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they also are important not in the japanese art but the east asian art as a whole.
but they are in a very bad state of conservation, that may be a problem.

and that's the end of this live-tooting.

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in ryukyu)
so we have 100% chinese clothes and chinese-inspired ryukyuan clothes.
the ming and the qing are not the same people, so they have different clothes. the qing did not send made clothes, they just sent cloth, and ryukyuan made clothes from this cloth. and the textile patterns were very different from the ming.
are the newly found ugui wonderful enough to become national treasures ?
we can't know what japan's ministry of culture is thinking but they're quite wonderful enough.

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doing ? where are they ?they compared with descriptions of various ceremonies we have but none look like what they are doing in the ugui.
but there is one ceremony that looks just a bit alike, so maybe a ceremony we don't know about
but related to this last one.
question about the secret signification of each object depicted in the ugui and the clothes of the king.
the clothes changed between the ming and the qing dynasties : the clothes were sent by the emperors (and then copied

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the second sho dynasty tried very hard to cancel everything first sho dynasty, so that we have nothing left but legends.
question about the 「reconstruction of the colours」they did when we only had the black and white photographs and if they differ from the real colours now that we have found the real paintings.
they do differ. but we had no choice at the time and the reconstructions are pretty good nevertheless.
the vassals are only present on ryukyuan portraits. why ? what are they

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painting.
question time
the ming portraits change from sideways to front, why ? (like, he just spent 5 minutes telling us about the emperor who wanted two ears…)
the emperors became very powerful politically during the ming and it might be an expression of their power, because you look powerful when you look front.
before the second sho dynasty, there were ugui too, but all lost, there were some as soon as satto.

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the ears, because the emperor needs two ears to hear all the things that are told to him by people from all the directions.
conclusion : he's sad to tell us that the ugui do not look like the portraits of the japanese emperors at all. and they face front because one of the ming emperors had philosophic ideas 😁
there is ＊probably＊ a chinese influence.
(i think it's fun he thinks we'll be shocked that ryukyu and china are related…)
we don't know what the painters thought while they were

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at the very end of thewgen, the emperor is almost facing front.
and we're at the ming dynasty at last.
the first one he shows is definitely looking left, not at all front.
ok, second one looking right.
he's lost in the differences in era-naming in china and japan. (ryukyu only use chinese calendar so i'm not sure why it's relevant)
at last, 17th century, an emperor facing front !
apparently one of the emperor decided the portraits had to face front, for the painter to paint both

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art historians first thought the painters did not have the
technique to paint people facing front but there are very old Buddhist portraits facing front so that's not a problem of techniques.
some of the old emperor portraits (the ones sideways) are seated on chairs, some are standing.
for the gen dynasty, we almost only have portraits with only the shoulders and face, but they are a bit looking sideway.

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he shows us maps of where the paintings were conserved.
apparently what he wanted to say is that he is happy the new dynasties did not destroy the paintings of the previous dynasties. nice, nice new dynasties.
and we at least change subject, given the faces of all my neighbours i'm not the only one not to have grasped the point of the last 10 minutes.
the oldest portraits of chinese emperors face on the side, and they turn gradually to face completely front during the ming.

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well, they're close with china, we're close with china, that's just chinese influence on both sides.
ryukyuan painters go to study in china, in fukken.
they sign their paintings mainly with their chinese names (ryukyuan people have chinese-like names and japanese-like names, although i never understood what was so japanese in what people call the 「japanese-like names」)
he is now talking about a place in ming china that had a collection of portraits. not sure where he is going here.

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ugui and korean king portraits. most have been destroyed too, as in ryukyu.
we have a lot of info about all the ceremonies held when painting a korean king.
there is something of a bit of slight look-alike with the ugui. if you want to see it 😁
it's definitely closer to the ugui than to the japanese emperors, ok.
the king has a crown, like the ugui ! and he can wear chinese-like clothes ! and he's seated on a chair !

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the portraits of the japanese emperors are not written by professional painters but by people close to the emperor, who hopefully had a bit of artistic talent.
ugui are painted by professionals.
the japanese emperors almost always face a little bit sideways, almost never front. there is almost nothing in the background.
korea ! the relations between ryukyu and korea are old, and korea as ryukyu was in relationship with china too.
it does not seem to have many similar points between

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there is less details in the background, less objects everywhere. there are only 7 vassals on each side and not all of them are holding objects. but we still don't know for sure what they are holding…
the political situation is very different in japan where they have an emperor and a shogun.
there are portraits of the emperors in temples too, they were painted after the emperor's death., which is also the case of the ugui.
the clothes of the japanese emperors are not chinese at all.

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during the ming period, the king is in the middle, there are fans on top and vassals on both sides.
the king has a certain type of clothes and shoes, in the background too there are many details, furnitures, even the tiles on the ground.
the vassals, 8 on each side, are holding objects and we do not know the meaning of the objects.
during the qing, the construction is the same but the fashion changes. some parts of the clothes are not seen in china, particular to ryukyu.

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the newly discovered ugui give so much more info than the black and white photographs. until now so much research has been made only on photographs, a new whole world is opening. for some of the newly found ones we don't know which kings they represent. researchers extrapolte from the clothes and comparing to the photographs (we know the names for the photographs, of course). it's fun to extrapolate. is this from the ming period ? the qing period ?

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then only 「how」: the techniques.
the ogoe are portraits that were kept in temples related to the royal family. after the fall of the kingdom, they were stored in nakagusuku udun. and most of them burnt in the war. or so we thought. but apparently quite a number survived.
photographs were taken before the war by kamakura yoshitaro (real hero of ryukyuan art conservation)(i mean, okinawan people go to naichi to pray on his tomb)

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the chinese portraits are facing front.
he will talk about the portraits of the japanese emperors, the korean kings and the chinese emperors.
he is very apologetic because the ryukyu portraits look like the chinese ones and not the japanese ones. did he expect us to be disappointed or surprised ?
he insists on the fact of keeping an open mind when watching art pieces, asking when, where, why it was painted, what it represent, who did it, who paid for it, to whom it was given, and

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photographs will be forbidden during the lecture. not that i would have time to take any with the live-tooting.
the lecturer is hirakawa nobuyuki, not sure i ever seen him before, but i'm not familiar with the 「art」part of the prefectural museum.
there are apparently very few specialists of ryukyuan paintings. hirakawa is interested by the fact all the portraits are facing front.
in japan, the portraits are generally facing right or left, rarely front.

i'm in
#okimyu

i'll be live-tooting in english the conference about the ugui portraits of the kings at the prefectural museum this afternoon.
hashtag #okimyu
as always, mute it if you'd rather not be flooded by kingdom period awesomeness 😁
https://okimu.jp/sp/event/1741487376/
#ryukyu #okinawa