Interviews with Faculty

Background:
Originally from New York, Travis Seifman completed MA degrees in Japanese Studies at SOAS University of London and in Art History at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa before earning his PhD in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before joining the ARC, he worked as a postdoctoral Project Researcher at the University of Tokyo Historiographical Institute, where he contributed to the production of an English-language translation of the Ishin Shiryō Kōyō Database. Travis Seifman specializes in Okinawan Studies, and researches in particular the embassies dispatched by the Okinawan kingdom of Lūchū (Ryūkyū) to Edo in the 17th to 19th centuries. Following the 2019 fire at Sui gusuku (Shuri castle), the former Luchuan royal palace, he began to explore the topic of restoration of the palace in the 1980s-90s and again today, and related issues of cultural heritage.

Dr. Seifman, thank you very much for your time today. What are some of the main responsibilities in your current role as a Research Manager at the ARC?

Seifman: My responsibilities are fairly wide-ranging. I help facilitate overseas research collaborations and networks, particularly with individuals and institutions in Europe and North America, acting as one of the main points of contact for our affiliated researchers overseas and working to recruit new research projects and partnerships.

I serve on the Center's Steering Committee as well as the Editorial Committee for the Center's journal, ART RESEARCH. Additionally, I coordinate the International ARC Seminar, our twice-monthly guest lecture series, and assist with a wide range of administrative duties, especially those involving English-language communications.

You first became connected with the ARC during your internship at the Smithsonian. Could you share more about that experience?

Seifman: In the summer of 2011, I spent about ten weeks as a digitization intern at the Freer-Sackler Galleries (now the National Museum of Asian Art), at the Smithsonian Institution, where I had the opportunity to experience the ARC's Digital Archiving Model firsthand. Along with two fellow interns, and under the guidance of Dr. Ryoko Matsuba, we photographed some 2,000 Japanese woodblock-printed and other illustrated books from the 17th to 20th centuries.

Handling and paging through these many volumes--far more than I had ever encountered before or since--gave me an invaluable, hands-on understanding and foundational knowledge of the many variations in paper, pigments, binding styles, book sizes and formats, genres of contents, and artistic styles represented in those books.

It was also through this internship that I first met Prof. Akama, Dr. Matsuba, and Dr. Ellis Tinios, learning a great deal from them about Edo-period books and publishing, and establishing personal and professional networks that have continued to this day.

From your perspective, what makes the ARC's approach to digital archiving unique or impactful in the global context?

Seifman: I think what makes the ARC's digital archives truly unique and impactful is their scale, comprehensiveness, and global accessibility.

First, the archives are extensive. With more than 880,000 prints and paintings, and more than 600,000 early Japanese books currently contained in the ARC's databases, researchers can perform large-scale comparative analyses in ways never before possible. Dr. Ellis Tinios' work on various developments in Japanese printing and publishing through exploring the numerous variations amongst editions or printings of books by a given author or artist, Shiori Totsuka's study of changes over time in prints by artists of the Katsukawa school, and Prof. Yumi Takenaka's work exploring the representation of domestic spaces in ukiyo-e across a large number of prints and books, are but a few examples of this.

Second, the databases are comprehensive. The ARC's approach emphasizes the digital archiving of entire collections whenever possible, rather than selectively targeting only those works considered, by whatever criteria, the most pertinent for art historical research. As a result, the databases encompass a great diversity of works relevant to a wide range of research themes--not only more traditional "Japanese art history" themes like Kabuki, landscapes, or poetry, but also urban history, history of mapping and geography, history of agriculture, medicine, fashion, ritual and ceremony, and so on.

Third, the databases include works from collections around the globe, providing access to a far wider range of materials than ever before. This has surely transformed how art history and cultural studies research can be conducted, and our conception of the field itself--enabling scholars to discover and compare works across institutions in disparate locations, without the need for international travel, or hunting down rare exhibit catalogs.

In my research on Hokusai's "Eight Views of Ryukyu" landscape series, I was fortunate to have easy online access to high-resolution digital images of both the full set of Hokusai's eight landscape prints and of every page of the Chinese volume Liúqiúguó zhìlüè (J: Ryūkyū-koku shiryaku), which he used as a basis for his images. Comparing the images side by side on my computer screen, and zooming in on details in each image allowed me to discover connections and differences I might have otherwise missed.

Further, a simple keyword search for "Ryukyu" or other keywords in the ARC databases revealed numerous related works from collections worldwide--including private collections--which I might never have known otherwise. One such example is a surimono (a woodblock print produced not for large-scale commercial sale but in a small print run for members of a given poetry circle) from 1833 depicting a pair of Ryukyuan (Okinawan) individuals, accompanied by poetry likely composed by a literary circle. One copy is owned by the British Museum. In my limited personal experience, I believe this is the first Ryukyu-related surimono I have encountered, and, while I still have much to learn about it, it provides an intriguing starting point, or further data point so to speak, for understanding how widespread interest in Ryukyu was among Japanese cultural elites, and the general public at that time.

Could you tell us what initially sparked your interest in Japanese studies--particularly Japanese art history?

Seifman: I entered college initially planning to major in the hard sciences, and I began taking Japanese language and history courses on the side because of a personal interest in anime, video games, and my imagined ideas of traditional Japanese culture. However, a semester abroad in Tokyo, which I thought would be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, solidified my interest in pursuing Japanese Studies further.

My interest in art history specifically developed after I returned from that study abroad semester in Japan and took a few courses in Asian art history to complete a major in East Asian Studies. I was enthralled by the way images and objects can function as touchpoints, or windows, into a sense of a given time, place, or culture. It is a cliché to say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but images and objects can indeed provide a sense of the look, the feel, of a time and place in ways that words alone cannot. They allow us to travel the world, and travel through time, in a sense, engaging somewhat more directly with the visual and material culture-- the actual objects themselves--of different places and times.

Looking ahead, can you share some of the key plans and goals of the ARC for the new fiscal year?

Seifman: The Center's accreditation as the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC) has recently been renewed by the Ministry of Education for an additional six years, and we have completed the review and selection of our latest round of International Joint Research Projects with Research Funds. I am excited to welcome our new affiliated researchers--both online and in person--as their projects begin.

This year's projects include a survey of objects in European collections related to Gagaku, an ancient form of imperial court music; the digitization of photographs by pioneering female photographer Akahori Masuko; and research on Kabuki playwright Kawatake Mokuami, among others.

We are also continuing to expand our international digitization efforts, including new or expanded collaborations with the University of California, Berkeley (UCB); the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the Five Continents Museum (Museum Fünf Kontinente) in Munich; the Museum of Decorative Arts (Musée des Arts Décoratifs) in Paris; and others, which will further diversify the materials in our databases and improve access to important global collections.

Further, we are actively preparing for the launch of a new faculty at Ritsumeikan University, tentatively named the School of Art and Design, set to open in 2026. Prof. Ryo Akama, Director of the ARC, will serve as the Dean of this new School.

We are also looking forward to a variety of events this summer celebrating the 125th anniversary of the establishment in 1900 of the Kyoto Law School, which was later renamed Ritsumeikan University.

Finally, could you tell us about your current research projects and what you find most rewarding or meaningful about working at the intersection of digital humanities and Japanese cultural heritage?

Seifman: I am currently in the early stages of revising my PhD dissertation, completed in 2019, into an academic monograph--the first in English to examine in detail the seventeen embassies dispatched by the Okinawan kingdom of Ryukyu to Edo, the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. The book aims to shed light on this under-discussed aspect of early modern Japanese foreign interactions while also contributing to the broader field of research on diplomatic and political rituals in the early modern world. Although my research methods are largely analog, the project has benefited immeasurably from the availability of digitized artworks and historical documents, as well as from digital tools that have aided me in deciphering kuzushiji paleography.

I am excited for the continued expansion of digital archives, making Japanese historical documents, artworks, and cultural resources held in collections around the globe not only more easily available but in many cases discoverable in the first place. When researchers can come across, and learn of a given item, whether in an online exhibition or database or otherwise, the possibilities for discoveries expand in ways we may not predict.

In particular, I am enthusiastic about advances in kuzushiji paleography deciphering tools, such as those integrated into the ARC system. These technologies make full-text searchable transcriptions--honkoku--more widely available, expanding the scope of research. While at the University of Tokyo, I photographed a number of documents detailing ceremonies in which envoys from the Ryukyu Kingdom were received in audience at Edo castle. I look forward to working with those texts in the ARC system, using the AI kuzushiji tools to help me with transcription and uncovering new information, such as the seating arrangements, the gifts exchanged, and other details which can provide new insights into how the rituals were structured, and to what political or cultural effect.

Our faculty members and other affiliated researchers here at the ARC have also been working on exciting projects using 3D modelling and other digital technologies to recreate historical spaces and even soundscapes virtually. Digital 3D models of the interiors of Nijō Castle in Kyoto--as created by Prof. Satoshi Tanaka--can be beneficial for visualizing, in three-dimensional space and full color, some sense of what those ceremonial meetings looked and felt like. Similarly, computer models of how the music and other sounds from parades and processions travel through space, and how they are experienced by paradegoers and participants, such as in research by Prof. Takanobu Nishiura, offer fascinating insights that can be applied to rituals like the Ryukyuan embassy processions I study.

I continue to be regularly amazed by how Digital Humanities is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in cultural and historical research. The fusion of arts/humanities and digital technologies offers seemingly endless new avenues for exploration and understanding.

(This interview was conducted by Yinzi Emily Li)

Background:
Akiko Yano studied in Japan for a BA in international relations at Tsuda College, and for a MA and PhD in Japanese art history at Keio University. She specialises in Japanese painting history. She had an opportunity to study in the UK for one year as a visiting PhD student, based at SOAS University of London, thanks to a scholarship provided by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC). She continued working in the UK, first as a Research Assistant for the SOAS-British Museum (BM) project on Osaka actor prints 'Kabuki Heroes on the Osaka Stage: 1780-1830' (2005), and then as a Research Fellow for the SOAS-BM project on shunga 'Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art' (2013). After joining the BM as a curator in 2015, she has been responsible, with two other colleague curators, for the Japanese collection, which holds over 40,000 objects.

Dr. Yano, thank you very much for your time today. What initially sparked your interest in Japanese art history?

Yano: I was interested in art (mainly painting) and history as a teenager, but I was not particularly looking at the discipline of art history for my BA as I was more interested in international relations through cultural communication. Thinking about my future career, however, I realised that I would feel more of a sense of mission if I could work on the preservation of the cultural heritage of Japan, and hence learnt, belatedly, about a job called a 'curator'. From that point onwards, I switched my specialty to art history with an emphasis on Japanese art history since I was in Japan and thought Japanese art would be easily accessible.

How did your connection with the Art Research Center (ARC) begin?

Yano: I learnt about the ARC's digitisation projects when I was in London as a visiting PhD student at SOAS. Prof. Akama was also based at SOAS on a sabbatical at about the same time. He was then digitising actor prints in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, and I was fortunate enough to have a chance to help with his photography sessions once or twice. It was a revelation. For an art history student in the early 2000s, photographs (using film!) of objects served primarily as my personal records to assist my memory of what I saw in the actual objects. The idea of systematic and end-to-end digital photography of a collection, which would exist online as a digital entity of that collection, available to the widest possible users, impressed me. When I was working as a Research Assistant for the Osaka actor prints project at SOAS, I actively used the ukiyo-e database, which Prof. Akama had created at the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum at Waseda University as well as at the ARC. He collaborated with the Osaka project by digitising a large-scale private collection of Osaka actor prints in Germany.

Yano: It has been a long-time ambition within the Japanese curatorial team at the British Museum to make use of the remarkable collection of paintings, prints, and illustrated books from Kyoto and Osaka in the collection, which has been acquired by the Museum over many years since the late 19^th century. The major exhibitions at the BM featuring Kyoto and Osaka artists in the past were 'Japanese Paintings & Prints: The Maruyama/Shijō School' (1976) and 'The Schools of Ganku and Bunchō' (1977) both by the then curator Lawrence Smith, and, more recently, 'Images of Kyoto & Osaka' (1997) by Tim Clark. It has been over a quarter of a century since the last exhibition, and the curators kept/keep acquiring Kamigata materials.

The most direct incentive for me to form the research project was the large-scale acquisition of the Scott Johnson collection of Kamigata surimono (so-called Shijō surimono), consisting of over 1600 items (if we count each sheet of surimono pasted in albums and accompanying surimono wrappers, it comes to be more than 2000) in 2021. It was our predecessor Tim Clark's final major acquisition as a BM curator. Significant in terms of scale and quality, this acquisition hugely enhanced our Kyoto-Osaka collection.

The more I looked into each of the surimono, the clearer it became that artists in Kyoto and Osaka were deeply involved in the world of haikai and kyōka. Not only that, but there are also thousands of individuals in surimono who contributed poems and pictures, who appear under their pen names and are unknown today. Who were they? How did they get involved in these surimono? What was going on, culturally, in late Edo period Japan?

I first encountered Kamigata surimono and the idea of 'salon' in the Osaka actor prints project, led by Prof. Andrew Gerstle of SOAS. The BM Japanese collection curators had been receiving generous advice from the late Prof. Nakatani Nobuo (Kansai University) about our Kyoto-Osaka painting collection. At the same time, Prof. Akama was spearheading the digitisation of the BM Japanese collection and built a system of databases at the ARC. All these threads of ideas, personal connections, academic activities, and advice converged into one as a research project. It is based on long-term working relationships among scholars in the UK and Japan, which has enabled us to embark on this 'salons' project to investigate a wide range of cultural participation of people of the late Edo period, centering in and around Kyoto and Osaka. Our scope at this stage includes any cultural activities that formed a communal space (real or virtual) for those who were interested in joining for pleasure, self-improvement, or whatever the reason, as long as there is evidence available in primary materials. In our project we call such a space a 'salon'. Primary materials are being digitised by the ARC team, and the project members are inputting relevant information - mainly about the persons involved - into the database. Our project is in a field where more traditional humanities study methods and digital technologies meet. Calling it 'digital humanities' might be easier, but our project is keeping an interesting balance between 'humanities' and 'digital.' Both benefit from each other to deepen our knowledge of the phenomenon of Japanese 'salons.'

While Edo (Tokyo) has been more comprehensively studied, the cultural history of the Kamigata region (Osaka and Kyoto) has remained relatively niche, at least in English. Did this influence your motivation to initiate this research project?

Yano: The situation is similar in Japanese as well. It was not really the original motivation to leverage the Kamigata profile, but it was and still is true that there was so much artistic material produced in the Kyoto-Osaka region that has as yet remained significantly underexplored.

The research outcomes of this collaborative project are currently being showcased in a one-year Special Display at the British Museum. Could you tell us about the unique appeal and key features of this Special Display?

Yano: The ongoing special display in the Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries at the British Museum (until 30^th March 2025) is one of the outcomes of the project. However, an academic research project and a public display each expect quite different audiences. For the general audience outside Japan who visit the British Museum, we need to start by explaining where Kyoto and Osaka are geographically, how vertically written Japanese text would be read, and so on. In addition, as the display is in the permanent collection gallery, the physical aspects of the space, such as the size and layout of the display cases, are fixed. We adopted a narrative so it would fit the objects nicely into the existing space, which sometimes posed a curatorial challenge. We also published a book to accompany the display, Salon Culture in Japan: Making Art, 1750-1900 (British Museum Press, 2024).

The display showcases in the first room representations of vibrant city life in Kyoto and Osaka, and the artistic currents of the late 18^th to the 19^th centuries mainly through paintings and illustrated books. Major Maruyama-Shijō school and other Kamigata artists' works are on display as well as some collaborative works (gassaku) among them. In the second room, the focus shifts to people's various hobby activities and cultural interests. The concept of 'salons' is introduced here as we feature group activities, such as haikai groups with surimono, sencha (infused tea) gatherings, and anthologies of poems and pictures by multiple authors. All the objects on display are from the British Museum's collection. Visitors are pleasantly surprised to learn about this rich section of our collection.

Given that part of this collaborative project was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, how did the ARC's database system and digital infrastructure support the implementation and realization of this project?

Yano: Covid-19 had a significant impact on our formation of the project. It was a time of no travelling nationally or internationally when we were planning the research grant application. It was a norm, previously, to travel between partner countries when conducting an international project.

The parallel aim of our project is to measure how it is possible to collaborate internationally without physically travelling. The ARC had already been a strong partner to the British Museum Japanese collection team. Building on that, as the core of our project, we set up an online database system, where digital images of relevant primary materials, text from transcriptions, and extracted person information can be accumulated, accessed, and searched for research by the project members from anywhere on earth. Each active member has assigned material to work on and input into the online database. Findings and work in progress can be shared in online meetings and workshops. The active use of online platforms for a meeting is a positive legacy from the era of Covid-19.

Do you have any personal favorites within the Japanese Collection at the British Museum that you would like to share?

Yano: I think that Banka jinmei roku (Who's Who from Myriad Houses, 1813, 1991,1112,0.75.1-5) is one of the key works for the project, and I am never bored by looking at each page. It is a who's who of haikai poets across Japan, complied by the Osaka poet and shipping agent Shime Chōsai (1757-1824). He called for applications from haiku poets in Japan's south and north, east and west, and put together more than 400 individuals' information. Each entry has a standardised format: a portrait of the poet, a haiku of their composition, their pen name, and a short biography. The entry order was, according to the hanrei (note at the beginning of the book), organised on a first-come-first-served basis, rather than based on skill or social status. This approach demonstrates the ethos of 'salon culture'. Based on the poets' biographies provided, we find courtiers, samurai, merchants, farmers, priests, scholars, artists, doctors, men and women, old and young, in one book. It is fascinating.

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

Yano: The ARC has digitised almost all the prints and books (both out of copyright) in the British Museum Japanese collection under their international digital humanities scheme. Thanks to their work, an incredible number of images - hundreds of thousands - of prints and pages of books can be viewed through our Collection Online by anyone interested all over the world. This serves specialists and general users alike. The impact of this visual presence is massive; Japanese art objects can be viewed and appreciated, stimulating interest in Japanese culture more broadly. We are most grateful to the ARC, and hope to continue working with the ARC in the future.

Photo courtesy of the British Museum/Dr. Akiko Yano.

(This interview was conducted by Yinzi Emily Li)

Background:
Kazuko Kameda-Madar completed her PhD in Japanese Art History at the University of British Columbia in 2011. She has taught at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, University of Hawaiʻi - West Oʻahu, and Hawaiʻi Pacific University for many years. Currently, she holds the position of Visiting Professor of Japanese Art History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel (HUJI). She is also a Visiting Researcher at the Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University. Her research interest is in Edo-period Japanese art and visual culture based on Chinese pictorial themes and episodes, especially visual representations of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering that took place in 4th century China.
Her publications include Imagery of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering (Leiden: Brill, 2022); "An Iconology of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering: Image, Text, and Communities in Tokugawa-Era Japan" in The Tokugawa World (London: Routledge, 2021); and "Copying and Theory in Edo Period Japan" in Theorizing Imitation in a Global Context (London: Association of Art Historians, 2014). She is a co-editor of an anthology Power of Utsushi: Matrix of Creation and Continuity (Kyoto: Shibunkaku Press, 2014), and Sino-Japan Code and the Representation of Nature: Art and Literature of Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries (Tokyo: Bensei Press, 2019).

Dr. Kameda-Madar, thank you very much for your time today. What sparked your interest in becoming a researcher in Japanese art history?

Kameda-Madar: Although I was always interested in art as a child in Japan, I took it more seriously when I began my formal education abroad - at the University of Hawaiʻi. Upon starting my studies, I realized how rich and wonderful Japanese art is, and I wanted to learn more about it. Prof. Mariko Inoue was my first mentor, greatly influencing my academic direction. I was fortunate to be surrounded by specialists in Chinese art. When I was seeking a topic for my MA thesis, Prof. James Cahill--who was in Hawaiʻi at that time--kindly introduced me to Prof. Hironobu Kohara in Kyoto. Under his guidance, I chose to study the theme of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering. This theme, which I believe embodies a strong, yet very subtle, implicit anti-war sentiment, captivated me, and I began to focus my research on the Sino-Japanese cultural relationship.

I continued to explore the Orchid Pavilion Gathering theme for my doctoral dissertation. While in the doctoral program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, I was fortunate to study with Prof. Joshua Mostow, who directed me to examine the relationship between literary and visual representations. In addition to the Orchid Pavilion Gathering, I also began to pay scholarly attention to pictures of the Party at a Meandering Stream, which derived from those of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering. The Chinese theme was nativized through the waka Japanese poetry. Since numerous artists from diverse schools produced these pictorial themes, my study did not focus solely on individual artists or schools. I enjoyed covering all the different types of paintings and prints created by many artists and schools throughout the Edo period. To complete such a versatile project, I consulted with many mentors and colleagues who inspired me and continue to do so.

After earning my doctoral degree, I returned to Hawaiʻi and worked as a researcher for the Kaikodo Gallery of Chinese and Japanese Arts. For many years, I taught Japanese visual culture at the East Asian Languages and Literature Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the University of Hawaiʻi - West Oʻahu, as well as Japanese art history at Hawaiʻi Pacific University.

Could you please tell us about your motivation to start this research project?

Kameda-Madar: I have been affiliated with the Israeli Association of Japanese Studies since 2013. In 2017, I was invited by Prof. Nissim Otmazgin, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, to assess a newly acquired collection of Japanese art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel (HUJI). It was a two-week project, so I could not investigate each item in depth. Since then, I have returned to HUJI almost every summer, where I have also engaged in other projects, such as the Green Tea for Peace workshop.

I moved from Hawaiʻi to Israel last year, just a couple of months before the current conflict started, and joined HUJI as a visiting professor and research affiliate. This situation naturally brought me back to the Japanese art collection that I had worked with in 2017.

Can you please tell us about the Japanese Art Collection at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, such as its significance and distinctiveness?

Kameda-Madar: The Japanese art collection is housed within the Department of Asian Studies at HUJI, which is the oldest of its kind in Israel and one of the largest departments in the Faculty of Humanities, with nearly 300 students specializing in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Indian & Indonesian Studies. Its mission is to provide students with advanced knowledge about the culture, history, language, society, politics, and various other aspects of East and South Asian countries. The department offers introductory and advanced seminars, guided reading classes, workshops, and other courses, as well as field trips to Asian destinations. Approximately 15 - 20% of students at HUJI are Palestinians.

The HUJI Collection, most of which has not yet been digitized, includes the Shagan Collection of Japanese Art, donated by Mr. Ofer Shagan, an art collector and long-term resident of Tokyo, in 2016. It was a special donation in memory of his sister, Ms. Oranit Shagan-Talmor. Most of the works date back to the Edo and the Meiji periods. Studying this collection deepens our understanding of Japan's changing sociopolitical and cultural atmosphere in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection consists of various media, including wahon (woodblock-printed illustrated books), paintings, ukiyo-e prints, calligraphy, masks, and metal and wood sculptures.

It is not yet an extensive collection: about 200 paintings are divided into the Kano School, Literati, Yamato-e, Otsu-e, Zenga, and other Buddhist themes. The formats are also diverse, including hanging scrolls, handscrolls, Nara ehon, etc. For example, one notable painting from the early 17th century representing an iconography of "Kikujidō" (Chrysanthemum boy) has a signature "Dasoku," a name for Kano Sansetsu. While it requires more examination, there are some exciting discoveries to be made within this collection. Additionally, the collection contains over 200 prints, featuring works by artists like Utagawa Kunisada, Toyohara Kunichika, Toyohara Chikanobu, Morikawa Chikashige, and others.

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)?

Kameda-Madar: I first connected with the ARC in 2007 by regularly participating in the 'Fuzokukaiga Kenkyukai' (Genre Paintings Research Group) led by Drs. Ikuyo Matsumoto, Sachiko Idemitsu, and Princess Akiko of Mikasa. During that time, Dr. Ryoko Matsuba introduced me to Prof. Ryo Akama, and we organized and participated in various academic activities, including the 'Kinsei Shikakubunka Kenkyukai' (Early Modern Visual Culture Research Group). Through these events, I learned about the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC). I believe it would be valuable to connect the Japanese art collection in Israel with the ARC-iJAC, contributing academic resources to the international research community.

How would you like to utilize the ARC Research Space (including the database system, digital tools, such as the ARC Kuzushiji Transcription Support System, etc.) to facilitate research and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem?

Kameda-Madar: The resources available at the ARC Research Space are enormous. I would like to utilize them to conduct our research and enhance the database of the Japanese art collection in Israel. For the Spring Semester of 2025, I will be teaching a course for MA students in the Asian Studies program, entitled "Research Methods in Art of Edo Japan."

In this course, we will archive the transcriptions and bibliographical introductions of materials within the HUJI collection using the ARC database system's built-in functions. We aim to gather a significant amount of data and plan to create an online exhibition at the end of the semester.

What are your thoughts on the importance of digitizing university collections, and how does it align with the long-term goals of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem?

Kameda-Madar: The digitization of the HUJI collection represents a transformative step that will allow for efficient database searches and significantly enhance its utilization in our education and research activities. It provides a digital environment with facilities that cater to a diverse range of research needs. This initiative encourages humanities scholars of Japanese culture at HUJI to conduct their research using Digital Humanities approaches. The wealth of digitized and scientifically managed academic information in the digital archives will serve as a valuable resource, adding depth to and opening up new horizons for research in the humanities at HUJI and worldwide.

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

Kameda-Madar: I am still learning how to utilize the advanced technology available at the ARC and hope to receive further instruction. As I work on this project, I plan to recruit some co-researchers, including colleagues and graduate students. Using this collection, I plan to organize a mini-exhibition at the gallery in front of the Central Library at HUJI. The exhibition catalog will feature captions and entries written by the graduate students under my guidance. I am genuinely looking forward to collaborating with the ARC-iJAC this semester, starting in November 2024.

Furthermore, I am assigned to teach a course of the history and philosophy of the Japanese tea ceremony at HUJI this semester. As I mentioned earlier, I have been organizing "Green Tea for Peace" workshops, in which my Israeli and Palestinian students participate together. I was inspired to establish this workshop--set to take place for the fourth time in January 2025--by Dr. Genshitsu Sen, the former Grand Tea Master of Urasenke, who advocated for "Peacefulness through a Bowl of Tea." I hope to contribute to achieving peace through Japanese art, including the HUJI collection.

(This interview was conducted by Yinzi Emily Li)

Background:
Toshie Marra joined the C. V. Starr East Asian Library (EAL), University of California, Berkeley in 2012 as the Librarian for the Japanese Collection. Her areas of responsibilities include developing EAL's Japanese language collections and providing instruction and reference services for Japanese studies. Previously, she worked at the Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for 22 years. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science degree from UCLA with specialization in cataloging and preservation.

Thank you very much for your time today. What sparked your interest in becoming a librarian?

Marra: Marrying a scholar of Japanese literature brought me to UCLA in the late 1980s. At that time, UCLA East Asian Library had just begun cataloging Chinese, Japanese, and Korean materials in the OCLC CJK system. I was hired as their first copy-cataloger for Japanese materials. Soon I discovered a shortage of librarians in North America with expertise in the Japanese language, especially those knowledgeable about handling Japanese pre-modern books, or kotenseki. As a result, many unique holdings remained uncatalogued in library storages. This unfortunate situation motivated me to pursue a career as Japanese Studies librarian in the U. S.

UC Berkeley's C.V. Starr East Asian Library (EAL) boasts one of the world's largest collections of Japanese cultural resources. Could you tell us about the significance of your collection?

Marra: EAL's Japanese collection focuses on the humanities and social sciences. It includes a wide range of materials such as full-text electronic databases, books, periodicals, woodblock-printed maps and prints, and manuscripts. One of EAL's most noteworthy special collections from Japan is the Mitsui acquisition in 1950, which comprises over 100,000 items in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean languages. This includes the Gakken (Dohi Keizō), Motoori (Motoori Ōhira family), Sōshin (Mitsui Takatatsu), Sōken/Teihyōkaku (Mitsui Takakata), Imazeki (Imazaki Tenpō), and Asami (Asami Rintarō) collections, spanning from the pre-modern era to modern times. Other significant special collections include the Ho-Chiang collection, which contains over 110 Buddhist sutras in manuscript and print from the 8^th to the 19^th century, documenting the development of Buddhism in China, Japan, and Korea. Additionally, the Murakami Collection, acquired by the EAL in 1948, consists of approximately 9,100 volumes. This collection features many first editions of literary works from the Meiji through early Showa periods, some with illustrative kuchie frontispieces.

The research cooperation between the C.V. Starr East Asian Library (EAL) and the ARC in the field of digital archiving started in 2006 and has been ongoing for almost two decades. How did you first connect with the Art Research Center (ARC)?

Marra: In 2006 my predecessor Hisayuki Ishimatsu contacted Professor Ryo Akama of the ARC to digitize the Sugoroku collection, a part of the Mitsui acquisition, consisting of 155 sheets. After I joined UC Berkeley, the EAL Director, Peter X. Zhou, and I visited the ARC in December 2013 to discuss potential collaborations for creating more digital archives using EAL's Japanese special collections. Starting in the summer of 2014, the ARC began making regular visits to EAL to digitize our materials.

The ARC has digitized and created online databases of old and rare books, copperplate prints, sugoroku sheets, fine art auction catalogs and others in the Japanese Special Collections of the EAL. What is the significance of each of these collections?

Marra: Currently, the portal "Japanese Special Collections at the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, University of California, Berkeley" contains five distinct databases:

1) Old and Rare Books: Includes printed books mostly from the Edo period (1603-1867) and manuscripts from the pre-modern to modern times

2) Copperplate Prints: Features over 2,400 images of individual prints from the copperplate prints collection, consisting of 472 physical items

3) Sugoroku Sheets: Contains 155 images, primarily from the Edo through the Meiji periods, with a few from the Taisho and early Showa periods

4) Fine Art Auction Catalogs: From the EAL's collection of approximately 800 volumes of art auction catalogs, mostly published between 1912 and 1941

5) Illustrations Surrounding Japanese Modern Books: From the Murakami Collection.

Among these, the first four databases are related to the Mitsui acquisition, though the "Old and Rare Books" database also includes a small number of Edo printed books from more recent donations, such as those collected by the late Prof. Ichiei Kishi and Dr. Frederic J. Kotas. This database also contains links to images converted from microfilm, provided by the National Institute of Japanese Literature through its Union Catalogue Database of Japanese Texts (Kokusho dētabēsu), allowing researchers to find digital images of the EAL's rare book holdings in a single database.

While the Copperplate Prints and Sugoroku Sheets databases are complete, the other digital archives are still growing as new materials are being digitized. The Copperplate Prints database resulted from the first digitization project that I sought assistance for from Prof. Akama, who tirelessly created metadata for each image after photographing them. The Illustrations Surrounding Japanese Modern Books database was designed by Dr. Kana Tsuneki, an ARC graduate currently teaching at the National Institute of Technology, Kurume College, and features kuchie frontispieces and other physical characteristics of bookmaking from the Meiji through early Showa periods.

Can you share your thoughts on how these digitized collections may facilitate research in Japanese art history, and provide an example or two of how researchers at UC Berkeley or elsewhere have utilized these digital archives, including the digital tools provided by the ARC, such as the Kuzushiji Transcription Support and Archiving System?

Marra: We owe a great deal to Prof. Akama and the ARC for enabling us to share EAL's digitized collections with researchers worldwide through the portal "Japanese Special Collections at the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, University of California, Berkeley." However, the benefits of this portal extend beyond mere accessibility. It allows researchers to create their own databases for specific research purposes. Examples include the Copperplate Prints and the Illustrations Surrounding Japanese Modern Books databases. For the Copperplate Prints collection, EAL's online catalog provides a single collection-level record, whereas the Copperplate Prints database offers over 2,400 individual image records with corresponding metadata. This makes it easier for researchers to find specific images by searching the database, enabling them to create personalized research tools for analysis.

The portal also features the Kuzushiji Transcription Support and Archiving System, which allows researchers to attach transcription texts to associated images, facilitating full-text search. Several members of the UCB community and beyond have shown interest in using the portal for transcription. During the 16-month closure of EAL due to the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and July 2021, I began to collaborate with Prof. Shinji Konno of Seisen University. He wanted to use the digital images of EAL's Japanese rare book holdings for his online instruction. Even after in-person classes resumed, he continued using the portal for his teaching and provided transcribed texts prepared by his students. We acknowledge the contributions of Prof. Konno and his collaborators by creating the Seisen University Transcription Project page within the portal.

Can you share your thoughts on the importance of digitally archiving library collections and how it may play a part in the overall long-term goals of the EAL?

Marra: Digital archives have made it easier to access rare Japanese holdings in libraries worldwide and have opened up new avenues for research. With thousands of volumes of pre-modern Japanese books and manuscripts not yet digitized, EAL, along with many other libraries, should continue striving to make as many of these holdings digitally accessible to researchers globally. To this end, we have collaborated with many researchers from Japan in various ways.

Regarding the Japanese materials included in the Mitsui acquisition, I would like to clarify that some items remain uncatalogued due to a lack of expertise among EAL staff. This includes most of the Japanese Manuscripts Collection, which consists of approximately 7,800 volumes and 4,200 single sheets from the 14^th to the 20^th century. Thanks to the enormous efforts of Prof. Motoi Katsumata (Meisei University) and Prof. Akama, over 3,400 bibliographic records for items in this collection have recently been added to the Old and Rare Books database in the aforementioned portal. This will help numerous scholars worldwide discover what EAL has to offer, as these records contain titles and creator names in romanization, in addition to those in Japanese.

This achievement was the result of a multi-year research project led by Prof. Katsumata, with many collaborators, funded by the Mitsubishi Foundation, Meisei University, and JSPS's KAKENHI, in addition to ARC's support. Including these bibliographic records in this database will facilitate the process of adding images from this collection as they become available.

Finally, could you share a few of your personal favorites within the EAL collection?

Marra: One of my favorite items in the collection is the Kadenshū manuscripts, which consists of 146 volumes of kaden, or genealogical records of 135 kuge families from the mid-19^th century. Although these volumes are shelved at different locations in the Japanese Manuscripts Collection according to their family names, they were virtually compiled into a single collection, when digitized with funding support from the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources in 2018. After digitization, we enhanced the usability of the collection by creating a search tool for over 3,100 nobles' names listed in the manuscripts. This work was documented in the poster co-presented with Prof. Akama at the Jinmonkon conference in 2019. The Kadenshū collection is highlighted in the Online Exhibitions section of the aforementioned portal.

Other favorite items of mine include the manuscripts of literary works and essays by well-known modern writers, which seem to be holographs and allow readers to trace the authors' process of refining their texts. Examples include:

・Genkō monogatari, by Fukuchi Ōchi (1841-1906)

・Giwaku, by Chikamatsu Shūkō (1876-1944)

・Haha, by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892-1927)

・Kabukigeki no hozon ni tsuite, by Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859-1935)

・Nara o tatsu mae, by Mushanokōji Saneatsu (1885-1976)

・Sōka ni tsuite, by Kōda Rohan (1867-1947)

・Yoakemae, Osanai Kaoru (1881-1928)

Is there anything else you would like to comment on or any other aspect you would like to address in this interview?

Marra: I would like to highlight that Prof. Akama and the ARC also helped digitize the Ukiyo-e prints collection held by the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. The images of these materials are accessible through a separate database, which is linked from the portal "Japanese Special Collections at the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, University of California, Berkeley." I express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Akama and the ARC students for their support over the years. I look forward to working more closely with them in the coming years.

(This interview was conducted by Yinzi Emily Li)

Background:
The ARC-iJAC project Ukiyo-e, illustrated books, albums and painted books in Madrid Collections emerged as an initiative of Asia Research Group (GIA), attached to the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain, which has been collaborating with the Art Research Center (ARC) for about two years and thanks to which significant progress has been made in the analysis and cataloging of ukiyo-e albums and books that are part of the collections of the Complutense University Library and that have remained almost unknown and, in some cases, in a poor state of preservation.
Involved in this project have been the professors Pilar Cabañas, Matilde Arias, Aitana Merino, and Ana Trujillo with the new incorporation of the researcher Alba Finol.

Click here for the Japanese collection of the UCM:
→ARC Ukiyo-e Portal Database
→ARC Early Japanese Books Portal Database

Could you please tell us about your motivation and the purpose of conducting the ARC-iJAC research project on the ukiyo-e, illustrated books, and albums in Madrid collections?

Cabañas: What encouraged us to initiate this project was to give value to the collections of the Complutense Library. Due to a lack of resources, these books and ukiyo-e had remained uncatalogued in the university's collections.

This project has enabled us to study them in-depth and make them known, not only in the Spanish context as part of the heritage of our institution, but also internationally, since the ARC database is a platform of great diffusion for specialists in Japanese art from all over the world. We are delighted with this possibility. Moreover, thanks to this collaboration, being in a space of great specialists, we can compare our knowledge and expand it.

What is distinctive about the Madrid collections?

Cabañas: In Madrid, there are no large collections of Japanese art or a historical tradition of its study. In the absence of major collectors, this material is a unique example within the panorama of Spanish collecting. Through these pieces, we can study the motivations and interests of the Spanish artistic market of the time, determined by its particular historical context, both economic and cultural.

Although they are not numerous, they are interesting examples of costumes, kabuki plays, and other themes that make us wonder about how they were perceived at the time in the Spanish context. Given the importance of their authors, they also represent a re-evaluation of the heritage of Japanese art in Spain.

How has the ARC-iJAC supported you in realizing this project and which research objectives have you been able to achieve?

Cabañas: The collaboration with the ARC-iJAC has been fundamental in the work of cataloging these works, solving our doubts whenever we have had them, especially in the transcription of texts and in the cataloging of themes and artists, as well as in certain specificities related to the art history of Japanese antique books and ukiyo-e.

You have recently launched an online exhibition on shini-e. Can you tell us more about it?

Cabañas: The virtual exhibition of SHINI-E, hosted on the website of the Complutense Library of Madrid, was an initiative on our part to publicize our project. We decided to focus on a specific aspect of the collection that would be attractive to users, and it seemed to us that the shini-e genre was little known to the general public.

The preparation of this exhibition involved presenting the public with specific information, not only about shini-e but also about more general aspects related to shini-e. Some of the merits achieved have been the opportunity to study specific aspects of each print - not only technical data collected in the print;something that already appears in the ARC database -but also information about the characters depicted.The transcription of the texts that appear in the images is perhaps the most valuable information obtained through this process. This allowed us to translate them into Spanish, including linguistic decisions that we understand will be useful for future students and researchers of the collection.

Likewise, the presentation is made in a way intended to be clear, and useful, even for those uninitiated in the Japanese language. Another specific aspect is that each image shown is accompanied by a link that directs the user to the ARC database to access detailed information that appears in neither the interface of the Complutense Library collection nor in the virtual exhibition. In these cards, we have tried to include texts in English to facilitate communication with those users who are not familiar with either the Japanese or Spanish languages, although these are isolated cases and not the entire collection.

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

Cabañas: Thanks to the implementation of this project, detailed cataloging of part of the library's holdings has been carried out. This research has led to new discoveries within the collection itself, such as the existence of poems, characters, and kabuki plays not yet studied in the Spanish scene. It has also meant a clear dissemination of information that has generated interest among the general public and students of Japanese art. All this makes clear the importance of the ARC database as a working tool for researchers who want to specialize in Japanese prints.

As for the challenges, although the albums were already digitized, when we checked the original material we could see that some of the albums were in a poor state of conservation, discolored, and out of order. The lack of institutional funds for the project also contributed to the limitations in achieving and meeting deadlines.

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

Cabañas: It was through the collaboration scholarships offered on their web page. It seemed like just what we were looking for. In addition, the database is also well-known among specialists in Japanese art in Spain, so we were delighted to have been able to collaborate with the ARC-iJAC.

In our experience, collaboration with Japanese institutions has always been great. We have always learned a lot from them, and this was no exception.

Is there anything else you would like to comment on or highlight, for example, regarding the direction of future collaboration?

Cabañas: It is an honor for us to be part of this immense project, considering our small contribution. We are excited and look forward to moving forward in the future.

Activities carried out as a result of the collaboration with the ARC-iJAC during FY 2023:

- Virtual exhibition of SHINI-E, hosted on the website of the Complutense Library of Madrid, was an initiative on our part to publicize our project. Focused on the shini-e genre. (https://patrimoniodigital.ucm.es/s/shinie-en/page/welcome)

- Complu-Asia Seminar: Museums in Asia. With two lectures on: digital archives // our collaboration with the ARC-iJAC (https://f965c820-9ad9-444b-8c5c-fbd24bc1b6fb.filesusr.com/ugd/c52cf2_d87c32a19d334acfa7183dd43c82d393.pdf)

- Revista de museología: Spanish publication with upcoming issue dedicated to Japanese art collections and museums both in Japan and internationally, again paying special attention to the digital humanities (https://www.museologia.net/)

- International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC) & "Digital Humanities Center for Japanese Arts and Cultures"-Project, Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University FY2023 Annual Report Meeting: "Ukiyo-e, illustrated books, albums and painted books in Madrid Collections" conference (Aitana Merino)

Background:
Prof. Ruck Thawonmas, a research member of the Art Research Center (ARC), received his B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, in 1987, an M.Eng. degree in information science from Ibaraki University in 1990, and a Ph.D. degree in information engineering from Tohoku University in 1994.
He is a Full Professor at the College of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, where he leads the Intelligent Computer Entertainment Laboratory (ICE Lab).

Prof. Thawonmas, thank you very much for your time today. Can you tell us how you joined Ritsumeikan University and the Art Research Center (ARC)?

Prof. Thawonmas: After I finished my Ph.D. at Tohoku University, I worked at several places in Japan. One day, I saw an interview with a non-Japanese professor at Ritsumeikan University. Seeing that the interviewee was a full professor doing well despite being non-Japanese in an international atmosphere environment encouraged me to join the university.

I joined Ritsumeikan University in 2002 when the university was planning to establish my current college--the College of Information Science and Engineering (CISE).

While my early research focused on data mining, upon joining Ritsumeikan, I decided to slightly change my research area to set myself apart from other professors. I started to look into entertainment computing and computer games, which were not yet well-recognized research areas at that time, either domestically or internationally.

From the beginning of my tenure at Ritsumeikan, I became involved in the ARC's research activities, including the application and subsequent execution of the 21st Century COE (Center for Excellence) Program of the Ministry of Education (MEXT) "Kyoto Art Entertainment Innovation Research." Guess who added the term entertainment there!

As the Head of the Intelligent Computer Entertainment Laboratory (ICE Lab), you have been engaged in research on game AI and intelligent techniques for increasing the entertainment value of computer games. Could you give us some examples of how digital resources of the ARC have been utilized in your research projects?

Prof. Thawonmas: As part of our effort to promote Japanese culture through games, ukiyo-e prints from the ARC Ukiyo-e Portal Database have been incorporated as background images in various projects on game AI.

Related article → The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) Collection of Ukiyo-e Prints and Japanese Old Books has been released

Related databases → Royal Ontario Museum Ukiyo-e Database / Royal Ontario Museum Japanese Old Books Database

Background:
Dr. Akiko Takesue joined the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in 2021 as the Bishop White Committee Associate Curator of Japanese Art & Culture, an endowed position, and is in charge of researching and developing the ROM's collection of Japanese art and culture that comprises approximately 10,000 objects.
Dr. Takesue holds a doctorate in Art History from York University and Master's degrees from the University of Toronto and the University of New South Wales. In addition to the ROM, she has broad curatorial experience at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Dr Takesue, thank you very much for your time today. What sparked your interest in Japanese art history?

Takesue: It is a long story since I left Japan almost 25 years ago. When I was younger and living in Japan, I was more interested in Western than Japanese art. Hence, I went to Sydney, Australia, to study art. At that time, I had the idea to work in an art gallery dealing with Western contemporary art.

Then, while I was doing an internship at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney under a Japanese curator, I discovered the beauty and excitement of studying and dealing with Japanese art. Interestingly, I realized the Japanese art collection there was different from what I thought of Japanese art, which was sort of a trigger for me to research the global circulation of Japanese art since the Meiji period.

As the Japanese collections overseas consist of many export arts, i.e., made in Japan but only for the Western market, I discovered many things I never knew about when I was in Japan. So, I became fascinated with the fact that Japanese art in Sydney was indeed different from my understanding of Japanese art. This interest continues even now.

I also investigated in my PhD dissertation how objects stay the same while their meanings shift from time to time, place to place.

How did you first connect with the Art Research Center (ARC)?

Takesue: It was through my predecessor, Dr. Rosina Buckland, who is now at the British Museum. In 2020, she started the digitization project of the ROM's Japanese art collection with Prof. Akama whom I met when he and his team was taking photographs of the collection. So, after Dr. Buckland left in 2021, I continued to complete this project, and I feel fortunate and grateful that she started it.

Comprising approximately 10,000 objects, the Japanese art collection of the ROM is the largest of its kind in Canada. Considered to be particularly comprehensive is the ukiyo-e print collection. What do you find fascinating about it and why?

Takesue: Over 2,000 ukiyo-e prints and surimono of Sir Byron Edmund Walker, one of the founders and the first chairman of the ROM, were bequested to the ROM in 1926, which became the core of our entire Japanese print collection.

The ROM already had some woodblock prints since 1916, but at that time, no one knew much about Japanese art at the museum. With the Walker Collection and the earlier prints, our print collection expanded, comprising over 4,000 prints today.

Furthermore, there is a variety in the genres of the prints. The ROM's collection consists of actor prints, prints of beautiful women, landscape prints, including those of Hokusai and Hiroshige, as well as prints from the Meiji period and war prints. So not only the sheer number of prints but the range of subjects make our collection quite valuable and unique.

For example, we have an almost complete set of Hiroshige's Meisho Edo Hyakkei (One Hundred Famous Views of Edo). It may not be well-known, but our set is almost like a 'first edition'. 'First edition' may be a tricky term, but our set is in a very good condition, and you can see the highly skilled printing techniques used. While everyone knows about the first edition at the Brooklyn Museum, hardly anybody knows about our set.

When I recently went to the Brooklyn Museum, I compared their set with printouts of some of our prints with the curator there, and we realized that both of our sets are almost identical. So, I was glad I could confirm that our set is also a high-quality series.

You also have a rare collection of Ogata Gekko prints. What are your thoughts on this collection?

Takesue: This collection is very unique, too. Although Gekko was quite well-known in his lifetime in the Meiji period and produced many prints, paintings, and book illustrations, he became somewhat of a forgotten artist.

A Toronto-based collector and former law librarian of York University, Balfour Halévy, accumulated over 600 of Gekko's works and donated the whole collection to the ROM in 2016. According to him, another extensive collection of Gekko prints exists in New Zealand. Since these two collections seem to be the only comprehensive collections dedicated to Gekko outside of Japan, we are very fortunate to have one of them at the ROM.

In June this year, 4,233 ukiyo-e prints and 74 old Japanese books from the ROM's collection were released in the ARC portal database. What is the significance of this database?

Takesue: The contents and quality of our print collection are good, however, not many people, including researchers, seem to be aware that we have such a comprehensive collection of prints. So, we are grateful for this ARC digitization project to make our collection available to researchers and the public for their studies, research, and pleasure. Otherwise, those prints remain just hidden in our storage. Except for a few notable research efforts, the whole collection has not been studied extensively.

Our goal is that many scholars and researchers will take note of the prints in the ROM's collection so we can contribute to the development of ukiyo-e research. The release of our collection marks a significant starting point.

What are your thoughts on the importance of digitization for museums, and how does it play a part in your plans at the ROM?

Takesue: Digitization of the collection is crucial to provide the public access to what we have. The ROM is a huge museum with 13 million objects in total in its collections. So, I believe that anyone can find at least one favorite object.

We try to exhibit as many in the museum as possible, but space is limited. Only less than 5% of our collection is publicly displayed. The rest is in our storage, with many objects never being on public view.

While, as a museum curator, I believe in the power of objects when you see them with your eyes, if a collection is available online, people have another way to enjoy the collection. Availability and accessibility are crucial particularly since we have no permanent Japanese gallery at the ROM right now.

I have recently completed an online exhibition on catfish prints. COVID has, in a way, accelerated the development of virtual channels. Digitization has become essential to showcase the Japanese collection at the ROM.

Finally, could you share a few of your personal favorites within the ROM's ukiyo-e print collection?

Takesue: I like ukiyo-e prints with some layers of meaning behind them, for instance, parodies (mitate-e) or complex ideas, which I realized when I did the online exhibition on the catfish prints. They are not just funny prints but encompass emotions and thoughts of people about society at that time. This is why I am fascinated with this kind of print.

Hiroshige's Meisho Edo Hyakkei (One Hundred Famous Views of Edo) is also one of my favorites, mainly because of its composition. Hiroshige uses very striking, innovative perspectives of having something huge at the front with other elements kept smaller at the back, which, at that time, was quite innovative and a reason why Western artists, including Impressionist artists were so fascinated with the Japanese prints.

Images credit: Courtesy of ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), Toronto, Canada. ©ROM

(This interview was conducted by Yinzi Emily Li)

Related article → The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) Collection of Ukiyo-e Prints and Japanese Old Books has been released

Related databases → Royal Ontario Museum Ukiyo-e Database / Royal Ontario Museum Japanese Old Books Database

Background:
Masami Yamada, leader of the ARC-iJAC project Re-thinking Japonisme: Digitization of the V&A's collection of Japanese illustrated books and researching its formation in the late 19th century, is a Curator in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Asia Department. She has particular responsibility for the collections of Japanese lacquerware, netsuke, ukiyo-e woodblock prints and contemporary craft. Her current area of research is contemporary craft, particularly the work of urushi lacquer artists. In 2022, she received the inaugural Sir Nicholas Goodison Award for Contemporary Craft from the Art Fund to further develop the Museum's internationally renowned Japanese lacquer collection.

Thank you very much for your time today. How did you first connect with the Art Research Center (ARC) or hear about the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC)?

Yamada: The V&A was the first museum where Professor Ryо̄ Akama from the ARC conducted the digitization of a Japanese art collection in Europe 20 years ago. In this first phase of the partnership project, every single artwork from the Museum's extensive collection of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, numbering over 25,000 in total, was photographed. These images were subsequently uploaded onto the Museum's publicly accessible collection database, Explore the Collections. It was a remarkable achievement in the early 2000s when the digital presence of museums was fairly limited.

Soon after I joined the V&A in 2018, I had a chance to meet with Professor Akama and Dr. Ryо̄ko Matsuba, Lecturer in Digital Japanese Arts and Humanities at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC), in London to discuss the possibility of initiating the second phase of the digitization project. The collections of ukiyo-e prints and illustrated books remain largely uncatalogued and without photographs in the case of the book collection. We agreed that there was much scope to improve the visibility and accessibility of these important collections. So, a collaborative project with the ARC was something I planned to initiate from the very beginning of my time at the V&A.

Could you please tell us the motivation and significance for your ARC-iJAC research project Re-thinking Japonisme: Digitization of the V&A's collection of Japanese ukiyo-e prints and illustrated books and researching its formation in the late 19th century?

Yamada: The current research project, launched in 2022, is expected to take at least a few years to complete considering the volume of the target areas. The prime objective is to systematically digitize the ukiyo-e woodblock prints and illustrated books in the V&A collection to provide a more comprehensive overview.

To date, three publications in English and two in Japanese on the ukiyo-e collection have been released between the 1980s and late 2000s. The 170 selected works traveled to Tokyo in 2007 for a special exhibition, Masterpieces of Ukiyo-e from the Victoria and Albert Museum, held at the Ōta Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo, contributing to the collection's recognition in Japan. However, the selection of prints for these previous publications and the exhibition tended to focus on the most iconic prints of the ukiyo-e genre. The number of prints we can display in our permanent gallery of Japanese art is limited to no more than 15 at a time. I am excited to make thousands of prints that have never been displayed or published before accessible online through this project.

The presence of the illustrated book collection, on the other hand, remains largely unknown despite its incredibly rich contents. There is only one publication on the collection compiled by Leonard G. Dawes in 1972. It introduced just a small selection of the most important titles, and there is currently no other publicly available resource to explore over 700 titles in the collection in full.

Our immediate focus is on the large group of Japanese prints and books acquired in 1886. The Museum purchased over 12,000 prints and 300 books as a single lot from a London-based art dealer, S. M. Franck, at the height of the European craze for all things Japanese. Analyzing print and book genres offered in this bulk acquisition would ultimately contribute to creating a new understanding of the Japanese art market in London in the late 19th century.

What do you hope to achieve with this joint research project?

Yamada: I hope this collaborative project will further reinforce our existing partnership with the ARC and SISJAC. The V&A could not initiate this exciting new phase of the digitization project without their expertise and support.

We are currently working together to make the ARC databases of the V&A's print and book collections publicly accessible. By interlinking the V&A's collection database in English with these specialist databases in Japanese, we will not only improve the accessibility of our collections for Japanese-speaking specialists and general audience, but also create opportunities for international specialists and audiences to discover the ARC's dedication and excellence in the field of Digital Humanities.

As part of the project, Dr. Matsuba from SISJAC regularly organizes hands-on digitizing workshops in the V&A, inviting young researchers and students. Spending one to two weeks, these workshops are designed to photograph the book collection for the above-mentioned databases. Every single book is being photographed from cover to cover, ensuring that new photographs meet today's publication standards. So far, seven university students and one researcher have taken part and learned best practices for digitizing museum collections. Offering learning opportunities for the next generation of researchers is another important goal for me.

Could you give us an insight into your current role as curator at the V&A and what do you find particularly fascinating about the Japanese Collection of the Museum?

Yamada: I am one of the three curators responsible for the Japanese art collections at the V&A. We hold over 48,000 objects in the Japanese art collections. Our permanent gallery, the Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art, celebrates the extraordinary craftsmanship and artistic creativity of Japan from the sixth century to the present day through displays of swords and armor, lacquer, ceramics, cloisonné enamels, textiles and dress, inrō and netsuke, paintings, prints, and illustrated books, as well as contemporary craft, product design, fashion, and electronics.

While making our existing collections as widely accessible as possible through exhibitions, displays, research papers, lectures, and digitization is at the heart of our daily routine, the V&A is also committed to supporting and promoting new creative practices, acting as a resource and platform for contemporary artists, designers, and performers. As a Japanese national who has lived in Europe for many years, it is my passion to support contemporary Japanese practitioners and create opportunities to introduce their artistic creativity on the world stage.

Our audience is diverse, not just in terms of nationalities, but also of age range. Young V&A (formerly the V&A Museum of Childhood) opened its doors to the public at the beginning of July 2023. This historic museum in East London has been entirely redesigned and is now reborn as a new museum where children, young people, and families can imagine, play and design. Its inaugural special exhibition will be all about Japan, Japan: Myths to Manga, and will open in October 2023. The exhibition has been collaboratively curated by Katy Canales, Young V&A Curator, with us in the Japan section of the V&A's Asia Department.

The ARC places great emphasis on fostering young researchers--the next generation of digital archiving experts. So, last but not least, based on your experience of studying and working in the UK, what would be your advice to students wishing to go abroad or join an international research project but worry about language barriers and other challenges?

Yamada: Studying and working abroad was the best thing I did in my early 20s. I highly recommend any early career researcher in Japan to go abroad or join an international research project if any opportunity arises. Although it has become easy to connect with international researchers virtually, meeting and working with them in person is an entirely different, far more powerful experience. Living in another country far from home is always challenging, but often life-changing and rewarding. It is exciting to exchange ideas with researchers from culturally diverse backgrounds who might have a completely different perspective on your research topic.

In terms of language barriers, I strongly believe the proverb, 'What one likes, one will do best.' If you are passionate about your research field, the most important thing is the contents of your research, and English is just a tool to communicate it. I went to a public school in Japan and could not speak English until I enrolled at the International Christian University in Tokyo, renowned for its fully bilingual education. So, my English was by no means perfect when I lived in London for the first time as a student, but I had learned that my Japanese heritage and language skill are unique assets that contribute to research projects in an international context.

Images credit line: Ⓒ Victoria and Albert Museum, London

(This interview was conducted by Yinzi Emily Li)

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.)

Background:
Kelly Midori McCormick is an assistant professor of Japanese history at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, specializing in the history of the material and visual culture of modern Japan.
Carrie Cushman is the Edith Dale Monson Gallery Director and Curator at the Hartford Art School. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University and is a specialist in postwar and contemporary art and photography from Japan.
Supported by the ARC-iJAC, their project team has created and launched the bilingual website Behind the Camera--part database, part educational tool--spotlighting a diverse range of international experts on the history of Japanese photography from the perspective of gender and power.

Thank you very much for your time today. Could you please tell us about your motivation to start your FY 2021 ARC-iJAC project Expanding the Study of Japanese Photography and Gender: Modules for Teaching and Public Access?

Prof. McCormick / Prof. Cushman: Conceived in 2017, Behind the Camera was established to address the lack of scholarship and access to primary sources on the histories of Japanese women in photography. The idea for Behind the Camera was sparked with a simple question: what resources existed on the roles that women have played in the history of Japanese photography?

Since the introduction of the first camera to Japan in 1848, women have been integral to the social constructions of photography as a visual technology, art form, and commercial practice.

Women photographers require a history that intersects social and political history with the close analysis of their work and its implications for visual culture in Japan.

Beyond accounting for historical omissions, we sought ways to interrogate the overwhelmingly male-centered historiography of Japanese photography and to address the ideologies that have consistently reinstated gendered hierarchies within the photography world.​​ We knew that these efforts could not be individual but would require a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach.

To that end, in 2019, we brought together a multidisciplinary group of scholars from Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel for a two-part panel at the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, sponsored by the Japan Art History Forum. The conversations generated at the AAS made clear that the histories of Japanese women in photography required a sustained platform that would allow for research to develop organically and collaboratively.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the project transformed into a website where specialists share carefully researched arguments and source materials made available to the public in both English and Japanese. In times when travel to archives and conferences is difficult, this website seeks to bring photographs, scholarly perspectives, and historical resources directly to you.

We are delighted about the launch of your digital humanities website Behind the Camera: Gender, Power, and Politics in the History of Japanese Photography.

Can you share some of your experiences with us during the implementation of this project? Have you come across any particular challenges?

Prof. McCormick / Prof. Cushman: The Art Research Center at Ritsumeikan is an incredible resource for researching Japanese visual culture and producing new information about it. We were thrilled at the opportunity to work with the ARC but the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic meant that our initial goals of using the recording facilities to conduct interviews with current Japanese women photographers were not possible.

We were able, however, to use the generous funding to produce an interview between the photographer Nagashima Yurie and art historian Handa Yuri. This interview will be the first to introduce a wide range of audiences to Nagashima's scholarly work on the history of the Japanese women photographers who gained recognition for their work in the 1990s and Nagashima's critical interpretation of the male photo critics who shaped the way the world saw this generation of women photographers.

Is there anything particularly fascinating you found while implementing this project?

Prof. McCormick / Prof. Cushman: To create the modules for the site, we approached historians of photography to present an issue from the history of Japanese photography from a gender studies perspective. One of the most gratifying things about this project is how many new angles scholars have approached and created their modules from. Many have seen the new format of a video lecture paired with an image archive as a structure that allows them to explore new topics or synthesize larger projects in a compelling and captivating way.

For instance, Dr. Elena Creef drew on networks of Japanese war brides that her mother is a part of to create a collection of family photographs that illustrate their experiences as they moved from Japan to the United States in the postwar period.

While the majority of the modules are focused on historical events, a selection of the modules has been created by curators who reflect on exhibition practices in relationship with the gender histories of Japanese photography.

Maggie Mustard's module on the exhibition she curated, The Incomplete Araki: Life, Sex, and Death in the Work of Nobuyoshi Araki, held at the Museum of Sex, New York in 2018, examines the many challenges with presenting work by the very controversial photographer in the context of the MeToo movement.

Do you have plans to expand this website, for example, by adding new modules? If possible, could you please tell us more about them?

Prof. McCormick / Prof. Cushman: We will be adding a new collection of modules to the website in 2023. We are excited to present lectures by Ayelet Zohar on Ishikawa Mao; Kerry Ross on marketing cameras to women in the Taisho and early Showa period; Judy Legewood on May Ebihara's anthropological photographs in Cambodia; Phillip Charrier's lecture, Shigeo Gocho, women, and everyday resistance in 1960s Japan; Miryam Sas on Rethinking Japanese media theory, and interviews with Eileen Smith on photographing Minamata; and an interview between Komatsu Hiroko and Franz Prichard.

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

We saw a call for applications and after investigating the resources at the ARC were excited to partner with Ritsumeikan in the hopes of spreading the word about the project and collaborating with Japanese scholars.

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

We are actively seeking contributors in Japan and around the world who would like to contribute new modules on the history of Japanese photography from new perspectives. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have a proposal for a module.

(This interview was conducted by Yinzi Emily Li.)