Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Plates bright and vivid.. Year 1964. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> KNOWLEDGE OF THE PERIOD described in this book 660 BC to the end of the Great Tomb Period in AD 671 is essential to the understanding of Japanese art and history but it is one which has not until now received detailed attention. The author has for the first time collated his own and other archaeologists’ past and recent work on the Tombs and their treasures and from the literature of this the first documented period of Japanese history he has reconstructed the art society and some of the beliefs of Japan in its formative years. It is a reconstruction heightened by the 133 illustrations selected from all the media of protohistoric Japanese art; clay figures iron weapons gold crowns wall paintings. The introduction of iron for weapons from Korea in the fourth century AD by the people of the Yamato Plain in the southeast of Japan’s main island enhanced their military power over the other tribes of central Japan. They formed the nucleus of what was soon to become the Japanese nation. Military expeditions also brought back works of art and craftsmen from Korea; embassies went and came from China; and the strong influ-ences of Chinese and of Manchurian and Central Asian art through Korea helped form early Japa-nese art. It is warlike as were the times; an art of armour weapons and horse-trappings. But an equally important aspect was religious art; figures of shamans and paintings of the magic boats and horses on which they were supposed to intercede with heaven. The author devotes a whole chapter to an interpretation of the symbolism of this art. Of special interest to scholars are the appendixes: catalogued descriptions of all the period’s orna-mented tombs and decorated sarcophagi to be. (MP)