Index to Resources

Nature of the Beast is an educational and interactive exploration of the way artists of Edo-period Japan depicted animals and the natural world.  It draws on the extensive collections of the USC Pacific Asia Museum .  This page includes links to  HTML versions of Flash content as well as teaching ideas and resources for educators. PLEASE NOTE that NATURE OF THE BEAST is only available as an online exhibit (only some works may be found on display in the museum galleries).

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• TRADITION: The way we have always done things
• REALITY: The way things really are.
• IMAGINATION: Creations of the mind

The Nature of the Beast
In their training, Japanese artists of the Edo period probably learned to draw and paint birds or insects or monkeys using traditional models, which meant that they copied the work of their teachers over and over until they could make perfect copies of their master’s work. Some artists, however, probably spent time observing animals in their natural habitat. Not only did they render the animals realistically, but they also show natural animal behaviors such as courtship displays, care of young, and feeding.

Artists also worked within the long Japanese tradition of showing imaginary animals and mythological stories. These mythological animals reflected stories that had been handed down for many years within Japanese and other Asian societies.

The artworks in the USC Pacific Asia Museum ’s collections give students the opportunity to take a look at some of the finest works that Japanese artists have produced. The three traditions explored in the Nature of the Beast online exhibit resonate with students’ interest in animals and also with the artistic processes used by these extraordinary artists.

1. Being Brave (Adobe PDF format, 382 KB) Lower Elementary, SRA Open Court connection (Language Arts and Visual Art)
2. Simple Sumi-e Painting (Adobe PDF format, 310 KB) Lower and Middle Elementary (Visual Art)
3. Create Your Own Crypto-Zoo (Adobe PDF format, 562 KB) Middle Elementary (Visual Arts and Language Arts)
4. Observing Nature (Adobe PDF format, 478 KB) Upper Elementary to Middle School (Science and Visual Art)
5. Tradition, Reality, Imagination (Adobe PDF format, 39 KB) High School (Visual Art)
6. Print, Online and Media Resources page
7. Captions & credits for all objects on the site, including links to larger versions of each image.
   

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FLASH

The Nature of the Beast Flash module includes all of the above content, plus:

• the ability to zoom in all images to inspect detail
• an interactive timeline and map
• sound files and rotating netsuke sculptures.

The Flash module requires the Flash 6 plug-in; you can click here to download it from Macromedia.