The Color Revolution: Printed Books In Eighteenth-Century Japan

Beginning in the mid-1760s, images printed in more than five colors in early modern Japan were known as nishiki-e 錦絵, or “brocade pictures,” an appellation that signaled their visual richness in distinction to prints in monochrome or limited color. Most accounts of full-color printing locate the development of this technology and its visual impact in the medium of the single-sheet print, as part of the genre of ukiyo-e 浮世絵 (the “pictures of the floating world”). This project revises that view by considering the illustrated books produced in the full-color technique, which predate or appear contemporaneously with the so-called “nishiki-e revolution.” Closely analyzing the materiality and visual programs of these books reveals how their use of printed color not only constitutes an important shift in technical practices of printing, but also signals a wider engagement with the artistic, social, and scientific discourses of mid-eighteenth century Japan. Ranging from interest in the natural world to painting, from poetry to scientific classification, from elite milieux to commercial publishers, these illustrated books demonstrate the convergence of a diverse set of concerns upon the particular medium of the color-printed, thread-bound book. The three case studies analyzed in this dissertation take up books differentiated by subject matter, style, and artistic genres. The first two chapters examine a book of fishes and its sequel, on the theme of plants and insects; both books are genre-bending works that combine concerns of poetry, natural studies, and painting. The third chapter considers two picture books of the floating world (ukiyo-ehon 浮世絵本), which feature actors and prostitutes of the pleasure quarter, respectively. Tracing the movement of printed “full color” from its emergence in the context of coterie poetry groups to its later status as a commercial imperative, this study reframes the earliest full-color illustrated books as critical artifacts of technological and epistemological change for picture-making and print in early modern Japan, centered around the materiality and conceptual power of color

Visual Analytics for the Exploratory Analysis and Labeling of Cultural Data

Cultural data can come in various forms and modalities, such as text traditions, artworks, music, crafted objects, or even as intangible heritage such as biographies of people, performing arts, cultural customs and rites. The assignment of metadata to such cultural heritage objects is an important task that people working in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) do on a daily basis. These rich metadata collections are used to categorize, structure, and study collections, but can also be used to apply computational methods. Such computational methods are in the focus of Computational and Digital Humanities projects and research. For the longest time, the digital humanities community has focused on textual corpora, including text mining, and other natural language processing techniques. Although some disciplines of the humanities, such as art history and archaeology have a long history of using visualizations. In recent years, the digital humanities community has started to shift the focus to include other modalities, such as audio-visual data. In turn, methods in machine learning and computer vision have been proposed for the specificities of such corpora. Over the last decade, the visualization community has engaged in several collaborations with the digital humanities, often with a focus on exploratory or comparative analysis of the data at hand. This includes both methods and systems that support classical Close Reading of the material and Distant Reading methods that give an overview of larger collections, as well as methods in between, such as Meso Reading. Furthermore, a wider application of machine learning methods can be observed on cultural heritage collections. But they are rarely applied together with visualizations to allow for further perspectives on the collections in a visual analytics or human-in-the-loop setting. Visual analytics can help in the decision-making process by guiding domain experts through the collection of interest. However, state-of-the-art supervised machine learning methods are often not applicable to the collection of interest due to missing ground truth. One form of ground truth are class labels, e.g., of entities depicted in an image collection, assigned to the individual images. Labeling all objects in a collection is an arduous task when performed manually, because cultural heritage collections contain a wide variety of different objects with plenty of details. A problem that arises with these collections curated in different institutions is that not always a specific standard is followed, so the vocabulary used can drift apart from another, making it difficult to combine the data from these institutions for large-scale analysis. This thesis presents a series of projects that combine machine learning methods with interactive visualizations for the exploratory analysis and labeling of cultural data. First, we define cultural data with regard to heritage and contemporary data, then we look at the state-of-the-art of existing visualization, computer vision, and visual analytics methods and projects focusing on cultural data collections. After this, we present the problems addressed in this thesis and their solutions, starting with a series of visualizations to explore different facets of rap lyrics and rap artists with a focus on text reuse. Next, we engage in a more complex case of text reuse, the collation of medieval vernacular text editions. For this, a human-in-the-loop process is presented that applies word embeddings and interactive visualizations to perform textual alignments on under-resourced languages supported by labeling of the relations between lines and the relations between words. We then switch the focus from textual data to another modality of cultural data by presenting a Virtual Museum that combines interactive visualizations and computer vision in order to explore a collection of artworks. With the lessons learned from the previous projects, we engage in the labeling and analysis of medieval illuminated manuscripts and so combine some of the machine learning methods and visualizations that were used for textual data with computer vision methods. Finally, we give reflections on the interdisciplinary projects and the lessons learned, before we discuss existing challenges when working with cultural heritage data from the computer science perspective to outline potential research directions for machine learning and visual analytics of cultural heritage data

Visualizing the classics : reading surimono and kyōka books as social and cultural history

Surimono reflect cultural and social facets of urban life in late Edo period Japan. Thus far, most surimono research was focused on the art historic qualities of the material, regularly also taking the interplay between poetry and image into account. The research presented here places surimono in a greater perspective by including the literary antecedents of the content, the cultural background of the kyōka world and the social networks of poets.Fundamental to the aim of this research is to expose how kyōka provided spheres where people with a cultural interest could join in a literary pursuit that allowed them to fully incorporate their appreciation for and knowledge of the classics. I argue that surimono and kyōka books are deeply rooted in a literary tradition and aimed at an audience of amateur poets who enjoyed honing their wit and culture, creating a world of their own with self-imposed regulations. Despite the initial mocking stance towards the classics seen in early stages of the renewed kyōka popularity in Edo, I contend that surimono, well as other kyōka related materials, show a specific rediscovery and reception of a literary past, which coincides with a period of cultural self-identification in Edo society.De Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), The Heinz Kaempfer Fund, Het Leids Universiteits Fonds (LUF)Asian Studie

Japonisme in Polish Pictorial Arts (1885 – 1939)

This thesis chronicles the development of Polish Japonisme between 1885 and 1939. It focuses mainly on painting and graphic arts, and selected aspects of photography, design and architecture. Appropriation from Japanese sources triggered the articulation of new visual and conceptual languages which helped forge new art and art educational paradigms that would define the modern age. Starting with Polish fin-de-siècle Japonisme, it examines the role of Western European artistic centres, mainly Paris, in the initial dissemination of Japonisme in Poland, and considers the exceptional case of Julian Fałat, who had first-hand experience of Japan. The second phase of Polish Japonisme (1901-1918) was nourished on local, mostly Cracovian, infrastructure put in place by the ‘godfather’ of Polish Japonisme Feliks Manggha Jasieński. His pro-Japonisme agency is discussed at length. Considerable attention is given to the political incentive provided by the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904, which rendered Japan as Poland’s ally against its Russian oppressor. The first two decades of the 20th century are regarded as the ‘Renaissance’ of Japonisme in Poland, and it is this part of the thesis that explores Japanese inspirations as manifested in the genres of portraiture, still life, landscape, representations of flora and fauna, erotic imagery, and caricature. Japonisme in graphic and applied graphic arts, including the poster, is also discussed. The existence of the taste for Japanese art in the West after 1918 is less readily acknowledged than that of the preceding decades. The third phase of Polish Japonisme (1919-1939) helps challenge the tacit conviction that Japanese art stopped functioning as an inspirational force around 1918. This part of the thesis examines the nationalisation of heretofore private resources of Japanese art in Cracow and Warsaw, and the inauguration of official cultural exchange between Poland and Japan. Polish Japonisme within École de Paris, both before 1918 and thereafter, inspired mainly by the painting of Foujita Tsuguharu, is an entirely new contribution to the field. Although Japanese inspirations frequently appeared in Polish painting of the interwar period, it was the graphic arts that became most receptive to the Japanese aesthetic at that time. The thesis includes a case study of Leon Wyczółkowski’s interbellum Japonisme, and interprets it as patriotic transpositions of the work of Hiroshige and the Japanese genre of meisho-e. Japonisme in Polish design and architecture is addressed only in the context of the creation of Polish national style in design (1901-1939). Art schools in Britain and America became important centres for Japonisme at the beginning of the 20th century. The thesis considers the case of Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, which due to radical changes introduced by its new director Julian Fałat, became an important centre for the dissemination of the taste for Japanese art in Poland

The otaku phenomenon : pop culture, fandom, and religiosity in contemporary Japan.

The focus of this dissertation centers on the otaku subculture and their subsequent incorporation of Japanese religious elements into their consumption of Japanese popular culture. This phenomenon highlights the intersections of popular culture and religion in Japan, which is emerging in religious sites. Shintō shrines and Buddhist temples are incorporating popular culture as a means to maintain relevancy, encourage growth of parishioners, and raising revenue by capitalizing on the popularity of manga and anime. The relevance of this research connects to the continued impact of Japanese popular culture through globalization. The first chapter provides a theoretical background examining this socio-religious phenomenon, and sociological framework, which considers the capitalist economy and relationship to religion. Chapter Two defines Shintō and kami, explains deification, outlines an historical overview for religion in Japan, providing historical antecedents for the otaku’s relationship to religion, and highlighting historical and cultural influences. Chapter Three analyzes the historical and cultural contexts that form the otaku identity, traces the etymology of the word “otaku,” and positions the otaku within mainstream society. This analysis of otaku identity and mindset provides insight into the otaku’s consumptive behaviors associated with popular culture. Chapter Four analyzes otaku consumptive practices and behaviors, and the impact on several Shintō shrines and Buddhist temples. Chapter Four concludes with the emergence of “pop culture kami” that accentuate the otaku’s incorporation of Shintō elements into their consumption of popular culture. This convergence of otaku, religion, and popular culture points to emerging shifts within contemporary Japan