I was going to write a longer parenthetical comment in my previous post about this archive, but I was so taken with it that I thought it deserved its own post. Now I may be on to something the rest of the world knows about, but I was quite shocked at coming upon the Rare Books Image Database at the National Diet Library site (the latter links to the library’s English site). The image database is in Japanese, but with a little effort (or just plain luck clicking on various links) you’ll soon be captivated by an astonishing array of prints, most of them from the Edo Period. If you’re at all interested in Japanese art, particularly ukiyo-e woodblock prints, you really should take a look at this archive. The source material isn’t the most pristine, and the scans aren’t the greatest, but they’re relatively large (usually around 200K) and adequate enough. According to the Library, there are almost 31,000 images in the database. Let me repeat: 31,000 images! I ran a search on Hiroshige, for example, and there are almost 1,500 works of his in the database. (To be fair, a good share of the database’s images are scans of texts from various rare books, which may or may not appeal to you).
To get to the ukiyo-e prints, from the main image database page, click on the purple button in the main menu navigation to be taken to the nishiki-e (color woodblock print) section. If you don’t feel comfortable (of have the capability with your computer setup) searching on Kanji keywords, try this page which will allow you to browse by clicking on Hiragana characters in the left margin.
I could spend hours just clicking through this virtual gallery. Hell, what am I talking about, I already have!
I meant to say, when I first read this, that this is a fantastic link. Wow. Thanks for sharing it with us!