5月23日

今日は、美術館に行きました．葛飾北斎の絵でした．浮世絵の変化は、良い説明です．

そして、築地に昼ご飯を食べました. うなぎとほたてとわぎゅとうにとイクラを食べて見ました．うなぎとほたてとわぎゅ、全部で、焼肉で美味しかったです．うにとイクラは、ままでした．

そして、あきはばらに行きました．おたくparadiseです！

先生は二人、学生は、九人、全部で十一人、マイドカフェに行きました．

学生は、マイドに騙させられたんですけど先生は助けてもらいました！先生は頭が良いしやさしいし．

そして、すみだ水族館に行きました．とても面白いね．からげや色々魚やたくさんペンギンを見ました．とてもかわいい！

後で晩ご飯を食べてもっと買い物して心が疲れた学生は、ホテルに戻りました．

——

I think, for me, the most interesting things at the art musuem were learning that one colour art, ukiyo-e, became nishiki-e and became polychrome but still tended to be referred to as ukiyo-e, and about the making process, and the number of people involved and comparing that to what I already knew about western woodblock printing and print engraving. I did not know about the print degradation, but it makes sense since wood is a softer, more fragile medium than metal plates.

The other most interesting thing to me at the art museum was the sketches of dances that were intended to be a medium to teach people those dances. I looked at those and remembered manuscripts and hand drawn books from Europe from mediaeval times that were intended to teach people to sword fight, and in particular, the dueling circle style for rapier, and how I discussed those with my fencing 先生, and we agreed that unless you already knew how to sword fight, those pictures would make no sense and could not be used. You would still need an instructor to make sense of them, especially with the element of time in them and to flow between positions.

I felt that it was the same with the dance instruction sketch book - which was why it was particularly interesting to see the animation they had created from those pictures, because that would help a student a lot, seeing it move between the positions, and to visualise it better. It had that time element in it, that is impossible to pick up from individual pictures. That time element is represented in Indian art often by having multiple hands - it is not necessarily a many-handed deity, but a representation of time and capability.

And I’m sorry that my main thoughts are in English, but I lack the vocabulary to express all that and wish to still capture the thoughts and impressions.