Centuries-old Christian painting found in Japan- News – NHK WORLD – English

judica-me:

Officials of a history museum and experts examined the painting. They say it was done with China ink on a hand scroll measuring 22 centimeters wide by 3 meters long and made of Japanese “washi” paper.

The work depicts 15 scenes relating to Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, including the Annunciation and the Pentecost.

The painting also bears some writing. An analysis shows it is Latin prayers that someone transcribed from a verbal form.

The words “the year of 1592” appear at the end of the scroll. Experts say it is highly likely that the painting was made in that year, as their analysis of the paper shows that it was made between the late 16th and the early 17th centuries.

kaible:

highlandvalley:

A museum in Japan spends most of its day refusing entry to 2 cats trying to get in
@bijutsu1
https://twitter.com/jiffington/status/1062471505496469504/video/1

some fun facts about this: the black cat started trying to get in right at the same time that the museum was hosting an exhibition of Mitsuaki Iwago’s photography of cats, and after the photos of this started circulating, the museum started to sell merchandise based on the cat trying to get in:

tilthat:

TIL Oregon was bombed by Japanese during WWII. The attacks were minor, but they were the first time the contiguous United States was bombed by enemy aircraft.

via ift.tt

toast-potent:

captainsnoop:

i’ll never understand why we don’t call countries the names they actually call themselves

like, i know this is a weeaboo-sounding example, but let’s start with Japan. They call themselves Nippon or Nihon depending on… i guess, the speaker’s accent??? or their level of formality while speaking??? I dunno. But we still called them Zipangu for like a few hundred years. And now we call them Japan.

All because Marco Polo asked someone in China about that island over there and they said “oh that’s Cipangu” and Marco Polo was like “Oh, Zipangu, cool.” And then he went back to Italy and said “Y’ALL THERE’S THIS DOPE-ASS ISLAND CALLED ZIPANGU” and people back in Italy were like “An island called Giappone? Dope.”

And this pattern of people mishearing people kept repeating until we got to “Japan.”

And we still call them Japan even though we know better. Because fuck you, Marco Polo asked the wrong person 500 years ago and misheard them and we’re sticking to that, I guess.

that was literally just the world’s worst game of telephone