The digital collection of the Tokyo National Museum

December 22, 2008 9:08 PM

The digital collectionof the Tokyo National Museum is full of wonder. TNM is the oldest museum in Japan and collects archaeological objects and art from Japan as well as other parts of Asia. The collection can be browsed by type or region. Here are some of my favorites: Buddha's life, The name "Korin" given to pupil, Tale of Matsuranomiya, Coquettish type, Tea caddy in shape of bucket with handle, Mirror, design of sea and island, Traditionary identified as Minamoto no Yoritomo, Seated Monju Bosatsu (Manjusri) and attendants, Sword mounting of kazari-tachi type and (my current desktop background) Figures under a tree. This is but a small sampling of all that can be found in the digital collection
posted by Kattullus (4 comments total)

It's JOI ITO!
posted by troy at 9:14 PM on December 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

Heh, the guy on the right does look like him.

Neat post. The Nara National Museum is also online, but its photo archives are only in Japanese. The Kyoto Museum Masterworks selections seems to have quite a bit of information in English.

But Nara is the heart of it all, probably the most beautiful, mysterious, wonderful and ancient place in Japan. Man, I love it there.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:42 PM on December 22, 2008

I just hope that Nara will upload better scans. Many of their images are very poor quality. The Nara is one of the many museums of the world I hope to visit one day.
posted by Kattullus at 9:49 PM on December 22, 2008

aww...my favorite piece is not online (a black lacquer box with a design of a path to a shrine through a moonlit grove of bamboo executed in silver leaf...srsly, the closest i have ever come to doing a smash and grab in a museum) ah,well...maybe they will add it later

and yeah nara is beautiful...i saw a koi there that was blue. be warned though, if you go there, that the deer have e.s.p. and can tell the instant that you begin to think about maybe purchasing some deer cookies for them...that's how we ended up with a hole in our map.
posted by sexyrobot at 10:43 PM on December 22, 2008 [1 favorite]