User Guide | Art Platform Japan (APJ) User guide General information Dictionary of Artists in Japan (DAJ) Japanese Museum Collections Search (SHŪZŌ) Contemporary Japanese Art Exhibitions from 1945 Japanese Galleries and Art Spaces APJ Bibliography Use of readings Recommended browsers General information APJ ID Each record stored on this research portal is assigned a unique ID structured as follows. Artists: The letter A followed by a numeric code Works: The letter W followed by a numeric code Museums: The letter M followed by a numeric code Exhibitions: The letter E followed by a numeric code Galleries: The letter G followed by a numeric code Bibliographic Information: The letter B followed by a numeric code Terms of use Please see the Terms of Use for rules and conditions that apply to the use of information published on the APJ research portal. Dictionary of Artists in Japan (DAJ) Overview The Dictionary of Artists in Japan (DAJ) is a resource for information on artists and groups that have contributed to the development of the arts in Japan since the Meiji era (1868-1912). It is intended to help promote international research on Japanese art by serving as a full-fledged reference tool on Japanese artists that is accessible to users around the world. Inclusion criteria This database comprises mainly artists and groups that have contributed to the development of art in Japan. Our specific inclusion criteria are as follows: Japanese artists and groups whose works are housed in museums across Japan Artists and groups referenced in the resources on Art Platform Japan Artists and groups associated with the initiatives of the National Center for Art Research Other artists and groups proposed by members of the Research Resource Committee In terms of the time range, the database covers artists who were active after 1867 and born before 1996. In the case of groups, the representative or leading figure must have been born before 1996. Record items Names Various forms of the artist’s name that appear in the literature have been included to the widest extent possible. Therefore, not all of them are necessarily "correct." The name most commonly used and recommended in Japan and abroad is used for the display name and Japanese display name. Other forms are also listed, with the type of representation given in parentheses (see example below) . Index names are in the following order: family name, given name. The family name is in uppercase. If the artist’s culture normally places the given name before the family name, a comma is placed after the family name to make it clear that the order is reversed. Group names are given the same treatment as family names. As specified by the Bunka-cho Art Platform Japan Translation Project Style Guide(PDF)Open in a new tab, Romanization follows the ALA-LC Japanese transliteration table(PDF)Open in a new tab (modified Hepburn system) prepared by the U.S. Library of Congress. Exceptions are made for cases where the artist’s preference is different. Example: オノ・ヨーコ(Japanese display name) 小野洋子(Japanese birth name) おの ようこ(transliterated hiragana) Date of birth; Date of death These dates are given according to the Western calendar, with the Japanese calendar date added if deemed necessary. Gender The gender notation indicates the artist’s assigned sex and does not necessarily represent the artist’s gender identity. Fields of activity The following classifications are used for artists’ fields of activity. Painting, Sculpture, Printmaking, Photography, Video, Illustration, Manga, Crafts, Design, Fashion, Performance Art, Performing Arts, Media Art, Sound Art, Installation, Architecture, Calligraphy, Ikebana, Poetry, Conceptual Art, Literature, Critic Painting: Categorized as "Painting" when the artist has created two-dimensional works, including Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) and Western-style painting. Sculpture: Categorized as "Sculpture" when the artist has created three-dimensional works, including sculptures and objets. Biography The name of the author and date of publication are noted at the end of the text. For translated works, the translator’s name is also included. Exhibitions Selected exhibitions on the artist are listed. Museum holdings Museums and collections that hold important works or many works by the artist are included. Selected bibliography Selected bibliographic references related to the artist are included. Those that are a catalogue raisonné and or a manuscript written by the artist are indicated as such at the end of the entry. External sources This section provides information on the artist excerpted from articles and other resources published on the following external websites. Since the information is periodically refreshed, it may change due to revisions made on the source website. Yearbook of Japanese Art Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties “Obituaries”: Where artist obituaries published in the Institute’s Yearbook of Japanese Art exist in the website’s database, up to 200 characters of text is displayed with the Institute’s consent. When citing these obituaries, please be sure to access the Institute’s original article and follow the sample notation provided at the bottom of the page. Please also refer to the NotesOpen in a new tab provided for the obituaries. Wikipedia (Japanese), Wikipedia (English) Text in the Introduction section of Wikipedia articles about artists is displayed under a Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC-BY-SA). When citing these sources, please observe the terms and conditions provided. Authority files Where one or more of the following authorities contain an entry for the artist in question, the relevant identifiers are listed. VIAF ULAN (Union List of Artist Names) Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Online (AKL) Benezit Dictionary of Artists Grove Art Online Web NDL Authorities* Wikidata *Service for searching and downloading authority data created by the National Diet Library, Japan Japanese Museum Collections Search (SHŪZŌ) Overview The Japanese Museum Collections Search (SHŪZŌ) system is a searchable database of artworks in collections held by registered museums and equivalent facilities throughout Japan. Artwork data supplied by the collaborating museums form the core of the database. The National Center for Art Research, Japan has added the Japanese and English renderings of the artist names and museum names as search tags to enable searches to be conducted in either Japanese or English. Additionally, for works by artists included in the Dictionary of Artists in Japan (DAJ), we have added the artist's name as a search tag. The details page for each artwork features an option for machine translation into English to help users not proficient in Japanese to better understand the title, medium, and other descriptions for which the source has not supplied English translations. SHŪZŌ is intended to fulfill the longstanding need of art researchers and other professionals in Japan and abroad for a serious research tool that enables acquisition of information on specific artists’ works held in collections in Japan . SHŪZŌ Roadmap (PDF, as of April 23, 2026)Open in a new tab Origin of the name “SHŪZŌ” The Japanese name of this search system is Zenkoku Bijūtsukan Shūzōhin Sāchi: SHŪZŌ and the English name is Japanese Museum Collections Search (SHŪZŌ). The nickname “SHŪZŌ” was selected because it represents the Japanese word for “collections” and is a homonym for a popular personal name in Japan. Inclusion criteria SHŪZŌ covers artworks in the collections of public institutions such as museums and other facilities in Japan. The scope includes artworks created in or after 1801, as well as works by artists registered in Art Platform Japan’s Dictionary of Artists in Japan (DAJ). However, even if a work was clearly created in or after 1801, it may not be included if the artist’s name or production year is unspecified or missing from the work data, due to data processing constraints. Data record policy The records stored in this system are based on data provided by collaborating institutions (hereinafter, "source data"). This includes unpublished internal-use records, as well as collection catalogues and annual reports that were previously unavailable online. However, not all source data provided by the institutions is necessarily made public, in accordance with the inclusion criteria outlined above. In principle, the original notation of the source data has been maintained, and standardization has not been applied. However, minor additions or modifications may be made to correct obvious misspellings or typographical errors, or to supplement information such as cultural property designations. In cases where it proved difficult to adhere to the entries in paper catalogues due to the use of outdated kanji characters or the like, kanji approximating the original characters were entered instead, followed by the reading in katakana script in brackets (or by 〓unknown characters if the reading is unknown). For greater convenience in searches, controlled vocabularies for artist names and museum names are assigned as search tags to some of the work data. In some cases, the source data did not include English translations for the artwork descriptions (title, year, medium, etc.). To aid understanding of those entries, a machine translation option has been added to the artwork details page. This feature can be enabled or disabled using the machine translation toggle switch in the upper right corner of the page. Record items The record items used in each artwork entry are as follows. Artist, Title, Series title, Year, Medium, Dimensions/Duration, Edition/State, Inscriptions/Marks, Designation, Collection, Accession number, Provenance, Exhibition history, Notes, Source, View providing website Artist As mentioned above, artist names have been entered in accordance with the original notation of the source data. As a result, there may be inconsistencies in how an artist’s name is rendered in different records, such as in the use of a space to separate the family name and given name, and the order of the family and given names (this is especially true for names in alphabetical notation. In cases where an artwork involved multiple artists and information on their respective roles was provided in the source data, this information was entered as: “{Artist Name}({Role})”. In addition to the artist's name as it appears in the source data, a search tag with the artist's name has been added when the artist is included in the Dictionary of Artists in Japan (DAJ). Title The title is rendered in accordance with the notation in the source data. The original title or the Japanese translation thereof was entered as Japanese data, while an English translation or the original title that was the source of the Japanese translation was entered as English data. Whether the original title is entered in Japanese, English, or another language varies according to the work. Year If the source data included dates in both the Western and Japanese calendars, the Western calendar was used. In cases where only Japanese dates were provided, the Japanese date was recorded in the Japanese database. Medium This information is presented as it appeared in the source data. To improve the convenience of searching the source data, variant spellings and terms have been registered as synonyms as described in the following appendix (also see “Search specs” below). List of synonymous media (PDF, as of January 1, 2022)Open in a new tab Dimensions/Duration This information was entered as it appeared in the source data. For this reason, there may be inconsistencies in the order of notation. Designation National and prefectural cultural property designations are listed. When applicable, the designation date and design…