Abstract
Digital archiving for the purpose of protection and inheritance of historical cultural properties gains momentum in recent years. Japanese swords are highly valuable cultural properties related to historical characters and background, thus digital archiving and browsing have been strongly desired. Devices to achieve Japanese swords' excellence, i. e., “unbreakable, unbendable, and ultra-sharp” also form beauty of the sword. However, it is difficult for non-experts to appreciate the beauty, because reading aura of colors and patterns while changing relative posture of illumination, sword and eyes is important in the aesthetics of Japanese sword. We develop a Japanese sword digital archiving system with multi-angle and multi-band spectrometric capturing functions, as well as color and brightness correction and image synthesis. The system can display the appearance of the Japanese sword in expert perspective. This paper describes functions and architecture of the system and effectiveness of archiving images.
