"The day after the April 1 Reiwa announcement, staff at Kinokuniya Co.'s giant bookshop in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward piled a wagon near the cash registers high with copies of the 'Manyoshu'" (Mainichi Japan)

The Reiwa era was announced which marked the end of the previous era, the Heisei era. The announcement of the 232nd era of Japan sparked public interest in "Manyoshu", the oldest extant collection of Japanese poetry. Inside the book seemed to contain "source material" to naming the new era. I wonder whether the book have names for the eras succeeding the Reiwa era.

"In East Asia the arts of poetry, calligraphy, and painting are considered the 'three perfections,'"

"Three pairs of shikishi are pasted on each panel: each pair is inscribed with a couplet from a Chinese poem at the right and a waka... at the left."

These forms of art and literature were considered "perfections" so this is a piece of work with all three, which is product that embodied perfection. In addition, they put this work together using ink, gold, and silver which are expensive materials, which is an indication of how much they valued poetry.

"Women of all ages flock to Kawai Shrine to pray for beauty. Supplicants paint their ideal face on a vanity mirror-shaped ema votive plaque (kagami-ema) and hang it on a rack with their wishes for good looks."

This ancient shrine serves as place for women to pray and become beautiful. It seems like a tourist destination and makes me want to visit shrines if I ever go to Japan. My question is: Was this shrine always used to pray for beauty? I assumed this Kawai shrine is relatively new although the buildings have been there for centuries.

"This drop-front cabinet was designed to store the forty-two volumes of the Taiheki, a Japanese historical epic written in the late fourteenth century...The exterior of the cabinet is decorated with autumn grasses and flowers, further embellished with inlaid silver dewdrops"

"Taiheki belongs to the genre of Japanese literature known as gunki monogatari, or war tales."

The Taiheki series similar to other pieces of works seem to be sacred because they created a cabinet with the sole purpose to store these stores. This certain period of history is protected in this drawer with a handle and embellished with foliage and silver. I wonder if this handle was used to carry the cabinet for transport?

"This screen, the left of a pair, shows four of the Eight Views of Ōmi....Conspicuous on the right is the Ishiyamadera, the hillside temple where the author of The Tale of Genji is said to have been moved to write her compelling portrait of court life by the sight of the full moon reflected on the lake."

The screen depicts the Japanese version of the eight views in XiaoXiang and also involves the temple where Murasaki moved to. The style of work referred to the work of the Soga school during 15-16th century but this work was made a lot later on. I wonder what had compelled Soga Shohaku to create this piece later on.

Noh masks are used in Noh performances, serving as characters and artistic creations. There generally 5 categories of masks including female, male, elder, demon, and ghost/spirit masks which are used to portray each role in a performance.

There are many masks that a performer can choose to use based on the character they are playing. I wonder if they switched masks frequently throughout the performances to convey changing emotions. I had just learned that the Hannya masks are actually the faces of women who are angry.

"The book Moretti had found turned out to be the earliest-known adaptation of the book for children. Created in 1766, the volume first shows the main character as a young boy, likely to encourage young readers to identify with him and uses simpler phonetic characters that readers with only two years of school could read..."

"The book also contains only a selection of the 125 episodes in the full Tales of Ise, which contains scenes from the life of an unnamed man, from his youth, through his adult loves and troubles, to his old age."

I wonder if this was the earliest children's book or the earliest children's book to adapt classic Japanese literature. This book exposed children to poetry, so I wonder whether children had a difficult time reading and interpreting the stories.

Japanese woodblock printing became hugely popular in the Edo period. To start, the first step is to transfer an image to your block using a marker. Then, the artist will use tools to carve the image using tools of various sizes. Next, the artist applies ink to the image on the carved block, pressing a sheet of paper on top to test the print. To add color to the print, separate blocks must be carved for each color.

Through this process, the artists must be skilled in understanding how the carving will look when printed. I think it would be extremely hard to get it right the first time and if you mess up, I think you would have to restart. Also, using blocks with different colors is confusing since you need to make sure the colors don't overlap.

The kabuki performance illustrated many battles and conflicts. Battles were choreographed to depict fights and weapons were used as props.

I liked watching them perform in various settings which was quite impressive to see. I'm curious to know about the creator of the stories and why they wanted to write this story.

These panels were created by Ono no Ozū, with illustrations and calligraphy depicting scenes from The Tale of Genji. This collection of works was written several centuries after the novel was written; So, I wonder what influenced her to create this during the 17th century? Calligraphic excerpts seemed to have about 10-20 characters which is relatively short. I wonder which scenes these are and whether it is enough context to tell the story?