The Art Research Center (ARC), Ritsumeikan University, is pleased to announce that the publication of the 21^st volume of its annual research bulletin Art Research is scheduled for mid-March 2021.

This bulletin has the purpose of disseminating the results of the research projects conducted by the ARC to the public. Moreover, as an academic bulletin specialized in arts and culture, it has been attracting many contributors every year.

Since its establishment in 1998, the ARC has been awarded several national grants as a research center of excellence in culture, arts, and information science. Most recently, the ARC has been designated as an International Joint Usage / Research Center by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in October 2019.

We look forward to receiving your research results that meet the criteria below.

【Journal Name】「ART RESEARCH」Vol.21

【Format】A4, horizontal and vertical writing both in two-column sets

【Publication Date】Mid-March 2021（Scheduled）

【Content】Research papers and research notes related to culture, arts, and information science (e.g. research reports, introduction to materials, technical notes). It is particularly desirable if the theme of the research project fits with the research topics of the Art Research Center (ARC).

【Writing Guidelines】 執筆要綱 (PDF: 186KB)

【Applying for Author Registration】

To submit a manuscript, please register as an author first. Kindly send us the following information by e-mail before the deadline. After the screening by the editorial committee, you will be notified whether you have been accepted for the author's registration.

Information to be submitted:

[1] Name (in Furigana)

[2] Affiliation

[3] Position

[4] Address for sending proofreading documents

[5] Phone number

[6] E-mail address

[7] Type of manuscript (research paper or research note)

[8] Title(s) (can be tentative)

[9] Summary (about 200 words)

Contact: arc-jimu■arc.ritsumei.ac.jp (Attn: Ishimura, Nakamura)

Please change "■" to "@" in the e-mail. Please state「9/6執筆者登録応募」in the subject line.

Application Deadline: September 6, 2020 (Sunday), 24:00

※Please note that applications after the deadline are not accepted.

※Please contact the Art Research Center secretariat if you have any difficulty in submitting by e-mail.

As one of the traditional Japanese performing arts, Noh Theater - or nohgaku - has been established in Japan for more than 600 years and is designated as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. Often based on tales from traditional Japanese literature, nohgaku integrates masks, costumes, and various props in a dance-based performance which requires highly trained actors and musicians.

To preserve and disseminate nohgaku culture, the Art Research Center has been working with the Katayama Family, who holds an invaluable position as nohgaku performers in Kyoto, to film and digitally archive their performances for the last 20 years. The Katayama Family has not only been contributing immensely to the preservation of this intangible cultural property but has also been protecting tangible assets such as nohgaku masks and costumes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, unfortunately, resulted in the cancellation of an annual public Noh performance by the Katayama Family at the Kyoto Station Building this year.

Therefore, master's students of Digital Humanities for Arts and Cultures, the Graduate School of Letters, Ritsumeikan University, have completed a promotional video about nohgaku which is currently being shown at Kyoto Station and Yamashina Station until September 6, 2020, in cooperation with the Art Research Center, the Katayama Family Foundation for the Preservation of Noh and Kyoto Dance and the West Japan Railway Company.

Location & Period of Video Screenings

Kyoto Station and Yamashina Station:

August 22 - September 6 (without audio)

Kyoto Station Building (the station square, in front of the stairs at the east side entrance of Porta Mall):

August 7 - September 6 (with audio)

For details on the Katayama Family Foundation for the Preservation of Noh and Kyoto Dance: http://www.arc.ritsumei.ac.jp/k-kanze/

Official Youtube channel of the Katayama Family Foundation for the Preservation of Noh and Kyoto Dance:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBuoGcS3O46XcaNjePQnfeA/videos

Kyoto Kanze Noh Theater: http://www.kyoto-kanze.jp/

The ARC Day, an annual event where the faculty members of the Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University, take turns to introduce their research projects for the new fiscal year in brief presentations, took place on Saturday, August 1, 2020.

To prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, this event was held online via Zoom and broadcasted live on YouTube.

For the first time on the ARC Day, four collaborative research projects had been presented which share a common theme「"遊び": アート・エンターテインメント研究」 ("Play": Art Entertainment). The purpose of these collaborative projects is to develop research activities that further integrate humanities and sciences to create new future directions for the ARC while fostering and supporting young researchers and graduate students, who are working jointly on these projects.

To stimulate these young researchers and graduate students in their research endeavors, they also actively participated in the ARC Day as discussants in the Q&A sessions that followed the research presentations.

Program of the ARC Day 2020

The handouts with red icons are protected with passwords. If you wish to download any of them, please email us at r-darc(at)st.ritsumei.ac.jp (Please change "at" to @.)

August 1st（Sat）　14:00～17:10（JST）
14:00-14:05	Opening remarks
14:05-14:35	Session 1 Firstly, each project leader will introduce their projects within 3 minutes in the order of the program. Then, the rest of the session will be spent on Q&As. We will take questions from the participants on Zoom and questions from YouTube participants via Twitter。
	1.	「Research Project on the Japanese Cultural Resources using the Concept of "Metahistory" or "Les lieux de mémoire"」 Project leader: Koichi HOSOI, Professor, College of Image Arts and Sciences, RU
	2.	「A System Development Project for Exhibition of Images such as Ukiyo-e through the Means of Games」 Project leader: Ruck THAWONMAS, Professor, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU
	3.	「Play between Creativity and Learning」 Project leader: Akinori NAKAMURA, Professor, College of Image Arts and Sciences, RU (Presenter: Akito INOUE, Lecturer, College of Image Arts and Sciences, RU）
	4.	「Digital Archive of the Techniques, Processing and Enjoyment of Manga and Anime with its Focus on International Spread and Propagation of Culture」 Project leader: Ryosuke YAMANISHI, Associate Professor, Faculty of Informatics, Kansai University
	5.	Collaborative Project ① Project leaders：Prof. HOSOI, Prof RUCK, Prof. NAKAMURA (Presenter: Mr. Toshinari TSUJI, M1, Graduate School of Letters, RU)
14:35-15:05	Session 2
	6.	「Play and Discovery in Kanji Characters」 Project leader: Lin MENG, Associate Professor, College of Science and Engineering, RU
	7.	「Construction and Transmission of a Kyoto Street Culture Archive」 Project leader: Shinya SAITO, Associate Professor, College of Image Arts and Sciences, RU
	8.	「Playing in the City of Kyoto - Construction of a Virtual Kyoto Using VR and AR」 Project leader: Naomi KAWASUMI, Associate Professor, College of Letters, RU (Presenter: Hirotaka SATO, Assistant Professor, College of Letters, RU)
	9.	Collaborative Project ② Project leaders: Prof. RUCK, Assoc. Prof. SAITO, Assoc. Prof. KAWASUMI (Assis. Prof. SATO)
	10.	Collaborative Project ③ Project leaders: Prof. MAEDA, Assoc. Prof. MENG, Assoc. Prof. Fumio GOTO (The Shirakawa Shizuka Institute of East Asian Characters and Culture/ Grad. School of Professional Teacher Education)
15:05-15:35	Session 3
	11.	「Acoustic Sound Reconstruction and Playing-Support with Traditional Instruments」 Project leader: Takanobu NISHIURA, Professor, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU
	12.	「A Project on the Intellectual Linkage of Large-Scale Cultural Information」 Project leader: Ryo AKAMA, Professor, College of Letters, RU
	13.	「Project of developing Evaluation Datasets for ARC Collection Databases」 Project leader: Akira MAEDA, Professor, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU
	14.	「Digital Archiving of Indonesian Cultural Heritage and Development of 4D High-Definition Visualization Contents」 Project leader: Dr. Fadjar I. THUFAIL, Senior Researcher, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) (Presenter: Satoshi TANAKA, Professor, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU)
15:35-15:50	Break
15:50-16:20	Session 4
	15.	「Collection and Preservation of Traditional Games from around the World, the Systematization and the Study of Cultural Relevance of Them」 Project leader: Isao UMEBAYASHI, Part-time Lecturer, Shitennoji University
	16.	「Visualization for Re-experiencing the Psychology/ Festival using VR Technology」 Project leader: Kyoko HASEGAWA, Lecturer, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU
	17.	「Generation Z Web Content Archiving Project」 Project leader: Yumi TAKENAKA, Professor, Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, RU
	18.	Collaborative Project ④ Project leaders: Prof. TAKENAKA, Dr. HASEGAWA
16:20-16:50	Session 5
	19.	「Digital Archive Project of Japanese Arts in the Collection of Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad, India」 Project leader: Shinya MAEZAKI, Associate Professor, Dept. of Apparel and Space Design, Kyoto Women's University
	20.	「Edo Period Map goes Digital - The O Edo ezu as an Interactive Resource」 Project leader: Michael KINSKI, Professor, Japanese Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt
	21.	「Using Digital Archives to Create a Research Network of Japanese Cultural Resources in the UK and Utilizing Digital Resources for Japanese Studies」 Project leader: Ryoko MATSUBA, Senior Digital Humanities Officer, SISJAC
	22.	「A Database Construction of Japanese Medieval Handwritten Copies of Sutras Located in Europe and their Analysis Using Machine Learning」 Project leader: Toshiaki AIDA, Lecturer, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health System, Okayama University
16:50-17:05	Buffer（15分） Q&A Session （Questions from each session and other questions）
17:05-17:10	Closing remarks

Date & Time：Saturday, August 1st, 2020　14:00～17:10 (JST）
Location: Web Event (via ZOOM, Youtube and Twitter)

Click here to access the ARC Day 2020 via Youtube.

Program

The handouts with red icons are protected with passwords. If you wish to download any of them, please email us at r-darc(at)st.ritsumei.ac.jp (Please change "at" to @.)

August 1st（Sat）　14:00～17:10（JST）
14:00-14:05	Opening remarks
14:05-14:35	Session 1 Firstly, each project leader will introduce their projects within 3 minutes in the order of the program. Then, the rest of the session will be spent on Q&As. We will take questions from the participants on Zoom and questions from YouTube participants via Twitter。
	1.	「Research Project on the Japanese Cultural Resources using the Concept of "Metahistory" or "Les lieux de mémoire"」 Project leader: Koichi HOSOI, Professor, College of Image Arts and Sciences, RU
	2.	「A System Development Project for Exhibition of Images such as Ukiyo-e through the Means of Games」 Project leader: Ruck THAWONMAS, Professor, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU
	3.	「Play between Creativity and Learning」 Project leader: Akinori NAKAMURA, Professor, College of Image Arts and Sciences, RU (Presenter: Akito INOUE, Lecturer, College of Image Arts and Sciences, RU）
	4.	「Digital Archive of the Techniques, Processing and Enjoyment of Manga and Anime with its Focus on International Spread and Propagation of Culture」 Project leader: Ryosuke YAMANISHI, Associate Professor, Faculty of Informatics, Kansai University
	5.	Collaborative Project ① Project leaders：Prof. HOSOI, Prof RUCK, Prof. NAKAMURA (Presenter: Mr. Toshinari TSUJI, M1, Graduate School of Letters, RU)
14:35-15:05	Session 2
	6.	「Play and Discovery in Kanji Characters」 Project leader: Lin MENG, Associate Professor, College of Science and Engineering, RU
	7.	「Construction and Transmission of a Kyoto Street Culture Archive」 Project leader: Shinya SAITO, Associate Professor, College of Image Arts and Sciences, RU
	8.	「Playing in the City of Kyoto - Construction of a Virtual Kyoto Using VR and AR」 Project leader: Naomi KAWASUMI, Associate Professor, College of Letters, RU (Presenter: Hirotaka SATO, Assistant Professor, College of Letters, RU)
	9.	Collaborative Project ② Project leaders: Prof. RUCK, Assoc. Prof. SAITO, Assoc. Prof. KAWASUMI (Assis. Prof. SATO)
	10.	Collaborative Project ③ Project leaders: Prof. MAEDA, Assoc. Prof. MENG, Assoc. Prof. Fumio GOTO (The Shirakawa Shizuka Institute of East Asian Characters and Culture/ Grad. School of Professional Teacher Education)
15:05-15:35	Session 3
	11.	「Acoustic Sound Reconstruction and Playing-Support with Traditional Instruments」 Project leader: Takanobu NISHIURA, Professor, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU
	12.	「A Project on the Intellectual Linkage of Large-Scale Cultural Information」 Project leader: Ryo AKAMA, Professor, College of Letters, RU
	13.	「Project of developing Evaluation Datasets for ARC Collection Databases」 Project leader: Akira MAEDA, Professor, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU
	14.	「Digital Archiving of Indonesian Cultural Heritage and Development of 4D High-Definition Visualization Contents」 Project leader: Dr. Fadjar I. THUFAIL, Senior Researcher, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) (Presenter: Satoshi TANAKA, Professor, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU)
15:35-15:50	Break
15:50-16:20	Session 4
	15.	「Collection and Preservation of Traditional Games from around the World, the Systematization and the Study of Cultural Relevance of Them」 Project leader: Isao UMEBAYASHI, Part-time Lecturer, Shitennoji University
	16.	「Visualization for Re-experiencing the Psychology/ Festival using VR Technology」 Project leader: Kyoko HASEGAWA, Lecturer, College of Information Science and Engineering, RU
	17.	「Generation Z Web Content Archiving Project」 Project leader: Yumi TAKENAKA, Professor, Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, RU
	18.	Collaborative Project ④ Project leaders: Prof. TAKENAKA, Dr. HASEGAWA
16:20-16:50	Session 5
	19.	「Digital Archive Project of Japanese Arts in the Collection of Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad, India」 Project leader: Shinya MAEZAKI, Associate Professor, Dept. of Apparel and Space Design, Kyoto Women's University
	20.	「Edo Period Map goes Digital - The O Edo ezu as an Interactive Resource」 Project leader: Michael KINSKI, Professor, Japanese Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt
	21.	「Using Digital Archives to Create a Research Network of Japanese Cultural Resources in the UK and Utilizing Digital Resources for Japanese Studies」 Project leader: Ryoko MATSUBA, Senior Digital Humanities Officer, SISJAC
	22.	「A Database Construction of Japanese Medieval Handwritten Copies of Sutras Located in Europe and their Analysis Using Machine Learning」 Project leader: Toshiaki AIDA, Lecturer, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health System, Okayama University
16:50-17:05	Buffer（15分） Q&A Session （Questions from each session and other questions）
17:05-17:10	Closing remarks

Due to the spread of the new coronavirus, the Gion Festival in Kyoto, one of the biggest and most important festivals in Japan celebrated for more than 1,100 years, will take place on a much smaller scale this year as the grand Yamahoko Junkō parade and other related events have been canceled.

Despite this situation, to provide an opportunity to learn about and experience the Gion Festival, the Art Research Center's International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC) at Ritsumeikan University, in cooperation with the College of Letters, will be launching "The Gion Festival Digital Museum: The Past, Present, and Future of the Gion Festival" from July 1 - July 31, 2020, on its website.

The Gion Festival, which usually takes place in Kyoto in the same month, is widely known in Japan and abroad as one of the three major Japanese festivals. The Art Research Center (ARC) provides an online platform where its research results on the festival so far are published so that people around the world, who are interested in Japanese culture, can deepen their understanding of the Gion Festival by virtually experiencing it.

On the ARC's website, 2D and 3D maps of the Gion Festival and videos of a virtual Yamahoko Junkō, the magnificent procession of decorated floats and the crowning event of the festival, will be made available. Besides, one can discover the three-dimensional, see-through visualization model of the Hachiman-yama float, one of the festival floats, with new perspectives otherwise invisible to the human eye. Furthermore, the Byobu Matsuri, or Folding Screen Festival, at the Nagae Family Residence, a Kyo-machiya designated a cultural property by the city of Kyoto, will be exhibited in the virtual space.

By digitally archiving traditional events such as the Gion Festival and making them accessible to the broad public, the ARC is dedicated to research, analyze, record, organize, preserve and disseminate the tangibles as well as intangibles of Japanese cultural and historical heritage to retain their significance for future generations.

Access to The Gion Festival Digital Museum (available from July 1, 2020)

https://www.arc.ritsumei.ac.jp/lib/vm/gionfestivalDM/

Event Schedule

July 1 (Wed), 2020: The Gion Festival Digital Museum 2020 opens to the public (new content to be continuously added after its launch)

July 19 (Sun), 2020: Web event will be held at the Nagae Family Residence (details to be announced on the website later)

The 73rd International ARC Seminar will be held as a Webinar next week on Wednesday, July 22, starting at 18:00 JST.

The program is as follows:

"Digitizing Borobudur: A Perspective on Technological Co-Production" (in English)

Speaker: Dr. Fadjar I. THUFAIL (Senior Researcher, Research Center for Area Studies, Indonesian Institute of Sciences)

Seminar handout (free to download)

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Date: Wednesday, July 22, 2020 18:00 - 19:30 JST

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

*This Webinar is open to everyone, and non-ARC members are also invited to participate. Please access the Webinar via the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNlN7ppEMMnF_eoA0PXl2dA/featured

Gion Festival Digital Museum 2020

Live Web Event: Round Table at the Nagae Family Residence on Sunday, July 19, 2020 (in Japanese)

Topic: Effectivity and Possibility of Digital Archives for Local Communities from a Digital Humanities Point of View

Organizer: Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University (Executive Committee of The Gion Festival Digital Museum 2020)

Date & Time: Sunday, July 19, 2020 / 15:00 - 16:30 JST live from the Nagae Family Residence via Youtube >>https://youtu.be/-L_I4MBuf_o

Language: Japanese

Background: The Nagae Family Residence is a Kyo-machiya - a traditional wooden townhouse - and has been designated a tangible cultural property by Kyoto city which sought to restore the interior to how it looked when the building was constructed 150 years ago. The Nagae family used to be merchants of the Kimono fabric. After Ritsumeikan University was donated a collection of items belonging to the Nagae Family Residence, the Art Research Center (ARC) began to digitally archive this collection and became involved in the planning and managing of the Byobu Matsuri (folding screen festival) held at the Nagae Family Residence during the Gion Festival.

Event Schedule (to be confirmed)

15:00 Welcome speech

Keiji Yano (Professor, College of Letters, Ritsumeikan University)

15:05 Part 1 - Introduction of The Gion Festival Digital Museum 2020 and explanation of its contents

Hirotaka Sato (Assistant Professor, College of Letters, Ritsumeikan University), student of the Kyoto Studies Fieldwork Group IV

15:45 Part 2 - Exchange of opinions

Moderator: Keiji Yano

Panelists:

Kenji Tsuji (President, Gion Festival Fune-hoko Preservation Association)

Masao Goto (Former President, Hachiman-yama Preservation Association)

Yoshie Takagi (Curator, Nagae Family Residence Project)

Hirotaka Sato

16:15 Question & Answer session

16:30 End of the event

Access here >>https://youtu.be/-L_I4MBuf_o

The 72^nd International ARC Seminar will be held as a Webinar next week on Wednesday, July 8, starting at 18:00 JST.

The program is as follows:

1. "Audience Participation Games for Promoting Ukiyo-e" (in English)

Speaker: Pujana PALIYAWAN (Senior Researcher, Research Organization of Science and Technology, Ritsumeikan University)

Seminar handout (free to download)

Presentation slides (free to download)

2. "口絵デジタルアーカイブ構築によってみえてきた課題 (Issues Revealed by Constructing the Kuchi-e Digital Archive)" (in Japanese)

Speaker: Kana TSUNEKI (Assistant Professor, Liberal Arts (Humanities), National Institute of Technology, Kurume College / Ph.D. Candidate, Digital Humanities for Arts and Cultures, Graduate School of Letters, Ritsumeikan University)

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Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2020 18:00 - 19:30 JST

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

*This Webinar is open to everyone, and non-ARC members are also invited to participate. Please access the Webinar via the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNlN7ppEMMnF_eoA0PXl2dA/featured

The Annual Conference of the Japan Art Documentation Society (JADS), hosted by the Japan Art Documentation Society (JADS) in cooperation with the MEXT International Joint Usage / Research Center International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC), Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University, took place on June 27 (Sat) and 28 (Sun), 2020.

To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the event was held online for the first time this year and more than 130 members and non-members of the JADS participated.

As part of this year's annual conference, a symposium on 「芸術文化資源デジタル・アーカイブの国際的共同利用 -- オンライン環境での知的生産システムとそのツール」 (The International Joint Usage of Digital Archives for Arts and Cultural Resources -- Intelligent Production Systems and their Tools in an Online Environment) was held.

The symposium began with a welcome speech by Prof. Koichi Hosoi, Director of the Art Research Center (ARC), who introduced the international research activities of the ARC-iJAC in the field of digital humanities.

Following his opening remarks, three presenters proposed activities and tools for the next generation of digital research environments in light of the role of digital archives until now which only had a focus on reference information. In this context, they discussed ways and future directions to construct an online knowledge cycle for arts and cultural resources.

Among these three speakers, Mitsuhiro Tsuda, a researcher at the Art Research Center, publicly presented the concept and utilization of the ARC Research Space and ARC Database for the first time and explained their role in effectively building relationships between digital resources and intellectual activities.

In supporting the activities of the Japan Art Documentation Society (JADS), the ARC-iJAC aims to contribute to the establishment of such an online knowledge cycle which may enable researchers, curators and librarians not only to "browse" information, but also archive the "relationships" between these resources and produce new knowledge by "editing" and "re-archiving" them in the future.