Huang Goodman · Art Forgotten

Art Forgotten

Art from public museum collections. A mismatched real Japanese law, and some other factoids.

Every object, image and description comes from the museum's own catalogue record, and every object links to its original. Japanese records are machine-translated into English; the museum's Japanese is kept beside the translation because it is the authoritative form. Each law carries its official number and links to e-Gov 法令検索, the Japanese government's statute database.

Dish from Snow-Flake Side Dishes
{Dish from Snow-Flake Side Dishes · Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914) · 1893–1914 · Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0}

According to the box lid, this set of 6 side dishes, or mukōzuke, are “snow-flower style” (sekkashiki), having mouths shaped like snowflakes. Their mouths, which have 6 lobes and scalloped edges, are traced with brown iron oxide at the rim. The outside of each bowl is glazed with a very bright pink over the basin and foot, and the inside is left white. From directly above, one sees a snowflake-like shape, and from the side, they seem to float above a rosy ground.

View the original at Cleveland Museum of Art →
The law
景観法
Landscape Act
平成十六年法律第百十号 · Act No. 110 of 2004

Article 1 states the aim as a beautiful and dignified national land, and it covers not only cities but farming, mountain and fishing villages. Inside a landscape planning area, Article 16 requires advance notification of new building, extension, rebuilding, relocation, and any repair or alteration that changes the exterior. Landscape Districts go further and impose direct restrictions on the form and design of buildings.

The cool part. Read Article 16 to the end of the sentence. A change of colour is listed alongside new construction as an act you must notify. Repainting your building is, in law, the same category of event as putting up a new one. This is the machinery behind the muted shopfronts of Kyoto. The brown coffee-shop sign is not a marketing choice, it is compliance.

Verify at e-Gov 法令検索 →

Use it Take the ratio, not the picture. It sets a page better than a grid does.

Description source: museum curator text — not generated