Boro Boro is admirable as a majestic work of art. The great extent of the masses of building, covered in some parts with the luxuriant vegetation of the climate, the beauty and delicate execution of the separate portions, the symmetry and regularity...
There was a belief among the Japanese people that in order to be re-born [it depended on] how much good . . . you can do. So it was probably a similar idea, that these exquisitely made and very expensive mirrors... to offer in order to be re-born......
And it's this particular ability of Japanese mirrors to allow humans to speak to gods that has ensured the survival of our mirror, which, along with 18 others, was given to the British Museum in 1927 by a great Japanese collector of mirrors. All of t...
The mirror in Japanese culture does have several meanings, and some of them may seem contradictory. One is that it's an object to ward off evil spirits. On the other hand it can also attract them, which is why, if you go into a rather traditional hou...
Ben-no-Naishi showed on her train a beach with cranes on it, painted with silver. It was something new. She had also embroidered pine branches; she is clever, for all these things are emblematic of a long life. And the cranes also carry another meani...
One thing that distinguishes medieval Japanese culture, is that it was extremely aestheticised, it turned beauty into a kind of cult. And that included everything in daily life, not just objects like mirrors, or chopsticks, or whatever it was, but li...
Untroubled by outside influences or new arrivals, Japan turned inwards for several centuries - a fact which still resonates today - and developed its own highly idiosyncratic culture. At the court in Kyoto every aspect of life was constantly refined...
But this hoard also tells us a great deal of what was happening back in York. There, the Vikings were becoming Christian but, as so often, the new converts were reluctant to abandon the symbols of their old religion-the Norse gods were not entirely d...
And that's why all the later kings of the English, whether it was Normans or Plantagenets or Tudors, looked back to Athelstan as the founder of their kingdom. 因此之后的英格兰国王,不管是诺曼王朝、金雀花王朝还是都铎王朝,...
The Vale of York hoard makes it clear that Viking England did indeed operate on a trans-continental scale. Here is a dirham from Samarkand, and there are other Islamic coins from central Asia. Like York, Kiev was a great Viking city, and there mercha...