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.

日光名所絵巻 上巻
{日光名所絵巻 上巻 · 栃木県立博物館 · Date unrecorded · Japan Search · 国立国会図書館}
Daylight Famous Scroll Part 1 (There is no plain English translation of this text as it is only a title of a Japanese museum catalog. It does not contain any sentences or information that can be translated into plain English.)

This scroll painting depicts famous places around Nikko. The overall feeling is that of tranquility and grandeur characteristic of Nikko, with a sense of majesty. The scenes include the shrine, the eastern golden pavilion, the mausoleum at Rinnoji temple, the misty waterfall, and the ice floes.

日光山内周辺の名所を描いた絵巻です。全体的にはいかにも日光の絵らしく静寂さ、豪華さとともに、なんとなく威厳が感じられる作品と言えます。 場面は神橋、御宮(東照宮)、御霊屋(大猷院廟)、霧降滝、氷岩、含満が渕からなっています。

View the original at Japan Search →
The law
図書館法
Library Act
昭和二十五年法律第百十八号 · Act No. 118 of 1950

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, translated — not generated