Japanese Studies Reference: Art History: Art Related Databases

This project currently includes more than 37,000 artworks from 184 museums, including Adachi Museum of Art, Ohara Museum of Art, The National Museum of Western Art, Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo National Museum, and Bridgestone Museum of Art.

Features more than 12,000 items collected by Sackler and Freer Galleries.

This resource provides high definition images of national treasures and important cultural properties owned by four national museums.

This website lets you search art items held by four major national museums.

A collection index site of "Edo Tokyo Museum" and other museums in Tokyo.

This database allows you to search the Spencer Collection. Areas of strenth include medieval art, European and American paintings, sculpture and prints, photography, Japanese Edo-period painting and prints, etc.

A Union catalog through which the user can search the collections held by the four national museums of Japan: i.e., Tokyo National Museum, Kyoto National Museum, Nara National Museum and Kyushu National Museum.

This page lists databases created by or available through 東文研.

A Union catalog provided by 美術図書館連絡会 (The Art Library Consortium). Users can search the collection of member art libraries.

This resource provides scholarly works created by the researchers at TNM as well as links to the image and text databases. Hosted by TNM.

An index database to search information on the cultural properties designated by Japan.

An index database for finding data on the cultural heritages, including those designated as National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties. Images may be available.

Approx. 115,000 images are provided by 949 museums in Japan.

Created by DNP, which offers lending image data of artworks from Japan and abroad. Read the instructions to purchase image data. An English search screen is available, and an English keyword search can retrieve some results, but Japanese keywords retrieve more records.

This site aims at collecting digital images pertinent to Japanese culture, published in museums, libraries., etc., around the world. This site allows you to select the images you like to create a "Self Museum." The search interface is available in English, but using Japanese terms retrieve better results than English.

"Art Platform Japan is an initiative and a website that aims to further the research and networking in the field of contemporary Japanese art." --- from the site. Japanese and English.

As a part of Art Platform Japan project, this database is an initiative to promote efforts seeking to raise the international profile of Japan’s contemporary art and to ensure its sustained development. This database collects information on these three areas: artworks, artists, and museums. By showcasing and disseminating information about contemporary art in Japan, this aims to encourage researchers, curators, artists, museum officials, and art enthusiasts in Japan and overseas to use this platform. Both Japanese and English.

As a part of Art Japan Platform, this page provides English translations of key, selected writings on contemporary art in Japan.

"The glass photographic plates were taken in 1935 by Benridō, a firm from Kyoto specializing in artistic printing. This effort was part of a larger project helmed by the Ministry of Education aimed at preserving the National Treasure of Hōryūji Temple and its cultural properties, large numbers of which are also designated National Treasures. Yet little over a decade later, a calamitous fire broke out on January 26, 1949, severely damaging the murals in the Hōryūji Kondō" (taken from main site).

An image database provided by 奈良国立博物館 (Nara National Museum), known for its Buddhist art collection. Though meta data is available, many of the images are viewable only at the museum.

This database covers the following 6 categories within the field of Japanese Buddhist objects from European museums:
1.Sculpture
2.Painting (except Ukiyo-e prints)
3.Calligraphy and hand-written manuscripts
4.Ritual objects
5.Textiles
6.Ofuda.
(information from the main site)

Database of ofuda collection at Collège de France, originally donated by the late Bernard Frank. Available in French and Japanese.

Created by 京都表具共同組合. This simulator allows you to choose the style of kakejiku hanging scroll, then choose the textile to design your own scroll. By doing so you can learn the variety of Japanese textile design.

Kampo Museum is a private museum operated by the Japan Calligraphy Education Foundation and has a collection of as many as 25,000 items, mainly Chinese calligraphy. This database allows you to search their collection by keyword, author's name, etc.

Available in Japanese and English. Created by the Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University.

Users can search Japanese seals of painters, calligraphers and scholars during the Edo Period by their names.

Digitized newspaper advertisements with illustrations. Covers 1891-1945.

A digital collection of photos and postcards of paintings and sculptures, originally collected and held by Dr. Hasumi Shigeyasu (1904-1979), a renowned art history researcher.

Allows access to the digital images of 30 emaki scrolls collected by 日文研, many of which feature 妖怪.

Provides images and metadata of Japanese artworks held by six oversea museums, Hermitage Museum, Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asian Art, National Gallery Prague, etc.

An image database for ezoshi, or illustrated story books from the Edo period, held by 日文研. An English search screen is available, but search keywords must be in Japanese.

This database includes approx. 6,000 images from novels, newspapers, photographs, posters, etc. They show the clothing culture of the Japanese from the Meiji Period to the end of WWII.

This database collects the face part from the variety of art works, such as Japanese emaki scroll paintings. This allows users to analyze the similarities/differences of painting style, relations between different artists and art labs. 8845 faces from 99 works are available to analyze. Click 「顔貌コレクション - IIIF Curation Finderによる検索」to search the database or click 「顔コレデータセット - 機械学習のためのデータセット」to download the data sets.

Konoshima Ōkoku (1877-1938) left 600 volumes of sketchbooks .Sen-oku Hakukokan Museum has digitized 40 volumes of large-size sketches. The users can search by keywords, periods, and/or subjects.