This sturdy box, with comparatively thick walls and resulting heft, is sparsely decorated with a single butterfly motif in dark underglaze blue cobalt in one corner of the lid and with repeating floral patterns along the lid and base. Single broken lines of underglaze blue define the edge of the box lid’s top where it curves to meet the sides and again where it meets the base of the box. Another blue band runs around the upper rim of the base where it meets the lip, left unglazed for a better grip of the lid when the box is closed. Yohei I’s signature on the center of the recessed base is set within a wide blue square. The porcelain box is meant to call to mind a famous story attributed to Zhuang Zhou (c. 369–286 BCE), also known as Master Zhuang, or Zhuangzi, pronounced Soji in Japanese. The second chapter of Zhuangzi, his eponymous collection of anecdotes, records the story as follows: Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know that he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly, he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakably Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.
View the original at Cleveland Museum of Art →Article 3 tells libraries what to gather, and the list is wider than books: local materials, local administrative records, works of art, records and film. Article 3 also requires interlibrary lending, travelling collections and mobile libraries, so that the holdings move toward the reader rather than waiting.
The cool part. Article 17 is one sentence and admits nothing. A public library may not collect an admission fee, or any consideration whatsoever, for the use of library materials. Free is not a policy that a budget round can revisit, it is the statute. Article 26 is stranger still: the state and local authorities must not interfere in the work of a private library, and must not give it a subsidy. Independence is protected by withholding the money.
Verify at e-Gov 法令検索 →Use it A motif small enough to blind-deboss, which is where restraint actually shows.
Description source: museum curator text — not generated