In an Uproar over the Cyrus Cylinder

I have been “hearing” (reading, really) just snippets here and there for some time now about a debate between Iran and the British Museum.. It’s a pretty big deal, but, as it’s hardly anywhere near my main field of interest, I let it slip.

Today, Mark Rose provides us a nice concise summary of the situation, on the blog at Archaeology.org.

Here’s what I distill out of it:
1) The Cyrus Cylinder, an object in the BM’s collection since 1879 when it was unearthed in an excavation operated on behalf of the Museum, is a major major historical document, recording the release of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity (and important for various other reasons as well, the direct mention of the King Cyrus, other aspects of the inscription, etc etc.).
2) In 2009, the Museum made arrangements with Iran to lend the cylinder to Iran to go on exhibit, in exchange for Iran lending a number of objects for an exhibition in London.
3) Iran lent those objects, and the exhibit in London went through. But, now, having discovered related inscriptions on other objects in its collection, the BM wants to delay the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder so they can study it more.
4) Iran throws a hissy-fit and temper tantrum, and cuts off all formal relations with the British Museum.

…

Well, on the one hand, it seems a pretty dick move for the British Museum to delay or deny the loan, if doing so seriously throws a wrench in plans to have the exhibition. That is to say, if the exhibition is already planned for this year, and various things are already underway; if the refusal to loan the Cyrus Cylinder means the exhibit either will go on without the cylinder, or won’t go on at all, then that is a really dick move. Guys, you can do your studies when you get the object back, after the exhibit. Assuming you trust the Iranians to give it back, that is.

On the other hand, it seems to me like Iran is overreacting, and blowing things out of proportion. It’s not as if the Museum has said they won’t lend the object at all. Yes, they’re delaying the loan, yes, that’s a dick move, and maybe that might constitute a breach of contract. But at a time when other countries are going crazy trying to get the British Museum and other institutions to return objects they claim were stolen, this kind of thing just really doesn’t seem such a big deal. The cylinder is fully rightfully in the Museum’s ownership, and as far as I can tell, Iran does not seem to be contesting that; the Museum has said they will loan the cylinder, just not right now… So, I don’t see what the big deal is. Maybe in Persian/Arab culture, this is how you handle things, by getting angry and offended at the drop of a hat, but in the West, we like to handle things in a more civilized rational different manner.

Searching for Japanese texts: some useful links

I’ve been taking a course on research methods in Japanese sources this term. It’s amazing the resources out there that one would never otherwise know about…

(1) Union Catalogue of Early Japanese Books (日本古典総合目録)

I never suspected that such a database existed, so accessible and easily searchable. Looking for a kabuki play? a samurai clan’s records? records of the trade at Nagasaki? an Edo period novel? You can search for it here, and find out which libraries have handwritten manuscript copies (写本), and which compilations or anthologies contain a modern typed up (活字) copy.

It’s pretty incredible. All these things which I never thought I’d ever be able to find, suddenly available (almost, not quite) at my fingertips.

I searched for Gosannen Ôshû Gunki, a kabuki play composed in 1879 for the special occasion of a visit by former US president Ulysses S Grant to Japan. Performed only once, so far as I knew, I assumed that there was no written record of the script – kabuki, so far as I was told, never tended to keep scripts, the plays being pretty fluid, changing a bit every time they are performed. But, search for it I did, and there it was: original (woodblock?) printed copies in numerous libraries, including Tokyo University, Kyoto University, Waseda University, Geidai (aka Tokyo Univ of the Arts), the National Diet Library, and the collection of Shôchiku (the kabuki production company). And! a typed version of the document available in an anthology called 続帝国文庫並木宗輔浄瑠璃集 (zoku teikoku bunko Namiki Sôsuke jôruri-shû; Collection of Jôruri plays by Namiki Sôsuke, Imperial Archives, continued). Finding that anthology might not be the easiest thing to do, but, for a document I suspected never even existed to begin with, that’s really something.

(2) Want to read a certain Japanese story or novel, but aren’t sure if an English translation exists, what it’s called, or who it’s translated by? Want to translate and seek to publish a Japanese story or novel, but aren’t sure if someone’s beaten you to it?

日本文学翻訳書誌検索 (Japanese Literature in Translation Search), powered by the Japan Foundation, is another very interesting and useful database.

You can choose from a great many languages, not just English, and search by Japanese author, title, publication year and/or keywords, and find whether the book in question has been published in translation.

NYT Review: Art of Vietnam at Asia Society

Another beautifully written art review from Holland Cotter, New York Times art critic.

This Viet Nam show really sounds wonderful. Wish I could be there.

Spotlight: Katsushika Ôi – Night Scene in the Yoshiwara

When I first learned of paintings by Hokusai’s daughter, I was intrigued by her purely on that basis alone. Prominent women artists are rare in pre-20th century Japanese art, and while plenty of ukiyo-e artists were directly related to their masters or predecessors, somehow a daughter, particularly a daughter of such a great master as Hokusai, who did not found a school nor have all that many direct disciples, has a particular allure.

We have all heard of Hokusai – or are at least familiar with some of his most famous works even if we don’t know it. They are practically everpresent, used extensively in advertising, in cheap Japan-themed calendars and the like. But who knew he had a daughter of any note – that is to say, a daughter who was a prominent and accomplished artist in her own right?

I was introduced to Ôi through the painting at left, from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, dubbed by the MFA curators simply “Three Women Playing Musical Instruments.” A fairly straightforward work, at least upon first glance, I would never have given it a second thought if it were not by someone as intriguing as Katsushika Ôi. Granted, it is a beautiful piece, expertly painted, with bold, beautiful colors. Granted, to see a figure with their back to us isn’t overly common, and it creates a sense of space between the three figures who are otherwise relatively flat; hardly an innovative move, but certainly interesting in its own way. Plus, the woman on the left is playing a kokyû, an instrument hardly ever heard of, let alone seen or heard today, even in geisha quarters or traditional/classical performance troupes, despite it being so essential to the trio ensemble seen here, the sankyoku of kokyû, shamisen, koto. Still, for all of that, the composition hardly stands out against other ukiyo-e works. The style resembles that of her father, Hokusai, very closely, and does not stand out to me, grabbing my eye and commanding my attention the way certain Hokusai works, or many works by Kaigetsudô artists, Miyagawa Chôshun, or others do.

Intrigued by Ôi therefore purely as a historical figure, as a female artist, and for her ties to the great master, but not so much for her artworks themselves, I sought out more about her, and was kindly informed by my good friend Kathryn about an article on Ôi by the prominent ukiyo-e scholar Kobayashi Tadashi*.

“Three Women Playing Musical Instruments” may not have made much of an impression upon me, but “Night Scene in the Yoshiwara,” seen at the top of this post, struck me, immediately, in a way few paintings do.

It took me a few moments to realize what it was that was so tantalizing and striking about this image. Granted, it’s a beautiful scene, with bright colors, but so are just about all ukiyo-e paintings. Then it hit me. Of course! Traditional Japanese paintings don’t show the interplay of light and shadow, and this painting does that in a major way.

Ôi shows herself here to be not simply playing with light and shadow as a curiosity, as many ukiyo-e artists toyed with Western-style one-point perspective for a time. Rather, she employs it quite expertly, to the fullest effect, creating a scene which speaks its mood and atmosphere clearly and directly (to a modern-day Western viewer such as myself, at least). Typically, in traditional Japanese painting, we would expect to see night scenes lit up as bright as day, no light sources evident, no shadows depicted. Only the moon in the sky, torches, lanterns, candles, and other signs would indicate it to be a night scene, nothing in the mood or shading of the image overall.

Over a half century earlier, Harunobu was perhaps the first Japanese artist to depict a night scene with a solid black (or very dark color) background, rather than a blank white or other solid color background used indeterminately for any time of day or night. Yosa Buson experimented with this too, in one of my favorite compositions, but it never took hold in the Japanese painting or prints traditions, and remained revolutionary and unusual when Ôi did it many decades later.

Her technical skill and eye for detail in this image are astounding. The soft focus effect seen in the way the various light sources pierce the darkness, each pool of light fading softly – not too sharply – into the darkness at its edges, creates an effect unlike any I have ever seen in ukiyo-e. It is not simply her technical skill which impresses, though, of course, but the effect created, the mood set, the picture painted, which strikes me so.

In a way, the lanterns and other light sources resonate with, or parallel, the music being performed by the courtesans within, and with the presence of the beautiful women themselves. The women, and their music, like the lanterns, cut through the dark night, beacons of light, song, entertainment and pleasure in the otherwise depressing, isolating, and perhaps frightening darkness.

In most ukiyo-e, I find it difficult to imagine the music and liveliness of the pleasure quarters. The colors in many paintings can be quite bold, but the universal light source and absence of shadows seen in most works washes out the image in a way, I feel. The light itself takes away from the courtesans’ role in providing that source of happiness, of entertainment, of metaphorical light in the darkness. Here, by enveloping the courtesans and their world in darkness, as it would be in reality, the pleasure districts being a place of evening pleasures after all, Ôi has conversely allowed them to shine, and their music to be heard.

—

*Kobayashi, Tadashi. Julie Nelson Davis (trans.). “The Floating World in Light and Shadow: Ukiyo-e Paintings by Hokusai’s Daughter Ôi.” in Carpenter, John et al (eds). Hokusai and his Age. Hotei Publishing, 2005. pp93-103.

Quick Links: Freer+Sackler Song+Yuan Paintings Online

The Freer & Sackler Galleries, the Asian art arm of the Smithsonian Institution, revealed this week a new and quite shiny website featuring 85 Song & Yuan dynasty works from the collection (82 paintings, three works of calligraphy). It’s a quite attractive, sleek and clean website, and I applaud them for making images and documentation of these works more easily and widely available online.

While the images are not the kind of super-high quality or fully zoomable images one finds on some other museum’s online databases, nor do they begin to compare to the quality of images on ArtStor, the documentation is quite extensive, including full transcriptions and translations of the inscriptions on at least some of the works.

Could prove a pretty useful resource. Inscriptions can be particularly illuminating and insightful when studying a painting, and yet are often overlooked due to the lack of easily accessible transcriptions and/or translations.

If you’re interested, take a look.

Quick Links: Ancient Viet Nam at Asia Society (NY)

“Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea” opens today at the Asia Society in NY. It seems to me relatively rare that any large exhibits are ever devoted to Viet Nam, with most museums devoting most of their Asian art attention to Chinese and Japanese art. (And there are plenty of good reasons for that, starting with the nature & composition of their collections, the history of collecting which led to the collections being this way, etc.) This seems a nice and special opportunity, therefore. It’s made all the more exciting by the fact that the exhibit does not restrict itself purely to ancient Viet Nam, but covers Hoi An as well, a major early modern trading port of the 16th-18th centuries. Hoi An was one of the chief SE Asian ports for Japanese trade, and the site of one of the largest Japanese communities, in the late 16th to early 17th centuries, which is how it attracted my attention, and came to form a major section in my (first) MA thesis.

I really wish I could be in NY to see this exhibit. If you are, go check it out.

(I must say, however, that I remain perplexed by the overwhelming dominance of ceramics and other “decorative arts” or “craft goods” in exhibits of Southeast Asian art. Yes, I know it’s not really PC to make a distinction any longer, to imply that decorative arts, crafts, ceramics are any lesser than so-called “fine arts” such as painting. But, those politics aside, where are the paintings? Surely, Viet Nam produced paintings just as every other country in the world has, heavily influenced by Chinese traditions just as much as Okinawa, Japan, and Korea were, the art of painting raised up above ceramics and other arts and treasured and celebrated just as much as in any other Sinosphere culture. So, where are the paintings? Okinawa was ravaged by war, and a great deal was lost; but even so, there are still paintings surviving and exhibited in Okinawa and Japan, if not in the US. … Well, at least the exhibit doesn’t focus exclusively on religious sculpture, like so many SE Asian galleries in major museums do.)

Quotes on Art: Dong Qichang

“Painting cannot equal nature for the marvels of mountains and water, but nature cannot equal painting for the marvels of brush and ink.” – Dong Qichang (1555-1636).

I just obtained a copy of “A Short Guide to Writing About Art,” by Sylvan Barnet. I love Bookmooch.

Sylvan Barnet was a professor of English at Tufts, so it certainly makes sense that he’d produce a book on how to write, and a pretty nice one at that, judging from a cursory flip through the book. But he is also a rather prominent collector of ukiyo-e and other Japanese art. It is exciting to read such a book by someone whose name I’m already familiar with, whose name appears on numerous catalogs and journal articles and the like. It’s also exciting to know that such a book on writing about art is not written from a Eurocentric background or approach, but by someone intimately familiar with the same type of art about which I am myself writing.

Ryukyu no Kaze

(Could the opening theme song possibly be any *less* Okinawan? …. )

After literally years of waiting to come across this poor-faring, unpopular, 15+ year old Taiga drama, the only one to be set in Okinawa, I am now watching the first episode of Ryûkyû no kaze. The series tells the story of the 1609 invasion of Ryûkyû by forces from the Japanese domain of Satsuma, an event which changed the course of Ryukyuan history dramatically.

Not very popular among Okinawans when it came out, on account of it starring mostly (mainland) Japanese actors rather than Okinawans, and being done entirely in Japanese, with no Okinawan language or even accent, I would imagine it was also not particularly popular with mainland Japanese, on account of it being about Okinawa, and not some more popular mainland Japanese subject, such as Nobunaga, Ryoma, or the like.

To be honest, I thought that this reaction on the part of Okinawans was a bit harsh. After all, I don’t think much of it when people like Brad Pitt and Daniel Craig play Jews on screen. But, now that I am watching this, having seen things like Churasan, Okinawan Midsummer Night’s Dream, etc, shows & movies that use genuine Okinawan language and/or Okinawan dialected Japanese, I realize how much that linguistic element adds to (or, in this case, takes away from) the atmosphere, flavor, and feel of a show or movie. Without that, it just doesn’t feel right. (And then, of course, there’s the potential argument about implications of imperialist attitudes – by having Okinawan characters in the show speak Japanese, it’s implying that Okinawans are Japanese, denying them their distinct cultural and national identity; denying, on some implicit symbolic level that Ryukyu was even ever independent. But, I’m not sure I would go so far as to subscribe to this interpretation myself.)

At least there’s nice sanshin music to help set the mood, though it’s really not quite enough.

The video quality is terribly grainy, the subtitles terribly blocky and pixelated, looking like they were composed in the 70s or something. But I cannot help but be excited for the story, one featuring major historical figures like Shô Nei and Jana Ueekata, and some of the most major events ever to be suffered by the Ryukyu Kingdom. Having read about it, it will be interesting to see it actually play out on screen.

A booklet about the making of the show, scanned and uploaded generously by the makers of a Sho Kosugi fansite.

NYT: Time-Traveling with the Muses in Boston

Image (c) Richard Perry, New York Times.

Holland Cotter, one of the chief art critics for the New York Times, a man whose name has appeared on a great many articles I have read, reminisces today about his childhood and teenage years exploring the museums of Boston. For some reason, I feel like I want to describe this article as a “love letter” to the cultural atmosphere of the Fenway (i.e. the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum a few blocks away), though I know those words are not quite right. His words are nostalgic, romantic, and caring, the kind of thing you’d expect perhaps in a memoir – or in the preface to a history of the museum – and not in a daily newspaper which is meant to be reporting on the newest news of the art world.

He describes quite beautifully what I have myself strove to express on numerous occasions about the special feeling one has in these two museums. Had I never interned at the MFA, I nevertheless may have (perhaps; I can’t really know for sure) developed the same fondness for the museum, and its neighbor, along with a sense of belonging. I have been fortunate to visit a number of great museums, and while if the opportunity were to be offered me to become curator at the Metropolitan, Smithsonian, Tokyo National Museum, British Museum, or the like, I would almost certainly take it, the MFA is truly the dream job.

Yes, the MFA does have one of the best (if not *the* best) Japanese art collection in the world, an excellent Chinese collection, a nearly unparalleled Egyptian collection, and fine collections in many other areas. But it is, as Cotter describes it, something about the way the Victorian/Gilded Age atmosphere somehow lives on in the building… a warmth, a sense of cultural activity… that truly makes the museum feel welcoming, homey, bright and exciting. The displays are as modern as any you’ll see in another museum – the MFA is not an artifact of a past age as the Gardner is, nor does it feel dusty and old as the Ashmolean did last time I was there, roughly five years ago (I hear it’s seen considerable renovations since then) – but the history is nevertheless there, in a nearly tangible way. Combined with the Gardner Museum, and the Peabody-Essex in Salem, a short distance away by train or car, and with the general cultural/historical atmosphere of certain parts of Boston (certain aspects of Boston life), it all just seems so much more… more like what a museum atmosphere, museum experience, ought to be, in my mind. Not old, dusty, dark, but also not too new and shiny and modern. Romantic, nostalgic, reminiscent of the high culture of opera or ballet but without being so inaccessible. As our world continues to move further into the realm of concrete, steel, asphalt, wires, and the digital – as metaphorically embodied by certain aspects of the atmosphere or flavor of Tokyo and New York – the MFA, and in some ways Greater Boston more widely, stands as a living, active, dynamic, still fresh monument to the colorful, flavorful, sensuous worlds of the past.

UH Manoa Library Preservation Department

I was privileged today to be given a tour of the preservation department offices here on campus.

I must admit I am not surprised that we should have here the best paper preservation/conservation lab in the Pacific, as defined by the Pacific Islands of Micronesia, Polynesia, etc. After all, if not here, then where? Rarotonga?

To be honest, I would not be surprised if this lab were pretty much on par with anything they have in Japan, as well – I’ve read a fair bit lately about how poorly equipped Japanese universities are in terms of their equipment across the board, and I know that the Kyushu National Museum, est. 2005, is one of the only museums in Japan to have conservation departments of any significance. In any case, if “the Pacific” were to be taken to include Vancouver, California, down to Peru & Chile, Australia, New Zealand, etc., then to have the top conservation lab in the Pacific is really something.

I don’t know that I’ve ever really been inclined to pursue this kind of work myself, in a hands-on way, as it does involve a great extent of understanding of chemistry and materials sciences, and as, quite simply, I would get nervous about handling rare, important, expensive, fragile materials myself. One has to be extremely careful. But I nevertheless find the whole thing quite fascinating and intriguing, and not only because of the “behind-the-scenes” feeling of special exclusive access. The objects themselves which are being preserved, conserved, and restored are incredible, and as a conservator, one gets to see all kinds of things come across your desk, and you get to handle them.

The library does a lot of binding and re-binding in-house, mainly of rare, fragile, or old books, though they also send a lot of newer books and periodicals away to be bound in a more commercial factory manner. (The in-house efforts, I presume, cannot handle such high volume of throughput.)

We were shown how books extremely damaged and fragile as the result of age, the acid in the paper gradually yellowing then browning and drying out the pages until they simply flake away, can be restored to a perfect white and to a considerable degree of resilience. This was truly a surprise to me. Granted, the lab also does a lot of digitalization, with cameras and scanners, and presumably reproduction as well. But this was the very same paper, the very same page, immersed in some solution to leach the acid and the discoloration from the page (somehow without damaging the text or images), restoring not only the whiteness but also the durability of the page, drying it out and protecting it with a thin, transparent layer of alkaline to further de-acidify the paper.

A professional expert paper conservator works with a number of different techniques and state-of-the-art equipment to restore worm-eaten pages, and repair or conserve numerous other types of damage.

Due to the climate and the local ecology (read: insects), the books here face a lot of dangers on a regular basis. I don’t know what it’s like at other libraries (I don’t recall this ever being a problem at Brandeis or SOAS), but it would seem that whole sections of the libraries here are regularly sectioned off for mold infestations. … While Hamilton’s climate control seems to do a pretty good job – bring a sweatshirt – for some reason, they don’t seem to bother in Sinclair, the other library on campus, which is always pretty stuffy.

But, mold and insects and regular concerns aside, the library also suffered a terrible disaster in 2004, when a flood struck the campus, filling the library basement with mud, and carrying many objects from the collection out onto the lawns.

Here is but one of many photos that can be found online hinting at the damage. It may not look like much, but look at how muddy those books are, and think of all the books, rare photographs, computers(!), and other materials and equipment covered in mud, drenched in water, which need(ed) to be salvaged, restored, conserved, in one manner or another. It’s easy to overlook it now, five years later, to not really think about what things looked like that day, to think it was “just” water damage to the library collections, but actually, a very quick search turned up photos showing severe architectural damage, overturned cars elsewhere in the Valley…. I am sure that none of these photos can truly capture what it must have been like to actually experience this – particularly to experience it as a conservator or librarian. We saw the head of the preservation department today crumbling pages in her hand just to show us how bad books can get, and how completely they can be restored – if our hearts twinge at seeing just one page of an old book destroyed, I can only imagine the heartbreak, the horrible feeling, these librarians and conservators – and researchers and scholars as well – must have felt seeing this at that time.

I’m not sure how much was salvaged, or how much conservation has already been done, but I do know that a lot is still left to do. I feel for these guys, for the impossible volume of work they have to do at any given time, and their extremely valuable – and perhaps often unrecognized – efforts. While I do not know that I will ever see myself working as a conservator myself, I absolutely applaud their efforts and quite enjoy learning about what they do and how they do it, and seeing it all in action.