Japan
From Japan's decorative arts, which mostly date to the Edo period (about 1600-1868), there are tsuba (sword-guards), netsuke (toggles) and inrō (boxes), as well as portable shrines and other lacquer boxes and containers and over 120 painted scrolls and manuscripts, including many Nara e-hon and sutras.
The Japanese woodblock prints include some 450 ukiyo-e prints, as well as 350 privately produced surimono prints, the latter acquired in 1954 from the Dr M. Cooper collection and built up by Jack Hillier between then and about 1964.
Japanese Scroll Conservation Project
The Chester Beatty Library is delighted to announce a grant from The Sumitomo Foundation, Tokyo, to conserve one of the most important Japanese hand scrolls in the Library’s collections – an early 17th-century version of The Tale of the Bamboo-Cutter in a set of two picture scrolls. For more information please click here.