Bringing ancient artefacts to life

A new perspective

Established in 1872, the Tokyo National Museum (TNM) is Japan’s oldest and largest museum. It is home to a collection of Asian art and archaeological findings that totals over 110,000 objects.

With such a culturally and historically important collection, TNM has been looking at new ways of showcasing its artefacts in order to broaden the museum’s appeal and attract a new generation of visitors. It also wanted a solution to the problem of showcasing hard-to-view artefacts.

For example, “Illustrated biography of Prince Shotoku” – a national treasure famous for its historical and artistic value – cannot be viewed easily in normal circumstances, because it’s located inside a dark gallery, and is able to be viewed for only a limited time every year because of its fragility. TNM wanted to bring artefacts such as these to a new and much wider audience.

Four times the image detail

To meet these objectives, the Tokyo National Museum has created a new VR (virtual reality) theatre within its resource centre, where visitors can view artefacts in digital form.

Working in collaboration with Toppan Printing Co. Ltd, TNM has recorded and archived digital images from its collection, and developed a new means of showcasing them using high-end VR technology.

Within the new “TNM and Toppan Museum Theatre”, Sony’s SRX-S110 projector is used to display highly detailed images on a massive 240-inch screen. Thanks to this projector’s advanced SXRD imaging chip, it provides a native resolution of over 8.8. megapixels (4096 x 2160) – which is four times greater than that of any other projector on the market. And in combination with Toppan’s advanced VR techniques, it truly brings the museum’s artefacts to life – allowing visitors to see every detail and really feel that the object is in front of them.

Furthermore, staff can use an interactive theatre navigator to control what is shown. They can easily choose which object to display from an interactive menu, and then zoom in to different parts of the object to see more detail. The navigator can be controlled via a fixed control desk or using a remote commander unit, which is useful when delivering presentations to an audience, as the presenter is free to walk about the room.

These technologies make for a new and exciting audience experience that is attracting more people through the museum door and added interest in the collection.

“The TNM and Toppan Museum Theatre is all about showcasing Japan’s cultural heritage, and we thought that it required a high-quality projection system to reproduce super-precise images. Sony’s 4K SXRD projector is the only super-high-resolution projector commercially available, and after evaluating its image reproduction, we had no hesitation in choosing it for the theatre,” explains Mr. Honda, General Manager of Toppan Printing Co. Ltd

Positive cultural impact

The first exhibition to be shown in the new theatre was the “Illustrated Biography of Prince Shotoku” – which depicts numerous episodes from his life. The original biography is a set of screen paintings from the Horyuji Temple in Nara Prefecture, which have in recent years been located onsite at TNM.

Thanks to VR technology, these paintings have now been reproduced digitally, allowing the originals to be returned to the Horyuji Temple. The virtual biography gives audiences an ultra-high-resolution view of the paintings, but it’s also set against a virtual backdrop of the Temple, giving them the feeling of actually being there too.

In this way, the virtual biography offers a more realistic experience to museum visitors than before. While having the original paintings on display was popular, being able to see them in their original setting has proven even more so – with almost 90% of visitors offering positive feedback.

Editorial Supervision : Tokyo National Museum/ Production : Toppan Printing Co. Ltd/With the cooperation of Horyuji Temple