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Studies of Japanese Art by Period
Pre-Buddhist (to circa 550 CE)
Most of these books are chiefly concerned with ceramics (sculpture and utensils),
but they also touch on metalwork and painting. C. Melvin
Aikens and Takayama Higuchi, Prehistory of Japan (New York: Academic Press,
1982); Vadime Elisseeff, Japan, translated by James Hogarth (London: Barrie
and Jenkins, 1974); Richard J. Pearson et al., eds., Windows on the Japanese Past
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1986); and Richard Pearson et al., Ancient
Japan (New York: Braziller, 1992) are chiefly archaeological studies. (Pearson's
Ancient Japan is especially handsome, with 71 color plates and more than 200
black-and-white illustrations.) Douglas Moore Kenrick, Jomon of Japan: The World's
Oldest Pottery (London and New York: Kegan Paul, 1996), a survey of stylistic
variations of Jomon pottery, chiefly with black-and-white illustrations, concentrates
on pots but includes some material on masks and sculpture. Older than Kenrick, but
better for students of art, are several books by J. Edward Kidder, Jr., especially
Prehistoric Japanese Arts: Jomon Pottery (Tokyo: Kodansha International,
1968), The Birth of Japanese Art (New York: Praeger, 1965), and Early
Japanese Art (Princeton: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1964). Erica H. Weeder, ed.,
The Rise of a Great Tradition: Japanese Archaeological Ceramics from the Jomon
through the Heian Periods, 10,500 BC-AD 1185 (New York: Agency for Cultural Affairs,
Government of Japan, 1990) offers six interesting essays (especially Anne P. Underhill's
"A Guide to Understanding Ceramic Change"), but the illustrations of some
70 objects are only so-so, and in fact the essays are not always closely connected
with the illustrations. Other useful books are Namio Egami, The Beginnings of
Japanese Art, translated by John Bester (New York: Weatherhill, 1973), and -
limited to Kofun-era sculpture - Fumio Miki, Haniwa, translated and adapted
by Gina Lee Barnes (New York: Weatherhill, 1974).
For Shinto architecture, see (in addition to books already listed above under
Architecture) Yasutada Watanabe, Shinto Art: Ise and Izumo Shrines, translated
by Robert Ricketts (New York: Weatherhill, 1974), and especially Kenzo Tange and
Noboro Kawazoe, Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1965).
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