Excellent view of our prosperous age
On the occasion of the reopening of the Museum of Eastasian Art in Berlin an extraordinary hand scroll titled "Kidai Shoran" (literally: "Excellent View of Our Prosperous Age") was introduced to the public for the first time.
With a length of twelve meters this hand scroll portrays the then most important shopping street of Edo, modern-day Tôkyô around the year 1800. More than 1000 people and animals, 40 different shops, hundreds of houses, numerous restaurants, etc. illustrate the society and everyday live. An up to then unknown artist created this comprehensive panorama of life in Japan during the Edo period.
The scroll is completely shown on a CD ROM created in a cooperation of designers with programming skills and japanologists. The scientific research was carried out by Prof. Ehmcke and her team at the University of Cologne.
The different persons, professions, shops and houses are explained and are connected via hyperlinks. Hypertexts offer a comprehensive insight in japanese live of that time. Five guided tours make the shopping street which was about 700 meters long accessible from various perspectives.
Authoring
We wanted the high quality of the content based on the work of a highly qualified team of japanologists to be put into the software as smoothly as possible. To achieve this it was necessary to create a software that enabled us to fill a database with the information needed. This was not only a huge amount of text in two languages but also the complex linking between the text and the large image. The tool that fulfilled these demands resembled very much the final CD ROM application but additionally offered the opportunity to enter the input and links necessary.
Images
Credits
Concept: Joachim Sauter, Ralph Ammer, Tobias Schmidt
Design and programming: Ralph Ammer, Tobias Schmidt, Stephan Huber
Supervision: Dr. des. Khanh Trinh
Texts: Prof Dr. Franziska Ehmcke, Hiroko Yoshikawa-Geffers, Bernd Auf der Mauer, Britta-Maria Gruber MA, Jens Kreutzer MA, Ilse Reuter
Client: SMPK Berlin