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The "Eight Views of Ryūkyū" (Ryūkyū Hakkei), designed by Katsushika Hokusai and published in 1832, are perhaps the only series of single-sheet ukiyo-e prints to depict landscape scenes in Ryūkyū (Okinawa). They both informed and were informed by popular (mis)conceptions about Ryūkyū among Japanese at the time, and thus provide a window into those (mis)conceptions. Works such as these, along with ones describing or depicting ceremonial processions performed by Ryukyuan embassies to Japan, played a key role in informing Japanese attitudes regarding Oknawa which carried on well into the 20th and even the 21st centuries. The Eight Views depict a Ryūkyū which is fantastical and both geographically and culturally distant, but at the same time in other respects both geographically and culturally (and therefore, perhaps politically?) nearby.

Abstract This study combines scientific and connoisseurship approaches to establish a production chronology of 141 woodblock prints from Katsushika Hokusai’s series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji belonging to different cultural institutions in Europe and the United States. In order to create this chronology, the reflectance spectroscopy (FORS) signature of the indigo/Prussian blue mixture of the key-block printed outlines was measured and compared using multivariate data analysis. This approach yielded 9 clusters of prints, each one presenting slightly different FORS features, and therefore, different Prussian blue/indigo mixtures. The connoisseurship approach was then applied to impressions of the same print found across the 9 clusters. This allowed for arrangement of the clustered prints according to their production time, resulting in a comprehensive timeline for the 141 prints examined. To date, this work represents the only systematic study of such a large corpus of Japanese/Hokusai woodblock prints integrating chemical analysis and statistical treatment of data with careful visual examination of the prints. The result is a novel approach to creating a chronology for these objects. Our study easily differentiated between early nineteenth and early twentieth century prints as well as between various printing batches/clusters. Creating a chronology of such an important print series is also crucial to understand the evolution of artist and printing studio practices in late nineteenth-century Japan, a period of great economic and cultural changes.

Abstract This study explores the evolution of the manufacturing process of artificial arsenic sulfide pigments in Edo-period Japan through the analysis of three impressions of the same print dated from the 1830s and attributed to Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), and one from 1852 and attributed to Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865). Colorants in the yellow and green areas of the four prints were investigated by means of non-invasive and microanalytical techniques such as optical microscopy, fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. While the pigments in the green and yellow areas are similar throughout the set of prints—Prussian blue, indigo (for the Hokusai prints) and orpiment were identified—optical microscopy and Raman spectroscopy highlighted some variations in the orpiment used in the green areas of the prints. Two of the Hokusai prints present bright yellow particles of larger size and lamellar morphology, identified by Raman spectroscopy as natural orpiment. The third print presents an admixture of bright yellow natural orpiment particles with a smaller number of orange-yellow particles shown by Raman to be partially amorphous arsenic sulfide. Small bright yellow particles identified as fully amorphous arsenic sulfide pigments by Raman were found throughout the green areas of the Kunisada print. Although supported by Japanese historical sources, local production of artificial arsenic sulfide in the early nineteenth century was not previously documented. The simultaneous presence of both crystalline and amorphous domains in a single pigment particle in some of the Hokusai prints suggests that natural orpiment was used as primary source of arsenic for the production of a low grade artificial pigment. The pigment found in the Kunisada print, by contrast, was obtained from arsenic oxide (or arsenolite) and sulfur though a dry-process synthesis, as shown by the sulfur excess, signs of heat treatments and fully amorphous nature of the pigment. These findings set the earliest dates for both the ore sublimation process and the arsenolite dry process, and are of foremost importance to understand the evolution of the amorphous arsenic sulfide production in Edo-period Japan and its introduction in the palette of Japanese woodblock prints.

The Hokusai (H05) quadrangle is in Mercury’s northern mid-latitudes (0–90°E, 22.5–65°N) and covers almost 5 million km2, or 6.5%, of the planet’s surface. We have used data from the MESSENGER spacecraft to make the first geological map of H05. Linework was digitized at 1:400,000-scale for final presentation at 1:3,000,000-scale, mainly using a ∼166 m/pixel monochrome basemap. Three major photogeologic units of regional extent were mapped: intercrater, intermediate, and smooth plains. Materials of craters ≥ 20 km in diameter were classified according to their degradation state. Two classification schemes were employed in parallel, one with three classes and the other with five classes, for compatibility with existing MESSENGER-era quadrangle maps and the first global geologic map. This map will provide science context and targets for the ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury.

This study combines scientific and connoisseurship approaches to establish a production chronology of 141 woodblock prints from Katsushika Hokusai's series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji belonging to different cultural institutions in Europe and the United States. In order to create this chronology, the reflectance spectroscopy (FORS) signature of the indigo/Prussian blue mixture of the key-block printed outlines was measured and compared using multivariate data analysis. This approach yielded 9 clusters of prints, each one presenting slightly different FORS features, and therefore, different Prussian blue/indigo mixtures. The connoisseurship approach was then applied to impressions of the same print found across the 9 clusters. This allowed for arrangement of the clustered prints according to their production time, resulting in a comprehensive timeline for the 141 prints examined. To date, this work represents the only systematic study of such a large corpus of Japanese/Hokusai woodblock prints integrating chemical analysis and statistical treatment of data with careful visual examination of the prints. The result is a novel approach to creating a chronology for these objects. Our study easily differentiated between early nineteenth and early twentieth century prints as well as between various printing batches/clusters. Creating a chronology of such an important print series is also crucial to understand the evolution of artist and printing studio practices in late nineteenth-century Japan, a period of great economic and cultural changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En el presente artículo se trata el impacto de Hokusai en España a través de las publicaciones periódicas en el último tercio del siglo XIX y primeras décadas del siglo XX coincidiendo con los periodos japoneses Meiji (1868-1912) y Taishō (1912-1926), época en la que el arte japonés y el fenómeno del japonismo se encontraban en pleno auge. El impacto de Hokusai en nuestro país a través de las publicaciones periódicas no fue tan importante como el que se produjo en otras naciones occidentales que tuvieron en esta época vínculos más estrechos con Japón y donde el coleccionismo de arte japonés (en especial de grabados ukiyo-e) fue más importante. No obstante, tanto en revistas ilustradas como en buena parte de los periódicos nacionales y locales de nuestro país se hicieron eco de la importancia de este destacado artista japonés proporcionando noticias sobre su vida y su obra, además de brindar informaciones sobre su influencia en otros artistas y sobre el coleccionismo de sus obras. De esta forma el conocimiento tanto de Hokusai como de su obra gozó de una notable difusión alcanzando todos los estratos de la sociedad y presentando un importante calado.

The Hokusai (H05) quadrangle is in Mercury’s northern mid-latitudes (0–90°E, 22.5–65°N) and covers almost 5 million km2, or 6.5%, of the planet’s surface. We have used data from the MESSENGER spacecraft to make the first geological map of H05. Linework was digitized at 1:400,000-scale for final presentation at 1:3,000,000-scale, mainly using a ∼166 m/pixel monochrome basemap. Three major photogeologic units of regional extent were mapped: intercrater, intermediate, and smooth plains. Materials of craters ≥ 20 km in diameter were classified according to their degradation state. Two classification schemes were employed in parallel, one with three classes and the other with five classes, for compatibility with existing MESSENGER-era quadrangle maps and the first global geologic map. This map will provide science context and targets for the ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Menotyra is the property of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The personality of Shitao (1642-1707), Chinese painter active during the beginning of Qing dynasty, deserves to be figured out by the comparison of his own particular life, his artistic work, – above all in the phase of its full utterance, – and the philosophical thoughts that he has revealed in his Dialogues on painting. By the union of all these features, Shitao has laid down a link between the «one-brushstroke» and the holistic fusion of his Spirit with Nature.

Marià Fortuny, a painter in the forefront of the European avant-garde of the early 1870s, is also considered a key figure in the introduction of Japonisme in Spain and Italy. This study aims to offer a comprehensive analysis of Marià Fortuny's links to Japanese art and the phenomenon of Japonisme. To this end, the article provides new information about Fortuny's collection of Japanese art and considers the influence that these pieces had on the Catalan painter's own work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In collaboration with authors Katherine Olivetti and Paul Watsky, artist Tom Killion discusses his art, history, and interests. He elaborates the process of how he became interested in Japanese woodcutting techniques as well as other aspects of his education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the activation of aesthetics through the examination of an acute sensitivity to melancholy and time permeating the literary and pictorial arts of Japan. In medieval court circles, this sensitivity was activated through a pervasive sense ofaware, a poignant reflection on the pathos of things. This sensibility became the motivating force for court verse, and through this medium, for the mature projects of theukiyo-e‘floating world picture’ artist Katsushika Hokusai. Hokusai reached back toawaresensibilities, subjects and conventions in celebrations of the poetic that sustained cultural memories resonating classical lyric and pastoral themes. This paper examines how this elegiac sensibility activated Hokusai’s preoccupations with poetic allusion in his late representations of scholar-poets and the unfinished series ofHyakuninisshu uba-ga etoki, ‘One hundred poems, by one hundred poets, explained by the nurse’. It examines four works to explain how their synthesis of the visual and poetic could sustainawarethemes and tropes over time to maintain a distinctive sense of this aesthetic sensibility in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores the evolution of the manufacturing process of artificial arsenic sulfide pigments in Edo-period Japan through the analysis of three impressions of the same print dated from the 1830s and attributed to Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), and one from 1852 and attributed to Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865). Colorants in the yellow and green areas of the four prints were investigated by means of non-invasive and microanalytical techniques such as optical microscopy, fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. While the pigments in the green and yellow areas are similar throughout the set of prints—Prussian blue, indigo (for the Hokusai prints) and orpiment were identified—optical microscopy and Raman spectroscopy highlighted some variations in the orpiment used in the green areas of the prints. Two of the Hokusai prints present bright yellow particles of larger size and lamellar morphology, identified by Raman spectroscopy as natural orpiment. The third print presents an admixture of bright yellow natural orpiment particles with a smaller number of orange-yellow particles shown by Raman to be partially amorphous arsenic sulfide. Small bright yellow particles identified as fully amorphous arsenic sulfide pigments by Raman were found throughout the green areas of the Kunisada print. Although supported by Japanese historical sources, local production of artificial arsenic sulfide in the early nineteenth century was not previously documented. The simultaneous presence of both crystalline and amorphous domains in a single pigment particle in some of the Hokusai prints suggests that natural orpiment was used as primary source of arsenic for the production of a low grade artificial pigment. The pigment found in the Kunisada print, by contrast, was obtained from arsenic oxide (or arsenolite) and sulfur though a dry-process synthesis, as shown by the sulfur excess, signs of heat treatments and fully amorphous nature of the pigment. These findings set the earliest dates for both the ore sublimation process and the arsenolite dry process, and are of foremost importance to understand the evolution of the amorphous arsenic sulfide production in Edo-period Japan and its introduction in the palette of Japanese woodblock prints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]