The Hachiman Digital Handscrolls Project (HDH)
The Project
The Hachiman Digital Handscrolls Project (HDH) offers an innovative access to seven digitized Japanese illuminated hand scrolls ranging from the 14th to the 19th century.
Each version tells the same story:
The first part covers the prehistoric pregnant Empress Jingū 神功皇后 and her alleged conquest of the Korean kingdoms by help of indigenous deities. This colorful myth is followed by the empress’s birth of the future Emperor Ōjin 應神天皇, and his manifestation as the Hachiman 八幡 deity. Hachiman’s miraculous appearances and oracles as well as the foundation tales of the most famous Hachiman shrines cover the second part of the scrolls. The title of the scrolls reflects the gist of the scrolls, “Karmic Origins of the Great Bodhisattva Hachiman 八幡大菩薩御縁起.”
Digital Output
The Hachiman Digital Handscrolls Project (HDH) is a pilot study to enhance digital presentations of image-and-text formats. The innovative open source system HyperImage is the pivotal tool employed to realize the aims of the project. Within the HyperImage environment, users not only can manipulate the speed of viewing and zooming in on details of the entire hand scrolls, but it is also possible to provide transcriptions of the calligraphies together with their English translations. Additionally, the user may opt to use extensive annotations on the materiality, depicted motifs, calligraphic styles and political, religious or ritual background information. Furthermore, the seven scrolls can be flexibly compared with each other.
The great variety, but also the similarities of style, contents, and interpretation of this highly influential narrative over the centuries is presented at the users’ fingertips. Thus, the HDH offers the opportunity to experience Japanese handscrolls in ways, which reflect virtually how viewers at the time may have looked at one set of handscrolls, while at the same time offering possibilities of comparisons and supplemented knowledge, that were not possible until recently.
The first version of the project was funded by the Excellence Initiative at Heidelberg University, Field of Focus 3 “Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World,” and extended and completed in October 2015. Because of its great success, a course “Visual Media/Digital Art History: Practical Training in digital methods and their implementation” was held and in March 2017 a second version was published now containing additional Japanese translations.
