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Created page with "*''Japanese'': 極楽箱 ''(gokuraku bako)'' Perspective boxes were one of a number of optical curiosities or devices introduced into Japan in the 17th to 18th centuries. A v..."
*''Japanese'': 極楽箱 ''(gokuraku bako)''
Perspective boxes were one of a number of optical curiosities or devices introduced into Japan in the 17th to 18th centuries. A variety of lenses and/or mirrors are used along with images painted on the inside of the box, or small objects placed within the box, to create for viewers who peer inside the box a semblance of an experience of a complex, three-dimensional, scene.
One notable example of such perspective boxes or "peep boxes" was one gifted by the [[Dutch East India Company]] to the [[Tokugawa shogunate]] in [[1647]]. Shogunate officials viewed the box at the [[Nagasaki-ya]] residence for the Dutch in [[Edo]], and dubbed it a ''gokuraku bako'', or "paradise box," referencing a traditional Chinese story of a wizard who entered into a gourd to live in the world inside there (a ''kyôchû no ten'', lit. "heaven inside a gourd"). The box was later presented to the shogun at [[Edo castle]] by [[Willem Versteeghen]], chief trader of the VOC in Japan.
{{stub}}
==References==
*Timon Screech, "Rethinking the Visual Revolution in Edo," in ''Nozoite bikkuri Edo kaiga: The Scientific Eye and Visual Wonders in Edo'' のぞいてびっくり江戸絵画, Tokyo: Suntory Museum of Art (2014), 16.
[[Category:Edo Period]]
[[Category:Culture]]
Perspective boxes were one of a number of optical curiosities or devices introduced into Japan in the 17th to 18th centuries. A variety of lenses and/or mirrors are used along with images painted on the inside of the box, or small objects placed within the box, to create for viewers who peer inside the box a semblance of an experience of a complex, three-dimensional, scene.
One notable example of such perspective boxes or "peep boxes" was one gifted by the [[Dutch East India Company]] to the [[Tokugawa shogunate]] in [[1647]]. Shogunate officials viewed the box at the [[Nagasaki-ya]] residence for the Dutch in [[Edo]], and dubbed it a ''gokuraku bako'', or "paradise box," referencing a traditional Chinese story of a wizard who entered into a gourd to live in the world inside there (a ''kyôchû no ten'', lit. "heaven inside a gourd"). The box was later presented to the shogun at [[Edo castle]] by [[Willem Versteeghen]], chief trader of the VOC in Japan.
{{stub}}
==References==
*Timon Screech, "Rethinking the Visual Revolution in Edo," in ''Nozoite bikkuri Edo kaiga: The Scientific Eye and Visual Wonders in Edo'' のぞいてびっくり江戸絵画, Tokyo: Suntory Museum of Art (2014), 16.
[[Category:Edo Period]]
[[Category:Culture]]