Back to Index
Traditional Japan
General Government Tokugawa Era Literature

Japanese Poetry: from the Manyoshu and other early collections [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Noh Plays, translated by Arthur Waley, 1922 [Was At UVA, now Internet Archive]

Culture

Kokin Wakashu [At Virginia] [Internet Archive version here]
An anthology of 1,111 Japanese poems (in the most widely circulated editions) compiled and edited early in the 10th century CE.

Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, or, 100 Poems by 100 Poets, [At Virginia] [Internet Archive version here]

Sarashina: The Diary of Lady Sarashina, 1009-1059 CE [At Hanover College] [Internet Archive version here]

Kaibara Ekken or Kaibara Token: Greater Learning for Women, 1762 [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Diaries of the Court Ladies of Old Japan, trans. Annie Sheply Omori and Kochi Doi, full text, [Was At CMU, now Internet Archive]

Back to Index
Korea
General Japanese Rule Back to Index
Vietnam
General Back to Index The Western Intrusion General European Imperialism British East Asia Other European Powers in East Asia
United States' Imperialism

John Hay to Andrew D. White, First Open Door note on China, Department of State, Washington, September 6, 1899 [At Amdocs] [Internet Archive version here]

Image: Anti-Chinese Cartoon from 1877 bw

WEB Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy 1898-1914, [Was At Mt. Holyoke, now Internet Archive]

Josiah Strong: On Anglo-Saxon Predominance, 1891 [Was At Mt. Holyoke, now Internet Archive]

Albert Beveridge (1862-1927): The March of the Flag, September 16, 1898 [At this Site]

The Atlantic: The Break-up of China, and Our Interest in It, The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1899 [At The Atlantic Monthly] [Internet Archive versionhere]

John W. Foster: The Chinese Boycott, The Atlantic Monthly, January 1906 [At The Atlantic] [Internet Archive version here]
Criticizes America's discrimination against Chinese immigrants in America as racist. This behavior incited a Chinese boycott of American trade.

Rudyard Kipling: The White Man's Burden, 1899 [At this Site]

James Henry Breasted: The Conquest of Civilization (selections), 1926 [At WHA] [Internet Archive version here]

Missionaries Back to Index Japan as a World Power General The Forced Opening The Meiji Restoration

WEB Meiji Japan [Was At Sage, now Internet Archive]

WEB The Meiji Project [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Japan: Constitution, 1889 [At Hanover College] [Internet Archive versionhere]

Lt. Tadayoshi Sakurai: The Attack upon Port Arthur, 1905 .[At this Site]
The Japanese quickly adopted Western Imperialism

Theodore Roosevelt: The Threat of Japan, 1909 [WasAt Mt. Holyoke, now Internet Archive]

Okuma: Fifty Years of New Japan, 1907-08, excerpts [At this Site]

WEB Taisei Corporation History of 120 Years [At Internet Archive, from Tasei]
A Japanese company's illustrated online history of itself.

Natsume Soseki (1867-1916): Kokoro, translation by Edwin McClellan. [At ibiblio] [Internet Archive versionhere]

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904): Writings on Japan [At ibiblio] [Internet Archive version here]

Kume Kunitake: Records of My Visits to America and Europe, 1871-1873 .[At this Site]

Sir Edwin Arnold: A Japanese Dinner Party, 1890 [At this Site]

Alice M. Bacon: How Japanese Ladies Go Shopping, 1890 [At this Site]

The Greater East Asia Prosperity Zone World War II
Use of Atomic Bomb
Back to Index China's Disaster:1840-1949 General

Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 3-30 [extended excerpts are online]

The Hai-lu, a Chinese traveler's account of the West in the 18th century.[Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

One China, The Atlantic Monthly, March 1996 [At The Atlantic] [Internet Archive backuphere]
Coverage by the magazine of China in the 20th century.

Rejection of the West Government Efforts to Reform Religion and Rebellion Modernization: The May 4th Movement

Yan Phou Lee: When I Went to School in China 1880 [At this Site]
A late Confucian education - and what was attacked by the May 4th Movement.

Luxun Two Selections from His Writing [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Luxun Lu Hsun (1881-1936): Selected Stories of Lu Hsun, Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, full text of 20 stories. [Was At Cold Bacon, now Internet Archive]
A leading May 4th Movement writer.

Image: People: The writer Lu Xun

Nationalism

Zou Rong (1885-1911): The Revolutionary Army, 1905 [Was At IUP, now Internet Archive]
A radical Anti-Manchu tract, published in Shanghai.

Paul S. Reinsch: A Parliament for China, The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1909 [Was At The Atlantic, now Internet Archive]

Proclamation of The Abdication of the Manchus, 1912 [At this Site]

Ching Chun Wang: A Plea for the Recognition of the Chinese Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, January 1913 [Was At The Atlantic, now Internet Archive]

Sun Yat-sen: Fundamentals of National Reconstruction, 1923 CE [At this Site]

Image: People: Sun Yat Sen

Image: People: Chiang Kai-shek

Early Communism The Chinese in America

California: Anti-Coolie Act, 1862 [At Drug Library] [Internet Archive version here]
"An Act to protect free White labor against competition with Chinese collie labor, and to discourse the immigration of the Chinese into the state of California, April 26, 1862"

San Francisco Chinatown Opium Den – 1870's [Image][At Drug Library]

Chinese Miners in the Gold Fields - 1860 [Image][At Drug Library]

Chinatown Declared a Nuisance! [At Drug Library] [Internet Archive version here]
This is the full text of a sixteen-page pamphlet, "Chinatown Declared a Nuisance!"; distributed by the Workingmen's Committee of California, it called for the abatement of Chinatown as a health menace.

Albert S. Evans: A Cruise on the Barbary Coast, Chapter 12 of A la California. Sketch of Life in the Golden State, c, 1871. [At Drug Library] [Internet Archive versionhere]

Back to Index China Since World War II
Genera l

The "Liberation"

Mao Zedong (1893-1976): In Commemoration of the 28th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China, June 30, 1949, excerpts [At this Site]

Mao Zedong (1893-1976): Quotations of Chairman Mao [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]

Mao Zedong (1893-1976): Quotations of Chairman Mao, full text. [At Artbin] [Internet Archive version here]

American Views on the Situation In China, 1947 [At this Site]
Statement by General Marshall, January 7, 1947

Statement of the Central Committee of The Chinese Communist Party, February 1, 1947 [At this Site]

Dean Acheson: United States Position on China, August 1949
An acute critique of Nationalist/Koumintang failures.

The Common Program of The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, 1949 [At this Site]

The 1950s The Cultural Revolution Chinese Foreign Relations The Four Modernizations

2ND Sun Y Y., The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism, 1976-1992, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Image: People: Deng Xiaoping

Orville Schell: Once Again, Long Live Chairman Mao, The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1992 [Was At The Atlantic, now Internet Archive]
On the commodifiction of Mao.

Hong Kong
Hong Kong Constitution, 1990 [Was At ICL, now Internet Archive]
Taiwan [Republic of China]
Taiwan (Republic of China) Constitution, 1994 [Was At ICL, now Internet Archive]
Dissidents Tiananmen Square, 1989

Documents on the Gate of Heavenly Peace [all on the PBS Tiananmen web site] [Internet Archive backup here]

Review with Background Information from Newsweek Inc. 1995 [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Interview with Directors The GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE Press Conference October 12, 1995, excepts by Henri Behar [Was at Filmscouts, now Internet Archive]

Tiananmen Square Interpretations - The official Government View "The Truth About the Beijing Turmoil", Edited by the Editorial Board of The Truth about the Beijing Turmoil [Internet Archive backuphere]

Criticism Chinese Government and Attempts to Stop the Film
Letter to the Director of the Washington DC International Film Festival from the Press Counsel of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China, and a letter written in response [Internet Archive backuphere]

Criticism by Western Writers and Response [and Re-Response]
The New York Review of Books (May 9, 1996) [Internet Archive backuphere]

Criticism by Student Leaders
Article by Ye Ren, from The 90s, July August 1995 [Internet Archive backuphere]

The Modern Democracy Movement in Exile and Gate of Heavenly Peace
Excerpt from "Totalitarian Nostalgia" in Geremie Barmé'sIn The Red: Contemporary Chinese Culture, New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming 1997. [Internet Archive backup here]

China, Post-1989 Intellectuals and Foreigners"To Screw Foreigners in Patriotic: China's Avant-Garde Nationalist" from Geremie R. Barmé, FromThe China Journal, No. 34, July 1995. [Internet Archive backup here]

Chronology of Tiananmen Square Events [Internet Archive backup here]

WEB More Online Reading on Gate of Heavenly Peace [Internet Archive backup here]

Image: Hist. Illus.: The Goddess of Democracy, Tienanmen Square

Image: Hist. Illus.: Tienanmen Square: Student Stops Tanks

Back to Index Japan Since World War II General American Occupation Economic Growth Culture

WEB Japanese Aesthetics [Was At Baylor, now Internet Archive]

Tanaka Kotaro: In Search of Truth and Peace, excerpts, 1952 [At this Site]

Ruth Benedict: The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946), full text] [At Faded Page] [Internet Archive backup here]
TheChrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture is a 1946 study of Japan by American anthropologist Ruth Benedict. It was written at the invitation of the U.S. Office of War Information in order to understand and predict the behavior of the Japanese in World War II. . . The book was influential in shaping American ideas about Japanese culture during the occupation of Japan, and popularized the distinction between guilt cultures and shame cultures.

Back to Index Korea Since World War II General
South Korea Constitution, 1997 [Was At ICL, now Internet Archive]
The Korean War Back to Index Other East Asian Countries
General

Cambodia Constitution, 1993 [Was At Cambodian Parliament.org, now Internet Archive]

Tibet Constitution 1991 [Was At ICL, now Internet Archive]
This is the constitution of the "government in exile".

Mongolia Constitution, 1992 [Was At ICL, now Internet Archive]

Nepal Constitution, 1990 [Was At ICL, now Internet Archive]

Singapore Constitution, 1995 [Was At ICL, now Internet Archive]

The Manila Accord, 1963 [At this Site]
Between Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines,

The Non-Aligned Movement
Addendum: The Vietnam War

WEB Vietnam War Documents and Links [Now Internet Archive]

WEB Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy--Vietnam [Was At Mt. Holyoke, now Internet Archive]

Ho Chi Minh (1890-1968): Program for Communist of Indochina, 1930, excerpts [At this Site]

Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, 1945 [At this Site]

The Manifesto of The Laodong Party, February1951 [At this Site]

The Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference: On Restoring Peace in Indochina, July 21, 1954 [At this Site]

President Eisenhower: Letter to Ngo Dinh Diem, October 23, 1954 [At this Site]
Beginning US "humanitarian" aid.

Viet Cong Program, 1962 [At this Site]

Charles de Gaulle: France's Attitude Toward US Policy in Vietnam, 1964 [At this Site]

The Tonkin Bay Resolution, 1964 [At this Site]

Tonkin Gulf Incident, 1964 [At Yale] [Internet Archive versionhere]

U.S. State Department: Aggression from the North, February 27, 1965 [At this Site]

US State Department: North Vietnamese Aggression, 1965 [At this Site]

Senator Fulbright: Appraisal of US Policy in the Dominican Crisis, September 15, 1965 [At this Site]
A wide-ranging critique of US foreign policy.

President Lyndon Johnson and Ho Chi Minh: Letter Exchange, 1967 [At this Site]

John Kerry, for Vietnam Veterans Against the War: Statement to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, 1971 [At this Site]

Addendum: Asian-Pacific Immigrants in the US

Lowell Weiss: Timing is Everything, The Atlantic Monthly, January1994 [Was At The Atlantic, now Internet Archive]
The fate of two groups of Vietnamese immigrants in America.

Roy Beck: The Ordeal of Immigration in Wausau, The Atlantic Monthly, April 1994 [Was At The Atlantic, now Internet Archive]
Effects of Southeast Asian refugees in Wausau.

Back to Index East Asian Genders and Sexualities Women: China

Ban Zhao Pan Chao: Lessons for A Woman: The Views of A Female Confucian, c. 80 CE [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Ben Zhao Pan Chao (45-115? CE) : The Problem of Woman [Was At CCNY, now Internet Archive]

Fu Xuan: Poem on Woman c. 3rd, Century CE [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Marco Polo: On Chinese Women 13th century [Was At CCNY, now Internet Archive]

Chinese Footbinding [Was At CCNY, now Internet Archive]

The Tale of Mulan, the Maiden Chief, c. 502-556 CE [At this Site]

2ND Marie Vento: One Thousand Years of Chinese Footbinding: Its Origins, Popularity and Demise [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Image: Custom: Picture of Woman With Feet Unbound

Image: Custom: Picture of Unbound Feet Close Up
Image:Custom: A bound foot - closeup

Image: Custom: Woman with bound feet

Women in China: History and the Present [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Ning Lao T'ai Tai: A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman by Ida Pruitt, full text. (1945. Copryright not renewed).

Tom Hilditch: A Holocaust of Girls, from the South China Morning Post Sept 1995 [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Women in Asia: Press Reports [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

NY Times Report on Recent UN Women's Conference [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Modern Marriage in China - Two Texts [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Women: Japan Homosexuality

WEB People With a History: Online Guide to LGBT* History

The Homosexual Tradition in China: Selections from Chinese Homosexual Literature [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Four 1990s Press Reports on Gay Life in China [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Manifesto of First Chinese Tongzhi Conference, 1996 [Was At HKGAY, now Internet Archive]
Tongzhi is being used in Chinese for Gay. This manifesto directly asserts a historical basis for modern Chinese homosexuals and the differences of Chinese Tongzhi movements with western gay movements.

Mary M. Anderson, Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China , (Buffalo NY: Prometheus, 1990), 15-18, 307-11 [At Columbia] [Internet Archive versionhere]

The Death of the Last Emperor's Last Eunuch, 1996 [At Columbia] [Internet Archive version here]

Image: Custom: A young eunuch exposes effects of castration

Back to Index
Further Resources on East Asian History

[Note this was once quite an extensive section, but guides to the web turned out to be very hard to maintain. Good advice now is to look up East Asian topics on Wikipedia and consult the further resources links at the bottom of many articles. Wikipedia is never a place to end research but it is a good place to start.]

E-Texts

WEB Asia for Educators [Columbia University]
This is a truly excellent site providing primary sources, lesson plans, focused sub-siites for educators who want to include East Asian materials in their classes.

WEB Chinese Text Project
The Chinese Text Project is an online open-access digital library that makes pre-modern Chinese texts available to readers and researchers all around the wor

WEB WWW Virtual Library: Asian Studies [Archived]

Web Guides: East Asia

Web Guides: China

Web Guides: Japan

Web Sites: Japanese History

Web Guides: Korea

Academic History/Culture Sites

Other Resources
General Reference Documents

Chronology of Chinese History [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]
three separate chronologies based on 1. dynasties, 2. governmental forms, 3. economic life.

Extended Annotated Bibliography of Chinese Studies [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Bibliography in plaintext form [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Basic Facts about Modern China Compiled from Compton's Living Encyclopediaon America Online (August 1995) [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Chinese Dynastic History Compiled from Compton's Living Encyclopedia on America Online (August 1995) [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Chinese Religions Compiled from Compton's Living Encyclopedia on America Online (August 1995) [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Chinese Literature Compiled from Compton's Living Encyclopedia on America Online (August 1995) [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Chinese Arts Compiled from Compton's Living Encyclopedia on America Online (August 1995) [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Chinese Ethnic Groups Compiled from Compton's Living Encyclopedia on America Online (August 1995) [Was At BC, now Internet Archive]

Back to Index
© This text is copyright. The specific electronic form, and any notes and questions are copyright. Permission is granted to copy the text, and to print out copies for personal and educational use. No permission is granted for commercial use.

If any copyright has been infringed, this was unintentional. The possibility of a site such as this, as with other collections of electronic texts, depends on the large availability of public domain material from texts translated before 1927. [In the US, all texts issued before 1927 are now in the public domain. Texts published before 1964 may be in the public domain if copyright was not renewed after 28 years. This site seeks to abide by US copyright law: the copyright status of texts here outside the US may be different.] Efforts have been made to ascertain the copyright status of all texts here, although, occasionally, this has not been possible where older or non-US publishers seem to have ceased existence. Some of the recently translated texts here are copyright to the translators indicated in each document. These translators have in every case given permission for non-commercial reproduction. No representation is made about the copyright status of texts linked off-site. This site is intended for educational use. Notification of copyright infringement will result in the immediate removal of a text until its status is resolved.

NOTES:

The Internet East Asian History Sourcebook is part of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project. The date of inception was 1998. Links to files at other site are indicated by [At some indication of the site name or location]. WEB indicates a link to one of small number of high quality web sites which provide either more texts or an especially valuable overview.

The Site Concept and Design: created 26 Jan 1996: latest revision 28 June 2024 [ Internet History Sourcebooks Project is located at the History Department of Fordham University, New York. The Internet Medieval Sourcebook, and other medieval components of the project, are located at the Paul Halsall CV] Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies.The IHSP recognizes the contribution of Fordham University, the Fordham University History Department, and the Fordham Center for Medieval Studies in providing web space and server support for the project. The IHSP is a project independent of Fordham University. Although the IHSP seeks to follow all applicable copyright law, Fordham University is not the institutional owner, and is not liable as the result of any legal action.

©

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Internet East Asian History Sourcebook Editor: Paul Halsall There is no way of avoiding the fact that China is the central culture of Eastern Asia. Massively larger than any of her neighbors, China may have developed its cultural forms in relative isolation, but since the advent of Buddhism has both absorbed outside influences and disseminated its own culture.

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The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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The ancient Japanese found divinity manifested within nature itself. Flowering peaks, flowing rivers, and venerable trees, for example, were thought to be sanctified by the deities, or kami, that inhabited them. This indigenous "Way of the Gods," or Shinto, can be understood as a multifaceted assembly of practices, attitudes, and institutions that express the Japanese people's relationship with their land and the lifecycles of the earth and humans. Shinto emerged gradually in ancient times and is distinctive in that it has no founder, no sacred books, no teachers, no saints, and no well-defined pantheon. It never developed a moral order or a hierarchical priesthood and did not offer salvation after death. The oldest type of Shinto ceremonies that could be called religious were dedicated to agriculture and always emphasized ritual purity. Worship took place outdoors at sites proclaimed to be sacred. In time, however, the ancient Japanese built permanent structures to honor their gods. Shrines were usually built on mountains or in rural areas, often on unlevel ground, without any symmetrical plan.

In Japan, anthropomorphic representations of gods were unknown before the spread of Buddhism, although deities were symbolically associated with sacred objects, such as mirrors, swords, and jewels, that became imperial insignia. Following the advent of the new religion, Shintoists began to make images. The form of worship, however, did not change, as representations of gods were hidden away in the inner sanctuary of the Shinto shrine, adherents demonstrating their faith-at the entrance-simply by clapping their hands.

Department of Asian Art. "Shinto." In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000-. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shin/hd_shin.htm (October 2002)

Mason, Penelope. History of Japanese Art. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.

Varley, H. Paul. Japanese Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000.

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Shinto | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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The ancient Japanese found divinity manifested within nature itself. Flowering peaks, flowing rivers, and venerable trees, for example, were thought to be sanctified by the deities, or kami, that inhabited them. This indigenous "Way of the Gods," or Shinto, can be understood as a multifaceted assembly of practices, attitudes, and institutions that express the Japanese people's relationship with their land and the lifecycles of the earth and humans.

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The Spread of Buddhism (Asian Art Museum, San Francisco)

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The Spread of Buddhism (Asian Art Museum, San Francisco)

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The Spread of Buddhism Across Asia - Education - Asian Art Museum

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The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco houses one of the most comprehensive Asian art collections in the world, with more than 18,000 works of art in its permanent collection. Stroll through 6,000 years of art and culture.

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The Spread of Buddhism in China

Note to Teachers * The journal Education about Asia has many excellent teaching resources on-line on all topics related to East, South and SE Asia.

* Buddhism on the Silk Road [International Dunhuang Project]
"The civilizations which flourished along the Silk Road in the first millennium CE were open to cultural and religious influences from both East and West. Many religions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, gained new followers. But it was Buddhism, travelling the trade routes of the Silk Road, which became the common factor uniting the different peoples of the Silk Road." See especially the section on Chinese Buddhism on the Silk Roads. Also see the IDP website's Education section for more units about the Silk Road.

* Xuanzang: The Monk Who Brought Buddhism East [Asia Society]
"The life and adventures of a Chinese monk who made a 17-year journey to bring Buddhist teachings from India to China. Xuanzang subsequently became a main character in the great Chinese epic Journey to the West."

* Buddhism [A Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization, University of Washington]
"This unit offers evidence of how Buddhism changed China's visual culture, showing the evolution of images of deities, plus views of temples and people practicing Buddhism." A Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization was prepared by University of Washington history professor Patricia Buckley Ebrey. With questions for discussion, timelines, maps, and suggested readings. Select HOME to find link to teachers' guides for all topics featured on the website.

AFE Special Topic Guide * Buddhism [OMuRAA, Asia for Educators]
AFE's compilation of recommended resources about Buddhism on OMuRAA, Online Museum Resources on Asian Art.

Lotus Sutra, composed after 483 BCE
Primary Source w/DBQs *Selection from the Lotus Sutra: "The Daughter of the Dragon King" [PDF] [Asia for Educators]
The Lotus Sutra, a text of the Mahayana School of Buddhism, was composed well after the death of the historical Buddha (ca. 483 BCE) and written down in Sanskrit even later. The scripture was translated into Chinese in several different versions, the most respected being the translation carried out under the direction of the monk Kumarajiva in 406 CE. This passage is notable for addressing the question of the salvation of women.
Primary Source w/DBQs *Selection from the Lotus Sutra: "The Buddha Preaches the One Great Vehicle" [PDF] [Asia for Educators]
The Lotus Sutra, a text of the Mahayana School of Buddhism, was composed well after the death of the historical Buddha (ca. 483 BCE) and written down in Sanskrit even later. The scripture was translated into Chinese in several different versions, the most respected being the translation carried out under the direction of the monk Kumarajiva in 406 CE. This passage addresses the question of the multitude - of why there are so many schools of Buddhism.

Mouzi, latter years of the Eastern Han (ca. 220 CE)
Primary Source w/DBQs *Selections from Mouzi's Disposing of Error (Lihuo Lun) [PDF] [Asia for Educators]
Lihuo Lun is a defense of Buddhism possibly composed by Mouzi, a Confucian scholar and official of the Eastern Han.

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• The Origins of Buddhism [Asia Society] “A short essay that explores how Buddhism grew out of Hinduism and spread from India to the rest of Asia. How does Buddhism vary from place to place, sect to sect? Learn about how the spread of ideas combine of new beliefs with existing thoughts and practices.”

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Confucius and Confucianism (Khan Academy)

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Confucius and Confucianism (Khan Academy)

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An essay on Confucianism: its roots, premise, impact on society over time and modern incarnations.

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Confucianism is one of the most influential religious philosophies in the history of China, and it has existed for over 2,500 years. It is concerned with inner virtue, morality, and respect for the community and its values.

Subjects

Religion, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations

Image

Confucian Philosopher Mencius

Confucianism is an ancient Chinese belief system, which focuses on the importance of personal ethics and morality. Whether it is only or a philosophy or also a religion is debated.

Photograph by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images, taken from Myths and Legends of China

Confucianism is a philosophy and belief system from ancient China, which laid the foundation for much of Chinese culture. Confucius was a philosopher and teacher who lived from 551 to 479 B.C.E. His thoughts on ethics, good behavior, and moral character were written down by his disciples in several books, the most important being the Lunyu. Confucianism believes in ancestor worship and human-centered virtues for living a peaceful life. The golden rule of Confucianism is "Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you."

There is debate over if Confucianism is a religion. Confucianism is best understood as an ethical guide to life and living with strong character. Yet, Confucianism also began as a revival of an earlier religious tradition. There are no Confucian gods, and Confucius himself is worshipped as a spirit rather than a god. However, there are temples of Confucianism, which are places where important community and civic rituals happen. This debate remains unresolved and many people refer to Confucianism as both a religion and a philosophy.

The main idea of Confucianism is the importance of having a good moral character, which can then affect the world around that person through the idea of "cosmic harmony." If the emperor has moral perfection, his rule will be peaceful and benevolent. Natural disasters and conflict are the result of straying from the ancient teachings. This moral character is achieved through the virtue of ren, or "humanity," which leads to more virtuous behaviours, such as respect, altruism, and humility. Confucius believed in the importance of education in order to create this virtuous character. He thought that people are essentially good yet may have strayed from the appropriate forms of conduct. Rituals in Confucianism were designed to bring about this respectful attitude and create a sense of community within a group.

The idea of "filial piety," or devotion to family, is key to Confucius thought. This devotion can take the form of ancestor worship, submission to parental authority, or the use of family metaphors, such as "son of heaven," to describe the emperor and his government. The family was the most important group for Confucian ethics, and devotion to family could only strengthen the society surrounding it.

While Confucius gave his name to Confucianism, he was not the first person to discuss many of the important concepts in Confucianism. Rather, he can be understood as someone concerned with the preservation of traditional Chinese knowledge from earlier thinkers. After Confucius' death, several of his disciples compiled his wisdom and carried on his work. The most famous of these disciples were Mencius and Xunzi, both of whom developed Confucian thought further.

Confucianism remains one of the most influential philosophies in China. During the Han Dynasty, emperor Wu Di (reigned 141-87 B.C.E.) made Confucianism the official state ideology. During this time, Confucius schools were established to teach Confucian ethics. Confucianism existed alongside Buddhism and Taoism for several centuries as one of the most important Chinese religions. In the Song Dynasty (960-1279 C.E.) the influence from Buddhism and Taoism brought about "Neo-Confucianism," which combined ideas from all three religions. However, in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912 C.E.), many scholars looked for a return to the older ideas of Confucianism, prompting a Confucian revival.

Media Credits

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

other

March 6, 2024

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Confucianism is one of the most influential religious philosophies in the history of China, and it has existed for over 2,500 years. It is concerned with inner virtue, morality, and respect for the community and its values.

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Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine

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Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine

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Suki's favorite possession is her blue cotton kimono. A gift from her obachan, it holds special memories of her grandmother's visit last summer. And Suki is going to wear it on her first day back to school --- no matter what anyone says.When it's Suki's turn to share with her classmates what she did during the summer, she tells them about the street festival she attended with her obachan and the circle dance that they took part in. In fact, she gets so carried away reminiscing that she's soon humming the music and dancing away, much to the delight of her entire class!Filled with gentle enthusiasm and a touch of whimsy, Suki's Kimono is the joyful story of a little girl whose spirit leads her to march --- and dance --- to her own drumbeat.

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Suki's favorite possession is her blue cotton kimono. A gift from her obachan, it holds special memories of her grandmother's visit last summer. And Suki is going to wear it on her first day back to school --- no matter what anyone says.When it's Suki's turn to share with her classmates what she ...

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"An understated ode to an iconic Japanese cultural celebration, mindfulness, and the restorative power of the seasons." Kirkus Reviews

"Well suited to reading aloud, the concise text works well with the precise, delicate artwork, subtly encouraging viewers to slow down occasionally and enjoy fleeting moments of natural beauty." Booklist

When the Sakura Bloom by Nariso Togo sheds light on the cultural significance of cherry blossom season in Japan, and an insight into the unique mindset of its people. Through subtle text and gentle imagery readers will see the importance of slowing down to appreciate the moment. That comfort, not despair, can be found in the inevitable cycles of the seasons. How change can usher in opportunities and rejuvenation.

Moreover, When the Sakura Bloom is an understated illustration of the importance of celebrating the fleeting, delicate beauty of nature and the metaphor this represents for life itself.

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When the Sakura Bloom [Togo, Narisa] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. When the Sakura Bloom

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Hokusai: The Man Who Painted a Mountain by Deborah Kogan Ray

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Hokusai: The Man Who Painted a Mountain by Deborah Kogan Ray

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Amazon.com: Hokusai: The Man Who Painted a Mountain: 9780374332631: Ray, Deborah Kogan, Ray, Deborah Kogan: Books

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Part of the Council of East Asian Studies at the MacMillan Center, the Digital Tokugawa Lab is a group of scholars working on digital humanities projects with a focus on pre-modern Japan. Inspired by the idea that some forms of knowledge production require a range of expertise and a scale of labor that cannot be covered by a single individual, the lab was established in fall 2019 by Fabian Drixler and has four other full-time lab members.

For details on our inaugural project, please see Digital Atlas of Tokugawa Japan.

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Part of the Council of East Asian Studies at the MacMillan Center, the Digital Tokugawa Lab is a group of scholars working on digital humanities projects with a focus on pre-modern Japan.

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Soup plate with Hokusai design by Félix Bracquemond

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Soup plate with Hokusai design by Félix Bracquemond

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Title: Soup plate (part of a set of three)

Designer: Félix Bracquemond (French, Paris 1833-1914 Sèvres)

Maker: Produced by Eugêne Rousseau (1827-1891)

Dimensions: Diameter: 9 3/4 in. (24.8 cm)

Classification: Ceramics-Pottery

Credit Line: Purchase, Friends of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Gifts, 1996

Accession Number: 1996.161.1

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Félix Bracquemond | Soup plate (part of a set of three) | French, Creil | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Title: Soup plate (part of a set of three) Designer: Félix Bracquemond (French, Paris 1833-1914 Sèvres) Maker: Produced by Eugêne Rousseau (1827-1891) Dimensions: Diameter: 9 3/4 in. (24.8 cm) Classification: Ceramics-Pottery Credit Line: Purchase, Friends of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Gifts, 1996 Accession Number: 1996.161.1

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KABUKI Theater STAR WARS: A Japanese dance-drama from a Galaxy Far Far Away! FULL

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Porcelain, gold, and the Dutch East India Company

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Porcelain, gold, and the Dutch East India Company

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For use in colonial trade between the Netherlands and its dominions

By the seventeenth century the Netherlands had become a prosperous country through its shipping trade across Europe and its trade links with Asia. The United Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) was formed in 1602 in order to unite various small trade companies which had created commercial links with the India and East Asia during the late sixteenth century. With bases in Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia, the Company became a powerful trade organization. It was even given powers of rule over its dominions, along similar lines to those of the English East India Company. Like its British rival, the Dutch East India Company issued coins for trade in its dominions. The coin bears the Company's monogram (VOC) and the date.

Gold ducats were first struck in Venice in the thirteenth century and, such was the success of the coin, continued to be produced until the end of the eighteenth century. It became the standard European gold coin, and many rulers produced their own coins to a similar weight and fineness.

With the mark of the Dutch East India Company

This dish was commissioned by the United Dutch East India Company and bears their V.O.C. mark (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie). From the end of the sixteenth century the Dutch East India Company developed a vast network of trading posts through South-east Asia. They monopolized European trade with Japan from about 1641, when, for political reasons, the Tokugawa Shogunate restricted foreign contacts by law. The Dutch 'factory' was on the tiny island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay. The Chinese were the only other foreigners allowed to trade with Japan, but even their activities were restricted by political upheaval at home with the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644. The Dutch brought in mainly raw silk and sugar and took out gold, silver and copper. However as time went on demand also grew for Japanese porcelain.

This dish was for the use of the Company's officers in Japan. The commissioners also specified the Chinese-style design of auspicious peaches and the 'Buddha's fingers' plant. Judging from the great depth of the transparent glaze and the five spur marks on the base the dish was made between 1690 and 1700 at a time of great technological advance in porcelain manufacture.

Porcelain with a coat of arms

The design on this teacup and saucer is composed of a crowned coat of arms supported by two crowned lions, below which is the monogram VOC. The arms and motto belong to the Dutch Republic. The VOC monogram is that of the Dutch East India Company ( Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), which was hugely important to Asian trade with Europe at this time. So important, in fact, that the company issued its own coinage for use in the Far East.

Encircling the design is the date 1728 and the Latin motto CONCORDIA RES PARVAE CRESCUNT ('Small things grow great in unity'). The design on the cup and saucer has been accurately copied from one side of a silver coin struck in 1728. The pieces are good examples of the fine porcelains decorated in the bright colors of the pallette.

© The Trustees of the British Museum

R. Krahl and J. Harrison-Hall, Ancient Chinese trade ceramics (National Museum of History, ROC, 1994)

S.J. Vainker, Chinese pottery and porcelain, (London, The British Museum Press, 1991)

L. Smith, V. Harris and T. Clark, Japanese art: masterpieces in (London, The British Museum Press, 1990)

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Porcelain, gold, and the Dutch East India Company

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By the seventeenth century the Netherlands had become a prosperous country through its shipping trade across Europe and its trade links with Asia. The United Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) was formed in 1602 in order to unite various small trade companies which had created commercial links with the India and East Asia during the late sixteenth century.

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Takashi Murakami "The 500 Arhats" at the Mori Art Museum

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Human Beings -From Fujino Tenko and Kitamura Seibo to Touchable Sculptures by Miwa Michiyo, Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, Gunma (cat.)
2023
Anxiety and Hope in Japanese Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.A.

THE DORAEMON EXHIBITION TAIPEI 2023, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Taipei, Taiwan

Special Exhibition: Healing Japanese Art -Jakuchu's Solace and Togyu's Comfort-, Yamatane Museum of Art, Tokyo

Museum with Many Ways to Enjoy! Touch, lean, read, listen, play, converse, ponder, create..., Shiga Museum of Art

THE DORAEMON EXHIBITION NAGASAKI 2023, Huis Ten Bosch Museum, Nagasaki

Crossing the Borders, The Tokushima Modern Art Museum

"ART de Cha Cha Cha− Exploring the DNA of Japanese Contemporary Art −" from the Takahashi Ryutaro Collection, WHAT MUSEUM

Shinran, Higashi Honganji Gallery, Kyoto

Imagination of Shopping Malls, Takashimaya Archives TOKYO （cat.）
2022
60th anniversary "Shutoko (Metropolitan Expressway) exhibition" O Museum, Tokyo

Permanent Collection, Landscape paintings idea 2022, Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art

Permanent Collection 3 rd Term, Takamatsu Art Museum, Kagawa

THE DORAEMON EXHIBITION SINGAPORE 2022, National Museum of Singapore

The Power of Setouchi Revealed by the Scenery: Nature, History, and Human Resonance, Kagawa Prefectural Museum

Our City-Portrait of Osaka, Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka

Tokaido of ours - Charms of the landscapes with Mt. Fuji, Bernard Buffet Museum, Shizuoka

Manga Scroll of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido vs Kyoka Tokaido by Utagawa Hiroshige, Okawa Museum of Art, Gunma

>Common Ground: UCCA 15th Anniversary Patrons Collection Exhibition, UCCA, Beijing

The Byodoin Phoenix Hall and Jodoin Temple- Its Beauty and Faith, The Museum of Art, Ehime, traveled to: Shizuoka City Museum of Art, and The Niigata Prefectural Museum Of Modern Art

Allusions to Stories, Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi

THE DORAEMON OKAYAMA 2022, Okayama Prefectual Museum of Art

Special Exhibition for Donation Commemoration to Kiryu City, Yamaguchi Akira Shopping Mall, Okawa Museum of Art, Gunma
2021
Handsome Men They Are, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, travelled to Iwami Art Museum, Shimane

TATEBI REPORT, Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi

Manga - Reading the Flow,Museum Rietberg, Zurich

Kawabata Ryushi + Takahashi Ryutaro Collection: Aida Makoto, Konoike Tomoko, Tenmyouya Hisashi, and Yamaguchi Akira, Ryushi Memorial Museum, Tokyo

TOKYO: ART & PHOTOGRAPHY, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, U.K.

Orai, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo

THE DORAEMON 2021, Sapporo Art Museum, Hokkaido,travelled to Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art , Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art

Electrical Line Exhibition -Kobayashi Kiyochika to Yamaguchi Akira-, Nerima Art Museum, Tokyo
2020
Connections: 150 years of Modern Art in Japan and France, Pola Museum of Art, Kanagawa

Unveiling decorations -Architecture and Rediscover of Nihombashi, Takashimaya Archives TOKYO

Reopening Celebration I "ART in LIFE, LIFE and BEAUTY" Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo

THE DORAEMON NIIGATA 2020, The Niigata Bandaijima Art Museum

Artists in Kiryu, Okawa Museum of Art, Gunma
2019
Matsumoto Shunsuke: His Hours of Walking around Towns, Okawa Museum of Art, Gunma

Mandalas of Mount Fuji: The World of Beliefs Associated with Mount Fuji as Seen in Pilgrimage Mandalas, Mr. Fuji World Heritage Centre, Shizuoka

SHUNPUTEI Ichinosuke × YAMAGUCHI Akira: An Introduction to Fun Rakugo, OKAWARI!, CAPSULE, Tokyo

Takahashi Collection, Tsuruoka Art Forum, Yamagata

THE DORAEMON OSAKA 2019, Osaka Culturarium at Tempozan

Impossible Architecture: Another History of Architecture, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama (cat.), traveled to Niigata City Art Museum, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, and The National Museum of Art, Osaka

Technical HOKUSAI, Itochu Aoyama Art Square, Tokyo
2018
To Travel with Glasses, Aomori Museum of Art, traveled to Iwami Art Museum, Shimane, Shizuoka Prefectual Museum of Art

THE DORAEMON 2018, Takaoka Art Museum, Toyama, traveled to Matsuzakaya Art Museu, Aichi

Biennale Architettura 2018: 16th International Architecture Exhibition "Architectural Ethnography" Japan Pavilion, Giardini, Venice, Italy (cat.)

Ground No Plan, Aoyama Crystal Building, Tokyo (cat.)

The Superlative Artistry of Japan, The Japan Cultural Institute in Cologne, Germany
2017
THE DORAEMON 2017, Roppongi Mori Arts Center Gallery, Tokyo (cat.)

"The Riddle of Art: Takahashi Collection- Resonance or Repellence?", Shizuoka Prefectual Museum of Art (cat.)

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. -Pablo Picasso", The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts

"Japan - Spirits of Nature",Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, Skärhamn, Sweden

"EQUINE MUSEUM EXCELLENT WORKS 150", Equine Museum of Japan, Kanagawa (cat.)

"Special Exhibition commemorating 130th anniversary of the founding of Tokyo University of the Arts", The Pandora's box: Finding the Wondrous in the Geidai Collection, The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts (cat.)

"TAKAHASHI COLLECTION Mindfulness 2017", Yamagata Museum of Art

"The Cosmos of the Takahashi Collection", Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto

"Twenty Year's of the TARO Award/ Twenty Enfants Terrible", Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, Tokyo
2016
"Dispatch//Itabashi// Edo - Contemporary", Itabashi Art Museum, Tokyo

"TAKAHASHI COLLECTION: Mindfulness!", The Museum of Art, Kochi

"Ryūsaku Tsunoda and Donald Keene: From Gunma to the World", Gunma Prefectural Museum of Literature in Commemoration of Bunmei Tsuchiya

"Extended Remix: Contemporary Artitst Meet the Japanese Print", Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, U.S.A.,

"Exposing Ikai- The Different World", Visitors in Past and Contemporary Art, Akita Museum of Art

The Railway Art Museum, Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kanagawa

"TAKAHASHI COLLECTION", Kanaz Forest of Creation, Fukui

Naohiro UKAWA DOMMUNE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS "THE 100 JAPANESE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS / season 4″YAMAMOTO GENDAI, Tokyo

"SHUNPUTEI Ichinosuke × YAMAGUCHI Akira: An Introduction to Fun Rakugo" CAPSULE, Tokyo

"Collection Exhibition Part.1", Takamatsu Art Museum, Kagawa

"Unimaginable by One Mind Alone: Exquisite Corpses from the William Green Collection of Japanese Prints", Mead Art Museum, Amherst, U.S.A.

"The Collection of the Takamatsu Art Museum" Exhibition Celebrating the Museum's Reopening A Concise Guide to Life with Japanese Contemporary Art, Takamatsu Art Museum, Kagawa
2015
"Fujisan: Faith and Arts", Yamanashi Prefectural Museum

"Hiroshima Trilogy: 70 th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing", Part II, A Bird's-eye View of the World, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

"Excellent Techniques of Carving and Printing: 250 th Birth Anniversary of Multi-colored Print", Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum of Art, Tokyo

"A Bird's Eye View of the World", Borderless Art Museum NO-MA, Shiga

"TAKAHASHI COLLECTION: Mirror Neuron", Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery

"The Ohara Museum of Art - Journeys to Masterpieces", Shizuoka City Museum of Art

"Art of Laughter", The Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki
2014
"Conversations through the Asian collections", Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (thru Oct 15, 2015)

"Master Pieces from Ohara Museum of Art", Akita Museum of Modern Art, Akita

"Hiroshige's 'The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido' and Contemporary Artists", Muse'e Bernard Buffet, Shizuoka

"'15th Anniversary Urawa Art Museum Artist Show: image no yukue", Urawa Art Museum, Saitama (cat.)

"Takahashi Collection 2014 Mindfulness!", Nagoya City Art Museum, Aichi (cat.)

"JAPON, ABBAYE SAINT ANDRÉ Centre d'art contemporain", Meymac, France
2013
"Takahashi Collection Mindfulness!", Sapporo Art Park, Hokkaido (cat.)

"PAINTED CAPITALS", Cityscapes of Kaifeng, Hangzhou, Kyoto and Edo, Okura Museum of Art, Tokyo (cat.)

"Ukiyo-e POP", Shizuoka Tokaido Hiroshige Museum of Art, Shizuoka

"Ohara Contemporary", Ohara Museum of Art, Okayama (cat.)

"Roppongi Hills and Mori Art Museum 10th Anniversary Exhibition", All You Need Is LOVE: From Chagall to Kusama and Hatsune Miku, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (cat.)

"Wonderful My Art- Selected artist from TAKAHASHI COLLECTION", Kawaguchiko Museum of Art, Yamanashi (cat.)

"From attractive" - Meiji of watercolor Mizue to the present age -, Hiratsuka Museum of Art, Kanagawa (cat.)
2012
"ZIPANGU-The Surge of Japanese Contemporary Art", The Niigata Bandaijima Art Museum, Niigata, traveled to: Takasaki Museum of Art, Gunma, Hachinohe City Museum of Art, Aomori, Akita Museum of Modern Art, Akita (cat.)

"Reinventing Tokyo: Japan's Largest City in the Artistic Imagination", Mead Art Museum, Amherst, USA

"Masterpieces from the Ohara Museum of Art", Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Hokkaido (cat)

"Double Vision: Contemporary Art from Japan", Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia, traveled to Haifa Museums (Haifa Museum of Art, Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art) (cat.)
2011
"Kobiken-from the Takahashi Collection," TABLOID GALLERY, Tokyo

"Edo Pop": the Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, U.S.A.

"TARO LOVE", Seibu Shibuya, Meiji Jingu Gaien, Tokyo

JARAPAGOS, Art Gallery ATRIUM, Fukuoka

"CAFE in Mito 2011-Relationships in Color", Ther Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki

"Japan: a tradition of innovation", Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, CANADA

"ZIPANGU-31 spirited artists cutting through new territories of Japanese contemporary art", Takashimaya Nihonbashi exhibition Hall (8F), Tokyo (cat.)

"The Origin of 20", The Hiratsuka Museum of Art, Kanagawa, traveled to: Shimonoseki City Art Museum, Yamaguchi and two other venues(cat.)

"The Most Requested Top 30/ 10 Years of TAKAHASHI COLLECTION", TABLOID GALLERY, Tokyo

"Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art", Japan Society, New York, U.S.A. (cat.)
2010
TDW-ART "JARAPAGOS (Tokyo Designer's Week", Tokyo

"Narrative Paintings", The Niigata Bandaijima Art Museum, Niigata

"BASARA", Spiral Garden, Tokyo

"ROBOT and ARTS: Visual Images in the 20th Century Japan", Aomori Museum of Art, Aomori, traveled to Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka and IWAMI ART MUSEUM, Shimane (cat.)

17th Biennale of Sydney "THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age", Sydney, Australia (cat.)

Shinran Exhibition, Nihombashi Mitsukoshi Exhibition Hall, Tokyo, traveled to 26 venues

"AIDA Makoto+TENMYOUYA Hisashi+YAMAGUCHI Akira", TAKAHASHI COLLECTION, Tokyo

"neoteny japan: Contemporary Artists after 1990s FROM TAKAHASHI COLLECTION", Yogago City Museum of Art, Tottori, traveled to Museum of Art, Ehime
2009
November Steps, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo

Great works of the OHARA Museum -In pursuit of the precious paintings", Fukuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Fukuoka, Japan (cat.)

ECHIGO-TSUMARI ART TRIENNALE, Niigata

"neoteny japan -FROM TAKAHASHI COLLECTION", The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, traveled to: the Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Akita Museum of Modern Art, Akita

"WAR & ART", Terror and Simulacrum of Beauty, Calerie Aube, Kyoto University of Art and Design, Kyoto
2008
"JAPAN CAR", Cite des sciences et de L'industrie, Paris,s France, traveled to : Science Museum, London, U.K.

"neoteny japan -FROM TAKAHASHI COLLECTION", Kirishima Open Air Museum, Kagoshima, traveled to: Sapporo Art Park, Hokkaido (cat.)

"ORDER RECEIVED", Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo

"Off the Rails", Mizuma & One Gallery, Beijing, China (cat.)

"Another landscape: from Mori Art Collection", Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Takahashi Collection, Tokyo
2007
"Nihonga Metsubou-ron", C.Square, Chukyo University Art Gallery, Aichi

"Heroes in Warror Paintings", Nagano Prefectural Shinano Art Museum, Nagano (cat.)

"The Vision of Contemporary Art 2007", The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo (cat.)
2006
"NIPPON vs FINEART-Striving for Identity in the Context of Western art", Osaka City Museum of Art, Shinsaibashi Temporary Exhibition Space, Osaka

"Art and Object: Affinity of the Jomon and the Contemporary", Aomori Museum of Art, Aomori

Comtemporary Forms -Life & Art -: "The forms of Intoxication", Higashihiroshima City Museum of Art, Hiroshima

"Kimura Naomichi + Art and Play", The Museum of Modern Art Saitama, Saitama
2005
"Rising Sun, Melting Moon: Contemporary Art from Japan", The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

"Looking for Utopia: Beyond the Imagination", The Niigata Bandaijima Art Museum, Niigata (cat.)

"Villa YURINSO Special Open : AIDA Makoto / OZAWA Tsuyoshi / YAMAGUCHI Akira", Ohara Museum of Art Yurinso, Okayama (cat.)

"The World of Matchbox Labels", The Okayama Prefectual Museum of Art, Okayama (cat.)

"The Elegance of Silence : Contemporary Art from East Asia", Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (cat.)
2004
"OFFICINA ASIA",Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy (cat.)

"20th Anniversary Exhibition : The Copy Age - From Duchamp through Warhol to Morimura-", The Museum of Modern Art Shiga, Shiga (cat.)

"Mediarena : contemporary art from Japan", Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand (cat.)

"Living Together is Easy", Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, travelling to : The National Galleryof Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (cat.)

"MOT Annual 2004 : Where do I come from? Where am I going?", Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo (cat.)
2003
"TREASURE for TREASURE : A Treasure Exchange Project with six Artists", Sumida Riverside Hall Gallery, Tokyo (cat.)
2002
"TANAGOKORO 8", roentgenwerke, Tokyo

"Japan in Blekinge, Olofstrom Art Exhibition Hall", Blekinge, Sweden

"New Edition! Japanese Art-Other Inheritors of Jaoanese Tradition", Yamanashi Prefectual Museum of Art, Yamanashi (cat.)
2001
"The 4th Exhibition of the Taro Okamoto Memorial Award for Contemporary Art", Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki, Kanagawa

"S(h)itting in the mirror", Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo
2000
"Five continents and one city", Museum of Mexico City, Mexico

"Department Store of Contemporary Art",Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Yamanashi (cat.)
1999
"A Window, Inside and Outside", Gwangju City Art Museum, Gwangju, South Korea (cat.)

Inoue Gallery, Tokyo
1998
Inoue Gallery, Tokyo
1997
"KOTATSU-SCHOOL", Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo

"WALKING MUSEUM", Shinjuku Takashimaya TIMES SQUARE, Tokyo

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Human Beings -From Fujino Tenko and Kitamura Seibo to Touchable Sculptures by Miwa Michiyo, Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, Gunma (cat.) 2023 Anxiety and Hope in Japanese Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.A.

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About Kobe City Museum

The museum opened in 1982 after renovating what used to be the Kobe branch office of Yokohama Specie Bank, which was built in 1935. Characterized by its classical architecture and granite exterior, the building was designated as an important cultural property (structure) in1998.
Kobe City Museum holds various special exhibitions and events. Besides, it has permanent exhibitions and facilities as follows.

History of Kobe1st Floor / Free

From a long time ago, Kobe was a pivotal point of diverse interactions. What kind of history does the city reveal? This exhibition demonstrates the cultural exchange that took place via the ocean and the port as well as its influence on history. The exhibition is divided by date into the following four sections: "Corridor in the Ocean: Interaction with East Asia", "From Owada no Tomari to Hyogo no Tsu", "Prosperity of Hyogo no Tsu", and "Opening the Port to the World".

Cultural Property of Kobe

This exhibition presents items that are crucial to the history of Kobe. Immerse yourself in the depth and diverse charms of the cultural properties of Kobe. Themes will be updated regularly.

Collection Room2nd Floor

Our collection boasts approximately 70,000 items, including 21 items from one national treasure and 76 items from seven important cultural properties. In our collection room, the items are organized and displayed by themes.

Sakuragaoka Bronze Bells and Bronze Halberds

St. Francis Xavier

Fine Arts

This section exhibits the cultural encounter and transition between Japan and overseas through Namban artworks, Obaku paintings, Nampin-style Kacho (bird and flower) paintings, as well as western-influenced paintings. Themes will be updated regularly.

Old Maps

Biidoro, Giyaman, Glass

Archaeology and History

This section navigates visitors through the history of Kobe from the primitive and ancient times to the late modern period with a wide variety of materials. Themes will be updated regularly.

The items in each section will be on display for a limited period of time depending on the theme and the condition of preservation. Please contact the museum if you have questions about the actual items on display or the duration of exhibitions.

Floor Plan

Hands-on StudioFree of Charge

Visitors will be able to experience and learn the history of Kobe while having fun. A wide range of history-related books for children are available on the shelves, and there is a large chronological table on the wall, which traces the history of Kobe. Visitors can place the images of the items from the collection onto the chronological table using magnets. In addition, replicated bronze bells, a model of the ancient pit dwelling (Tateana Jukyo), and a set of large puzzles are available.

Books and DatabaseFree of Charge

Shop and Café

Public Transportation

・10-minute drive south from Sanyo-Shinkansen Shin-Kobe Station

・18-minute train ride from Kobe Airport to Sannomiya Station by Port Liner

・10-minute walk southwest from JR Line Sannomiya Station, Hankyu Railway Kobe-Sannomiya Station, Port Liner and 　Seishin-Yamate Line Sannomiya Station, and Hanshin Railway Kobe-Sannomiya Station

・10-minute walk southeast from JR Line and Hanshin Railway Motomachi Station

・5-minute walk southeast from Kaigan Line Kyukyoryuchi-Daimarumae Station

Further Information

Not available for group use.
Museum Hours: 9:30 - 17:30 *Admission until 16:45
From April 29 to May 7, 2023.
Museum Hours: 9:00 - 18:00 *Admission until 17:15
During special exhibition, the museum stays open until 19:30 on Fridays and Saturdays. *Admission until 18:45

Closed: Mondays *Museum hours and closures are subject to change.
If you have questions regarding our special exhibitions, museum hours and closures, or admission fees, please visit our official website listed below or contact the museum directly.

24 Kyomachi, Chuo Ward, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0034, Japan
Telephone: 078-391-0035
FAX: 078-392-7054

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The museum opened in 1982 after renovating what used to be the Kobe branch office of Yokohama Specie Bank, which was built in 1935. Characterized by its classical architecture and granite exterior, the building was designated as an important cultural property (structure) in1998. Kobe City Museum holds various special exhibitions and events.

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The exhibition explored the multiple aspects of Monet’s intimate relationship with Japanese art as it unfolded throughout his long spanning career.

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Van Gogh and his collection of Japanese prints

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Van Gogh and his collection of Japanese prints

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Vincent van Gogh owned a large number of Japanese prints. Find out more about his collection: discover why he collected these prints, where did he get them and what kind of prints he preferred.

In a single brief period in the winter of 1886-87, Vincent van Gogh bought 660 woodcuts from the Paris art dealer Siegfried Bing. In the attic of his gallery Van Gogh was able to browse the thousands of Japanese prints Bing offered for sale at low prices.

Van Gogh did not pick out the best-known or most expensive works. He preferred prints with bright colours and attractive motifs, such as geishas in kimonos and exotic landscapes.

Japan as an example

Van Gogh most likely bought the Japanese woodcuts on a whim. He intended to start trading in the prints. When nothing came of this plan he began to study them more closely in the course of 1887.

In the autumn of that year, he painted three copies of prints in his collection. He also worked them into the background of his portraits. The art of the future, Van Gogh was convinced, had to be colourful and joyous, just like Japanese printmaking.

Traces of use

Vincent surrounded himself with his Japanese prints in the Paris apartment he shared with his brother Theo. He pinned them to the walls of his studio, leaving holes that can still be seen today in a surprisingly large number of them. Some even have paint or oil stains. Zoom in on the corners of the prints to see these traces of use.

Lasting source of inspiration

We know that Van Gogh also had the prints lying around as he worked. Although he moved house regularly, he always took a number of them with him. Having the prints close at hand enabled him to study them 'calmly and at length'.

After a year or so, he no longer needed them to see the world 'with a more Japanese eye'. Van Gogh had assimilated the stylistic features of Japanese art in his own work. From 1888 and his time in Arles (southern France) onwards, his compositions became flatter, more intense in colour, with clear lines and decorative patterns.

In the Van Gogh Museum

Theo and later his widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, took good care of Van Gogh's Japanese prints, so that the majority of them eventually found their way into the Van Gogh Museum.

You can view over 500 colourful works from his collection and admire them just as Van Gogh himself did.

The book

Alongside the online presentation of Japanese prints, a book is published that explores Van Gogh's collection in detail and offers fresh insights: Japanese Prints. The Collection of Vincent van Gogh.

Based on new research, the authors analyse the composition and quality of the collection. The publication features nearly 150 prints owned by Van Gogh. Written by Chris Uhlenbeck, Louis van Tilborgh and Shigeru Oikawa. Available in English and Dutch. Price: € 35.

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Van Gogh and his collection of Japanese prints - Van Gogh Museum

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Vincent van Gogh owned a large number of Japanese prints. Find out more about his collection

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How a collection of prints became an important source of inspiration

Vincent van Gogh loved Japanese prints. He started collecting prints for fun, but they ultimately taught him a new way of looking at the world. Discover how Japanese prints changed Vincent's art for good.

Artists exchanging art

Vincent believed that Japanese artists exchanged work with each other. He suggested to Gauguin and Bernard that they do the same, and asked them to paint portraits of one another for him. They sent him self-portraits instead. In exchange, Vincent offered a self-portrait in which he painted himself as a Japanese monk, with epicanthic folds and cropped hair.

Use the up and down keys to compare the two images.

Vincent often opted for paintings with compositions with a low horizon or none at all, just like in Japanese prints. Or he chose everyday, seemingly insignificant details from nature as his subject matter, such as flowers and insects, and zoomed in on those. Just like Japanese artists.

Show-off

In this painting, Vincent made daring choices inspired by the Japanese example: his technique is even more stylised than before. He painted the scene from a bird's-eye view, excluding the horizon. A strong diagonal in the composition is bisected by the trees, which splits the painting up into zones of colour.

All my work is based to some extent on Japanese art...

Vincent to Theo from Arles, 15 July 1888

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How a collection of prints became an important source of inspiration

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Show this image

The Child's Bath

Date:

1893

Artist:

Mary Cassatt
American, 1844-1926

About this artwork

In this work, Mary Cassatt addressed the theme for which she is best known-women and children-while also experimenting with compositional elements of Japanese art. Cassatt saw a large exhibition of Japanese prints at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1890, and produced a series of prints influenced by their aesthetics. The Child's Bath is the culmination of her investigation of a flattened picture plane and decorative patterning. The intimate scene of everyday life also echoes the subject of many Japanese prints. In Cassatt's painting, the encircling arms and gentle touch of the mother or nurse convey an overall feeling of protection and tenderness.

Status

On View, Gallery 273

Department

Arts of the Americas

Artist

Mary Cassatt

Title

The Child's Bath

Place

France (Place depicted)

1893

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Signed lower left: "Mary Cassatt"

Dimensions

100.3 × 66.1 cm (39 1/2 × 26 in.)

Credit Line

Robert A. Waller Fund

Reference Number

1910.2

IIIF Manifest

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/111442/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Maud Howe Elliot, ed., Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893).

New York Times, Mar. 5, 1895, Supplement, 158, col. 2.

"Pictures by Mary Cassatt at Durand-Ruel," New York Times, May 18, 1895.

"In the World of Art, Cassatt at Durand-Ruel," New York Times, May 21, 1895, 13, col. 13.

Brush & Pencil, 6 (July 1900), 182, no. 183.

Sadakichi Hartman. A History of American Art, (Boston: L.C. Page and Company, 1901), vol. 2, 188, as The Toilet.

"The Cassatt Oils and Pastels at Durand-Ruel," New York Times, Nov. 6, 1903, 7, col. 1.

Wynford Dewhurst, Impressionist Painting, Its Genesis and Development (London, 1904), 75-77.

Brush and Pencil 15 (Mar.1905), 165, as The Toilet.

"Miss Cassatt's 'Triumphs of Uncomeliness,'" New York Times, Aug. 25, 1907, Section V, 8, col. 1.

Minutes Book of the Art Committee Meeting of Jan. 15, 1910, 45-46.

"Paintings by Miss Cassatt," New York Times, Mar. 6, 1910, Section III, 2, col.5.

The Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 3 (1910), 61.

General Catalogue of Objects in the Museum, 287 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1910), 188.

Achille Segard, Mary Cassatt, un Peintre des Enfants et des Meres, (Paris, Librairie Ollendorff, 1913), 52.

General Catalogue of Objects in the Museum 287 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1913), 130.

Handbook of Paintings and Drawings (Art Institute of Chicago, 1920), 50, cat. 507.

Handbook of Paintings and Drawings (Art Institute of Chicago, 1922), 54, cat. 507.

Handbook of Paintings and Drawings (Art Institute of Chicago, 1923), 54, cat. 507.

Guide to Paintings of the Permanent Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1925), 93 (ill.).

New York Times, June 27, 1926, Section IV, 14, col. 1.

New York Times, June 16, 1927, 25, col. 3. Obituary.

Edith Valerio, Mary Cassatt, (Paris: Editions G. Cres & Cie, 1930), no. 5.

Forbes Watson, Mary Cassatt, (Whitney Museum of Art, American Artists Series, 1932. La Toilette, ill. pl. 77.

Guide to Paintings of the Permanent Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1932), 93 (ill.).

The Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 27 (1933), 118.

Magazine of Art, 34 (June 1941), 295 (ill.).

"Paintings in the United States and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art," Apollo, 34 (Sept. 1941), 55-58.

"The Toilet," Art Digest 16 (Dec. 15, 1941), 8-9, ill. cover.

Time Magazine, Dec. 14, 1941, ill. as Mother and Child.

Pictures on Exhibit 5 (Dec. 1941), 2 (ill.), as La Toilette.

Life 12 (Jan. 19, 1942), 54-56 (ill.).

John Walker et al., Great American Paintings from Smibert to Bellows, 1729-1924, (Oxford University Press, 1943), pl. 77.

Margaret Breunig, Mary Cassatt, (Hyperion Press, 1944), 69 (ill.).

Edward Alden Jewell, French Impressionists, (Hyperion Press, Random House, 1944), pl. 89.

Emporium 101 (Jan. 1945), 33 (ill.).

Art Digest (Nov. 15, 1947).

Emporium 107 (Feb. 1948), 88 (ill.).

James Thomas Flaexner, A Short History of American Painting, (Mifflin Company, 1950), pl. 26.

The Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 48 (Feb. 1954), 4-8 (ill.).

Revista de Arte 5 (Mar./Apr. 1955), 286, no. 3 (ill.).

Daniel M. Mendelowitz, A History of American Art, (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1960), 451, pl. 16B.

Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), 69, no. 369.

The Pocket History of American Painting (New York, 1962), pl. 26.

American Artists, 26 (Jan. 1962), 54 (ill.).

Julia M. H. Carlson, Mary Cassatt (McKay Company, Inc., 1966), 89 (ill.).

Samuel M. Green, American Art, A Historical Survey (Ronald Press, 1966), 384 (ill.).

Frederick Sweet, Miss Mary Cassatt, Impressionist from Pennsylvania (University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 156 (ill.).

Frederick Sweet, "Paintings and Pastels by Mary Cassatt," Museum Studies 2 (1967), 33-49, fig. 7.

Richard McLanathan, The American Tradition in the Arts (Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968), 332 (ill.).

James Thomas Flaexner, Nineteenth Century American Painting (Putnam's Sons, 1970), 240 (ill.).

Russell Lynes, The Art Makers of Nineteenth Century America (Atheneum, 1970), 445 (ill.).

John E. Bullard, Mary Cassatt, Oils and Pastels (National Gallery of Art/Watson-Guptil Publications, 1972), pl. 16.

Donelson Hoopes, The American Impressionists (Watson-Guptil Publication, 1972), 37 (ill.).

"The Vincent Price Treasury of American Art," Country Beautiful (1972), 169 (ill.).

E. John Bullard, "An American in Paris," American Artist (Mar. 1973), 40-47.

"American Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago, Part II: The Nineteenth Century," Magazine Antiques (Nov. 1973), 904 (ill.).

Nancy Hale, Mary Cassatt (Doubleday and Company, 1975), 192 (ill.).

Milton W. Brown, American Art to 1900 (Abrams, 1977), 569, pl. 67.

Guy Hubbard and Mary J. Rouse, Art: Choosing and Expressing (Benefic Press, 1977), 37 (ill.).

John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (Thames and Hudson, 1970), 104-05 (ill.).

The Art Institute of Chicago: One Hundred Masterpieces, (Art Institute of Chicago/Rand McNally and Company, 1978), pl. 115.

Jay Roudebush, Mary Cassatt, (Crown Publishers, 1979), 49 (ill.).

Chicago Historical Society, "The Collections," Chicago History, 9, 1 (Spring 1979), 34-36 (ill.).

Pocketguide to The Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 1983), 38, no. 52.

William H. Gerdts, American Impressionism, (Abbeville Press, 1984), 43, no. 29.

Milo M. Naeve, "The Edwardian Era and Patrons of American Art at the Art Institute of Chicago: The Birth of a Tradition," America's International Exposition of Fine Arts and Antiques (Lakeside Group, 1988), 23, fig. 5.

Tom Armstrong, "The New Field-McCormick Galleries in the Art Institute of Chicago," Magazine Antiques 134, 4 (Oct. 1988), 822-35, pl. XIV.

Master Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Little, Brown, and Company, 1988) p. 99 (ill.).

Lita Solis-Cohen, "Chicago Shows Off-Tastefully," Maine Antique Digest (Dec. 1988), 12B-15B (ill.).

"Tempo Women," Chicago Tribune, Sec. 6C, Apr. 21, 1991, 7 (ill.).

Mahonri Sharp-Young, American Realists, Homer to Hopper (Watson-Guptill, 1977), n.pag. (ill.).

Judith A. Barter et al., American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), 262-65, no. 1893.

Judith A. Barter et al., The Age of American Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2011), no. 24.

Thomas J. Bussey, "What Can Biochemistry Students Learn About Protein Translation? Using Variation Theory to Explore the Space of Learning Created by Some Common External Representations" (PH. D. diss., University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2013)., 9-10, fig. 5.

Ken Johnson, "Paul Durand-Ruel, the Paris Dealer Who Put Impressionism on the Map," New York Times, July 22, 2015 (ill.).

Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017) p. 78.

Judith A. Barter, "Prolog: Ein neue Welt der Kunst," in Es war einmal in Amerika - 300 Jahre US-amerikanische Kunst [Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of American Art], eds. Barbara Schaefer and Anita Hachmann (Cologne: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud/Wienand Verlag, 2018), 21, fig. 6 (ill.).

Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Exposition de Tableaux, Pastels et Gravures de Mary Cassatt, Nov-Dec. 1893, cat. 1, as La Toilette de l'Enfant.

New York City, Durand-Ruel Galleries, Exposition of Paintings, Pastels and Etchings by Miss Mary Cassatt, Apr. 16-30, 1895, cat. 21, as La Toilette.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Sixty-Seventh Annual Exhibition, Jan. 10-Feb. 22, 1898, cat. 62, as The Toilet, lent by Messrs. Durand-Ruel and Sons.

Cincinnati Museum Association, Seventh Annual Exhibition of American Art in the Art Museum, May 19-July 9, 1900, cat. 13, as La Toilette, lent by M. Durand-Ruel, New York.

New York City, Durand-Ruel Galleries, Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels by Mary Cassatt, Nov. 5-21, 1903, cat. 6, as La Toilette.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Inaugural Exhibition, Jan. 7-Feb. 7, 1915, cat. 151, as The Toilet.

Art Institute of Chicago, Memorial Collection of the Works of Mary Cassatt, Dec. 21, 1926-Jan. 24, 1927, cat. 29, as The Toilet.

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, A Memorial Exhibition of the Work of Mary Cassatt, Mar. 15-Apr. 15, 1928, cat. 38 or 39, as The Toilet.

Art Institute of Chicago, A Survey of American Art, July 21-Oct. 9, 1932, as La Toilette.

Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, Exhibition of American Painting from 1860 until Today, June 23-Oct. 4, 1937, cat. 27, as The Toilet.

Brooklyn Museum, Leaders of American Impressionism: Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John H. Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Oct. 1937, cat. 22, as La Toilette.

New York City, Museum of Modern Art, Art in Our Time, May 1-Sept. 25, 1939, cat. 48, as The Toilet.

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, Painting Today and Yesterday in the United States, June 5-Sept. 1, 1941, cat. 23, as La Toilette.

Baltimore Museum of Art, Mary Cassatt, Nov. 28, 1941-Jan. 11, 1942, cat. 25, as The Toilet.

New York City, Wildenstein Company, Oct. 29-Dec. 6, 1947, A Loan Exhibition of Mary Cassatt for the Benefit of the Goddard Neighborhood Center, cat. 25, p. 32, as The Toilet.

Des Moines Art Center, Jun-Jul, 1948, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century European and American Art, cat. 16, as La Toilette.

Springfield, Mass., Museum of Fine Arts, Fifteen Fine Paintings, Oct. 7-Nov. 7, 1948, no cat., as La Toilette.

New York City, Wildenstein and Company, Landmarks in American Art, 1670-1950, Feb. 26-Mar. 28, 1953, cat. 38, as La Toilette.

Art Institute of Chicago, Sargent, Whistler and Mary Cassatt, Jan. 14-Feb. 25, 1954, cat. 19, as The Bath.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition, Apr. 22-May 3, 1956, cat. 119, as The Bath.

Milwaukee, Brooks Memorial Union, Marquette University, Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Exhibition, Festival of the American Arts, Apr. 22-May 3, cat. 12, as The Bath.

Detroit Institute of Arts, Painting in America, The Story of 450 Years, Apr. 23-June 9, 1957, cat. 122, as The Bath.

New York City, M. Knoedler and Company, The Paintings of Mary Cassatt, Feb. 1-26, 1966, cat. 21, as The Bath.

New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art of the United States: 1670-1966, Sept. 28-Nov. 27, 1966, cat. 39, as The Bath.

Omaha, Joslyn Art Museum, Mary Cassatt Among the Impressionists, Apr. 10-June 1, 1978, cat. 4, as The Bath (La Toilette).

New York City, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nineteenth-Century America: Paintings and Sculpture, Apr. 16-Sept. 7, 1970, cat. 169, as La Toilette.

Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Mary Cassatt, 1844-1926, Sept. 27-Nov. 8, 1970, cat. 49, as The Bath.

Newport Beach, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Mary Cassatt 1844-1926, Dec. 12, 1973-Jan. 20, 1974, cat. 7, ill., as The Bath.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mary Cassatt at Home, Aug. 5-Sept. 24, 1978, cat. 19, as The Bath.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, A New World, Masterpieces of American Painting, 1790-1910, Sept. 7-Nov. 13, 1983, cat. 94; Washington, DC, Corcoran Art Gallery, Dec. 7, 1983-Feb. 12, 1984, Paris, Grand Palais, Mar. 16, 1984-June 11, 1984.

Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum, American Painters of Modern Life, Aug. 22-Oct. 30, 1994; New York City, Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 2-July 24, 1994, Denver Art Museum, Nov. 28, 1994-Feb. 5, 1995, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mar. 6-May 14, 1995.

Omaha, Joslyn Art Museum, On View to the World: Paintings at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, May 30-Sept. 6, 1998.

Art Institute of Chicago, Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, Oct. 13, 1998-Jan. 10, 1999, cat. 72; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Feb. 14-May 9, 1999, National Gallery, Washington DC, June 6-Sept. 6, 1999.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915, Oct. 12, 2009-Jan. 24, 2010; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Feb. 28-May 23, 2010.

Paris, Musee d'Orsay, Paul Durand-Ruel: Defender of the Impressionists, Oct. 15, 2014-Feb. 8, 2015; London, National Gallery, Mar. 4-May 31, 2015; Philadelphia Museum of Art, June 18-Sept. 13, 2015, cat. 4.

The artist; sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris, November 24, 1893 [Paris 2015]; sold to Harris Whittemore, CT, January 17, 1894 [Paris 2015]; sold by him back to Durand-Ruel, New York, February 4, 1899 [Paris 2015]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1910.

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The Child's Bath | The Art Institute of Chicago

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Firemen and Tattoos in Japanese Woodblock Prints

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Firemen and Tattoos in Japanese Woodblock Prints

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Back in the 17th and up to the 19th century, the city of Edo (today's Tokyo) was under constant threat of fire. Closely built houses were made of highly flammable materials and the presence of candles, paper lanterns, charcoal braziers and open stoves added to the danger. Frequent earthquakes, wind and lighting completed the list of elements that could lead to disaster. The Great Meireiki Fire of 1657 caused the greatest damage to the city and shortly after, the government established the first professional fire brigades in Japan.The high authority established the first citywide firefighting organization: the Firemen were often called
jobikeshi, or 'regular firemen'. These groups were assigned different sections of the city and strategic locations around Edo Castle where the shogun lived. However, dozens of independent companies existed as well, which sometimes created conflicts among the competitive groups. Companies were identified by a decorative standard ( Edo no Hana, translated as 'flowers of Edo', but also referring to the spot closest to the fire, also called hana, where a representative fireman would stand with a matoi and signal the rest of his team members which direction to proceed and tackle the flames. matoi), which the bearer carried up onto a roof as close as possible to the fire in order to establish the company's precedence on the scene.

Because independent firefighters were more skilful, by the beginning of the 19th century, they had become the city's dominant firefighting force. Drawn from the city's guild of construction workers and roofers, the town brigade firemen (known as tobi, meaning hookmen, after their fire hooks), were more used than samurai to dangerous work in high places.

As fire was a constant source of menace and danger, firefighters were increasingly looked upon as rescuers and heroes. At the same time, firefighters themselves bashed in the glory and accentuated their image. Similar to the otokodate (street knights), firemen were often tattooed with a religious conviction that it would act as a shield against danger. Tattoos became synonymous with bravery. Enduring the pain and burning of having their entire bodies tattooed was a symbolic way of showing their defiance and their lack of fear of fire.

Given the danger, brave firefighters came from lower classes who could now prove their courage, command respect and become heroes. As some of these classes already had tattoos, voluntary or penal, the images that adorned their skin soon became symbols of their livelihood. As tattoos were seen more and more often, they became socially accepted and they became common feature and part of downtown Edo.

Another important and distinctive feature of firemen was the hanten, the protective coat that was usually immersed in water before being worn. These coats carried lining designs that most of the time reflected the very tattoo designs they were covering. As such, the coat acted on two levels: first it would offer the practical protection much needed when battling the flames, second it would act as psychological protection through the imagery weaved into its cloth.

Restrictive laws imposed during the Edo period prohibited the display of luxury, including expensive clothing. Wealthy merchants took to wearing plain coloured kimono on the outside, but with decorated lining underneath. This applied to firemen also, and their hanten would be beautifully decorated with mythical heroes and creatures believed to bring them luck in their dangerous profession. For festivals and other special occasions, they were worn inside out to show off the designs which resembled the tattoos they had underneath.

Kunichika Toyohara, Firemen Celebrating New Year, 1891

An artist who often featured tattoos in his woodblock print designs is Kunichika Toyohara (1835 - 1900). One of the last artists at the beginning of the Meiji period (1868 - 1912), he continued to make ukiyo-e prints with the full respect to the old school, traditional ways. He was of central importance for the production of actors' portraits and pictures of theatre performances at that time. Kunichika recalls that his father was the proprietor of a public bathhouse called Oshuya, popularly known as Dezomeshiki (New Year's Parade of Firemen) was an annual event that saw firemen performing acrobatic tricks and balancing acts at hair-raising heights to the astonishment of the public. The festival still takes place today and with historic roots, this January entertainment draws crowds by drawing from the past. Firemen would often have themselves tattooed not only with dragons and koi fish, but also with characters associated with fire, such as Fudoo Myo, hoping this would enhance their protection in their hazardous job. Apart from that, frequent visits to the temple and offerings enhanced the tattoos' ability to protect their wearers.

Darumayu ('The Daruma Bath'). A shop curtain illustrating a bobbing toy in the shape of Daruma or Bodhidharma (the founder of Zen Buddhism) hung in the doorway. Kunichika described his father as a dashing man, who was nicknamed 'Kyuju the kappa' because he had a kappa (a type of mythical beast) tattooed on his thigh. Kunichika was extremely fond of drinking and partaking of life's more ephemeral pleasures. Surrounded by a tattoo culture from an early age, many of his woodblock prints show tattooed actors and firemen proudly displaying their ink.

Text: Geanina Spinu for Japanese Gallery Kensington

Originally published in Tattoo Life Magazine, Jan-Feb 2020

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firemen and tattoos in japanese woodblock prints

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Firemen and Tattoos in Japanese Woodblock Prints

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Back in the 17th and up to the 19th century, the city of Edo (today's Tokyo) was under constant threat of fire. Closely built houses were made of highly flammable materials and the presence of candles, paper lanterns, charcoal braziers and open stoves added to the danger. Frequent earthquakes, ...

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Kinryūsan Temple at Asakusa, from "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo" by Hiroshige

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Kinryūsan Temple at Asakusa, from "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo" by Hiroshige

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名所江戸百景　浅草金龍山|Kinryūsan Temple at Asakusa, from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo" - Utagawa Hiroshige - Google Arts & Culture

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Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online.

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Dragon, Katsushika Hokusai ^ Minneapolis Institute of Art

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Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation expand_more 2015.79.123.1

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Japan

Inscribed in 2008 ( 3.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2005)

Kabuki is a Japanese traditional theatre form, which originated in the Edo period at the beginning of the seventeenth century and was particularly popular among townspeople. Originally, both men and women acted in Kabuki plays, but eventually only male actors performed the plays: a tradition that has remained to the present day. Male actors specialized in women's roles are called onnagata. Two other major role types are aragoto (rough style) and wagoto (soft style).

Kabuki plays are about historical events and moral conflict in relationships of the heart. The actors speak in a monotone voice and are accompanied by traditional instruments. The Kabuki stage is equipped with several gadgets, such as revolving stages and trapdoors through which the actors can appear and disappear. Another speciality of the Kabuki stage is a footbridge (hanamichi) that extends into the audience. Important characteristics of Kabuki theatre include its particular music, costumes, stage devices and props as well as specific plays, language and acting styles, such as the mie, in which the actor holds a characteristic pose to establish his character. Keshÿ, the particular make-up, provides an element of style easily recognizable even by those unfamiliar with the art form.

After 1868, when Japan opened to Western influence, actors strove to heighten the reputation of Kabuki among the upper classes and to adapt the traditional styles to modern tastes. Today, Kabuki is the most popular of the traditional styles of Japanese drama.

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The Committee meets annually to evaluate nominations proposed by States Parties to the 2003 Convention and decide whether or not to inscribe those cultural practices and expressions of intangible heritage on the Convention's Lists. By clicking on the inscribed elements listed below, you can discover the nominations, photos and videos, together with Committee decisions and evidence of commun...

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An Introduction to Kabuki Theater - Education - Asian Art Museum

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The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco houses one of the most comprehensive Asian art collections in the world, with more than 18,000 works of art in its permanent collection. Stroll through 6,000 years of art and culture.

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Japanese Historical Maps Collection from the C.V. Starr East Asian Library, UC Berkeley Library

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Japanese Historical Maps Collection from the C.V. Starr East Asian Library, UC Berkeley Library

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The Japanese Historical Maps Collection contains roughly 2,300 manuscript, woodblock, and copperplate maps of Japan and the world, ranging in date from the seventeenth century into the modern era. The core of the collection came from the maps and atlases originally collected by Mitsui Takakata (Sōken) 三井高堅宗堅 (1867-1945), ninth head of the Shinmachi branch of the Mitsui clan. The East Asian Library acquired the collection as part of a larger acquisition from the clan in 1950. The collection also includes a small number of maps originally belonged to Motoori Bunko 本居文庫, the library of the well-known family of the Kokugaku scholars founded by Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長 (1730-1801) and succeeded in Wakayama by Motoori Ōhira 本居大平 (1756-1833), Uchitō 内遠 (1792-1855), and Toyokai 豊穎 (1834-1913), those collected by Mitsui Takatatsu (Sōshin) 三井高辰宗辰 (1845-1922) and Dohi Keizō (Gakken) 土肥慶蔵鶚軒 (1866-1931), as well as those of unknown provenance (including these, all those maps that were not originally listed in Sōken shoshū chizu mokuroku 宗堅所集地圖目録 compiled by Mitsui Bunko are marked with * after the call number).

A portion of the collection was digitized by David Rumsey and Cartography Associates and has been available for viewing at the Japanese Historical Maps website since 2003. More recently, with CLIR funding (2016) the remaining maps produced before 1923 were digitized and all these digitized maps have become available at the UC Berkeley Library Digital Collections. In addition, over 1,000 maps from the Japanese Historical Maps Collection are made available in Japanese Map Warper (you can view all those maps by searching "UCB" in Tags).

Other related collections include Single-sheet Print Collection ＝ Ichimaizuri korekushon 一枚摺コレクション (688 items with over 1,000 images) and Copperplate Print Collection ＝ Dōbanga korekushon 銅版画コレクション (ca. 2,400 images). For more information, see the Japanese Studies guide ("About the Collection").

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Library Guides: Japanese Historical Maps Collection from the C. V. Starr East Asian Library: Home

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This guide helps you to navigate the digitized collection of Japanese historical maps held by the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, UC Berkeley.

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Japanese map collection, University of Manchester

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Japanese map collection, University of Manchester

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This collection draws on cartographic materials from the University of Manchester Library Japanese Collection and the Maps Collection. It holds roughly 60 items: mostly maps, charts and atlases, and a limited number of material classified as chishi, or topography (encyclopaedias, guidebooks, prints, surveys) that include maps or are otherwise related to cartography. The vast majority of items in the collection are printed, and they were produced in Japan during the Tokugawa or Edo period (1603-1868), with some exceptions, such as a Japanese tourist map of Japan published in 1897, and some maps of Japan published in Britain between the end of the eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century.

In the Tokugawa Period a proper cartographic culture, in the context of an increasingly mapped world, first took root in Japan. The ruling Tokugawa family and other local Japanese authorities ordered periodic land surveys in order to facilitate territorial control, which resulted in the production of administrative maps. At the same time, a growing publishing industry generated a wealth of commercial maps, some based on the official models, and others created specifically for distribution to the public. The resulting cartographical production included a variety of material: maps of sacred areas, road maps, city maps, provincial and regional maps, political maps of the whole country, and world maps.

The market for this sort of materials was wide. In the seventeenth century, the Tokugawa family established tight restrictions on movement, both within the country and across borders. While some of these restrictions were progressively eased, maps and other topographical materials were increasingly sought for, by consumers of all social standing, as means to virtually explore the country (and the surrounding world). They didn't exclusively serve practical purposes, and they weren't necessarily inspired by notions of "objective" or "scientific" representation. Many of them were at least partially (and in some cases highly) pictorial in nature. Distributed from the main publishing centres to peripheral areas, through a national trade network, they stimulated a new, widespread geographical conscience in Japan.

The Japanese Maps Collection of the John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a rich mirror to this mapped society. It provides examples of all of the above mentioned map categories, covers a wide range of geographical locations, and includes materials of great interest and, in some cases, of remarkable rarity.

Some of the maps were digitised in 2016 with a project led by Dr. Erica Baffelli (The University of Manchester) and funded by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and The Japan Foundation. The rest of the relevant cartographic materials are being digitised and will be added in due course. All the items have been investigated, and all the item descriptions have been edited and expanded, as part of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Project Travel in Tokugawa Period Japan (1603-1868): Identity, Nation and Social Transformation led by Dr. Sonia Favi (2019-2021). The project, funded by the European Commission, uses the Japanese Collection to look into the social and cultural history of Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868), through the lens of travel history.

An online exhibition using this material is available via Manchester Digital Exhibitions: Travels in Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868): a Virtual Journey.

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Arrival of the Europeans | Japan | Edo period (1615–1868) | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Use your arrow keys to navigate the tabs below, and your tab key to choose an item

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Actors Nakajima Wadaemon and Nakamura Konozo as Bodara Chozaemon and Kanagawaya Gon in play 'A Medley of Tales of Revenge' by Sharaku

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Actors Nakajima Wadaemon and Nakamura Konozo as Bodara Chozaemon and Kanagawaya Gon in play 'A Medley of Tales of Revenge' by Sharaku

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Description

Colour woodblock print. Actors Nakajima Wadaemon and Nakamura Konozo as Bodara Chozaemon and Kanagawaya Gon in play 'A Medley of Tales of Revenge'; looking at each with hand-gestures. Nishiki-e on paper with powdered dark grey mica background. Signed, sealed and marked.

Curator's comments

Reproduced in Christine Guth, 'Japanese Art of the Edo Period' (Orion Publishing, 1996), fig. 54.

A striking study in the contrasting characters of two minor villains: a testy customer bound for the pleasure quarters and the stolid boatman who will ferry him there. (Label copy, TTC 1995)

Smith 1988 Two minor characters from the same play as no. 141. The characters portrayed are Bodara Chozaemon and Kanagawaya Gon (a boatman). This is a fine example of Sharaku's interest, unusual among 'Ukiyoe' artists, in the more minor players. In some examples of this print the boatman (right) has red make-up across his eyes, apparently applied by hand. The signature is 'Painted by Toshusai Sharaku'.

Smith et al 1990 Wadaemon (right) plays the role of Bodara no Chozaemon, a customer visiting a house of pleasure, and Konozo (left) that of Kanagawaya Gon, the boatman who will ferry him there. Both were minor roles in the play 'Katakiuchi noriai-banashi' ('A Medley of Tales of Revenge'), performed at the Kiri theatre in the 5th month of 1794. The recently developed genre of the half-length portrait meant that artists could concentrate as never before on capturing the distinctive facial features of each actor. Sharaku went further than any of his contemporaries, however, in his penetrating analyses of each face, exaggerating the peculiarities to brilliantly expressive effect. Here the sharp, angular features of the testy customer contrast comically with the chubby, snub-nosed face of the stolid boatman. FURTHER READING Henderson, Harold G., and Ledoux, Louis V., 'The Surviving Works of Sharaku', New York, 1939, reprinted 1984. See also: Hillier, Jack, 'Japanese Colour Prints', London, 1966, reprinted 1975, no. 33. Ueno Royal Museum (Ueno no Mori Bijutsukan), 'Daiei Hakubutsukan shozo ukiyo-e meisakuten', ed. Narazaki Muneshige, Tokyo, 1985, no. 140.

Exhibition history

Exhibited: 2001, 30 Jan-8 Apr, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Arts of Japan: Recently repaired paintings, Ukiyo-e IV' 2006 Oct 13-2007 Feb 11, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from prehistory to the present' 2018 Oct-2019 Apr, BM Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries

Associated events

Associated Event: Katakiuchi noriai banashi (A Medley of Tales of Revenge) (performed at Kiri-za theatre, Edo in the 5th month of 1794)

Associated titles
Associated Title: Katakiuchi noriai banashi (A Medley of Tales of Revenge) (play)

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Colour woodblock print. Actors Nakajima Wadaemon and Nakamura Konozo as Bodara Chozaemon and Kanagawaya Gon in play 'A Medley of Tales of Revenge'; looking at each with hand-gestures. Nishiki-e on paper with powdered dark grey mica background. Signed, sealed and marked.

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Ichikawa Danjūrō VI in the Kabuki play Shibaraku

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Ichikawa Danjūrō VI in the Kabuki play Shibaraku

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Ichikawa Danjūrō VI in the Kabuki Play Shibaraku

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Ichikawa Danjūrō VI in the Kabuki Play Shibaraku, Toyokuni Utagawa (Japan, 1769-1825), Japan, 1812, Prints, Color woodblock print.

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Nagoya City Museum. "Ukiyo-e from the Metropolitan Museum of Art," April 14, 1995-May 28, 1995.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Graceful Gestures: Two Decades of Collecting Japanese Art," 2007.

Chiba City Museum of Art. "Ukiyo-e Viewed through Japonism," January 12, 2022-March 6, 2022.

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Kitagawa Utamaro | Mother and Child | Japan | Edo period (1615-1868) | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Nagoya City Museum. "Ukiyo-e from the Metropolitan Museum of Art," April 14, 1995-May 28, 1995. New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Graceful Gestures: Two Decades of Collecting Japanese Art," 2007. Chiba City Museum of Art. "Ukiyo-e Viewed through Japonism," January 12, 2022-March 6, 2022.

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Scenes from the Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter by Hishikawa Moronobu

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Scenes from the Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter by Hishikawa Moronobu

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Paintings with views of Kyoto and its suburbs are known as rakuchū-rakugai zu, a term referring to "inside" the capital city (rakuchū) and "outside" (rakugai). Usually executed on screens, these pictures illustrate the famous scenic spots and important monuments that served as settings for seasonal festivals and entertainments. Such screens, more than seventy of which are still extant, were much admired and in great demand in Kyoto. They were also popular with visitors from out of town, who purchased them as souvenirs of their trips to the capital. In 1582, when a group of Japanese Christian converts traveled to Rome, they took with them a set of rakuchū-rakugai zu by Kano Eitoku (1543- 1590) as a gift to the pope from the warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534 -1582). One of the two earliest extant pairs was a gift from Nobunaga to Lord Uesugi, whose descendants are still in possession of the set.

The origin of rakuchū-rakugai imagery can be traced to an important genre of yamato-e, the distinctly native style of Japanese painting whose basic concept and techniques were perfected in the Late Heian and Kamakura periods.[1] Few examples of these early genre paintings remain, but there are literary and documentary references to two specific types of yamato-e: meisho-e, paintings that depict activities taking place in famous scenic spots around the country, and tsukinami-e, pictures of seasonal events.[2] Because most famous scenic locations came to be associated with special seasonal festivals, the two themes were often combined in a single work. Even during the Muromachi period, when the influence of Chinese culture was profound, interest in meisho-e and tsukinami-e persisted. Zen monks, the champions of Chinese learning and aesthetics, actually composed poems in praise of paintings that depicted these purely Japanese themes.[3] While no screen paintings of this subject have survived from the Muromachi period, many folding fans decorated with meisho-e and tsukinami-e are still extant. Their compositions, and the detailed manner in which they were rendered, eventually served as models for panoramic screen paintings. Rakuchū-rakugai zu thus represent a final synthesis of meisho-e and tsukinami-e.

The formula for such screens was established in the early sixteenth century. In 1506, Tosa Mitsunobu (fl. 1469-1523) painted a single screen showing only views of the inner city. This work was hailed as a novelty.[4] The more common format for rakuchū-rakugai zu, which includes the suburbs as well, was established shortly afterward. The oldest extant screens of this type are a pair dating to the 1520s formerly in the Machida collection and now in the National Museum of Japanese History, Sakura.[5] A pair in the Uesugi collection attributed to Kano Eitoku have been dated to between 1550 and 1570. While Tosa artists undoubtedly followed the example set in 1506 by their ancestor Mitsunobu, most of the later versions were produced by anonymous artists, generally known as machi-eshi (town painters). The screens are encyclopedic visualizations of Kyoto and the lives of its citizens. They depict customs and costumes, performing arts, modes of transportation, commercial activities, and men and women from all walks of life. Rakuchū rakugai zu also generated many types of smaller genre paintings, which flourished during the Edo period. The decline in popularity of rakuchū-rakugai screens in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century coincided with Kyoto's loss of prestige as the center of the nation's cultural, political, and commercial life.

The sixteenth-century screens in the National Museum of Japanese History and the Uesugi collection represent the first stage in the development of the rakuchū-rakugai genre. In both pairs, the city of Kyoto is divided into two sections. The left screen shows views of the uptown district, while the right one depicts the downtown section. To create for the viewer the impression of being in the midst of the city, the screens when unfolded for viewing were placed facing each other, flanking the viewer, rather than side by side. References to the four seasons are also included. In other types of landscape screens, winter is usually represented at the extreme left panel of the left-hand screen. Here, however, winter is seen at the top left of the right screen continuing to the top right-hand corner of the left screen. Because this portion of the composition depicts the northern hills, it is an appropriate place for winter.

The Burke screens and the majority of extant Kyoto screen paintings belong to a second type of rakuchū-rakugai screens. In these the city is separated into east and west, with Abura-kōji Street (running north and south, east of Nijō Castle) as the dividing line. On the right screen, Higashiyama (the eastern hills) is shown at the top and the Gion Festival dominates the street activity. On the left screen are Nijō Castle and the western half of the city, with Kitayama (the northern hills) and Nishiyama (the western hills) in the background.[6]

Brilliant green hills and mountains, colorful houses, temples and shrines, palaces, streets, and human figures emerge from the golden clouds that partially envelop the capital. Avenues and houses are laid out in an orderly pattern. Running horizontally across the right screen-almost at its center-is the broad Kamo River, which divides the city into the metropolitan and suburban districts. In the foreground, to the west of the river and nearly parallel to it, runs a narrow canal, the Takasegawa, which was constructed in 1611. Structures of major importance and famous scenic locations are identified by small labels. Most of the major monuments on the screen at the right were constructed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), who united the country after a lengthy period of civil strife among various feudal lords. Fushimi Castle, in the top right corner, was demolished in 1622; the Hōkoku mausoleum, built for Hideyoshi in 1599, is to the left; directly below the mausoleum is the Great Buddha Hall of Hōkōji, dedicated by Hideyoshi in 1591.

At the northern end (the viewer's left) is the Imperial Palace, where the lse odori-a popular dance that originated at Ise-is being performed. In the downtown section, the mid-July Gion Festival, the most important summer event in Kyoto, is in progress. A major tourist attraction to this day, the festival originated in the mid-ninth century and has been observed annually since the year 970. Here, merchants and other citizens have deserted their shops and homes to watch the procession, with its colorful floats and theatrical performances, as it meanders through the streets and avenues.

Among the better-known Buddhist monuments in the suburbs on the eastern hills are three temples. In the south (at the right) are Tōfukuji, Sanjūsangendō, and the Great Buddha Hall of Hōkōji. In front of Hōkōji stands an unusual monument, also related to Hideyoshi: an earthen mound surmounted by a stone stupa, identified by its label as the Mimizuka (Ear Burial Mound). This structure was built for the interment of the ears and noses of enemy soldiers, which were brought back to Japan from Korea by Hideyoshi's troops. The stepped pyramid to the left, on the western (near) bank of the Kamo River, contained the remains of some thirty concubines kept by the amorous Hidetsugu, the adopted son of Hideyoshi. To pay for his life of dissipation, Hidetsugu was ordered by Hideyoshi to commit suicide in 1595; the members of his household followed suit.

In the eastern hills (at the top of the screen), pinkish white cherry blossoms dot the hilltops and valleys: spring is depicted in the suburbs, though a summer festival is in progress in the city proper. Major structures here include Kiyomizudera, a temple easily identified by its halls raised on stilts, the Yasaka Shrine with its beautiful pagoda, and Chion'in, another famous temple. On the eastern bank of the Kamo River, in the Gojō area, Okichi Kabuki, performed by young male dancers attracts a crowd of spectators. (Begun in 1629, it was banned in 1652 as the young males were thought to encourage prostitution; they were replaced by older men.) Facing this, in the Shijō district, is a Nō theater.

The left screen is dominated by the imposing structure of Nijō Castle, completed in 1603 to serve as the temporary residence of the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (r. 1603-5). The street in front of the castle is the site of some unusual security measures: roadblocks made of cloth curtains have been set up at intervals around the moat. An ox-drawn carriage moving toward the viewer's right has just emerged from the main gate of the castle. The label pasted above the carriage identifies the procession as that of a visiting member of the Tokugawa clan, on its way to the Imperial Palace. The vehicle probably carries Hidetada (r. 1605-23), the second Tokugawa shogun, who made an official visit to the Imperial Palace shortly after the ascension of Emperor Go-Mizunoo in 1611. Hidetada was accompanied on this occasion by three younger brothers, who followed in three palanquins behind him.[7] Nijō Castle is depicted as it looked prior to the extensive renovation of 1626. (A good example of a post-1626 representation of the castle can be found on a screen in the Brooklyn Museum of Art.)[8] Across from the castle, to the right, is the residence of Itakura Katsushige, who served as Kyoto's first governor, from 1601 to 1619.[9]

In the suburbs, beginning in the south (to the viewer's left) and moving northward, we come to the slender five-storied pagoda of Tōji, which marks the southern boundary of the city. The group of farmhouse-like structures with thatched roofs immediately above may reflect the original appearance of the famous Katsura Villa, before it was rebuilt in the 1620s as the elegant estate that still stands today. Across the Ōi River, in the mountainous area, is Kokūzō temple. At the foot of the steep approach to the compound an e-toki (picture explainer) is in the middle of delivering a lecture for which she has set up a large hanging scroll to illustrate a Buddhist story. Other famous monuments in the western hills include the temples of Tenryūji, Kinkakuji, and Daitokuji. A major attraction in the western suburbs is a large Kabuki theater adjacent to the Kitano Shrine. A crowd has gathered in front of the building, and within the walled enclosure a play, accompanied by a small orchestra, is being performed. The inscribed cartouche identifies this as the Okuni Kabuki-forerunner of the modern Kabuki drama-which made its first appearance near the Kitano Shrine in or before 1603. In the western and northern hills, blazing red maple leaves signal the arrival of autumn. Incongruously, the famous horse race at the Kamikamo Shrine is shown at the extreme right of the first panel. Introduced in 678, this festival is customarily held in May.

The presence of the Okichi Kabuki allows us to date the screens to about 1629. They were probably painted in a shop that produced ready-made pictures. Stylistically, several landscape details suggest that the artist may have been trained in the Kano school. Prominent shun (wrinkles), for example, were used to delineate the surface texture of rocks, and strong ink outlines form sharp angles to give the impression of roughness.

[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]

[1] On the evolution of this theme, see Kyoto National Museum 1966; Tsuji Nobuo 1976; and McKelway 1997.
[2] Soper 1942, pp. 351-79; K. Toda 1959, pp. 153-66; and Akiyama Terukazu 1964.
[3] See, for example, Kanrin koroshū, a collection of poems and essays by Keijo Shūrin (1440-1518), in Kamimura Kankō 1936, vol. 4.
[4] Sanjōnishi Sanetaka 1979, in the entry for the twenty-second day, twelfth month, third year of the Eishō era (1506).
[5] Takeda Tsuneo 1978a, pp. 13-18.
[6] For a detailed description, see McKelway 1997, pp. 48-57.
[7] Ibid., p. 53.
[8] Murase 1971, p. 117.
[9] McKelway 1997, p. 55.

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Scenes in and around the Capital | Japan | Edo period (1615-1868) | The Met

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Paintings with views of Kyoto and its suburbs are known as rakuchū-rakugai zu, a term referring to "inside" the capital city (rakuchū) and "outside" (rakugai). Usually executed on screens, these pictures illustrate the famous scenic spots and important monuments that served as settings for seasonal festivals and entertainments

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Roger Shimomura highlights cultural singularity with Yellow No Same 

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Roger Shimomura highlights cultural singularity with Yellow No Same 

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An exhibition of paintings at the Monterey Museum of Art by Roger Shimomura, titled Yellow No Same, juxtaposes the styles of American comic books and traditional Japanese woodblock prints. A Samurai warrior and Kabuki actor rub elbows with Japanese-Americans, circa 1942, communicating the swirl of emotions surrounding the issue of the internment camps. The series focuses on issues of race, stereotyping, cultural blindness and ignorance. Using the imprisonment of Japanese-American citizens during the World War II as a connectingsubject.

The exhibition is being held in collaboration with the Department of Visual and Public Art (VPA) at California State University, Monterey Bay, and is the second in a series of four annual "Geography of Memory" exhibitions. Dr. Amalia Mesa-Bains, director of VPA, curates these shows, which highlight the ethnic and cultural richness of the Central Coast through works of contemporary artists. Last year's display of paintings by Hung Lui inaugurated the series.

Throughout the 1930s, sentiment against Japanese-Americans was ever present-an ugly heir to the prejudice against the Chinese immigrants of the 1800s. White Americans couldn't abide that Japanese-American farmers were successful working lands that had been deemed unsuitable for growing, or that their work ethic made them successful shopkeepers and businesspeople. From Seattle to San Diego, Japanese-Americans worked to become "model citizens."

Inspired by the yellow journalism of the Hearst and McClatchy newspapers, many West Coast Americans became primed to betray their fellow citizens. Shortly after December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, an edict that required all people of Japanese-American descent to evacuate their homes within a short time frame, and report to a number of detention centers before being assigned to one of the internment camps in remote regions of the greater West.

In October and November, before Pearl Harbor, Curtis Munson of the State Department studied the threat of the Japanese-American community on the West Coast as the Japanese Imperialist Army advanced across Asia and the Pacific. In his report, he concluded that there was nothing to be concerned about. The US government ignored the report.

In Salinas, the rodeo grounds held 3,600 Japanese-Americans rounded up from Watsonville, Pajaro, Monterey, Pacific Grove and the Valley towns and put them on trains for the camps-grim, cramped barrack towns surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers, with no running water. The majority were women and children.

Shimomura, whose Seattle family was sent to Idaho, remembers the camp.

"My earliest memories all had to do with the weather extremes of Camp Minidoka," he says. "The hot, humid summers, the frigid winters, the muddy, swampy Falls and the constant wind."

With three successful uncles who were graphic designers in Seattle, Shimomura always knew he wanted to make art as an adult. In the early 1970s, as a professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, he "decided to do a painting about my Japanese-ness in a virtually all-white environment."

Relying on childhood memories and a diary kept by his immigrant grandmother, Shimomura began to address issues of cultural identity and prejudice.

By juxtaposing quintessential Japanese icons-the Kabuki actor, the Samurai, Floating World imagery- as well as American icons-such as Mickey Mouse, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Superman and Marilyn Monroe-the artist achieves provocative effects. Done in a graphic comic book style, the images are arresting and accessible, even with the understated outrage.

In the Yellow No Same series, the Japanese icon stands outside strands of barbed wire, while the Japanese-American citizen (with baseball cap or accordion or gingham dress) looks forlornly out. One subtle detail in the series underscores yet another piece of the story of the camps. Young men were given the option of enlisting in the US Army, even while their families remained behind barbed wire. Shimomura had depicted young men with their military uniforms visible.

(The Japanese-American soldiers were assigned to the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Regiment for duty in the European theater where they distinguished themselves with unprecedented valor. The 442nd is the most decorated outfit of its size in the history of the US Army.)

The exhibition will also include a 10-lithograph series by Shimomura, "Memories of Childhood," as well as documentary photographs of the internment in Monterey County.

"I deal with the 'old issues' that simply won't go away," Shimomura says. "America's inability to distinguish between Japanese and Chinese people, Asians always being mistaken for foreigners, stereotypical assumptions about Asians, etc., etc."

Roger Shimomura gives a lecture and slide presentation at the University Center Living Room, CSU Monterey Bay, at 6:30pm on Thursday, Sept. 16. Shimomura's exhibit, Yellow No Same, opens at the Monterey Museum of Art, 559 Pacific St., Monterey, on Saturday, Sept. 18, and runs through Jan 2, 2005. 372-5477.

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Roger Shimomura highlights cultural singularity with Yellow No Same.

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An exhibition of paintings at the Monterey Museum of Art by Roger Shimomura, titled Yellow No Same, juxtaposes the styles of American comic books and traditional Japanese woodblock prints. A

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Inside the Japanese Art Form of Kabuki (60 Minutes, April 2020)

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Inside the Japanese Art Form of Kabuki (60 Minutes, April 2020)

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Inside the Japanese Art Form of Kabuki (60 Minutes, April 2020)

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As broadcast on CBS "60 Minutes" on 19 April 2020.  I was one of two cameramen on the shoot,

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Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art

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The Peacock Room - National Museum of Asian Art

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The Peacock Room has captivated visitors at the Freer Gallery of Art since its opening in 1923. Originally designed by artist James McNeill Whistler to showcase a Chinese blue-and-white porcelain collection, the room marries its avian motif with a striking use of color inspired by the arts of East Asia.

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Roger Shimomura | Greg Kucera Gallery | Seattle

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RECENT PRESS: March 5, 2024 International Examiner Roger Shimomura's 'More Little White Lies' upsets expectations and worldviews in 100 very small paintings by Susan Platt

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Kaizawa Yukiko on 50 years of weaving Ainu 'attus' fabric 

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Kaizawa Yukiko on 50 years of weaving Ainu 'attus' fabric 

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Kaizawa Yukiko on 50 years of weaving Ainu 'attus' fabric

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The Surprising History and Fascinating Evolution of the Japanese Kimono

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The Surprising History and Fascinating Evolution of the Japanese Kimono

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For generations, Japanese style has been defined by a single garment: the kimono. Historically significant, aesthetically fascinating, and steeped in symbolism, the kimono captures the exquisite elegance of Japanese culture and design, proving that clothing can be much more than meets the eye.

Here, we look at the fascinating evolution of the kimono, tracing its exceptional history from the 8th century through the present and exploring its role in contemporary Japanese culture.

What is a Kimono?

Derived from the words ki ("wear") and mono ("thing"), the kimono is a traditional Japanese garment. Kimonos come in a range of styles and patterns. They are typically hand-sewn into a "T" shape from four single pieces of fabric called tans and tied with an obi, or belt.

Kimono Symbolism

In addition to their unique aesthetic, kimonos are valued for their symbolism; style, motif, color, and material work together to reveal the individual identity of the wearer.

Traditional kimonos come in a variety of styles. The type of style worn is dictated by a range of specific criteria, including gender, marital status, and event. For example, an unmarried woman would wear a furisode ("swinging sleeves") to a formal event, while a male store owner would wear a happi (a type of jacket) to a festival.

Patterns, symbols, and other designs also help communicate the wearer's status, personality traits, and virtues. Similar to woodblock prints, popular motifs include nature-inspired elements, like leaves, blossoms, and birds (namely, cranes).

On top of their imagery, kimonos' colors also hold symbolic significance. Additionally, the pigments used to achieve certain colors are also representative. "Dyes are seen to embody the spirit of the plants from which they are extracted," the Victoria & Albert Museum explains, "Any medicinal property is also believed to be transferred to the coloured cloth. Blue, for example, derives from indigo (ai), which is used to treat bites and stings, so wearing blue fabric is thought to serve as a repellent to snakes and insects."

Kimonos are made from various handmade and hand-decorated fabrics. Traditionally, these include linen, silk, and hemp. Today, materials like rayon, cotton, and polyester are often used. Unsurprisingly, however, the traditional, non-synthetic fabrics are favored.

History and Evolution

During the Heian period (794-1192 AD), an early, easy-to-wear prototype of the kimono emerged in Japan. Like the current-day kimono, this garment was composed of straight cuts of fabric and was intended to suit all body sizes and types.

Eventually, during the Edo period (1603-1868), this robe became known as a kosode-a term that literally translates to "small sleeves"-as its armholes decreased in size. The kosode played a particularly important role in this period, as all Japanese people (despite social status, age, or gender) wore it. Thus, in order to express their individuality and "describe" themselves, wearers adopted ways to customize their kosodes.

During the Meiji period (1868-1912), the kosode evolved into the kimono. Unlike its earlier edition, the kimono was worn predominantly by women. Still, in spite of these small changes, the garment's main function-to visually communicate a message -remains unchanged even today.

Types of Kimonos

Yukatas are a casual, cotton kimono commonly worn during the summer and summer events (like festivals). Modern kimonos are designed to be easy to maintain and are machine-washable.

While most kimonos are adorned with motifs, some are left intentionally minimalist. Iromuji is a type of kimono worn to tea ceremonies and usually features no painted design. Its simple monochromatic appearance is supposed to not detract from the ceremony. Sometimes patterns are sewn into the garment.

Uchikake is a formal type of kimono that was originally worn by samurai women in the 16th century. Centuries later, this garment was adopted into bridal wear. Since it is intended to be worn over another garment, like an overcoat, it is worn without an obi, and ornately decorated.

Another bridal kimono is the shiromuki. An all-white garment, it is intended to be worn by brides in a traditional Japanese Shinto wedding ceremony. It is often paired with matching accessories.

The Contemporary Kimono

Today, designers and artists have reinterpreted the traditional kimono in a myriad of ways. From upcycled wedding dresses to woven glass sculptures, these innovative creatives have come up with one-of-a-kind ways to both preserve Japanese heritage and showcase the beauty of the kimono.

Frequently Asked Questions

A kimono is a traditional Japanese garment. It is typically hand-sewn into a "T" shape from four single pieces of fabric called tans and tied with an obi, or belt.

What does a kimono symbolize?

A kimono is typically a symbol of longevity and good fortune, but it also depends on the style, motif, color, and material to reveal the individual identity of the wearer.

What is difference between a kimono and a yukata?

A kimono typically has a hand-sewn inner lining and a yukata never does. A yukata is made of a single layer of fabric and intended to be worn during warmer temperatures, especially at summer festivals.

This article has been edited and updated.

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The Surprising History and Fascinating Evolution of the Japanese Kimono

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The traditional kimono has evolved over centuries. Here, we explore the evolution of the Japanese kimono, including the history of the women's kimono.

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Perhaps the most recognisable Japanese article of clothing, the kimono's humble beginnings date back over a thousand years, to the Heian Period. Although it is no longer an everyday choice, this traditional garb is still worn for special occasions, such as weddings, funerals and tea ceremonies. Read on to explore its history and role today.

The history of the kimono

Clothing similar to the modern-day kimono started being worn during the Japanese Heian Period (794-1185). It was often worn with the Chinese-influenced hakama (a type of long skirt with or without a division to separate the legs, similar to trousers), or a type of apron known as a mo. Later, it became fashionable to wear the kimono-style garment without the hakama. This meant the wearer needed a new way to hold the robe closed, and so the obi (the wide sash worn around the waist) was born.

By the Kamakura Period (1185-1333), the kimono had become an everyday clothing choice, and layering came into fashion. It is thought that this is when the traditional Japanese colour combinations were first experimented with; the colours were based on seasons, gender or sometimes on political and family ties. The art of kimono-making grew into a specialised craft during the Edo Period (1603-1868), and some kimonos were literal works of art and could cost more than a family home. People would keep their kimonos and pass them down to the family.

The art of kimono-making grew into a specialised craft during the Edo Period | © Juri Pozzi / Alamy Stock Photo

Kimonos were popular for many reasons, mainly for being versatile. They could easily be layered or altered to suit any season. Heavy silk kimonos could be worn in the fall and winter, while the light linen and cotton kimono, known as a , could be worn in summer. The yukata is still commonly worn during seasonal summer festivals and fireworks displays (miyabi).

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Since the Edo Period, men's and women's kimono fashions have remained pretty much unchanged. Eventually, however, the complexity of kimono-wearing and the cumbersome sandals they required became a hindrance. The kimono fell out of fashion during the Meiji Period (1868-1912), when the government encouraged people to adopt Western clothing styles.

Things you didn't know about kimonos

Though kimonos are often handed down through generations, the garment can be extremely expensive, sometimes costing several hundred pounds. This is because it is traditionally made of costly materials such as silk and linen, but also because its seams and edges must be finished by hand. However, the most expensive options are usually reserved for special occasions, and it's now possible to buy an informal cotton version ( yukata) across Japan.

While kimonos appeal to fashionistas around the world, in Japan they are closely linked with manners and can reflect the formality of an occasion. Wearing the appropriate garment for the right event is a way of conveying respect and gratitude. Rank, formality and status can also be expressed through the kimono's design, styling and colour and even the way the obi is knotted at the back. Kimonos should also always be worn with the left side over the right: only a dead body dressed for burial should wear the right over left.

The role of kimonos today

Though kimonos are indelibly linked with tradition in Japan, they have more recently become a cult fashion item around the globe. This coincided with a renewed interest in Japanese culture worldwide in the late 1990s. The kimono's delicate patterns, sumptuous colours and striking silhouette suddenly appealed to a fashion-conscious generation who were keen to stand out from the crowd, especially on social media.

For some, wearing one offers a break from the norm, a chance to dress up and connect to a rediscovered history. For others, it is simply the opportunity to wear something breathtakingly beautiful and feminine, an alternative to a designer dress that might be spotted on anyone. In fact, many of its modern fans have never even visited Japan yet remain drawn to the kimono for special occasions.

Likewise, in Japan itself, the upsurge in kimono rental shops suggests more people are keen to rediscover this classic garment normally reserved for formal celebrations such as weddings. With a booming breed of young designers offering a fresh take on traditional styles and patterns, the kimono's new fans are certain that the garment can still have a role in our everyday wardrobe, too.

If you visit the Gion district of Kyoto, you might see maiko (apprentice geishas) strolling the streets | © maximimages.com / Alamy Stock Photo

Siobhan Grogan contributed additional reporting.

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Kimono and Yukata - 👘 The Traditional Japanese Clothing

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Every Japanese, regardless of genre or age, and even children as soon as they can walk, will wear a kimono or a yukata at least once during their life. Traditional clothing is not worn on a daily basis anymore, but…

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The island in Nagasaki Port, called Dejima. The artificial island housed the Dutch East India Company's Japanese trading post. "Oura Cathedral" is the oldest church existing in Japan today. Originally built as a place for foreigners staying in Nagasaki to pray.

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Dejima & Oura Cathedral | Nagasaki Prefecture | JAPAN VIDEO CATALOG

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The island in Nagasaki Port, called Dejima. The artificial island housed the Dutch East India Company's Japanese trading post. "Oura Cathedral" is the oldest church existing in Japan today. Originally built as a place for foreigners staying in Nagasaki to pray.

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Title: Red Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller

Artist: Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, Tokyo (Edo) 1760-1849 Tokyo (Edo))

Period: Edo period (1615-1868)

Medium: Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk

Dimensions: Image: 23 1/4 × 11 7/8 in. (59.1 × 30.2 cm)
Overall with mounting: 61 × 19 1/2 in. (154.9 × 49.6 cm)
Overall with knobs: 61 × 21 5/16 in. (154.9 × 54.1 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Charles Stewart Smith Collection, Gift of Mrs. Charles Stewart Smith, Charles Stewart Smith Jr., and Howard Caswell Smith, in memory of Charles Stewart Smith, 1914

Accession Number: 14.76.37

Signature: (lower right corner) Hachi-jū shichi rō Manji hitsu 八十七老　卍筆 (Painted by Manji, old man of 87) [86 by Western reckoning, 1846]; artist seal: (square intaglio) [Mount Fuji over a trigram]

Marking:

Charles Stewart Smith , New York (until d. 1909; by descent to his heirs).; Mrs. Charles Stewart Smith , Charles Stewart Smith Jr., and Howard Caswell Smith, New York (until 1914; donated to MMA).

Paris. Centre Culturel du Marais. "Hokusai et son Temps," October 3, 1980-January 3, 1981.

Otsu City Museum. "Works of Katsushika Hokusai," March 2, 1993-April 11, 1993.

Washington, DC. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. "Hokusai," March 4, 2006-May 14, 2006.

Paris. Réunion des Musées Nationaux - Grand Palais. "Katsushika Hokusai," October 1, 2014-January 18, 2015.

London. British Museum. "Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave," May 25, 2017-August 13, 2017.

Osaka. Abeno Harukas Art Museum. "'Hokusai - Fuji o koete'," October 6, 2017-November 19, 2017.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Poetry of Nature: Edo Paintings from the Fishbein-Bender Collection," February 27, 2018-January 21, 2019.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Anxiety and Hope in Japanese Art," April 8, 2023-July 14, 2024.

Tokyo Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyūjo 東京国立文化財研究所, ed. Nyūyōku Metoroporitan Bijutsukan, kaiga, chōkoku ニューヨークメトロポリタン美術館，絵画・彫刻 (Painting and sculpture of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) Kaigai shozai Nihon bijutsuhin chōsa hōkoku 海外所在日本美術品調查報告 (Catalogue of Japanese art in foreign collections) 1. Tokyo: Kobunkazai Kagaku Kenkyūkai, 1991, p. 81, cat. no. 235.

Asano Shūgō 浅野秀剛, and Timothy Clark. Hokusai: Fuji o koete 北斎 : 富士を超えて(Hokusai: Beyond Mount Fuji). Exh. cat. [Osaka]: Abeno Harukasu Bijutsukan, [2017], p. 214, cat. no. 159.

Clark, Timothy, ed. Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave. Exh. cat. London: Thames & Hudson in collaboration with the British Museum, 2017, p. 255, cat. no. 160.

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Katsushika Hokusai | Red Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller | Japan | Edo period (1615-1868) | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Signature: (lower right corner) Hachi-jū shichi rō Manji hitsu 八十七老　卍筆 (Painted by Manji, old man of 87) [86 by Western reckoning, 1846]; artist seal: (square intaglio) [Mount Fuji over a trigram] Marking:

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長崎市の出島(国指定史跡 出島和蘭商館跡)の公式ホームページです.

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百日紅～Miss HOKUSAI～ Sarusuberi- Miss Hokusai English Subbed

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Watch 百日紅～Miss HOKUSAI～ Sarusuberi- Miss Hokusai English Subbed - Jodha Akbar on Dailymotion

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Curator Tim Clark reveals why Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave focuses on the last 30 years of the artist's extraordinarily long life.

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Ojiya chijimi - Nationally-designated Important Intangible Cultural Property - Echigo

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Ojiya chijimi - Nationally-designated Important Intangible Cultural Property - Echigo

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新潟県小千谷市公式チャンネル

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Nihonbashi area to regain 'water city' status after highway moved (2019)

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Nihonbashi area to regain 'water city' status after highway moved (2019)

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Long in the shadow of the Metropolitan Expressway that runs overhead, Tokyo's Nihonbashi district is headed back into the spotlight as developers seek to recreate the "water city" that existed in the Edo Period (1603-1867).

Mitsui Fudosan Co. unveiled its Nihonbashi revitalization plan on Aug. 29, a long-range project that will take advantage of the government moving the stretch of elevated expressway underground.

The company plans to add commercial facilities to attract visitors and revitalize the open-sky waterfront.

Construction on the Nihonbashi project will begin around 2025 and is scheduled to be completed from the late 2030s to 2040s.

The cost of the project has not yet been announced, but it will likely run from hundreds of billions yen to 1 trillion yen ($9.4 billion).

"It will be very difficult and take a long time," said Masanobu Komoda, Mitsui Fudosan president. "But we will definitely achieve the goal."

The Nihonbashi project is one of a string of redevelopment projects mainly around train stations and sightseeing spots that are under way or planned in central Tokyo.

The townscape of one of Asia's major cities will continue to be transformed long after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics is a distant memory.

The Nihonbashi revitalization project, which will target a 6.7-hectare area along a 600-meter-long section of the river, will coincide with the Metropolitan Expressway being moved underground after more than 50 years.

Mitsui Fudosan also developed the Tokyo Midtown complex in the capital's Roppongi district, whose scale is equivalent to that of the Nihonbashi project.

Starting from the commercial complex Coredo Nihonbashi, which opened in 2004, Mitsui Fudosan has been developing a series of commercial facilities and office buildings in the district.

The newest project will encompass the Nihonbashi bridge, for centuries the symbol of the district, and the surrounding area.

A public walkway will be set up along the riverside, which is currently surrounded by skyscrapers, that will offer commercial facilities at lower heights.

The entrances to eateries and shops will face the river to encourage foot traffic among visitors.
PROJECTS CHANGING FACE OF CENTRAL TOKYO
Construction on major urban development projects in other parts of central Tokyo is proceeding.

An official of a major contractor describes the current situation as where, "old buildings are losing their competitive advantage and (the sites) are being redeveloped and moving forward with the 2020 Olympics as the driving force."

An increasing number of foreign visitors is also significantly accelerating the phenomenon, according to the official.

Numerous skyscrapers are under construction. Mori Building Co. is scheduled to complete a 330-meter-tall building as well as 200-meter-or-so buildings, which will accommodate offices or residences, in the Toranomon and Azabudai districts in March 2023.

The main tower of the project is expected to be the highest building in Japan in 2023, surpassing Osaka's 300-meter-tall Abeno Harukas.

On the northern side of Tokyo Station, Mitsubishi Estate Co. is scheduled to complete a 212-meter-tall building complex in April 2021, and aims to complete a 390-meter structure in fiscal 2027.

That will likely become Japan's highest building at that time, surpassing Mori Building's 330-meter skyscraper.

A 230-meter Shibuya Scramble Square building, to be directly connected to Shibuya Station, which is being jointly developed by Tokyu Corp., East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) and Tokyo Metro Co., will open in November this year.

In the Kabukicho district in Shinjuku Ward, a 225-meter building, which will include movie cinemas and theaters, will be completed by Tokyu Corp. and other companies in fiscal 2022. The facility will offer nighttime entertainment options.

JR East will construct an international convention center near the Takanawa Gateway Station of the Yamanote Line, which will open in spring 2020.

The company is scheduled to complete the convention center building in 2024, aiming to make it a hub for international business communication.

(This article was written by Naoyuki Takahashi and Keiko Nannichi.)

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Nihonbashi area to regain 'water city' status after highway moved | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis

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Long in the shadow of the Metropolitan Expressway that runs overhead, Tokyo's Nihonbashi district is headed back into the spotlight as developers seek to recreate the

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東京都江戸東京博物館の公式サイトです。ご来館案内、常設展、展覧会の情報や催し物情報などをご覧いただけます。

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Historical city travel guide: Osaka in the early 19th century

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Historical city travel guide: Osaka in the early 19th century

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When people visit Osaka, quite a lot end up staying there for a while. For it is a neat and clean city, the people are good-natured, and, on top of that, ample gold and silver circulates. No wonder it is a good place to live.

Hata Ginkei (1790-1870), Chimata no uwasa (Rumours Around Town), 1835.
Location

Osaka is located in the central part of the Japanese archipelago, neighbouring the cities of Kyoto to the north and Nara to the east, and Kii province to the south. With a secure location and easy access to marine transport, Osaka has always been important. From the mid-seventh to late eighth centuries AD, imperial palaces were built here, and in the 1580s, the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-98) established this as the site of his grand Osaka Castle.

To the west of the city, Osaka Bay connects to the Japanese inland sea, Seto-naikai. Osaka is a city of water. Many canals and bridges snake through the city, resulting in a distinctive landscape unlike other big Japanese cities. In recent times, the mouths of the rivers entering Osaka Bay have become heavily silted up, making it difficult for ships to moor.

So, the mouth of one of the main rivers, Ajigawa, has been dredged. You'll be surprised to see how much sand this project produced - enough to be officially classed as a good-sized mountain (although at 4.53m above sea level, it's Japan's smallest mountain!) Now called Tenpō-zan, the mountain makes a popular destination for leisurely outings, especially when the cherry trees there are in bloom.

The weather in Osaka is mild enough so you can enjoy a visit in the winter months to catch fabulous theatre performances. The summers can be very hot, but cooling off along the river in the evening is a popular pastime. If you want to catch the beautiful cherry blossoms, visiting in spring is recommended.

Travel

If you have already been to Edo (modern-day Tokyo) or Kyoto, you may be familiar with the Eastern Sea Road (Tōkaidō) which connects the two cities. Osaka is about 50km southwest of Kyoto. There is a good road for walking, but you will need to stay overnight at one of the station towns, else your legs will give way! If you're tired, you can hire a sedan chair ( kago) for part of the way. Kago are carried by two men, one at the front and one at the back, but be careful not to be caught by rogue carriers, who might demand additional fees at the end of the journey. Alternatively, you can take a boat along the Yodo river, the artery connecting southern Kyoto and Osaka.

A boat trip may be more costly than walking but is much easier. It will take you about half a day. Arriving at the boat terminal, Hachiken'ya, you will already feel the energy of the bustling city.

Getting around

Osaka is lively and exciting - and walking is a good way to really experience the city. The city centre is easy to navigate as the streets are organised in a grid pattern - suji, the north-south streets, and tōri, the east-west streets - accentuated by canals at regular intervals. As more than 90 per cent of the city's population (about 350,000) are merchants and artisans, the general atmosphere is relaxed and friendly - you're not likely to encounter a samurai on the street.

If you plan to go some distance, you can hire a simple sedan chair in town. You might sometimes see box-shaped, higher-quality kago with a proper roof, wall and a blind-covered window. Those belong exclusively to certain elite or wealthy households, and there are even regulations about which rank and status can ride which type.

Things to do

Dōjima and Nakanoshima

Osaka is Japan's centre of commerce and banking, and many goods, domestic or foreign (the latter entering through Nagasaki), are traded here.

Even prestigious samurai households rely on Osaka's merchants to sell products from their domains - areas of land and governing units entrusted to samurai lords. For a uniquely 'Osaka' experience, head to the north, at the edge of the city along the river, where there are two adjacent islands called Dōjima and Nakanoshima. Here you'll find impressive rows of storehouses.

They belong to daimyo (samurai lord) households from all over Japan intending to store their yearly harvest - mainly rice and other grains - for later sale. When boats carrying a domain's rice arrive, male workers wearing only a loincloth appear as if from nowhere and start swiftly landing the load.

The contents of the straw bags are inspected and in no time they are in storage. It is impressive that the workmen appear to be able to easily carry a couple of full straw bags (weighing about 60kg each) at once!

The bustle during market periods is another impressive sight. From early morning until the afternoon, numerous rice buyers and sellers gather in Dōjima, shouting and competing over what to buy, what to sell, and at what price. As negotiations heat up, many of the traders don't notice that the time is up, so officials will splash water around in order to forcibly disperse the crowd!

The price of rice of course depends on natural conditions each year and fluctuates, sometimes wildly. The Osaka market price determines the nationwide economy, as both the salary of the ruling samurai class and the scale of their property are calculated in the koku unit of rice (1 koku is about 180 litres).

Zakoba

If you like the liveliness of markets, you may want to visit the fish market in Zakoba. It sits towards the western edge of town, where canals pour into the Ajigawa river.

Due to its location, Osaka is blessed with ample sea produce. Itinerant fishmongers generally are high-spirited, robust fellows, but a visitor from Edo mentioned the other day that Osaka fishmongers appear much politer and more 'elegant' than their counterparts in Edo, since they wear an apron over their tucked-up kimono, not leaving their undergarment visible. How customs differ in each city!

Shitennō-ji Temple

The southeast quarter is the temple district, where there are hundreds of Buddhist temples big and small, and also some shrines. In the largest precinct stands Shitennō-ji Temple, one of Japan's oldest temples, believed to have been established at the end of the sixth century by Prince Shōtoku (AD 574-622), an early supporter of the Buddhist faith. You will see the distinctive layout of the buildings, with the southern gates, Five-Storey Pagoda, Golden Hall and Lecture Hall all lined up on the north-south axis in the centre of the precinct, showing a direct influence from the Asian continent. It really is a sight to behold, and you're free to explore the temples as you wish.

Osaka Castle

If you want to see how the upper echelons of society live, you'll find that samurai of the ruling class reside around Osaka Castle at the northeast edge of the city. You can see the castle's turrets from a distance and, if you approach the area, the impressively tall stone walls surrounding the castle will surely inspire awe. Today, the castle is rarely used by the shogun, but it is still heavily guarded by his trusted subjects. So it is not really advisable to be seen wandering around it.

Entertainment

When in Osaka, you must not miss seeing Bunraku and Kabuki theatre. Bunraku is puppet theatre, accompanied by powerful jōruri chanting and strumming on the three-stringed shamisen .

You may have heard the name of one of Japan's greatest playwrights, Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725). He wrote many Bunraku plays as well as Kabuki, and some of his plays such as The Love Suicides at Sonezaki ( Sonezaki shinjū) and The Battles of Coxinga ( Kokusen'ya kassen) are still popular today. It takes three puppeteers - left, right and centre - to perform one puppet, whose every joint and facial feature is movable, in order to express all possible nuances of a character's emotions.

If you are really struck by the deep-voiced jōruri chanting, and feel like taking a lesson, amateur jōruri clubs are quite popular here. You will eventually be expected to take a turn performing, if you stay around long enough!

Kabuki theatre is the biggest entertainment, and the top actors are true stars. It is an all-male theatre, and female-role specialists ( onnagata) dress as women even in their daily life. They wear a purple cloth on their forehead to cover the shaven area of hair that men customarily have.

Dōtonbori in the south of the city is the theatre district. The major theatres are Kado-za and Naka-za, which stand next to each other and are rivals in staging hit productions with famous actors. The 11th month in the lunar calendar (equivalent to December in the Gregorian calendar) is the most important month for the Kabuki theatre because that is when actors' new annual contracts with the theatre managers begin. The opening season performance with the new troupe is called kaomise kyōgen, and has a particularly merry atmosphere.

The top actors you should check out at present are Arashi Kichisaburō II, the handsome male lead-role ( tachiyaku), known for his lovely almond eyes, and Nakamura Utaemon III, the pop-eyed all-round star, who also performs in the city of Edo, where he is popular too.

In and around Kabuki theatres, you may see groups of people wearing matching clothing and peculiar rectangular hats, especially at the start of a new theatrical season. They are members of Kabuki fan clubs, and devout fans to their core. They send gifts to the troupe for the new season and attend performances together. When the actor they support comes out on stage to greet the audience, they start to sing (each group has its own song), beating wooden clappers to the rhythm. Osaka Kabuki fan clubs are well known for their zeal and dedication.

Where to stay

For travellers with deep pockets, head to the left bank of the Yodo River, along the Tosa-bori moat, where there are up-market restaurants and a hotel district . You can find exquisite service in this area but, please be aware, the price tag here reflects the clientele.

North of the Dōtonbori theatre district, right in the city centre, is the biggest shopping district - Junkei-machi - along the street running east-west. You can find virtually everything here, from clothes, footwear and accessories, to food, kitchen utensils, household tools and ceramics. Numerous shops are squeezed into this one street, and it is always crowded with shoppers and browsers.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858),Junkei-machi yomise no zu (Evening market scene in Junkei district, Osaka). Colour woodblock print, 1835.

At the west end of this high street is the bridge to enter the Shinmachi district. Similar to Yoshiwara in Edo and Shimabara in Kyoto, Shinmachi is the officially licensed brothel district, isolated somewhat from the surrounding areas by enclosed walls and ditches. Unless you have plenty of money, Shinmachi may not be for you, but if you have a chance to peek at the grand procession of a courtesan (high-ranked sex worker) walking from the house of her employer to the restaurant where her client awaits, you will understand why an evening's entertainment with her and her entourage is so expensive.

Food and drink

You may have heard it said that Osaka is the 'nation's kitchen' ( tenka no daidokoro).

All kinds of goods go through Osaka. Thanks to its location close to the sea and mountains, Osaka never suffers from a shortage of good food. What makes Osaka's cuisine particularly sophisticated is the use of dashi (umami-packed stock). Dried bonito from the neighbouring Kii province to the south and kelp from the land of Ezo in the far north, make the perfect dashi as a base for various dishes. Good-quality, locally-sourced soy sauce and salt are also available. From casual dining to fancy foods, the choice is yours!

The names of dishes in Osaka may sometimes appear perplexing to visitors. For example, you may see on a menu outside a small restaurant a dish called kashi-wan, meaning 'sweets bowl.' This is not a dessert, but rather sea bream fillet, a slice of steamed fish cake and shiitake mushrooms cooked in a clear savoury soup.

Hasegawa Sadanobu I (1809-1879), Masui Kiyomizu, showing the fresh water well in Masui and a grand restaurant. Colour woodblock print, 1869-1871.

Getting fresh water is a bit of a problem in the city centre. Well water is too briny to drink, but you can buy fresh water from street vendors if you have cash. Otherwise, you can get fresh water for free from the well in Masui, just to the west of Shitennōji Temple. Thanks to the quality of the water springs, excellent restaurants prosper there, and you can find grand two-storey establishments.

Being on the coast, sushi is a must. The recently opened sushi shop, Fukumoto Sushi, is becoming hugely popular. The appearance of their sushi may not be what you expect. It comes in a box, with sliced fillets of abalone, sea bream or a plain omelette on a bed of rice seasoned with salt, sugar and vinegar, eaten with Japanese sanshō pepper and ginger. It is not expensive, but it's a delicious treat. It is so popular that people - even the locals - fight to buy it! Visiting the shop early in the day is recommended.

In Osaka, you can taste the best sake in Japan. This is because not only is the highest-quality clear sake produced in Itami, just across the Yodo River, but also this sake has to pass through Osaka to be transported to Edo via the eastbound sea route.

Itami sake is prized by the elites in Edo, including the shogun himself, because it is clear and clean, unlike the cloudy sake that is more typical. Nowadays you can find about 200 brands of Itami - Hoshi no I (Starry Well), Tanchō-sui (Cranes' Elixir) or Wakatake (Young Bamboo), for example - which one appeals to you?

Religion

Osaka is renowned for the summer festivals ( natsu matsuri) of the shrines. The season runs from the late sixth month to early seventh month (about late July to early August in the Gregorian calendar). It takes weeks to complete the whole set of religious services at each shrine, but the highlights of the festivals are the couple of days when people in the community participate in the celebration and onlookers gather to see the lively parades.

One of the famous summer festivals is at the Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine. The Shrine is quite far south of the city centre, but it is worth a half-day trip. It boasts large green premises which enshrine deities blessing safe sea travel, proficiency in poetry composition and abundant harvests. These deities have been venerated by high and low alike since ancient times.
Continue your holiday-from-home around Japan with a virtual visit to the Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries, which cover Japanese history from 5000 BC to the present day. Discover five highlight objects on our In the mood for more time travelling? You can read these other blogs in our historical city travel guide series: gallery page.

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Historical city travel guide: Osaka in the early 19th century

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Time-travel back to Osaka to sample the best sushi, experience the wonders of Kabuki theatre and explore this central Japanese city's bustling markets.

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Tosa School - Scenes from the Tale of Ise

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Tosa School - Scenes from the Tale of Ise

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Title: Scenes from the Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari)

Period: Edo period (1615-1868)

Medium: Set of album leaf paintings; ink and color on paper (shikishi)

Dimensions: 9 3/8 x 6 13/16 in. (23.8 x 17.3 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Maximilian O. Goldsmith, 1974

Accession Number: 1974.225.2y-ww

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Tosa School | Scenes from the Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari) | Japan | Edo period (1615-1868) | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Title: Scenes from the Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari) Period: Edo period (1615-1868) Medium: Set of album leaf paintings; ink and color on paper (shikishi) Dimensions: 9 3/8 x 6 13/16 in. (23.8 x 17.3 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Maximilian O.

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The Five Highways and Other Routes Across Edo-Period Japan

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The Five Highways and Other Routes Across Edo-Period Japan

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Roads for Military Deployment

Japan's most famous highway, the Tōkaidō, was an essential transportation route between Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto during the Edo period (1603-1868). While there was previously a road linking west and east from over 1,000 years ago, the highway became associated with Tokugawa Ieyasu, who ordered considerable expansions and improvements two years before he received the title of shōgun in 1603.

His initial aim was to put in place a system of high-quality roads centered on Edo that would allow for the rapid deployment of military forces to subjugate any daimyō that fomented rebellion. The work on the Tōkaidō was the first stage of this plan. Its name means "Eastern Sea Road," as it ran along the Pacific coast for much of its length.

The Nakasendō, or "Central Mountain Route," joined Edo and Kyoto on a route farther inland. Ieyasu's 1602 licensing of Mitake-juku, in what is now Gifu Prefecture, as a Nakasendō post station shows that this highway was being improved at the same time. The year also saw the start of upgrades to the Kōshū Kaidō between Edo and where it joined the Nakasendō in modern Yamanashi Prefecture.

The main picture for this article above shows the three highways of the Nakasendō, Kōshū Kaidō, and Tōkaidō lined up in a row. At Katsunuma on the Kōshū Kaidō (to the upper right of the peak of Mount Fuji in the picture), there was an important battle in 1868, around the time of the Meiji Restoration. A unit led by Kondō Isami, loyal to the shōgun, made a desperate but ultimately unsuccessful struggle to prevent forces of the new Meiji government headed by Itagaki Taisuke from entering Edo.

The post station Utsunomiya-shuku on what became the Nikkō Kaidō was licensed in 1602, and highway improvements were extended to Nikkō (in today's Tochigi Prefecture) for a pilgrimage route after the Tōshōgū shrine was built there and dedicated to Ieyasu following his death in 1616. The Ōshū Kaidō followed the same route as the Nikkō Kaidō from Edo until Utsunomiya, where it branched off to continue as far as Shirakawa, in what is now Fukushima Prefecture.

The rapid establishment of the Gokaidō, or Five Highways, fulfilled Ieyasu's plan, cementing Edo's new position as Japan's center.

The Five Highways

Surveillance of Regional Leaders

The Five Highways ranged from around five to nine meters in width, with the considerable breadth fitted to their military purpose.

In 1659, inspectors were appointed to manage the highways, at the same time keeping the daimyō under observation. They reported directly to shogunate officials, who kept a close eye on the roads.

When daimyō were required to make regular visits to Edo under the sankin kōtai system, their processions were like military parades, so they needed the breadth of the Five Highways. This suited the shogunate, which wanted to monitor and manage regional leaders. Movement was basically forbidden from around eight in the evening until four in the morning. Even if the party was late, it could not travel at night. The forced expense of frequent lodging stops was one of the ways in which the daimyō were gradually stripped of power.

Other Roads Around the Country

The Five Highways stretched as far as Kyoto in the west and Shirakawa in the north, but this was not enough to reach all of the domains. Secondary roads further connected the country.

Secondary Roads

There is not always clear agreement on the number of post stations for these roads. Distances are approximations.

For example, until 1700, samurai from the Kishū domain (now Wakayama Prefecture) used the Ise Kaidō to travel through Ise (now Mie Prefecture) before joining the Tōkaidō on their way to Edo.

The Ise sangū meisho zue (Illustrated Guide to the Ise Pilgrimage) depicts a daimyō's entourage passing the Seki-juku station (now in Mie Prefecture) on the Tōkaidō. The station was a connection from the major highway to the Ise Kaidō. While it is not clear whether the group was from Kishū, the picture vividly shows a domain's retainers traveling to the Ise Kaidō. The Tōkaidō saikenzu (Detailed Map of the Tōkaidō) included the castle towns and post stations towns from Edo to Kyoto, and it also showed Seki-juku next to the castle town of Kameyama, as well as a road leading south to Ise.

Roads like the Hokurikudō and San'yōdō had enough traffic to rival the Five Highways, and performed a vital role if Kyoto was considered as Japan's center. The Hokurikudō linked the city to Kanazawa and Echigo (now Niigata Prefecture), while the San'yōdō connected it to the west. They were defined as secondary roads, however, as the shogunate placed greater importance on routes to Edo.

The mass movements under the sankin kōtai system required corresponding transport of goods, which gave a boost to commerce, so that not only samurai but also commoners made more frequent journeys. Thus, although the highway system was constructed for military purposes, its roads came to support trade, industry, and tourism.

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner image: Edo yori Fushimi made Kisoji Nakasendō Tōkaidō ezu [The Kisoji Nakasendō and Tōkaidō from Edo to Fushimi]. The picture shows the Nakasendō, Kōshū Kaidō [not mentioned in the title], and Tōkaidō lined up from top to bottom. Created by an unknown artist in 1668. Courtesy National Diet Library.)

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The Five Highways and Other Routes Across Edo-Period Japan

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When Tokugawa Ieyasu took control of Japan, he embarked on a project of road improvement intended to highlight Edo's position as the new center of the country, and to provide the means for rapid military deployment to defend that position if necessary.

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'Nihonbashi' is a website devoted to spreading the word about the exciting features of Nihonbashi, a place where the traditional exists alongside the new, a place that has thrived in Japan as a center of commerce and culture from the Edo Period to today.

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Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake: how the shogun's ancient capital became a great modern city, 1867-1923 by Edward Seidensticker

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Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake: how the shogun's ancient capital became a great modern city, 1867-1923 by Edward Seidensticker

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Best known for his translations of "The Tale of Genji" and the fiction of Yasunari Kawabata, for which the author won a Nobel Prize, Edward G. Seidensticker was also an accomplished essayist and historian.

Low City, High City, by Edward G. Seidensticker.
KNOPF, Nonfiction.

The first of a two-volume history of Tokyo, "Low City, High City" covers the years 1867 to 1923, when Tokyo, as well as the rest of Japan, joined the modern world after centures of feudalism. Written in a style conversational but not slangy, witty but not snarky, the book is packed with colorful anecdotes and pointed observations based on Seidensticker's thorough primary-source research and long acquaintance with the city. (For decades, he alternated between residences in Tokyo and the United States, finally dying here after a fall near Shinobazu Pond in 2007.) It is not only an absorbing read from cover to cover, but can also be dipped into at any point with pleasure.

There is not much about city-hall politics, but quite a lot about changing social customs and mores. Distinguished visitors are duly noted, such as former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, who stopped in Tokyo in 1879 during a round-the-world tour, but what one brings away are the images, such as Grant at kabuki being greeted by geisha wearing red and white kimonos and, over their exposed shoulders, star-spangled singlets. "It made the prettiest costume imaginable," wrote a contemporary diarist. It also shows that cosplay has deep roots indeed. This sort of descriptive writing, with the telling detail that brings old Tokyo vividly to life, can be found on page after page. Bedtime reading gets no better.
Read archived reviews of Japanese classics at jtimes.jp/essential.

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Best known for his translations of 'The Tale of Genji' and the fiction of Yasunari Kawabata, for which the author won a Nobel Prize, Edward G. Seidensticker was also an accomplished essayist and historian.

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David Rumsey Map Center celebrates its 8th Anniversary April 1, 2024 with a special screening the film "A Stranger Quest" - a documentary about Rumsey and his passion for maps. Free to the public, 4:30pm, Stanford. Details, register https://t.co/dDJUHcCPed Film release late 2024.

"A Stranger Quest," a film about David Rumsey and his passion for maps premiers at the Torino Film Festival November 30. Below is a trailer. Made by Italian filmmaker Andrea Gatopoulos, the film will be released in 2024. https://t.co/yT17D8rebL

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David Rumsey Map Center celebrates its 8th Anniversary April 1, 2024 with a special screening the film "A Stranger Quest" - a documentary about Rumsey and his passion for maps. Free to the public, 4:30pm, Stanford. Details, register https://t.co/dDJUHcCPed Film release late 2024.

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This step-by-step sequence demonstrates the successive stages in printing a woodblock print by Ohara Shoson (1877-1945) titled "Yanagibashi Bridge in the Snow." The sequence was issued in 1935 as a full-size accordion-style booklet by a source identified only as "the proprietor of the Wanatabe Colour-prints Shop."

Massachusetts Institute of Technology © 2008 Visualizing Cultures

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This step-by-step sequence demonstrates the successive stages in printing a woodblock print by Ohara Shoson (1877-1945) titled "Yanagibashi Bridge in the Snow." The sequence was issued in 1935 as a full-size accordion-style booklet by a source identified only as "the proprietor of the Wanatabe Colour-prints Shop."

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First official shogunal painter

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Kanō Tan'yū was one of the foremost Japanese painters of the Kanō school. His original given name was Morinobu; he was the eldest son of Kanō Takanobu and grandson of Kanō Eitoku. Many of the most famous and widely known Kanō works today are by Tan'yū.
In 1617, Tan'yū was appointed by the Tokugawa shogunate to become the shogunate's first official painter. Over the following years, he was given many highly prestigious commissions. Over the 1620s and 1630s, he created a number of large-scale works for Edo Castle, Nijō Castle, Osaka Castle, Nagoya Castle, and Nikkō Tōshō-gū.
Prolific in a variety of painting styles, Tan'yū's most famous works are probably those he produced for these large-scale commissions. They are screens and panels, prime examples of the Momoyama style, depicting natural subjects such as tigers, birds and plants, in bright colors and with extensive use of gold leaf. The gold, often used to represent clouds, water, or other background elements, would reflect what little light was available indoors, brightening a castle's dark rooms.

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Kanō Tan'yū was one of the foremost Japanese painters of the Kanō school.

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Hishikawa Moronobu - Google Arts & Culture

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Hishikawa Moronobu was a Japanese artist known for popularizing the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock prints and paintings in the late 17th century.

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Using the concept of 'Feudalism' to Compare Japan with Europe: Words of Caution

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Using the concept of 'Feudalism' to Compare Japan with Europe: Words of Caution

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"James Clavell's 'Shōgun' is reimagined for a new generation of TV viewers" by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis 

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"James Clavell's 'Shōgun' is reimagined for a new generation of TV viewers" by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis 

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In 1980, when James Clavell's blockbuster historical novel Shōgun was turned into a TV miniseries, some 33% of American households with a television tuned in. It quickly became one of the most viewed miniseries to date, second only to Roots.

I'm a historian of Japan who specializes in the history of the Tokugawa, or early modern era - a period from 1603 to 1868, during which the bulk of the action in Shōgun takes place. As a first-year graduate student, I sat glued to the television for five nights in September 1980, enthralled that someone cared enough to create a series about the period in Japan's past that had captured my imagination.

I wasn't alone. In 1982, historian Henry D. Smith estimated that one-fifth to one-half of students enrolled in university courses about Japan at that time had read the novel and became interested in Japan because of it.

"Shōgun," he added, "probably conveyed more information about the daily life of Japan to more people than all the combined writings of scholars, journalists, and novelists since the Pacific War."

Some even credit the series for making sushi trendy in the U.S.

That 1980 miniseries has now been remade as FX's Shōgun, a ten-episode production that is garnering rave reviews - including a near-100% rating from review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

Both miniseries closely hew to Clavell's 1975 novel, which is a fictionalised retelling of the story of the first Englishman, Will Adams - the character John Blackthorne in the novel - to set foot in Japan.

And yet there are subtle differences in each series that reveal the zeitgeist of each era, along with America's shifting attitudes toward Japan.

The 'Japanese miracle'

The original 1980 series reflects both the confidence of postwar America and its fascination with its resurgent former enemy.

World War II had left Japan devastated economically and psychologically. But by the 1970s and 1980s, the country had come to dominate global markets for consumer electronic, semiconductors and the auto industry. Its gross national product per capita rose spectacularly: from less than US$200 in 1952 to $8,900 in 1980 - the year Shōgun appeared on television - to almost $20,000 in 1988, surpassing the United States, West Germany and France.

Many Americans wanted to know the secret to Japan's head-spinning economic success - the so-called " Japanese miracle." Could Japan's history and culture offer clues?

During the 1970s and 1980s, scholars sought to understand the miracle by analyzing not just the Japanese economy but also the country's various institutions: schools, social policy, corporate culture and policing.

In his 1979 book, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America, sociologist Ezra Vogel argued that the US could learn a lot from Japan, whether it was through the country's long-term economic planning, collaboration between government and industry, investments in education, and quality control of goods and services.

A window into Japan

Clavell's expansive 1,100-page novel was released in the middle of the Japanese miracle. It sold more than 7 million copies in five years; then the series aired, which prompted the sale of another 2.5 million copies.

In it, Clavell tells the story of Blackthorne, who, shipwrecked off the coast of Japan in 1600, finds the country in a peaceful interlude after an era of civil war. But that peace is about to be shattered by competition among the five regents who have been appointed to ensure the succession of a young heir to their former lord's position as top military leader.

In the meantime, local leaders don't know whether to treat Blackthorne and his crew as dangerous pirates or harmless traders. His men end up being imprisoned, but Blackthorne's knowledge of the world outside of Japan - not to mention his boatload of cannons, muskets and ammunition - save him.

He ends up offering advice and munitions to one of the regents, Lord Yoshi Toranaga, the fictional version of the real-life Tokugawa Ieyasu. With this edge, Toranaga rises to become shogun, the country's top military leader.

Viewers of the 1980 television series witness Blackthorne slowly learning Japanese and coming to appreciate the value of Japanese culture. For example, at first, he's resistant to bathing. Since cleanliness is deeply rooted in Japanese culture, his Japanese hosts find his refusal irrational.

Blackthorne's, and the viewers', gradual acclimatization to Japanese culture is complete when, late in the series, he is reunited with the crew of his Dutch ship who have been held in captivity. Blackthorne is thoroughly repulsed by their filth and demands a bath to cleanse himself from their contagion.

Blackthorne comes to see Japan as far more civilized than the West. Just like his real-life counterpart, Will Adams, he decides to remain in Japan even after being granted his freedom. He marries a Japanese woman, with whom he has two children, and ends his days on foreign soil.

From fascination to fear

However, the positive views of Japan that its economic miracle generated, and that Shogun reinforced, eroded as the US trade deficit with Japan ballooned from $10 billion in 1981 to $50 billion in 1985.

" Japan bashing" spread in the US, and visceral anger exploded when American autoworkers smashed Toyota cars in March 1983 and congressmen shattered a Toshiba boombox with sledgehammers on the Capitol lawn in 1987. That same year, the magazine Foreign Affairs warned of " the coming US-Japan crisis."

This backlash against Japan in the US was also fueled by almost a decade of acquisitions of iconic American companies, such as Firestone, Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios, along with high-profile real estate, such as the iconic Rockefeller Center.

But the notion of Japan as a threat reached a peak in 1989, after which its economy stalled. The 1990s and early 2000s were dubbed Japan's " lost decade ".

Yet a curiosity and love for Japanese culture persists, thanks, in part, to manga and anime. More Japanese feature films and television series are also making their way to popular streaming services, including the series Tokyo Girl, Midnight Diner and Sanctuary. In December 2023, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Japan was " on the precipice of a content boom ".

Widening the lens

As FX's remake of "Shōgun" demonstrates, American viewers today apparently don't need to be slowly introduced to Japanese culture by a European guide.

In the new series, Blackthorne is not even the sole protagonist. Instead, he shares the spotlight with several Japanese characters, such as Lord Yoshi Toranaga, who no longer serves as a one-dimensional sidekick to Blackthorne, as he did in the original miniseries.

This change is facilitated by the fact that Japanese characters now communicate directly with the audience in Japanese, with English subtitles. In the 1980 miniseries, the Japanese dialogue went untranslated. There were English-speaking Japanese characters in the original, such as Blackthorne's female translator, Mariko. But they spoke in a highly formalized, unrealistic English.

Along with depicting authentic costumes, combat and gestures, the show's Japanese characters speak using the native language of the early modern era instead of using the contemporary Japanese that made the 1980 series so unpopular among Japanese viewers. (Imagine a film on the American Revolution featuring George Washington speaking like Jimmy Kimmel.)

Of course, authenticity has its limits. The producers of both television series decided to adhere closely to the original novel. In doing so, they're perhaps unwittingly reproducing certain stereotypes about Japan.

Most strikingly, there's the fetishization of death, as several characters have a penchant for violence and sadism, while many others commit ritual suicide, .

Part of this may have been simply a function of author Clavell being a self-professed " storyteller, not an historian". But this may have also reflected his experiences in World War II, when he spent three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Still, as Clavell noted, he came to deeply admire the Japanese.

His novel, as a whole, beautifully conveys this admiration. The two miniseries have, in my view, successfully followed suit, enthralling audiences in each of their times.

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James Clavell's 'Shōgun' is reimagined for a new generation of TV viewers

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Compared to its 1980 predecessor, the new FX series presents a more authentic portrayal of early modern Japan.

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Miss Hokusai Official US Release Trailer (2016) - Animated Movie

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Samurai Jack Season 5 Trailer | Samurai Jack | Adult Swim

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Walking the Tokaido Curriculum from Five College Consortium

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Walking the Tokaido Curriculum from Five College Consortium

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Walking the Tōkaidō: A Multi-Disciplinary Experience in History and Culture

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Matsuo Bashō: The Unparalleled Haiku Poet

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Matsuo Bashō: The Unparalleled Haiku Poet

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Bronze statue of Basho, located in the Basho-an Historical Site Observation Garden (Koto City, Tokyo) by the Sumida River, which is said to have been the site of Basho-an, where Basho lived

The Japanese short poem the "haiku" is beloved all around the world. In this first instalment of a new series that introduces haiku poets who have made a lasting impression on the history of this poetry form, we profile arguably the greatest of them all, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694).

Portrait of Basho by painter and haiku poet Matsumura Gekkei (1752-1811) (Collection of Koto City Basho Museum)

Haiku is a type of poetry unique to Japan that expresses natural aesthetics and human emotions in a limited number of characters. The poems typically comprise 17 on (phonetic units similar to syllables) in lines of five, seven and five (5-7-5) syllables. The basic rule is to include only one word to express the season, called a " kigo," among the seventeen syllables. The kigo are categorized as spring, summer, fall, winter and new year words, and people usually reference a book called the Saijiki, which lists such kigo like a dictionary, when composing haiku.

The most important haiku poet in the history of haiku is Matsuo Basho (hereinafter Basho). He lived until he was about 50 and created about 1,000 poems. In his later years, he came to be called "Haisei" (Great Master of Haiku), which signified that he was unparalleled by any haiku poet.

Noro Tatsuya of the Koto City Basho Museum in Tokyo says, "Basho was someone who perfected haiku as a literary art with high artistry, despite them being short poems of only 17 syllables."

Basho was born in 1644 in present-day Iga City, Mie Prefecture. He came across haikai* at the age of 19 and moved to Nihonbashi (now Chuo City, Tokyo) in Edo at the age of 29 with the dream of making a living out of haikai. After becoming a master of haikai at the age of 35, he started living in a house called Basho-an in Fukagawa (present-day Koto City) along the Sumida River in 1680. Basho was based in Fukagawa for about 14 years until his death, leaving behind a wealth of works.

The following poem is arguably Basho's most famous work and the one that established Basho's original style, called " shofu" (Basho style). Basho made this haiku on the subject of the frog ( kawazu in old Japanese) in the spring of 1686 when his disciples were gathered at his house.

Furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

An ancient pond
A frog jumps in
The splash of water

-Trans. by Koto City Basho Museum

Basho-an as depicted in an 1836 book introducing sights in Edo (present-day Tokyo)

"The frog, which is a kigo for spring, has a croak which has been treated as a symbol of the frog itself. However, Basho did not represent the croak of the frog in this poem but used its jumping movement and the splash of water as his motifs, thereby emphasizing the 'tranquility' of the pond so much that it feels like we can hear the movement of the small frog jumping," says Noro. "In haiku, unnecessary explanations are omitted as much as possible. It encourages the reader to imagine the scene and emotions of the poem."

It is important for haiku to have yohaku (empty space) that allows the reader to exercise their imagination. It is precisely such yohaku that yields the yoin (lingering note) that resonates with the heart. His composition of such poems is one of the ways Basho was innovative.

Basho traveled around the country and composed many haiku in various places. Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) is a travelogue written about his travels with disciples in some regions such as the Tohoku and Hokuriku regions in 1689. It contains 50 poems, one of which is the following.

Araumi ya
Sado ni yokotau
Amanogawa

Turbulent the sea
Across to Sado stretches
The Milky Way.

-Trans. by Donald Keene

This poem, which uses the autumn kigo "Milky Way," describes a scene with Sado Island** in a turbulent Sea of Japan at night and the Milky Way extending high above in the sky. With this short poem, Basho is able to evoke this magnificent image of nature and space in a reader who has not actually seen it. This poem is also regarded as one of Basho's masterpieces.

Haiku has now become a form of expression that is popular not only in Japan but also in other countries, with enthusiasts existing all over the world. For example, John Lennon, a member of the Beatles, said in an interview when he came to Japan in 1971 that "I think haiku is the most beautiful poetry I've ever read. I'd like to simplify my lyrics [to be] as beautiful as haiku." There are numerous other examples of passionate enthusiasts in Europe, such as the former President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, who has produced a haiku anthology of his own.

The Basho-an International English Haiku Competition has been held by the Koto City Basho Museum annually since 2018. Regardless of nationality or age, anyone can submit a haiku via the website. There is a rule that it should consist of two to three lines, but it is not necessary to include a kigo. Last year, the fourth time the competition was held, there were more than 1,500 submissions from 34 countries and regions.

A display of the kind of clothes, hat, sandals, and other objects that Basho might have used on his travels, at Koto City Basho Museum

The haiku form whose artistry Basho established may be considered one of the few literary styles in the world that allows anyone to freely express what they feel with simple words.

* Haikai is also known as haikai-renga and has its roots in the classic poetic form of waka. Waka is generally composed using 31 syllables in lines of five, seven, five, seven, seven (5-7-5-7-7) syllables. Traditional waka poetry often has a single author, but haikai is composed by multiple people. It starts with one person composing only the five, seven and five (5-7-5) syllables of the first half, called the "hokku," which is then followed by another person (other persons) composing the latter lines of seven and seven (7-7).
** SeeHighlighting Japan November 2021, "The Island of Gold Seeking to Become a World Heritage Site" https://www.gov-online.go.jp/eng/publicity/book/hlj/html/202111/202111_06_en.html

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Matsuo Basho: The Unparalleled Haiku Poet

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The Japanese short poem the "haiku" is beloved all around the world. In this first instalment of a new series "Haiku Poets", we profile arguably the greatest of them , Matsuo Basho (1644-1694).

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Matsuo Basho1644‐1694Matsuo Munefusa was born in U

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Silence (2016) Trailer, novel by Shūsaku Endō (1966)

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Silence (2016) Trailer, novel by Shūsaku Endō (1966)

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Silence Official Trailer (2016) - Paramount Pictures

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Shōgun - Official Trailer | Hiroyuki Sanada, Cosmo Jarvis, Anna Sawai | FX

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The Last Samurai Official Trailer #1 - (2003) HD

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Samurai Champloo – Opening Theme – Battlecry

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PDF: Shirane, Ch 3 'The Poetry and Prose of Matsuo Bashō' and Ch 7 'Comic and Satiric Poetry' pp. 85-120; 249-260

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PDF: Shirane, Ch 3 'The Poetry and Prose of Matsuo Bashō' and Ch 7 'Comic and Satiric Poetry' pp. 85-120; 249-260

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PDF: Ebrey, et al 'Edo Japan' pp. 279-294

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PDF: Ebrey, et al 'Edo Japan' pp. 279-294

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"New 'Shogun' series is a cut above the original" from Japan Times

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"New 'Shogun' series is a cut above the original" from Japan Times

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New ‘Shogun’ series is a cut above the original

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From the 1980 original to ‘Last Samurai’ to now, Hollywood is getting better at depicting Japan.

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Black Ships and Samurai by John W. Dower

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Black Ships and Samurai by John W. Dower

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Perry, ca. 1854

Perry, ca. 1856

© Nagasaki Prefecture

by Mathew Brady, Library of Congress

On July 8, 1853, residents of Uraga on the outskirts of Edo, the sprawling capital of feudal Japan, beheld an astonishing sight. Four foreign warships had entered their harbor under a cloud of black smoke, not a sail visible among them. They were, startled observers quickly learned, two coal-burning steamships towing two sloops under the command of a dour and imperious American. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry had arrived to force the long-secluded country to open its doors to the outside world.

"The Spermacetti Whale"
by J. Stewart, 1837
New Bedford Whaling Museum

This was a time that Americans can still picture today through Herman Melville's great novel Moby Dick, published in 1851-a time when whale-oil lamps illuminated homes, baleen whale bones gave women's skirts their copious form,

Whale Chart, Japan in blue (detail, color added) New Bedford Whaling Museum

by M.F. Maury, US Navy, 1851

and much industrial machinery was lubricated with the leviathan's oil. For several decades, whaling ships departing from New England ports had plied the rich fishery around Japan, particularly the waters near the northern island of Hokkaido. They were prohibited from putting in to shore even temporarily for supplies, however, and shipwrecked sailors who fell into Japanese hands were commonly subjected to harsh treatment.

This situation could not last. "If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable," Melville wrote in Moby Dick, "it is the whaleship alone to whom the credit will be due, for already she is on the threshold." One of the primary objectives of Perry's expedition was to demand that castaways be treated humanely and whalers and other American vessels be provided with one or two ports of call with access to "coal, provisions, and water."

The message Perry brought to Japan's leaders from President Millard Fillmore also looked forward, in very general terms, to the eventual establishment of mutually beneficial trade relations. On the surface, Perry's

President Fillmore's

1853 letter to
"The Emperor of Japan"

demands seemed relatively modest. Yet, as his own career made clear, this was also a moment when the world stood on the cusp of phenomenal change.

Nicknamed "Old Bruin" by one of his early crews (and "Old Hog" and other disparaging epithets by crewman with the Japan squadron), Matthew Perry was the younger brother of Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the American victory over the British on Lake Erie in 1813. His own fame as a wartime leader had been established in the recent U.S. war against Mexico, where he commanded a squadron that raided various ports and supported the storming of Vera Cruz. Victory over Mexico in 1848 did not merely add California to the United States. It also opened the vista of new frontiers further west across the Pacific Ocean. The markets and heathen souls of near-mythic "Asia" now beckoned more enticingly than ever before. Mars, Mammon, and God traveled hand-in-hand in this dawning age of technological and commercial revolution.

U.S. merchant firms had been involved in the China trade centering on Canton since the previous century. Indeed, "Chinoiserie"-elegant furnishings and objects d'art imported from the Far East, or else mimicking Chinese and Japanese art and artifacts-graced many fashionable European and American homes from the late-17th century on. Following England's victory in the Opium War of 1839-1842, the United States joined the system of "unequal treaties" that opened additional Chinese ports to foreign commerce. Tall, elegant Yankee clipper ships engaged in a lively commerce that included not merely Oriental luxuries such as silks, porcelains, and lacquer ware, but also opium (for China) and Chinese coolies (to help build America's transcontinental railway). Now, as Perry would ponderously convey to the Japanese, ports on the West Coast such as San Francisco were opening up as well. In the new age of steam-driven vessels, the distance between California and Japan had been reduced to but 18 days. Calculations concerning space, and time, and America's "manifest destiny" itself had all been dramatically transformed.

For Americans, Perry's expedition to Japan was but one momentous step in a seemingly inexorable westward expansion that ultimately spilled across the Pacific to embrace the exotic "East." For the Japanese, on the other hand, the intrusion of Perry's warships was traumatic, confounding, fascinating, and ultimately devastating.

For almost a century prior to the 1630s, Japan had in fact engaged in stimulating relations with European trading ships and Christian missionaries. Widely known as the "southern barbarians" (since they arrived from the south, after sailing around India and through the South Seas), these foreigners established a particularly strong presence in and around the great port city of Nagasaki on the southern island of Kyushu. Spain, Portugal, Holland, and England engaged in a lucrative triangular trade involving China as well as Japan.

Protestant missionaries eventually followed their Catholic predecessors and rivals, and by the early-17th century Christian converts in Kyushu were calculated to number many tens of thousands. (Catholic missionaries put the figure at around a quarter million.) At the same time, Japanese culture had become enriched by a brilliant vogue of "Southern Barbarian" art-by artwork, that is, that depicted the Europeans in Japan as well as the lands and cultures from which they had come. This new world of visual imagery ranged from large folding screens depicting the harbor at Nagasaki peopled with foreigners and their trading ships to both religious and secular paintings copied from European sources.

he arrival of "Southern Barbarians," 17th-century folding screen
T
Nagasaki Prefecture

During these same decades, the Japanese themselves were venturing abroad. Their voyagers established footholds in Siam and the Philippines, for example, and a small delegation of Japanese Christians actually visited the Vatican. The country seemed poised to join in the great age of overseas expansion.

All this came to an abrupt end in 1639, when the ruling warrior government enforced a strict "closed country" ( sakoku) policy: Japanese were forbidden to travel abroad, foreigners were expelled, and Christian worship was forbidden and cruelly punished.

The rationale behind the draconian seclusion policy was both strategic and ideological. The foreign powers, not unreasonably, were seen as posing a potential military threat to Japan; and it was feared, again not unreasonably, that devotion to the Christian Lord might undermine absolute loyalty to the feudal lords who ruled the land.

17th-century Japanese portrait of Francis Xavier, the Spanish Jesuit who introduced Christianity to Japan in the mid-16th centuryKobe City Museum

of Virgin Mary Shiryo Hensanjo,
Fumie
with Christ child

University of Tokyo

"Hidden Christians" reluctant to recant were ferreted out by forcing them to step on pictures or metal bas-reliefs of Christian icons such as the crucifixion or the Virgin Mary known as

The most notable small exception to the seclusion policy was the continued presence of a Dutch mission confined to Dejima, a tiny, fan-shaped, artificial island in the harbor at Nagasaki. Through Dejima and the Dutch, the now isolated Japanese maintained a small window on developments in the outside world.

fumie (literally, "step-on pictures"), and observing their reactions-a practice the Japanese sometimes forced American castaways to do as well.

The "fan-shaped" island of Nagasaki Prefecture (above left)

Dejima in Nagasaki harbor,
Peabody Essex Museum
where the Dutch were
permitted to maintain
an enclave during
the period of seclusion

Under the seclusion policy, the Japanese enjoyed over two centuries of insular security and economic self-sufficiency. Warriors became bureaucrats. Commerce flourished. Major highways laced the land. Lively towns dotted the landscape, and great cities came into being. At the time of Perry's arrival, Edo (later renamed Tokyo) had a population of around one million. The very city that Perry's tiny fleet approached in 1853 was one of the greatest urban centers in the world-although the outside world was unaware of this.

As it turned out, Perry himself never got to see Edo. Although his mission to open Japan succeeded in every respect, the negotiations took place in modest seaside locales. It remained for those who followed to tell the world about Japan's extraordinary capital city.

While the Japanese did not experience the political, scientific, and industrial revolutions that were sweeping the Western world during their two centuries of seclusion, these developments were not unknown to them. Through the Dutch enclave at Dejima, a small number of Japanese scholars had kept abreast of "Dutch studies" ( Rangaku) and "Western studies" ( Yogaku). And as news of European expansion filtered in, the feudal regime in Edo became alarmed enough to relax its anti-foreign strictures and permit the establishment of an official "Institute for the Investigation of Barbarian Books."

One of the earliest accounts of North America to appear in Japanese, published in 1708, reflected more than a little confusion: it referred to "a country cold and large...with many lions, elephants, tigers, leopards, and brown and white bears," in which "the natives are pugnacious and love to fight." As happens in secluded societies everywhere, moreover, there existed a subculture of fabulous stories about peoples inhabiting far-away places.

An 18th-century scroll titled "People of Forty-two Lands," for example, played to such imagination with illustrations of figures with multiple arms and legs, people with huge holes running through their upper bodies, semi-human creatures feathered head to toe like birds, and so on.

(details), ca. 1720 "People of Forty-two Lands"
Ryosenji Treasure Museum

Such grotesqueries belonged to a larger fantasy world of supernatural beings that had countless visual representations in popular art. Throughout the period of seclusion, however, naturalistic depictions of Europeans in the tradition of the "Southern Barbarian" artwork continued to be produced, particularly depicting the daily life of the "red hairs," as the Dutch in Dejima were commonly known.

Dutch dinner party

by Kawahara Keiga,
Peabody Essex Museum
early-19th century

Dutch familyDutch "surgery"
by Jo Girin, ca. 1800
Peabody Essex Museum

Kobe City Museum

Concrete knowledge of the West, including the United States, deepened over time. The Japanese obtained Chinese translations of certain American texts, including a standard history of the United States, and the very eve of Perry's arrival saw the publication of both a full-length "New History of America" (which, among other things, singled out egalitarianism, beef eating, and milk drinking) and a "General Account of America" that described the Americans as educated and civilized, and stated that they should be met "with respect but not fear."

Illustrations from a Japanese book about the United States published on the eve of Perry'sCollection of Carl H. Boehringer
arrival included imaginary renderings of "Columbus and Queen Isabella" (left)
and "George Washington and Amerigo Vespucci" (!)

The most vivid and intimate information available to Japanese officials prior to Perry's arrival came from "John Manjiro," a celebrated Japanese youth who had been shipwrecked while fishing off the Japanese coast in 1841. Only 14 years old at the time,

John Manjiro

Manjiro was rescued by an American vessel and brought to the United States. He lived in Fairhaven, Massachusetts for three years, sailed for a while on an American whaler, and even briefly joined the gold rush to California in 1849. When Manjiro finally made his way back to Japan in 1851, samurai officials interrogated him at great length.

Manjiro praised the Americans as a people who were "upright and generous, and do no evil"-although he noted that they did engage in odd practices like reading in the toilet, living in houses cluttered with furniture, and expressing affection between men and women in public (in this regard, he found them "lewd" and "wanton"). Manjiro also regaled his interrogators with accounts of America's remarkable technological progress, including railways, steamships, and the telegraph. An account of his adventures prepared with the help of a samurai scholar in 1852 even included crude drawings of a paddle-wheel steamship and a train.

When Perry's warships appeared off Uraga at the entry to Edo Bay, they were thus not a complete surprise. The Dutch in Dejima had informed the Japanese that the expedition was on its way. And John Manjiro had already described the wonders of the steam engine. As the official report of the Perry expedition later noted, "however backward the Japanese themselves may be in practical science, the best educated among them are tolerably well informed of its progress among more civilized or rather cultivated nations." Such abstract knowledge, however, failed to mitigate the shock of the commodore's gunboat diplomacy.

Perry was not the first American to enter Japanese waters and attempt to make that double-bolted land "hospitable." Several American vessels flying Dutch flags had entered Nagasaki harbor around the turn of the century, intent on commerce. In 1837, the unarmed trading ship Morrison had approached Uraga on a private mission to promote not only trade but also "the glory of God in the salvation of thirty-five million souls." At Uraga, and again at Kagoshima on the southern tip of Kyushu, the vessel was fired on and driven off. In 1845, the whaleship Manhattan was allowed to briefly put in at Uraga to return 22 shipwrecked Japanese sailors.

The whaleship, New Bedford

Manhattan
1845 watercolor by
an anonymous
Whaling Museum
Japanese artist

The following year, two warships commanded by Commodore James Biddle entered Edo Bay and engaged in preliminary contact with Japanese officials. Biddle was not allowed to come ashore, however, and when ordered to "depart immediately" did precisely as he had been told-leaving no legacy beyond a few American and Japanese illustrations of his warships.

Lithograph depicting Commodore Biddle's ships anchored in Edo Bay in 1846 and surrounded by small Japanese boats

Peabody Essex Museum

Perry possessed what his predecessors had lacked: grim determination, for one thing-and, still more intimidating, the steam-driven warships. He was not to be denied. And the erstwhile warrior leaders in Edo, who had not actually fought any wars for almost two-and-a-half centuries, quickly recognized that they had no alternative but to submit to his demands. They lacked the firepower-and all the advanced technology such power exemplified-to resist.

Perry prepared diligently for his mission, and immersed himself in the most authoritative foreign publications available on Japan. Some of these accounts, emanating from Europeans who had been stationed in Dejima, provided a general overview of political, economic, and social conditions. An American geography text described Japan in flattering terms as "the most civilized and refined nation of Asia," while other accounts, dwelling on the persecution of Christians and inhospitable treatment meted out to castaways, spoke derisively of a land that had regressed "into barbarism and idolatry."

In Japan and the Japanese, a small book published in America in 1852 as a send-off to the Perry expedition, a former employee of the British East India Company paired synopses of prior writings with a selection of illustrations that revealed how odd and exotic the little-known heathen still remained in the imagination of Westerners. These thoroughly fanciful graphics conjured up a world of bizarre religious icons commingled with sturdy men and women wearing Chinese-style robes, holding large and stiff fan-shaped implements, even promenading with folded umbrella-like tents draped over their heads and carried from behind by an attendant.

Illustrations in Japan and the Japanese (1852) included the worshipping of idols,
"Habit of the Japanese Soldiers," and "A Japanese Lady of Quality"

Such fantasy masquerading as informed commentary and illustration was typical. Just months before Perry's arrival in Japan, the popular U.S. periodical Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion published a dramatic engraving depicting "the emperor of Japan" holding public court in "Jeddo" (the old romanized spelling of Edo, the capital city later renamed Tokyo). Here, too-despite being annotated with fifteen numbered details-the graphic was entirely imaginary. The emperor lived in Kyoto rather than Edo. His palace surroundings were not highly Sinified ("Chinese"), as depicted here. He never held public court. And Japanese "gentlemen" and "soldiers" did not wear costumes or sport hairstyles of the sort portrayed.

"Representation of the Throne of the Emperor of Japan, at Jeddo"

from the April 12, 1853 issue of Gleason's Pictorial

In his private journals, Perry himself anticipated encountering "a weak and barbarous people," and resolved to assume the most forbidding demeanor possible within the bounds of proper decorum. Despite his diligent preparations, he (much like Gleason's Pictorial) never fully grasped where real power resided and with whom he was dealing. The letter he carried from President Fillmore was addressed "To His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan," and the report the commodore published after his mission was completed referred repeatedly to his dealings with "Imperial Commissioners." The hereditary imperial house in Kyoto was virtually powerless, however, having ceded de facto authority some seven centuries previously to warriors headed by a Shogun, or Supreme Commander. The "Imperial Commissioners" to whom Perry conveyed his demands were actually representatives of the warrior government headed by the Tokugawa clan, which had held the position of Shogun since the beginning of the 17th century.

In practice, none of this ambiguity mattered. Perry dealt with the holders of real authority, and through them had his way.

His 1853 visit was short. While the Japanese looked on in horror, the Americans blithely surveyed the waters around Edo Bay. On July 14, five days after appearing off Uraga, the commodore went ashore with great pomp and ceremony to present his demands to the Shogun's officials, who had gathered onshore near what was then the little town of Yokohama, south of Edo. Perry's entourage of some 300 officers, marines, and musicians passed without incident through ranks of armed samurai to a hastily erected "Audience Hall" made of wood and cloth. There Perry handed over President Fillmore's letter, explained that the United States sought peace and prosperity for both countries, and announced that he would return shortly, with a larger squadron, for the government's answer. Three days later, the four American vessels weighed anchor and left.

Perry made good on his heavy-handed promise some six months later, this time arriving in early March of 1854 with nine vessels (including three steamers), over 100 mounted guns, and a crew of close to 1,800.

This second encounter was accompanied by far greater interaction and socialization between the two sides. Gifts were exchanged, banquets were held, entertainment was offered, and the Americans spent much more time on shore, observing the countryside and intermingling with ordinary Japanese as well as local officials. The high point of these activities was a treaty signed on March 31 in Kanagawa, another locale on Edo Bay, which met all of the U.S. government's requests. The Treaty of Kanagawa guaranteed good treatment of castaways, opened two Japanese ports (Shimoda and Hakodate) for provisions and refuge, and laid the groundwork for Japan's reluctant acceptance of an American "consul"-which, as soon transpired, broke down the remaining barriers to Japan's incorporation in the global political economy.

The Perry expeditions of 1853 and 1854 constitute an extraordinary moment in the modern encounter between "East" and "West." Japan was suddenly "opened" to a world of foreign influences and experiences that poured in like a flood and quickly seeped into all corners of the archipelago. And the Americans-and other foreigners who quickly followed on their heels (the British, Dutch, French, and Russians)-abruptly found themselves face-to-face with an "Oriental" culture that had hitherto existed primarily as a figment of imagination. On all sides-whether facing "East" or facing "West"-the experience was profound. Whole new worlds became visualized in unprecedented ways.

Title page of the official Narrative

of the Perry mission.

This was true literally, not just figuratively. On the American side, Perry's entourage included two accomplished artists: William Heine and Eliphalet Brown, Jr. Their graphic renderings- particularly Heine's detailed depictions of scenic sites and crowded activities-were subsequently reproduced as tinted lithographs and plain woodcuts in a massive official U.S. account of the expedition (published in three volumes between 1856 and 1858, and cumbersomely titled Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, performed in the years 1852, 1853, and 1854, under the Command of Commodore M. C. Perry, United States Navy, by Order of the Government of the United States). Additionally, a small selection of official illustrations was made available in the form of large, independent, brightly colored lithographs.

As it happened, the Perry expeditions took place shortly after the invention of daguerreotype photography (in 1839), and Eliphalet Brown, Jr. in particular was entrusted with compiling a photographic record of the mission. Although most of his plates were subsequently destroyed in a fire, we still can easily imagine what was recorded through the camera's eye, for the official narrative also includes woodcuts and lithographs of carefully posed Japanese that are explicitly identified as being "from a daguerreotype."

On the Japanese side, there was no comparable official visual record of these encounters, although we know from accounts of the time that boatloads of Japanese artists and illustrators rushed out to draw the "black ships" from virtually the moment they appeared off Uraga. What we have instead of a consolidated official collection is a scattered treasury of graphic renderings of various aspects of the startling foreign intrusion. The Americans were, of course, as alien to the Japanese as the Japanese were, in their turn, to the Americans. They were, depending on the viewer, strange, curious, fascinating, attractive, lumpish, humorous, outlandish, and menacing-frequently an untidy mixture of several of these traits.

Japanese artists, moreover, rendered their impressions through forms of expression that differed from the lithographs, woodcuts, paintings, and photographs that Europeans and Americans of the time relied on in delineating the visual world. Vivacious woodblock prints, cruder runs of black-and-white " kawaraban" broadsheets, and drawings and brushwork in a conspicuously "Japanese" manner constituted the primary vehicles through which the great encounters of 1853 and 1854 were conveyed to a wider audience in Japan. Some of this artwork spilled over into the realm of caricature and cartoon.

The complementary but decidedly contrasting American and Japanese images of the Perry mission and opening of Japan constitute a rare moment in the history of "visualizing cultures." This was, after all, an unusually concentrated face-to-face encounter between a fundamentally white, Christian, and expansionist "Western" nation and a reclusive and hitherto all-but-unknown "Oriental" society. It was also a moment during which each side produced hundreds of graphic renderings not only of the alien foreigner, but of themselves as well. It is tempting, and indeed fascinating, to ask which side was more "realistic" in its renderings-but this really misses the point. For it is only by seeing the visual record whole, in its fullest possible range and variety, that we can grasp how complex and multi-layered these interactions really were.

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Perry, ca. 1854 Perry, ca. 1856 © Nagasaki Prefecture by Mathew Brady, Library of Congress On July 8, 1853, residents of Uraga on the outskirts of Edo, the sprawling capital of feudal Japan, beheld an astonishing sight. Four foreign warships had entered their harbor under a cloud of black smoke, not a sail visible among them.

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Video: Ukiyo-e woodblock printing with Keizaburo Matsuzaki

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Video: Ukiyo-e woodblock printing with Keizaburo Matsuzaki

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Ukiyo-e woodblock printmaking with Keizaburo Matsuzaki

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Voices of Early Modern Japan by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis

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Voices of Early Modern Japan by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis

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Stranger in the Shongun's City by Amy Stanley

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Stranger in the Shongun's City by Amy Stanley

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Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award in Biography
Stranger in the Shogun's City is a history of a city: Tokyo (which was then called Edo) in the first half of the nineteenth century. It's also the story of a rebellious, discontented woman who sacrificed everything to be there. The book follows her from her childhood in Japan's snow country, through three catastrophic marriages and a devastating famine, to her escape to the shogun's capital. It's about how a woman used the city to recreate herself - as a maidservant, a tenement-dweller, a samurai's wife - and how she, and others like her, built the global megalopolis we know today.

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Stranger in the Shogun's City - Amy Stanley

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Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award in Biography Stranger in the Shogun's City is a history of a city: Tokyo (which was then called Edo) in the first half of the nineteenth century. It's also the story of a rebellious, discontented woman who sacrificed everything to be there.

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East Asia Resource Center, University of Washington

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East Asia Resource Center, University of Washington

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