Research Guides: East Asian Art: Images

Interactive Resources

East Asian Scroll Paintings (University of Chicago)
A site developed by the University of Chicago Center for Art of East Asia to "simulate the experience of viewing handscrolls in ways that published photographs in books and projected slides cannot and to make them more widely accessible for teaching and research."

Guan Zilan (Violet Kwan), Portrait of a Girl, 1929. Source: WikiArt.

Tomioka Tessai, Two Divinities Dancing, 1924. Source: WikiArt.

All images on this page reproduced under the guidelines of Fair Use.

Moon Pil Shim, Untitled (Reflets), 2002. Source: WikiArt.

CHINESE ART

Nianhua Gallery 年画
This site is dedicated to the visual culture of pre-modern rural China, and through that visual culture it is hoped that readers will gain a stronger appreciation for how people lived and celebrated in the domestic Chinese setting.
中国研究网络资源导航
A collection of various free Chinese Studies databases. Including image databases.

JAPANESE ART

Fine Prints, Japanese: pre-1915
Database of Ukiyo-e prints in the Library of Congress.

Fuzoku Gaho This link opens in a new window
Fuzoku Gaho offers online access to the Japanese illustrated magazine published between 1889 - 1916.

Huntington Archive
The John C. and Susan L. Huntington Photographic Archive of Buddhist and Asian Art is devoted to providing pan-Asian documentation and resource materials for scholarly research and classroom teaching.
Japanese Woodblock Print Search
Ukiuo-e database. The database currently contains over 213,000 prints from 24 institutions (2014).
Mainichi Photobank
Mainichi Newspaper photo archive
NDL HINAGIKU
The National Diet Library (NDL) Great East Japan Earthquake Archive is a portal site which enables integrated search of records and reports of the earthquake disaster by public institutions, private organizations and media, and of research projects by universities, academic societies and research institutes. The archive includes news stories, reports, photos, sound and video recordings, and maps. Interface in multiple languages including English and Japanese
Yomiuri Shashinkan
Yomiuri Newspaper's photographs
浮世絵検索
This website allows you to search Ukiyo-e images from multiple institutions and compare, as well as upload your image to find the same ukiyo-e that other institutions have.

Copyright Guidelines for Using Images

Did you know? The images and other media you find online are most likely protected by copyright, regardless of whether any copyright statement is displayed. Copyright protection applies instantly and automatically when a new work is created; no copyright notice or registration is required!

Learn more about using images legally from this guide: Using Images: Copyright Guidelines for the Use of Images in Education

GENERAL Databases for Images

Google Arts & Culture
Google Arts & Culture has partnered with a number of international museums to host digital collections of artwork. This link will take you to the collections at the Tokyo National Museum, but they also have collections for the Kyoto National Museum and the Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives, among others.

Oxford Art Online [Selected Articles in Full Text] This link opens in a new window
Contains 45,000 articles on every aspect of the visual arts painting, sculpture, graphic arts, architecture, decorative arts and photography from prehistory to the present day. Topics include, artist biographies, patrons, writers, cultures, countries, towns, styles, movements, theories, subject matters, iconography and more. Access to over 100,000 art images from the Bridgeman Art Library. Links to images elsewhere on the web.

WikiArt
WikiArt is an open access database of images, many of which are in the public domain. Those that are not in the public domain can often be used according to the Fair Use standards. If an image is in the public domain, it will say so. You can filter by artists' country to find images of East Asian artists.

Japanese Image Use Protocol

Image Use Protocol (NCC)
Designed to give basic guidance to North American Japanese studies scholars who seek permissions for the use of Japanese images particularly in scholarly publications. Includes templates for bilingual letters to request permission for use of Japanese images.