ARC-iJAC Activities

We are pleased to announce that 1,481 ukiyo-e prints from the Mukai Nobuo Collection of Senshu University Library are now available online in the Ukiyo-e Portal Database of the Art Research Center (ARC), Ritsumeikan University.

Ukiyo-e Database of the Mukai Nobuo Collection, Senshu University Library

Note: From the ARC Ukiyo-e Portal Database, you can search for the Mukai Nobuo Collection by entering '向井信夫文庫' in the 'collection'-field.

The late Mukai Nobuo was known as a collector and researcher of Edo-period Japanese books. His collection comprises a wide variety of books from the late Edo period, such as gesaku (戯作)--including sharebon (洒落本), kokkeibon (滑稽本), hanashibon (咄本), and ninjobon (人情本)--kanshibun (漢詩文), kyoshi (狂詩) and kyobun (狂文), kosho zuihitsu (考証随筆), Yoshiwara-and kabuki-related works, picture books, and more.

While collecting these Japanese books, he also collected ukiyo-e prints and ukiyo-e albums of the same period. It is a well-balanced collection of late-Edo period actor prints (役者絵), warrior prints (武者絵), prints of beautiful women (美人画), and caricatures, with a sizeable collection of 690 works by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡芳年).

The Art Research Center (ARC) has collaborated in this project by digitizing the collection and providing detailed metadata.

While the Edo-period Japanese books of the Mukai Nobuo Collection are released sequentially by the National Institute of Japanese Literature, they are also accessible through the ARC database system.

Senshu University Library's Nobuo Mukai Collection Browsing System

Note: From the Early Japanese Books Portal Database, you can search by entering '専修大学' as the owner of the collection.

Regarding the use of rare books and materials of Senshu University Library, please refer to the library website https://library.lib.senshu-u.ac.jp/information/collection.

The 116th International ARC Seminar will be held as a Webinar on Wednesday, April 26, from 18:00 JST.

The program is as follows:

1. Speaker: Simon KANER (Executive Director, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, University of East Anglia)

Topic: Stonehenge and prehistoric Japan--Archaeological exchanges between Japan and the UK: Current and future trends

2. Speakers: Ryoko MATSUBA (Lecturer in Digital Japanese Arts and Humanities, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, University of East Anglia)
Joseph BILLS (MPhil, Japanese Studies, University of Cambridge)
Bori KO (MA Student, History of Art and Archaeology of East Asia, SOAS University of London)
Liam HEAD (MA Student, Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies, University of East Anglia)

Topic: Implementing the ARC Model in the UK: Digitising Sword Ornaments at the British Museum

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Date: Wednesday, April 26, 18:00 - 19:30 JST

Participation: online via Zoom, free of charge (no reservation required)

*This Webinar is open to everyone, and non-ARC members are also invited to participate via YouTube.

We are pleased to announce the Call for Manuscript Submissions for the Art Research Center's journal ART RESEARCH vol. 24-2.

As an academic journal specializing in arts and culture, the purpose of ART RESEARCH is to widely publicize the results of the research projects and activities conducted by the Art Research Center (ARC), Ritsumeikan University, and its partner institutions and collaborative researchers.

Since its establishment in 1998, the Art Research Center (ARC) has been selected for several national grants as a center of excellence for research in culture, art, and information science. In FY2019, the center assumed the role as the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art & Culture (ARC-iJAC) upon its accreditation by the MEXT as an International Joint Usage/Research Center. The ARC is highly regarded as a leading hub for the digital archiving of Japanese art and culture.

Our online journal will be published several times a year, and at the end of the fiscal year, a print booklet compiling all contributions will be distributed, as we hope to increase the submission opportunities for researchers.

We look forward to receiving your manuscript.

Read more>>

Background:
Supported by the ARC-iJAC, the research led by Dr. Ewa Machotka and Dr. John Pavlopoulos (Stockholm University) has pursued the large-scale digital geospatial exploration of places depicted in Japanese early modern ukiyo-e landscape prints through Natural Language Processing (FY 2021). Their follow-up project aims to apply NLP technology to inscriptions on ukiyo-e landscape prints to facilitate a large-scale exploration of textual information featured in those prints (FY 2023).

Project leader: Dr. Ewa Machotka (Dept. of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Stockholm University)
Project manager: Dr. John Pavlopoulos (Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University)
Project members: Konstantina Liagkou, Panagiotis Papapetrou, Marita Chatzipanagiotou

Thank you very much for your time today. Could you please tell us the motivation for your ARC-iJAC research project Natural Language Processing for a Geospatial Exploration of Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints?

Machotka: The last several decades saw the rise of interest in the concept of Global Art History, understood as a heterogenous transnational and critical study of the world's cultural production. One of the challenges of this new research direction is the question of how to acknowledge the conceptual and material heterogeneity of artistic production across the world in a way that does not support a universalist understanding of cultures. This concern prompted our research. We saw that Japanese early modern landscape prints, as globally recognizable non-Western pre-modern artifacts, offer a critical testbed for considering these issues.

We know that these prints are often defined today as fūkei-ga, or landscapes. However, we should not forget that the notion of fūkei is a modern cultural translation entangled with the ideology of modernization and colonial power. Originally these images were largely defined as meisho-e or 'images of famous places', and they are rooted in poetic rhetorical figures that tie seasonal images with either actual or imagined places. So, to understand meisho-e prints and their social function at the time of their production, we have to understand what places were depicted (i.e. considered culturally significant) and how these geographical locations were represented and mediated by the prints. We wanted to identify a general pattern in this mediation, which can be done easier at a large scale instead of at the level of individual prints.

Considering the richness of the corpus that includes thousands of objects, we thought that recent advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) could effectively help us to take the first step in this study, namely the geolocation of places depicted in prints, and identification of their distribution across time and space. Our exploratory mixed-method analysis has so far delivered promising results. We developed a novel application of NLP for the Digital Humanities that demonstrates the transformative potential of AI for the study of Japanese early modern prints and Art History at large.

How have the ARC-iJAC resources supported you in realizing this project?

Liagkou: To put it plainly, our research would not be possible without the Ukiyo-e Portal Database being developed by and hosted at the Art Research Center at Ritsumeikan University. First, the Portal Database offered us access to print collections kept in different museums around the world. If this feature sounds trivial, please note that not all museums freely share their collections online with the public.

Second, the ARC Ukiyo-e Portal Database offers access to an extremely rich corpus. When we started our research, the Portal Database hosted 678,429 prints kept at 28 institutions in Japan and abroad, and it is continuously growing. Hence, it offers access to a very large corpus of ukiyo-e prints facilitating 'distant viewing' or a macro analysis of the prints, thus also enabling a diversity of analytic tasks.

Third, the Portal Database features not only high-quality visual data itself (delivered in a standardized protocol) but also rich and high-quality metadata facilitating different kinds of explorations and analyses. In the context of our project, we especially appreciated image-content-related transcription of inscriptions on prints which often mention names of the places depicted in the prints. We identified these mentions with NLP, geotagged them, and then visualized them on a map.

As part of your research project, you developed an online application called Ukiyo-e Distant Viewer. Could you briefly explain its merits/ purpose?

Pavlopoulos: The Ukiyo-e Distant Viewer aims to facilitate the geolocation and visualization of recognized place-name entities found in ukiyo-e prints, enabling users to identify culturally significant places and explore their spatial distribution. This analysis covers thousands of images across Japan and provides a large-scale perspective on early modern landscape imagination.

It is important to note that our focus is not on individual prints or print series, but rather on identifying trends and changes across time.Ultimately, this tool will enable us to trace the chronological development of this imagination and gain insights into its cultural and historical significance.

How do you feel about the execution of the project? Have you come across any particular challenges?

Liagkou: Our exploratory mixed-method analysis has so far been successful. First, by employing the NLP approaches such as transfer-learning and Named Entity Recognition (NER) and applying our fine-tuned recognition model on a large dataset of prints, we provided a use-case of how a macroanalysis of a visual dataset can be undertaken in art historical research of Japanese visual culture.

Machotka: We also identified a number of methodological challenges. As we know, the field of Spatial Art History--combining Geographical Information Systems (GIS), NLP, and Corpus Linguistics--has advanced in the past few years. However, although these tools perform well on modern datasets, it is not the same for historical materials.

We can encounter several problems, such as OCR errors, difficulties related to place reference identification, and place reference disambiguation (related to language changes over time), among others. The situation is even more complicated in the case of mapping meisho-e prints due to the ambiguity of the depicted visual motifs. We need to note that place identification in prints is not always facilitated by iconography or visual motives but by the image-content-related inscriptions printed in the images that often feature place names.

So, the geolocation of these sites requires the reading of inscriptions. And transcription of inscriptions is one of the main obstacles for art historians interested in a large-scale analysis of the prints. This is due to the complexity of the Japanese early-modern writing system, problems with adequate identification of place names, and material aspects of a print (e.g. color scheme and preservation state). We plan to address some of these issues in our next project, which focuses on exploring possibilities of using computational tools for the automated transcription of inscriptions on prints.

Your next project, AI-powered Text Recognition of Inscriptions in Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints, will continue to utilize Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology to study the landscape prints (meisho-e) in the ARC Ukiyo-e Portal Database. What is the significance of this project?

Pavlopoulos: In this project, we will focus on resolving the linguistic problems related to transcribing the inscriptions on prints enabling geolocating of places mentioned in these inscriptions. We will investigate the development of computational tools for the automated recognition of the text of inscriptions on prints rather than using already-transcribed inscriptions provided in the database.

As we established previously, NER can be used to successfully extract the place names from inscriptions on ukiyo-e prints. However, the tool requires transcribed digital metadata to generate information, while many museum collections lack reliable transcriptions of inscriptions on prints.

Optical character recognition and handwritten text recognition (HTR) can be used to recognize the text from an image. Due to the technological, formal, and linguistic characteristics of ukiyo-e print inscriptions, which do not use a standardized writing system or movable type, we hypothesize that handwritten text recognition could be effectively applied to inscriptions on Japanese prints.

We expect the recognized text to contain errors, and we will investigate the accuracy of extracting place-named-entities from the recognized (not transcribed) text. This multimodal methodological challenge requires testing on non-transcribed inscriptions on prints, and our study will facilitate this.

How did you first connect with the Art Research Center (ARC)? / How did you hear about the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC)?

Machotka: As a scholar of Japanese art history educated in Japan, at Gakushūin University in Tokyo (thanks to the doctoral fellowship issued by MEXT), I have been well aware of the pioneering contribution of the Art Research Center (ARC) and the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC) to the digitization of Japanese cultural artifacts, and computational analysis of Japanese art.

I also had the honor and pleasure to meet the leading ARC researchers, Prof. Akama Ryo, Prof. Suzuki Keiko, Prof. Yano Keiji, Dr. Matsuba Ryoko, and many other colleagues at different academic events in Europe and Japan. So, I have been aware of the important work done by the ARC, its faculty, and the research value of the ARC databases for a long time. And I have to admit that I probably would have never started my own research adventure with Digital Art History if not for the ARC and its ground-breaking work.

Is there anything else you would like to comment on or highlight?

Machotka: We would like to stress one important issue, which we think is the key to the success of Digital Humanities, and can push the frontiers of research in (Global) Art History. It is the need and value of collaboration across various disciplines, institutions, and national borders.

Communication between researchers, exchange of experiences, sharing knowledge and good practices is the key to knowledge production. Digitization processes are going fast, and many museums invest in building their digital databases and sharing their collections with the general public. But to benefit from this incredible work, we would also like to see a strengthening of analytical aspects of Digital Art History, using computational tools not only to offer wider accessibility to museum collections but also to facilitate analysis and a better understanding of art objects.

So, we would like to encourage other art historians and computer scientists to explore possibilities for collaboration. Interdisciplinary work across distant disciplines like ours is not an easy task, as we need to learn to understand and respect our divergent research approaches. But it has been a rewarding experience for our team and brought out new findings that can move our disciplines forward.

(This interview was conducted by Yinzi Emily Li.)

The 115th International ARC Seminar will be held as a Webinar on Wednesday, April 12, from 18:00 JST.

The program is as follows:

Speaker: Ryuzo UENO (Professor, College of Letters, Ritsumeikan University)

Topic: The Acceptance of"Sanguozhi" in Japan through Ukiyo-e

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Date: Wednesday, April 12, 18:00 - 19:30 JST

Participation: online via Zoom, free of charge (no reservation required)

Supported by the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC), Art Research Center, the training course Generating 3D Model for Museums Collections Using Photo-Scanning Technique was held at the Atun Museum, Egypt, on March 7-9, 2023.

Overview:

Sharing knowledge and capacity building of curators working in the Egyptian museums at the Ministry of Antiquities is one of the important ways that achieve the required development of the policies and means of preserving the Egyptian cultural heritage in a sustainable framework. In this regard, sharing advanced practical know-how and experiences that have been developed with the Art Research Center (ARC) at Ritsumeikan University in Japan achieves this goal with the support of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

Objectives:

The photo-scanning technology contributes to preserving the objects of Egyptian museums, especially at the time of crises and disasters, such as the looting and destroying the Mallawi Museum in Egypt in August 2013, in addition to the massive destruction of the Islamic Art Museum after the Cairo Security Directorate bombing on January 24, 2014, the restoration and preservation of museum groups, add to contributing to the combating and recovery of smuggling of cultural heritage assets crimes.

The photo-scanning technique generates 3D modeling for artifacts in Egyptian museums. A digital database can be created and referred to, allowing the artifacts to be identified easily through fabric, components, and elements.
The dependence on the photo-scanning application on cultural heritage assets in Egyptian museums comes as a reflection of its practical and successful implementation on the objects of the Kyoto City Archaeological Museum in Japan under the supervision and support of the ARC. It aims to create 3D modeling of collected objects in a modernist geometric form (X, Y, Z) through precise photography with a special technique, processed with the Agisoft Metashape software v2021.

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Date: March 7-9, 2023, 9:00-14:00 EET

Topic: Generating 3D Model for Museums Collections Using Photo-Scanning Technique

Venue: The Atun Museum, Minya Governorate, Egypt

Organizer: The Museums Sector at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Egypt

Supported by: International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC), Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University

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Please note that this was a non-public event.

Supported by the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC), Art Research Center, the training course Generating 3D Model for Museums Collections Using Photo-Scanning Technique will be held at the Atun Museum, Egypt, on March 7-9, 2023.

Overview:

Sharing knowledge and capacity building of curators working in the Egyptian museums at the Ministry of Antiquities is one of the important ways that achieve the required development of the policies and means of preserving the Egyptian cultural heritage in a sustainable framework. In this regard, sharing advanced practical know-how and experiences that have been developed with the Art Research Center (ARC) at Ritsumeikan University in Japan achieves this goal with the support of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

Objectives:

The photo-scanning technology contributes to preserving the objects of Egyptian museums, especially at the time of crises and disasters, such as the looting and destroying the Mallawi Museum in Egypt in August 2013, in addition to the massive destruction of the Islamic Art Museum after the Cairo Security Directorate bombing on January 24, 2014, the restoration and preservation of museum groups, add to contributing to the combating and recovery of smuggling of cultural heritage assets crimes.

The photo-scanning technique generates 3D modeling for artifacts in Egyptian museums. A digital database can be created and referred to, allowing the artifacts to be identified easily through fabric, components, and elements.
The dependence on the photo-scanning application on cultural heritage assets in Egyptian museums comes as a reflection of its practical and successful implementation on the objects of the Kyoto City Archaeological Museum in Japan under the supervision and support of the ARC. It aims to create 3D modeling of collected objects in a modernist geometric form (X, Y, Z) through precise photography with a special technique, processed with the Agisoft Metashape software v2021.

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Date: March 7-9, 2023, 9:00-14:00 EET

Topic: Generating 3D Model for Museums Collections Using Photo-Scanning Technique

Venue: The Atun Museum, Minya Governorate, Egypt

Organizer: The Museums Sector at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Egypt

Supported by: International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC), Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University

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Please note that this is a non-public event.

A research project to visualize the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Tamaki Shrine (玉置神社) using the latest 3D scanning technologies, led by Professor Satoshi Tanaka (College of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University)--faculty member of the Art Research Center (ARC)--has officially started.

The project is jointly conducted with the Nara Prefectural Government and involves 3D measurement of Tamaki Shrine using drones, terrestrial laser scanners, and 360-degree cameras to take multifaceted measurements.

The beautiful main hall of Tamaki Shrine, the Tamaishi-sha (玉石社), as well as the Jindaisugi (神代杉) cedar tree, said to be 3,000 years old and an object of worship in the precinct, and the shrine office (社務所), designated a national important tangible cultural property, have been digitally preserved. The obtained data will be used to develop visual content as the project continues.

We express our gratitude to the people at Tamaki Shrine for their kind cooperation.

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Related links:

Official website of Tamaki Shrine (玉置神社) - in Japanese

Interview with Prof. Satoshi Tanaka on Visualizing Large-Scale Cultural Heritage - in English

A workshop with the Ukiyo-e Woodblock Engraving and Printmaking Techniques Preservation Society (浮世絵木版画彫摺技術保存協会) was held on February 17, 2023, co-organized by the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC), Art Research Center.

There has been a long history of cooperation between the ARC and the society, and workshops have previously been organized in February 2011, February 2015, June 2019, and February 2022.

The purpose of the workshops is to exchange information and opinions with experts, deepen the understanding of the ARC Collection and facilitate the sharing of knowledge concerning ukiyo-e woodblock engraving and printmaking techniques.

Following Article 147 of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties of Japan, the woodblock printmaking techniques were selected as preservation techniques in 1978, and the Ukiyo-e Woodblock Engraving and Printmaking Techniques Preservation Society (浮世絵木版画彫摺技術保存協会) has been recognized as one of the selected organizations holding this technique.

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Date: 17 February (Fri), 2023, 14:00-17:00

Method: Online (Zoom)

Program

1. Speaker: Akama Ryo (Professor and Director of the Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University)

Topic: 海外の浮世絵コレクション紹介　欧州ドイツ編

2. Speaker: Takaaki Kaneko (Associate Professor, Kinugasa Research Organization, Ritsumeikan University)

Topic: 立命館大学アート・リサーチセンターの板木コレクション

3. Speaker: Ryoko Matsuba (Lecturer in Japanese Digital Arts and Humanities, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, University of East Anglia)

Topic: Connecting Present to Past: Re-evaluating Japanese Traditional Printmaking プロジェクト報告および葛飾北斎作品の彫、摺の疑問点

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Co-organizers: International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC), Art Research Center; Ukiyo-e Woodblock Engraving and Printmaking Techniques Preservation Society (浮世絵木版画彫摺技術保存協会)

→ Website of the Ukiyo-e Woodblock Engraving and Printmaking Techniques Preservation Society

For inquiries, please contact:

Office of the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC), Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University

E-mail: r-darc (at) st.ritsumei.ac.jp (replace "at" with @)