We are pleased to present the second issue of The KeMCo Review. This issue comprises three feature articles and three research notes under our special theme, along with one general article and three additional research notes. Each piece has been selected through a stringent peer review process for publication. The special theme for this issue is “Public Humanities.” This encompasses efforts to reexamine professional knowledge in history in tandem with developments in digital humanities, initiatives to make digital data accessible to the public, and attempts to combine digital archives with design research, among other discussions and practices in the broad field of humanities. In this issue, we collected manuscripts under this theme, positioning “Public Humanities” broadly as the discussions and practices involved in opening the world of academic research to the public while also making them relevant to the public’s day-to-day lives. Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo) is a conceptual open space where diverse people—including researchers from various academic fields, artists, curators, and the general public—can interact beyond traditional boundaries. We are delighted to present the second issue of The KeMCo Review, which embodies the concept behind KeMCo in its content. Our publication sets a special theme for each issue to introduce topics of interest at KeMCo. We will soon begin considering the theme for the next issue and will call for submissions shortly. That said, we are always open to submissions that are not related to the set theme. Our guidelines, as stipulated by the submission rules and regulations, allow for submissions of not only academic papers but also shorter research notes, and the decision whether to publish is made after a review process involving, in principle, two peer reviewers and deliberation by the editorial committee. We encourage our readers to consider submitting contributions for the next issue.

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Through the introduction of two practical examples, this paper demonstrates how public humanities and public history can give new meaning to folk customs and people’s lives. First, a case involving the burning of New Year’s decorations (Sagicho), aside from being a ritual to return a deity to the sky, which is an authorized story among the local community, shows how such an event can strengthen social bonds.

Second, pilgrimage groups who visit a famous shrine (Iseko) function to not only enhance religious beliefs, but also act as a basis for communal life. All of these functions were discovered through collaborative research with residents and nonprofit organizations.

Public humanities enable us to work with people to uncover the functions of social groups and the events of which they are unaware. In particular, this paper demonstrates that the analysis of folk customs fundamental to community life, which can be considered a repertoire of symbiosis, can provide questions on universal themes.

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This research examines the transformative integration of digital public humanities into the operations of university museums, with a primary focus on Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo), a university museum in Tokyo. Through in-depth case studies, from digital engagement and exhibition design to workshop facilitation, the study highlights the importance of a student-centric approach, specifically through the KeMCoM project, where students are spotlighted as the main drivers for public engagement. By recognizing students as key contributors, this paper delves into collaborative practices among diverse stakeholders, both acknowledging challenges and valuing the unique expertise each brings in. Incorporating insights from practitioners and participants, this study sheds light on the actions and experiences conducted over the past two and a half years (2021-2023 first semester) in co-designing the university museum with students and foresees the evolution of a new generation of university museums.

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Museum evaluations have generally focused on the number of visitors, quality of museum activities, and management efficiency. However, each museum has a unique mission and faces diverse demands from stakeholders, including visitors, residents, and governing bodies. Accordingly, the value of each museum must be assessed individually using distinctive evaluation criteria that consider its mission and specific surrounding environment. This study attempted to develop an evaluation framework using a systems engineering approach to comprehensively measure the value of each museum from cultural, educational, academic, and economic perspectives while structurally mapping the relationships among stakeholders, missions, and activities. In collaboration with four museums, we conducted workshops with museum staff and local government officials to assess the effectiveness of the framework. The results showed that new qualitative and quantitative evaluation criteria could be efficiently developed by considering the museum’s mission and the value it should provide to stakeholders. Furthermore, the framework was also effective in encouraging workshop participants to discuss and reconsider the value of the museum throughout the workshop. Our proposed evaluation framework will aid museums in reaffirming their importance, discovering new potential value, building consensus, and fostering empathy among stakeholders.

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The development and commoditization of 3D measurement techniques and devices leads to the progress of digitization of archaeological materials and museum collections in 3D data form. As it is inherently easier to intuitively understand materials with three-dimensional shapes than conventional measured drawings or photographs, and has a high affinity with the web, AR and VR technologies, it is increasingly being applied not only in documenting and archiving materials, but also in educational dissemination. The authors have confirmed that the entire cycle from data generation to publication and utilization can be promoted in collaboration or in parallel, without distinction between academia and the public, using the latest technologies, through a series of practices ranging from 3D measurement workshops with public participation in museums to the use of openly available data in school education. It was confirmed that this can be done. On the other hand, archaeological and museum materials are difficult to reference and use from outside the field due to the lack of systematic material identification IDs. Therefore, we propose to use the bibliographic information of excavation reports, which are being digitally archived, as a key to increase reference possibilities and promote a collaborative cycle.

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This paper is a review of the efforts made in the exhibition ”Who Forms Archaeological Sites -in What Manner?” held at the Keio Museum Commons(KeMCo) in the spring of 2023. This exhibition was organized to showcase the results of the excavations conducted during the construction of KeMCo. However, in the course of preparing for the exhibition, we decided to distinguish ourselves from a general exhibition that merely introduces the results of the excavation, and instead of composing the exhibition only with “excavated things”. we dared to focus on “What was not excavated “ that were not the subject of research due to various reasons. In addition, several efforts were made to engage in an interactive exchange of ideas with visitors. This paper will summarize these efforts, incorporating specific events and discoveries that occurred through practice, as well as reflections and issues. Finally, we will summarize the exhibition from the perspective of the public and historiography.

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The Keio Museum Commons designs and implements participatory exhibitions that invite various forms of participation from visitors and the communities surrounding the university, focusing on widening people’s engagement with the university’s collections. This research note analyses the modalities of participation in the March 2023 exhibition “Who Forms Archaeological Sites – in What Manner?”, referring to discussions on participations in museums, as well as issues around Citizen Science and Public Humanities in Japan. This paper then addresses how exhibitions visualising different modalities of participation can function as effective platforms for opening up participation in cultural and academic activities to a wider audience.

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Since the early Edo period, Sesshu’s reputation has been firmly established, and in the modern era, his image as a “painting sage” has taken root. In recent years, however, there has been an effort to pursue Sesshu’s true image without being bound by such stereotypes, and new works have been introduced. As Ryōan Keigo, a monk of Tofuku-ji Temple, wrote in his Inscription of Sesshu’s landscapes (FujitaMuseum), “He discussed painting as he discussed poetry“, Sesshu must have entrusted his feelings as a Buddhist monk to his paintings on a daily basis, and painted them on demand. One example of a painting completed in a short period of time that was probablyproduced in response to such a request is a splashedink landscape. The “Landscapes” in the collection of Keio University are small works drawn using the splashed ink technique, and they are assumed to have been created in a short period of time. Although there are no rules for stroke order or how to paint, as the splashed ink technique is precise without being bound by its norms, by examining the origins of the splashed ink technique based on advice from contemporary artist*1, I will attempt to compare styles of splashed ink techniques, which are difficult to compare because of their high level of abstraction.

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There were about 10,000 movie theaters in postwar Japan. There are an abundance of books andmagazines on the subject of movies, and academicresearch is being conducted from various angles, butthere is little research on movie theaters, which arescreening facilities, and even basic information aboutmovie theaters outside of major cities is missing. This paper reports methods and studies involved in creating the database of film theaters called“Memories of the Lost Cinema” e.g., extracting basic information from each year’s “cinema directory” and comprehensively collecting information on movie theaters from local materials held by over 700 public libraries. The database is published under an open license, and it will be the first step toward academic research. As an example of its use, this article introduces the former sites of movie theaters in Aichi Prefecture and existing examples of movie theater buildings in the Tokai, Hokuriku-Koshinetsu, and Kinki regions, as well as describes archiving activities such as creating Wikipedia articles on movie theaters.

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In the summer of 2023, a composting machine by artist Soichiro Mihara appeared in the KeMCobuilding. Mihara’s artworks and thinking approaches to organic cycles will be shared through the SDGs programme with Keio Junior High School andKeMCo. As part of this programme, we have begun“making soil”. Composting, such as waste reductionand recycling of resources, has recently gained popularity as an action that can be taken at home inresponse to social challenges for a sustainable future. In addition, the experience under the coronavirus pandemic has increased interest in the visible impactof invisible beings and cycles. It shows the trendtoward a culture of composting and fermentation through microbial decomposition has become prominent in the context of art and other cultures. In this paper, I will discuss contemporary artwork sand art activities concerning with soil, and report on the composting process at KeMCo as a pre-survey of the (creative) relationship with “soil”

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Set in a sanatorium on a highland plateau, HoriTatsuo’s novel The Wind Rises, which uses a tense writing style and serene descriptions of nature to depict the psychology of the protagonist as he faces the imminent death of his fiancée, has been published in two beautiful limited editions. The prewar Noda Shobo edition(1938) and the Hosokawa Shoten edition(1949), published four years after the Second World War in a time of scarce supplies. In contrast to the Noda edition, which had no illustrations at all, the Hosokawa edition had five illustrations by Oka Shikanosuke, a Westen-style painter who studied in France for 15 years. The illustrations were not dipictions of characters or scenes, but rather unique paintings of flowers and butterflies that depicted the atmosphere of the novel’s five chapters. The miniature paintings made with the Gillott No.291, a British-made ultra-finepen, later made Oka a representative painter of theemblems(pictorial images) of Hori’s literary world. This article introduces the exchange between the artist and the literary figure that began with the production of the illustrations for Hosokawa’sversion of The Wind Rises, centred on the text of a postcard(new material) addressed to Oka by Hori that was written during the exchange.

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