EALC 203: Ukiyo-e: The Art of Japanese Prints (HC/BMC) Spring 2024

Reference sources include handbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, companions, and bibliographies. While these terms can be fluid, here are some baseline meanings:

• Handbooks are subject area tools and provide facts or explain terms, concepts, movements, etc. 
• Subject dictionaries focus on defining the terms of that subject area.
• Encyclopedias provide basic and general background information on a topic or subject. 
• Companions generally feature scholarly essays meant to provide an overview of an area and some of the important relevant scholarship on it. In many cases these are thesis-driven.
• Bibliographies list resources for further reading on a specific topic or subject.
  • Sometimes these look like the bibliographies you might compile at the end of a term paper, or in some cases they are much longer and more extensive, perhaps book-length.
  • Other times are like annotated bibliographies, with short essays or statements describing the resource and why it might be useful to a researcher.
  • Usually these offer more depth of coverage than other resources above, with more extensive listings of resources than the others which may also point to further reading.

Here is a selected list of handbooks you may find useful. Handbooks provide readers with a summary overview of a topic and include carefully selected bibliographies.  Be sure to look at the lists for further reading provided by the authors of the entries--they will be especially useful for you as you deepen your research. ​​

• Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints      : This 2 volume set offers informed essays on themes, artists, and connections with art, photography, and cultural history.

• Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan       : although published in 1986, this 9 volume encyclopedia is an excellent place to begin one's research. 

• Oxford Art Online        Includes full-text articles on every aspect of the visual arts from prehistory through the present. Contains images and provides links to related sites.

• Companion to Asian Art and Architecture        The most relevant chapter is "Revisiting Asian Art" (p. 3) which has an excellent introduction to the ways of seeing Asian art and how to appropriately analyze Asian art in a historical context. 

• A Companion to Japanese History        This is an excellent resource on the history of Japan in short, digestible sections. Each chapter includes notes, bibliographical information, and a section on further reading. It also includes trends in the field. 

• Historical Dictionary of Japan to 1945        This historical dictionary provides short, concise entries to further develop your research. It is especially helpful because it provides the terms in Japanese as well as in English. 

Literature reviews are a particularly useful kind of article when doing research. They address the issues involved in a particular question and the debates among scholars. They map out the intellectual terrain succinctly and give you the major landmarks in terms of key authors and significant titles.

Oxford Bibliographies Online        provide literature reviews for a variety of fields including Asian Studies (they specify the following subject areas: Chinese Studies, Buddhism, International Relations, etc. You can take a look at their subjects and complete a few searches to find what you are interested in).  The essays take the form of an annotated bibliography.  It gives you the benefit of expert advice when identifying what to read for your research. 

• Katsushika Hokusai by Matthi Forrer. This article is about one of the most famous Ukiyo-e artists, Katsushika Hokusai.
• Buddhist Art and Architecture in Japan by Heather Blair. This article will help contextualize Ukiyo-e as an art form. 
• Demons and the Demonic in Buddhism by Gail Hinich Sutherland. This article will help contextualize some of the artistic trends in Ukiyo-e. 

Literature Reviews in Dissertations and Theses

Doctoral dissertations (and in some cases, master's theses) often contain substantial reviews of the scholarly literature and other resources related to the topic or issue the author is researching. If you cannot find an Oxford Bibliography that is sufficiently relevant or helpful for your research, these studies written by graduate researchers can be a very good alternative or supplement.

Note that dissertations may not have a section titled "Literature Review," even if they have one.

• These are often contained within the introduction or first chapter, where the author relates the project to existing research.
• You are usually looking at something like a literature review when you see the footnotes, endnotes, or in-text citations becoming particularly dense.

The ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database (use linked icons above) allows you to search through a large collection of these documents.

Beyond simply searching for terms of interest, these approaches may be helpful.

• Use the Advanced Search function via the link above the search bar.
  • The default is to search anywhere within the dissertations and theses. Because this includes the full text of the documents, this can return a very large quantity of unfocused results.
  • Use the drop-down list to the right of the text input box to select Anywhere except full text. This searches the author's abstract/summary, keywords, subject areas, the title, etc,
  • Selecting Index term (keyword) allows you to see how widely-used a certain keyword is very quickly. Click on Look up index terms (keywords) when it appears directly under the right side drop-down box where you just made the selection for index term searching.
• Filtering by date and recency.
  • Use the Publication date filter on the left to find more recent results. (Some of results may be from only a few months ago!)
  • You may also use the Sorted by drop-down menu to have the database show the most recent results first.