July 2021 Message from the Executive Director

Welcome to Jōmon July. A series of initiatives relating to the Jōmon period of Japanese prehistory in which the Institute has been involved come to fruition this month. These include the nomination of 17 sites in northern Tōhoku and southern Hokkaido as UNESCO World Heritage, an inscription we hope will be ratified by the World […]

Report on the talk “Transformation Act: Early Eighth-Century Relic Devotion and the Emerging “Prince Shōtoku Cult” at Hōryūji”

The Prince Umayado (574-622), also known as Toyotomimi, was the second son of the 31st Emperor Yomei, and is known by the posthumous title “Prince Shotoku”. As the regent to his aunt, the 33rd Empress Suiko, Prince Shotoku led the way in establishing the 12 court ranks and first constitution with 17 articles. Prince Shotoku […]

Technical Workshops of Digital Archiving Japanese collection at the Sainsbury Centre

As a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, many institutions were forced to temporarily close their doors to the public. Deemed as sites where the risk of viral transmission was high, museums, which rely heavily on public interaction in their physical institutions, were left in a precarious position whereby their communicative strategies to interact with the […]