PROFILE
Masao Kawashima
Ph.D., Cultural history of the Japanese society in the medieval and early modern periods.
As the Director of the Digital Humanities Center for Japanese Arts and Cultures and the Leader of Kyoto Culture Group, I am conducting various research and educational projects. Among them, there is the project on “A Comprehensive Archive of the Rakuchu-rakugai-zu screen paintings and Changes in Urban Culture Depicted,” which promotes digital archiving of not only these screen paintings but also other genre paintings in the medieval and early modern periods.
■ Selected Publications
M. Kawashima, (2008) On Muromachi Culture (in Japanese). Tokyo: Hosei University Press.
M. Kawashima, (1999) A Social History Appeared in “Rakuchu-rakugai” Kyoto: Shibunkaku.
M. Kawashima and H. Ozawa, (1994) An Illustrated Analysis of Uesugi-version Rakuchu-rakugai-zu (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kawaide-shobo Shinsha.
M. Kawashima, (1992) Surroundings of Medieval Kyoto Culture (in Japanese). Kyoto: Shibunkaku.
■ Message
I am very much pleased to welcome distinguished scholars in various fields of digital humanities from universities and museums in and outside of Japan. I sincerely hope that all the people who are interested in digital humanities and Japanese cultural studies under globalization, including myself, will benefit from this wonderful occasion.
Abstract
Early Modern Genre Paintings and the Digital Humanities
This presentation raises some issues to which we have to give consideration, when analyzing genre paintings created in the early modern period or before. While having seen some successful cases of digital archiving of paintings, such as that of ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock prints), we still have to deal with quite a few problems, technological or otherwise. For example, when introducing information technology such as digital archiving into conventional academic fields in the Humanities, we have to reconsider their established premises, including the relationship between researchers who want to study paintings as research materials and their owners' copy rights. I will discuss these issues with a couple of actual examples.
