Study Groups and Achievements

Systematization of Illustrated Materials and Its Dissemination

Task 2: Compilation of Pictopedia of Everyday Life in Early Modern Japan

The successful outcome of our joint research was publication of Pictopedia of Everyday Life in Early Modern Japan, consisting of three volumes on Hokkaido, Tokaido and Hokuriku, respectively. They should be considered a trial version of pictorial reference, and are far from perfect. The format of each volume varies due to differences in research situations and conditions. We were not consistent in speculating as to what kind of organizational system would be appropriate for pictorial references. In the volume on Hokkaido, there are not so many captioned items. Rather, we provided detailed explanations for depicted scenes, to demonstrate the quality of modern research standards. For the volume on Tokaido, we adopted the format used in Pictopedia of Everyday Life in Medieval Japan. Objects are captioned, and explanations are added to illustrations. For the Hokuriku volume, drawings introducing the way of life observed in the castle town of Kanazawa were mainly selected.

In addition to the pictorial references above, we also created and released a pictorial database on Guide to Famous Tokaido Sites, which might be considered a spin-off of our research. With conventional databases, users type in a string of letters to access desired information. We used this “search by word” function for the database since many users are used to it. Furthermore, we explored ways to search target information by illustration, since what we strived to build was a pictorial database, and we managed to offer this function.

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