Kyoto
Kyoto Kyoto City, is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture, located in the Kansai region of Japan. It is best known in Japanese history for being the former Imperial capital of Japan for more than one thousand years, as well as a major part of the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area. In Japanese, Kyoto was called Kyō, Miyako, or Kyō no Miyako. In the 11th century, the city was renamed Kyoto, from the Chinese calligraphic, jingdu. After the city of Edo was renamed Tokyo in 1868, the seat of the Emperor was moved there, Kyoto was for a short time known as Saikyō. Kyoto is sometimes called the thousand-year capital; the National Diet never passed any law designating a capital. Foreign spellings for the city's name have included Kioto and Meaco, utilised by Dutch cartographers. Another term used to refer to the city in the pre-modern period was Keishi, meaning "urba" or "capital". Ample archaeological evidence suggests human settlement in Kyoto began as early as the Paleolithic period, although not much published material is retained about human activity in the area before the 6th century, around which time the Shimogamo Shrine is believed to have been established.
During the 8th century, when powerful Buddhist clergy became involved in the affairs of the Imperial government, Emperor Kanmu chose to relocate the capital in order to distance it from the clerical establishment in Nara. His last choice for the site was the village of Uda, in the Kadono district of Yamashiro Province; the new city, Heian-kyō, a scaled replica of the Tang capital Chang'an, became the seat of Japan's imperial court in 794, beginning the Heian period of Japanese history. Although military rulers established their governments either in Kyoto or in other cities such as Kamakura and Edo, Kyoto remained Japan's capital until the transfer of the imperial court to Tokyo in 1869 at the time of the Imperial Restoration; the city suffered extensive destruction in the Ōnin War of 1467–1477, did not recover until the mid-16th century. During the Ōnin War, the shugo collapsed, power was divided among the military families. Battles between samurai factions spilled into the streets, came to involve the court nobility and religious factions as well.
Nobles' mansions were transformed into fortresses, deep trenches dug throughout the city for defense and as firebreaks, numerous buildings burned. The city has not seen such widespread destruction since. In the late 16th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi reconstructed the city by building new streets to double the number of north-south streets in central Kyoto, creating rectangle blocks superseding ancient square blocks. Hideyoshi built earthwork walls called odoi encircling the city. Teramachi Street in central Kyoto is a Buddhist temple quarter where Hideyoshi gathered temples in the city. Throughout the Edo period, the economy of the city flourished as one of three major cities in Japan, the others being Osaka and Edo; the Hamaguri rebellion of 1864 burnt down 28,000 houses in the city which showed the rebels' dissatisfaction towards the Tokugawa Shogunate. The subsequent move of the Emperor to Tokyo in 1869 weakened the economy; the modern city of Kyoto was formed on April 1, 1889. The construction of Lake Biwa Canal in 1890 was one measure taken to revive the city.
The population of the city exceeded one million in 1932. There was some consideration by the United States of targeting Kyoto with an atomic bomb at the end of World War II because, as an intellectual center of Japan, it had a population large enough to persuade the emperor to surrender. In the end, at the insistence of Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, the city was removed from the list of targets and replaced by Nagasaki; the city was spared from conventional bombing as well, although small-scale air raids did result in casualties. As a result, the Imperial City of Kyoto is one of the few Japanese cities that still have an abundance of prewar buildings, such as the traditional townhouses known as machiya. However, modernization is continually breaking down the traditional Kyoto in favor of newer architecture, such as the Kyōto Station complex. Kyoto became a city designated by government ordinance on September 1, 1956. In 1997, Kyoto hosted the conference.
Kyoto is located in a valley, part of the Yamashiro Basin, in the eastern part of the mountainous region known as the Tamba highlands. The Yamashiro Basin is surrounded on three sides by mountains known as Higashiyama and Nishiyama, with a height just above 1,000 metres above sea level; this interior positioning results in cold winters. There are three rivers in the basin, the Ujigawa to the south, the Katsuragawa to the west, the Kamogawa to the east. Kyoto City takes up 17.9% of the land in the prefecture with an area of 827.9 square kilometres. The original city was arranged in accordance with traditional Chinese feng shui following the model of the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an; the Imperial Palace faced south. The streets in the modern-day wards of Nakagyō, Shimogyō, Kamigyō-ku still follow a grid pattern. Today, the main business district is located to the south of the old Imperial Palace, with the less-populated northern area retaining a fa
Realism (arts)
Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, or implausible and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, can be in large part a matter of technique and training, the avoidance of stylization. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the accurate depiction of lifeforms and the details of light and colour, but realist or naturalist works of art may, as well or instead of illusionist realism, be "realist" in their subject-matter, emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid. This is typical of the 19th-century Realist movement that began in France in the 1850s, after the 1848 Revolution, social realism, regionalism, or kitchen sink realism; the Realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. There have been various movements invoking realism in the other arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism, Italian neorealist cinema.
Realism is the precise and accurate representation in art of the visual appearance of scenes and objects i.e. it is drawn in photographic precision. Realism in this sense is called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism. Realistic art was created in many periods, it is in large part a matter of technique and training, the avoidance of stylization, it becomes marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck and other artists in the 15th century. However such "realism" is used to depict, for example, angels with wings, which were not things the artists had seen in real life. 19th-century Realism art movement painters such as Gustave Courbet are by no means noted for precise and careful depiction of visual appearances. It is the choice and treatment of subject matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting, rather than the careful attention to visual appearances. Other terms such as naturalism, naturalistic and "veristic" do not escape the same ambiguity, though the distinction between "realistic" and "realist" is useful, as is the term "illusionistic" for the accurate rendering of visual appearances.
The development of accurate representation of the visual appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the accurate depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance, of detailed effects of light and colour; the Art of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe achieved remarkably lifelike depictions of animals, Ancient Egyptian art developed conventions involving both stylization and idealization that allowed effective depictions to be produced widely and consistently. Ancient Greek art is recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy, has remained an influential model since. No original works on panels or walls by the great Greek painters survive, but from literary accounts, the surviving corpus of derivative works it is clear that illusionism was valued in painting. Pliny the Elder's famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, but indicates the aspiration of Greek painting.
As well as accuracy in shape and colour, Roman paintings show an unscientific but effective knowledge of representing distant objects smaller than closer ones, representing regular geometric forms such as the roof and walls of a room with perspective. This progress in illusionistic effects in no way meant a rejection of idealism. Roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects; the art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, a change well underway by the time Christianity began to affect the art of the elite. In the West classical standards of illusionism did not begin to be reached again until the Late medieval and Early Renaissance periods, were helped, first in the Netherlands in the early 15th century, around the 1470s in Italy, by the development of new techniques of oil painting which allowed subtle and precise effects of light to be painted using small brushes and several layers of paint and glaze.
Scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy in the early 15th century and spread across Europe, accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm; the accurate depiction of landscape in painting had been developing in Early Netherlandish/Early Northern Renaissance and Italian Renaissance painting, was brought to a high level in 17th-century Dutch Golden Age painting, with subtle techniques for depicting a range of weather conditions and degrees of natural light. After being another development of Early Netherlandish painting, by 1600 European portraiture could give a good likeness in both painting and sculpture, though the subjects were idealized by smoothing features or giving them an artificial pose. Still life paintings, still life elements in other w
Osaka
Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Japan. It is the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and the largest component of the Keihanshin Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Japan and among the largest in the world with over 19 million inhabitants. Osaka will host Expo 2025; the current mayor of Osaka is Ichiro Matsui. Some of the earliest signs of human habitation in the Osaka area at the Morinomiya ruins comprise shell mounds, sea oysters and buried human skeletons from the 6th–5th centuries BC, it is believed that what is today the Uehonmachi area consisted of a peninsular land with an inland sea in the east. During the Yayoi period, permanent habitation on the plains grew. By the Kofun period, Osaka developed into a hub port connecting the region to the western part of Japan; the large numbers of larger tomb mounds found in the plains of Osaka are seen as evidence of political-power concentration, leading to the formation of a state. The Kojiki records that during 390–430 AD there was an imperial palace located at Osumi, in what is present day Higashiyodogawa ward, but it may have been a secondary imperial residence rather than a capital.
In 645, Emperor Kōtoku built his Naniwa Nagara-Toyosaki Palace in what is now Osaka, making it the capital of Japan. The city now known as Osaka was at this time referred to as Naniwa, this name and derivations of it are still in use for districts in central Osaka such as Naniwa and Namba. Although the capital was moved to Asuka in 655, Naniwa remained a vital connection, by land and sea, between Yamato and China. Naniwa was declared the capital again in 744 by order of Emperor Shōmu, remained so until 745, when the Imperial Court moved back to Heijō-kyō. By the end of the Nara period, Naniwa's seaport roles had been taken over by neighboring areas, but it remained a lively center of river and land transportation between Heian-kyō and other destinations. In 1496, Jōdo Shinshū Buddhists established their headquarters in the fortified Ishiyama Hongan-ji, located directly on the site of the old Naniwa Imperial Palace. Oda Nobunaga began a decade-long siege campaign on the temple in 1570 which resulted in the surrender of the monks and subsequent razing of the temple.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi constructed Osaka Castle in its place in 1583. Osaka was long considered Japan's primary economic center, with a large percentage of the population belonging to the merchant class. Over the course of the Edo period, Osaka grew into one of Japan's major cities and returned to its ancient role as a lively and important port, its popular culture was related to ukiyo-e depictions of life in Edo. By 1780, Osaka had cultivated a vibrant arts culture, as typified by its famous Kabuki and Bunraku theaters. In 1837, Ōshio Heihachirō, a low-ranking samurai, led a peasant insurrection in response to the city's unwillingness to support the many poor and suffering families in the area. One-quarter of the city was razed before shogunal officials put down the rebellion, after which Ōshio killed himself. Osaka was opened to foreign trade by the government of the Bakufu at the same time as Hyōgo on 1 January 1868, just before the advent of the Boshin War and the Meiji Restoration. Osaka residents were stereotyped in Edo literature from at least the 18th century.
Jippensha Ikku in 1802 depicted Osakans as stingy beyond belief. In 1809, the derogatory term "Kamigata zeeroku" was used by Edo residents to characterize inhabitants of the Osaka region in terms of calculation, lack of civic spirit, the vulgarity of Osaka dialect. Edo writers aspired to samurai culture, saw themselves as poor but generous and public spirited. Edo writers by contrast saw "zeeroku" as obsequious apprentices, greedy and lewd. To some degree, Osaka residents are still stigmatized by Tokyo observers in the same way today in terms of gluttony, evidenced in the phrase, "Residents of Osaka devour their food until they collapse"; the modern municipality was established in 1889 by government ordinance, with an initial area of 15 square kilometres, overlapping today's Chūō and Nishi wards. The city went through three major expansions to reach its current size of 223 square kilometres. Osaka was the industrial center most defined in the development of capitalism in Japan, it became known as the "Manchester of the Orient."The rapid industrialization attracted many Korean immigrants, who set up a life apart for themselves.
The political system was pluralistic, with a strong emphasis on promoting industrialization and modernization. Literacy was high and the educational system expanded producing a middle class with a taste for literature and a willingness to support the arts. In 1927, General Motors operated a factory called Osaka Assembly until 1941, manufacturing Chevrolet, Pontiac and Buick vehicles and staffed by Japanese workers and managers. In the nearby city of Ikeda in Osaka Prefecture is the headquarters office of Daihatsu, one of Japan's oldest automobile manufacturers. Like its European and American counterparts, Osaka displayed slums and poverty. In Japan it was here that municipal government first introduced a comprehensive system of poverty relief, copied in part from British models. Osaka policymakers stressed the importance of family formation and mutual assistance as the best way to combat poverty; this minimized
Kameoka, Kyoto
Kameoka is a city in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. As of October 1, 2015, the city has an estimated population of 89,479, with 33,915 households and a population density of 398 persons per km²; the total area is 224.80 km². Kameoka is located to the north of Osaka, it is on the border line between former Yamashiro providences. Together with Nantan city, the region is known as Southern Kuchitan or Nanatan. For centuries, Kameoka served as a key transportation point to connect San'in region and Tanba providence with Kyoto. Today, the city serves as one of the suburbs of Metro Kyoto. Kameoka is notable as the launch point for Hozugawa Kudari, a boat ride down the Hozu River, it is the location of Anaoji Temple, one of the 21 temples in western Japan authorized to issue amulets in the name of the Boddhisattva Kannon. The area served as a farming community for Kyoto, Japan's former capital. For centuries, area farmers provided ingredients used for traditional Japanese food served in Kyoto including chestnuts, black beans, rice, matsutake and daikon.
In addition, farmers in the city provide beef and ayu. In the past, Kameoka was served as the provincial capital for Tanba province. 300 BCE – Rice farming colonies were built throughout the area 741 – Emperor Shōmu established kokubunji, provincial temples 8th century – beginning to grow as a suburb of Nagaokakyo and Heian-kyō 1333 – Takauji Ashikaga raised his army in Kameoka to settle the Genkō Rebellion in Kyoto 1577 – Under the direction of Oda Nobunaga, Akechi Mitsuhide erected Kameyama Castle 1582 – Mitsuhide Akechi raised his army in Kameoka to assassinate Nobunaga Oda and Nobutada Oda in Kyoto: The Incident at Honnō-ji 1869 – Kameyama was renamed Kameokasource:歴史. 国営亀岡農地再編整備事業. Kinki Regional Agricultural Administration Office. Kyoto Gakuen University Maruyama Ōkyo Aya Domenig Mitsuhide Akechi Kobayakawa Hideaki Maeda Gen'i Oda Hidekatsu Kameoka has agreements of friendship and co-operation with: Knittelfeld, Austria - April 14, 1964 Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA - November 3, 1985 Jandira, Brazil - November 3, 1980 Suzhou, China - December 31, 1996 Kameoka mayoral election, 2007 Kameoka City official website Kameoka City official website
Ōtsu
Ōtsu is the capital city of Shiga Prefecture, Japan. Ōtsu is known as the main port of the largest lake in Japan. It served as the capital of Japan from 667 to 672 AD during the Asuka period; the city is home to numerous sites of historical importance, notably the temples of Mii-dera, Ishiyama-dera, Enryaku-ji and the Hiyoshi Taisha shrine. Enryaku-ji is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto". Ōtsu was incorporated as a town on April 1, 1889. In October 1, 1898, Ōtsu-town was changed to Ōtsu-city; as of October 1, 2017, the city has an estimated population of 341,187 and a population density of 730 persons per km2. The total area is 464.51 km2. Ōtsu, meaning "big port", was a center of inland water transportation since ancient times. The city was an important port on Lake Biwa, a center of trade by water and land to other areas of Japan. Ōtsu was part of an old province of Japan until the modern period. The port is referred to in the Man ` yōshū as Shiga no Shigatsu.
In the years 667 to 672, the Ōmi Ōtsu Palace was founded by Emperor Tenji. The Jinshin War devastated the Ōmi Ōtsu Palace, Ōtsu was renamed Furutsu. A new capital, Heian-kyō, was established in the immediate neighborhood in 794, Ōtsu was revived as an important traffic point and satellite town of the capital. With the establishment of the new capital, the name of the city was restored to "Ōtsu". Ōtsu prospered during the Edo period because of the port on Lake Biwa and for its role as a shukuba, or post town. The city was under direct administration of the Tokugawa shogunate, both for its strategic location and for its role as a center of travel and trade. Two of the Gokaidō, or five routes that connected the capitol at Edo with other parts of Japan, converged in Ōtsu: the great Tōkaidō connecting Edo with Kyoto, the Nakasendō connecting Edo with Kyoto via an inland route. Additionally, the ancient Hokurikudō, which connected Kyoto to the provinces of northern Honshu, ran through Otsu; the Tokugawa shogunate established several han domains in the Ōtsu area.
The Zeze Domain was based in Zeze, a neighboring castle town of Ōtsu-juku, the smaller Katada Domain occupied the northern area of the present-day city. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 saw the establishment of a new central government in Tokyo and the abolition of the han system. Numerous prefectures under control of the Meiji government were created, part of the old province of Ōmi was designated as Ōtsu Prefecture in 1868. Several smaller prefectures were merged into Ōtsu Prefecture in 1871, which became part of present-day Shiga Prefecture on January 1, 1872. Ōtsu a town, was named the prefectural capital of Shiga. The Ōtsu incident, a failed assassination attempt on Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Russia, occurred on 11 May 1891. Nicholas, returning to Kyoto after a day trip to Lake Biwa, was attacked with a saber by Tsuda Sanzō, an escort policeman. Nicholas survived the assassination attempt, but the incident caused national outcry against Tsuda and was seen as a crisis in Japanese-Russian relations.
The Lake Biwa Canal was constructed in the 1890s between Kyoto. The canal, expanded during the Taishō period, played an important role in connecting the cities, facilitating water and passenger transportation, providing electrical energy to power Japan's first streetcar railroad services; the canal was designated a Historic Site in 1996.Ōtsu was incorporated as a city on October 1, 1898. On March 20, 2006, the town of Shiga ceased to exist after merging into Ōtsu. Ōtsu is located at the southwest of Shiga Prefecture. The city stretches along the southwest shore of Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake. Ōtsu ranges from the densely populated alluvium depressions near the shore of Lake Biwa to sparsely populated hilly and mountainous areas to the west and south of the city. Lake Biwa, the largest freshwater lake in Japan, covers 673.9 square kilometres and is located at the center of the Shiga Prefecture. The north part of the lake reaches a depth of 50 metres, the south part of the lake near Ōtsu is much shallower and reaches a depth of 5 metres.
Lake Biwa provides water for the industrial areas of the Kansai Region and drinking water in the Shiga area. The lake has been a travel destination since ancient times, continues to support the tourism industry of the prefecture; the lake is protected as part of Biwako Quasi-National Park. Lake Biwa is home to the Lake Biwa Marathon, which started in Osaka in 1946, moved to Lake Biwa in 1962, it is considered to be the oldest marathon in Japan. The Yodo River emerges from the south of Lake Biwa; the portion of the river that emerges from the lake is called the Seta River. The Setagawa Dam was constructed in 1961 to regulate the level of Lake Biwa, is located in the Nangō district of Ōtsu; the Yodo River is noted for having the largest number of tributaries of any river in Japan, for supplying water for the Hanshin Industrial Region. Ōtsu was noted for the production of several products, including Ōtsu-e, a form of folk drawing purchased by travelers in the Edo period.
Chōnin
Chōnin was a social class that emerged in Japan during the early years of the Tokugawa period. The majority of chōnin were merchants. Nōmin were not considered chōnin; the socioeconomic ascendance of chōnin has certain similarities to the contemporary rise of the middle class in the West. By the late 17th century the prosperity and growth of Edo had begun to produce unforeseen changes in the Tokugawa social order; the chōnin, who were theoretically at the bottom of the Edo hierarchy and economically at the expense of the daimyōs and samurai, who were eager to trade rice for cash and consumer goods. Mass-market innovations further challenged social hierarchies. For example, vast Edo department stores had cash-only policies, which favored the chōnin with their ready cash supply. While chōnin are not as well known to non Japanese as other social classes in Japan, they played a key role in the development of Japanese cultural products such as ukiyo-e, handicrafts. Aesthetic ideals such as iki, tsū, inase were developed among the chōnin.
Samurai, Chōnin and the Bakufu: Between Cultures of Frivolity and Frugality. Britannica Article
Figure drawing
A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures using any of the drawing media. The term can refer to the act of producing such a drawing; the degree of representation may range from detailed, anatomically correct renderings to loose and expressive sketches. A "life drawing" is a drawing of the human figure from observation of a live model. A figure drawing may be a composed work of art or a figure study done in preparation for a more finished work such as a painting. Figure drawing is arguably the most difficult subject an artist encounters, entire courses are dedicated to the subject; the human figure is one of the most enduring themes in the visual arts, the human figure can be the basis of portraiture, sculpture, medical illustration, other fields. Artists take a variety of approaches to drawing the human figure, they may draw from live models or from photographs, from skeletal models, or from memory and imagination. Most instruction focuses on the use of models in "life drawing" courses.
The use of photographic reference—although common since the development of photography—is criticized or discouraged for its tendency to produce "flat" images that fail to capture the dynamic aspects of the subject. Drawing from imagination is lauded for the expressiveness it encourages, criticized for the inaccuracies introduced by the artist's lack of knowledge or limited memory in visualizing the human figure. In developing the image, some artists focus on the shapes created by the interplay of light and dark values on the surfaces of the body. Others take an anatomical approach, beginning by approximating the internal skeleton of the figure, overlaying the internal organs and musculature, covering those shapes with the skin, clothing. Another approach is to loosely construct the body out of geometric shapes, e.g. a sphere for the cranium, a cylinder for the torso, etc. refine those shapes to more resemble the human form. For those working without visual reference, proportions recommended in figure drawing are: An average person is 7-and-a-half heads tall.
This can be illustrated to students in the classroom using paper plates to visually demonstrate the length of their bodies. An ideal figure, used for an impression of nobility or grace, is drawn at 8 heads tall. A heroic figure used in the depiction of gods and superheroes is eight-and-a-half. Most of the additional length comes from longer legs. Note that these proportions are most useful for a standing model. Poses which introduce foreshortening of various body parts will cause them to differ; the French Salon in the 19th century recommended the use of Conté crayons, which are sticks of wax and pigment, combined with specially formulated paper. Erasure was not permitted. A popular modern technique is the use of a charcoal stick, prepared from special vines, a rougher form of paper; the charcoal adheres loosely to the paper, allowing easy erasure, but the final drawing can be preserved using a spray-on "fixative" to keep the charcoal from rubbing off. Harder compressed charcoal can produce a more deliberate and precise effect, graduated tones can be produced by smudging with the fingers or with a cylindrical paper tool called a stump.
Graphite pencil is commonly used for figure drawing. For this purpose artists' pencils are sold in various formulations, ranging from 9B to 1B, from 1H to 9H. Like charcoal, it can be manipulated using a stump. Ink is another popular medium; the artist will start with graphite pencil to sketch or outline the drawing the final line work is done with a pen or brush, with permanent ink. The ink may be diluted with water to produce gradations, a technique called ink wash; the pencil marks may be erased after the ink is applied, or left in place with the dark inks overpowering them. Some artists draw directly in ink without the preparation of a pencil sketch, preferring the spontaneity of this approach despite the fact that it limits the ability to correct mistakes. Matisse is an artist known to have worked in this way. A favored method of Watteau and other 17th and 18th-century artists of the Baroque and Rococo era was to start with a colored ground of tone halfway between white and black, to add shade in black and highlights in white, using pen and ink or "crayon".
The human figure has been the subject of drawings since prehistoric times. While the studio practices of the artists of antiquity are a matter of conjecture, that they drew and modeled from nude models is suggested by the anatomical sophistication of their works. An anecdote related by Pliny describes how Zeuxis reviewed the young women of Agrigentum naked before selecting five whose features he would combine in order to paint an ideal image; the use of nude models in the medieval artist's workshop is implied in the writings of Cennino Cennini, a manuscript of Villard de Honnecourt confirms that sketching from life was an established practice in the 13th century. The Carracci, who opened their Accademia degli Incamminati in Bologna in the 1580s, set the pattern for art schools by making life drawing the central discipline; the course of training began with the copying of engravings proceeded to drawing from plaster casts, after which the students were trained in drawing from
