Japanese Digital Resources: Art

Illustrated Nara ehon books and scrolls in a Flash viewer provided by the National Institute of Japanese Literature.

Browse, search, and view about 20 emaki from Nichibunken, with a focus on yokai related materials, including 「地獄草紙絵巻」「鳥羽絵巻」「長谷雄草紙」 「寛永行幸図巻」and「百鬼夜行絵巻」.

Images of the New York Public Library's ehon (illustrated book) collection. You can search the collection or browse by clicking on "See all Images" at the top of the page.

Hiroshima University's collection of Nara ehon, including kaisetsu 解説 and honkoku + image viewer 翻刻+画像.

Various types of illustrated books held by Shirayuri Women's University, available in color digital facsimile in a range of digital archives linked to on this page.

Digitized color facsimiles of ehon and emaki held by Meisei University, including Heike Monogatari.

This is a database/wiki of emaki run by Nichibunken. You can view images of various emaki along with their text, which has been inputted under the image so is copy and pasteable. You can also search for specific characters across emaki.

Digitized images of 23 ehon and emaki held by the Eisai Co's medicine museum. The focus is, of course, on medical books.

A bibliographic database, with summaries, of chirimen-bon (crepe paper books) including fairy tales, Japanese culture, and Lafcadio Hearn works, in addition to calendars. They are from Hasegawa Takejirō as well as other publishers.

A database from Nichibunken, browsable and searchable, of chirimen-bon (crepe-paper books) from the Meiji period. Includes zoomable full color images of the books.

A search engine for inkan, indexed by personal name of artists, scholars, and calligraphers from the Edo period.

A database of seals stamped in books by collectors. The advanced search function is extremely detailed and allows you to search by size, color, title, author, etc. It provides high-quality digital images of the seals and notes which institution holds the book that was scanned.

This database provides page images of yomihon from the Edo period, from Ritsumeikan's Art Research Center. Its interface is difficult to use, but if you click on "縮小画像一覧" you can view all thumbnails from a given book.

A digital library from the Japan Arts Council, including old photographs and nishiki-e prints as well as documents relating to various types of theater.

Images of thousands of objects from the MFA Boston's collections, including many Japanese prints and other works of art.

Images of various objects from the museum's collections, including byobu, emaki, and archival documents.

A digital archive containing images of a wide variety of artifacts held by Kyōto University Library, including photographs, emaki, paintings, and more.

This is a visual finding aid for the Petzold collection of Buddhist scrolls at Harvard-Yenching Library. Each scroll has a zoomable high-quality image as well as bibliographic data and catalog links.

Bijutsu Gahō, aka Nihon Bijutsu Gahō, was a Meij-period magazine featuring reproductions of various kinds of art works. This database classifies and identifies each piece, along with high-resolution scan of the page of the magazine in which it appeared, including English translations of titles and exhibitions, as well as romanized artists' names. The database is being updated regularly.

Dry plate photographs of sculptor Shinkai Taketarō's works, as well as his hometown in Yamagata, from the late 1800s and early 1990s. Images are of medium size but high quality and contain metadata on the works.

Contains images from many Japanese print and other art collections at the Harvard-Yenching Library.

A searchable and browsable database of images of publishing culture throughout history from the Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University.

Browseable, searchable database of ukiyo-e in medium-sized images. Provides the ability to upload an image of a print and tries to match the print with one in the database, or recommend similar prints to the image.

A database of images of ukiyo-e in the collection of Waseda University's Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum. Provides high-quality images of the ukiyo-e as well as metadata about the prints. Searchable, and the interface is available only in Japanese.

This database of caricatures from the 19th to early 20th centuries includes a tri-lingual search interface as well as information on ukiyo-e and caricatures in addition to images of the prints themselves.

A browseable and searchable, Japanese-only database of over 2000 ukiyo-e held by the US Library of Congress, administered by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken). Good quality images of prints from many time periods.

A searchable ukiyo-e database by Ritsumeikan University's Art Research Center. The images are private collectors' prints digitized by ARC. Both Japanese and English interfaces.

A London-based print dealer with a large number of medium-size, high quality digitizations of prints in the "gallery" section.

An online repository of images of Japanese prints from UCLA Grunwald Center for Graphic Arts.

A print dealer site with many high-quality images of Japanese prints and paintings. English/Romaji interface only.

The Barry Rosensteel Japanese Print Collection was donated to the University of Pittsburgh in 2008 by Mr. and Mrs. Barry Rosensteel. The collection consists of 126 wood block prints. While the earliest print dates to 1760, most of the prints were produced in the 1800s, while others were created in the 1900s. The work of over forty artists is represented in the collection. The images portray Japanese culture through detailed depictions of portraits, landscapes, wildlife and theatrical performances, taking into account some of Japan’s rich history. The prints were produced with high-quality paper. Vegetative color pigments, and, in some cases, ground precious metals, were used as part of the creative process.

Nōgaku zue 能 樂 圖 繪, or Pictures of Noh, is a spectacular series of Japanese color woodblock prints by the artist Tsukioka Kōgyo (1869-1927). The University of Pittsburgh owns a rare, complete set of this series, published at Tokyo between the Meiji years 30-35, or 1897-1902. Bound in traditional folding-album format, the series comprises five volumes of 261 prints inspired by the plays of classical Japanese noh theatre. The complete set of prints, held by the ULS Special Collections Department, is digitally reproduced here along with a descriptive catalog and contextual essays.

Catalogue Raisonné of the Work of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), including many reference links, bibliography, and links to digital archives of other artists. The aim is to have a catalog and images of Yoshitoshi's entire oeuvre.

"Japanese Old Photographs of the Bakumatsu-Meiji Periods” at the Nagasaki University Library is the largest collection of old photographs, approximately 7,000, taken all over Japan from the Bakumatsu through to the Meiji period. “Metadata Database of Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Periods” inherited the data from the original “Japanese Old Photographs of the Bakumatsu-Meiji Periods” and presented them in a new design. In addition, the Metadata Database was made in accordance with the Dublin Core (the international standard of metadata) which allows various electronic library systems and digital archives to access the Japanese old photography collection of the Nagasaki University Library.

Many historical photographs of the Meiji and Taisho eras. The photographs used here were taken from the albums and photo books possessed by the National Diet Library. For photographs which are referred to in materials contained in the Digital Library from the Meiji Era (Japanese only) or "Digitized Contents (Rare Books, etc.)" (former Rare Books Image Database) (Japanese only) on the NDL website, links are provided to corresponding sites. In addition, persons related to the photographs contained in the NDL Electronic Exhibition "Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures" are linked to their corresponding pages, and portraits and biographies of the persons can be checked.

High-quality images of the photographs contained in the "Japanese Old Photographs of the Bakumatsu-Meiji Period" database.

The East Asia Image Collection is an open-access archive of digitized photographs, negatives, postcards, and slides of imperial Japan (1868-1945), its Asian empire (1895-1945) and occupied Japan (1947-52). Images unique to this collection include the Warners' unpublished slides and negatives , made from snapshots taken during their years of US State Department service in Asia (1932-1952). Rare materials include prewar picture postcards, high-quality commercial prints, and colonial era picture books.

University of Hawaii Manoa's collection of magic lantern slides from Japan.

Early Photography of Japan is a virtual collection of more than 40 souvenir photograph albums and illustrated publications with over 2,000 images from Widener Library, the Fine Arts Library, and Harvard-Yenching Library. These images primarily document the early history of commercial photography in Japan and are representative of what is often called Japanese tourist photography or Yokohama shashin. They reflect the Western image of traditional Japanese culture before the dramatic transformation brought about by modernization during the Meiji period (1868-1912).

A digital archive of high-quality scans of photographs taken around the world by Wada Shin 和田新.

The artist Odaka Sennosuke conducted a global survey along with Monbushō researchers in 1931-32 including countries such as southeast Asian nations, India, Afghanistan, and Egypt as well as Europe. This digital archive contains high-quality scans of his photos and additionally locates them on Google Maps.

A bilingual resource for finding current exhibits at museums around Japan.

NCC's guide to image use for research on Japan is a key resource for understanding how to get clearance for using images, your rights, and the rights of the image owners.

This dictionary contains approximately 8000 terms related to traditional Japanese architecture and gardens, painting, sculpture and art-historical iconography from approximately the 1st century A.D. to the end of the Edo period (1868). Terms from related fields such as lacquer, ceramics, textiles and metalwork have been included where they are considered to be of general interest and/or impact on the principal fields of architecture, painting and sculpture.

This database provides signature and seal samples for thousands of ukiyo-e artists.

Comprehensive English-language directory of various websites relating to ukiyo-e, including image databases as well as information about artists and prints.

A guide to print and Internet resources for viewing and studying ukiyo-e.

A selected guide to online resources for reading Edo-period illustrated books, from UCLA.

While this doesn't necessarily lead you to online images, it is a search of all national art museum catalogs in Japan. You can also limit your search to specific museums or browse by artist name.

Biographies of art collectors and dealers by the Freer-Sackler Gallery, with links to related collections and Smithsonian records.

A database of recordings of oral history interviews with figures in Japanese art.

A collaboration between Crowd4Uプロジェクト and 翻デジプロジェクト, this "wall" is a randomly-generated visualization of images of books and art from the NDL digital collections. You can limit by year and keywords.

Asian Historical Architecture is a photographic survey of Asia's architectural heritage. It contains over 17,500 photos of 850 sites in twenty-one countries, with background information and virtual tours, as well as bibliographies. This website is a collection of photos from many different contributors.

Various information and primary sources (such as interview videos on YouTube) about Japanese architecture and architects.

This organization provides a digital archive as well as an open-access departmental research report. Also notifications of local art-related events.