Digital archive project to catalogue exported Japanese decorative arts

In Europe, Japanese ceramic and lacquer objects have been collected and used as interior decoration since the early seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, the worldwide fashion for Japonisme generated an extensive trade in various Japanese decorative arts. Consequently, museums and private collections all over the world have rich holdings of Japanese decorative arts. Despite their popularity and profound influence on Western applied arts, the systematic research of Japanese decorative arts in Western collections is backward compared to the investigation of other art forms. It is actually difficult to gain access to the objects scattered in numerous collections or to achieve high-quality images, not to mention that there are only a few specialists capable of documenting the objects. Generally, that is why there are only very few online databases dedicated to decorative arts. The Art Research Centre, Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto, Japan), has developed databases of various Japanese cultural assets, tangible as well as intangible art forms and, based on the expertise in developing scholarly databases, has launched online image databases of three-dimensional art objects. The purpose of the project is to advance searchable, academic databases and to foster international cooperation between researchers and students of Japanese art by sharing high-quality images on the Web.