Developer API & Interoperability

Last Updated: June 11, 2026

Nihon-Arts.org provides public machine-readable data for published collection records. These resources are intended to support scholarly citation, digital art history research, interoperability with compatible tools, and durable reference to object records and image annotations.

The site currently provides public object JSON, IIIF Presentation 3 manifests, IIIF Canvas resources, IIIF AnnotationPage resources, W3C Web Annotation JSON-LD, and a site-level IIIF Collection.

These exports are provided as an interoperability layer. They do not supersede the object pages, image viewer, rights statements, or Terms of Use. In case of any discrepancy, the human-readable object page and the Terms of Use should be treated as authoritative. Access to machine-readable data does not place the site’s content, including but not limited to images, texts, annotations, metadata, or catalogue structure, under an open license. It also does not grant permission to reproduce, republish, scrape, harvest, train machine-learning or artificial-intelligence systems on, or commercially reuse the site’s content. Please refer to the Terms of Use for the full policy governing permissions, reproduction, scraping, AI training, and reuse.

Available Endpoints

Site-Level IIIF Collection

The site-level IIIF Collection lists published object manifests available from Nihon-Arts.org.

https://nihon-arts.org/wp-json/pcd/v1/iiif/collection

Public Object JSON

Each published object record has a public JSON endpoint with object metadata, public images, public constituent relationships, public annotations, catalogue details, and interoperability links.

https://nihon-arts.org/wp-json/pcd/v1/objects/{object_id}

Example: https://nihon-arts.org/wp-json/pcd/v1/objects/721

IIIF Manifest

Each published object record has a IIIF Presentation 3 manifest.

https://nihon-arts.org/wp-json/pcd/v1/objects/{object_id}/iiif-manifest

Example: https://nihon-arts.org/wp-json/pcd/v1/objects/721/iiif-manifest

W3C Web Annotations

Public image annotations are available as W3C Web Annotation JSON-LD.

https://nihon-arts.org/wp-json/pcd/v1/objects/{object_id}/annotations

Example: https://nihon-arts.org/wp-json/pcd/v1/objects/721/annotations

Image-Level Resources

Image-level IIIF Canvas and AnnotationPage links are available through each object’s public JSON response. These resources are intended primarily for developers, IIIF viewers, and annotation-aware tools.

OCR Acknowledgment, Annotation Status, and Caution

This site uses OCR-assisted transcription in the preparation of image annotations. These annotations are subject to editorial review, and their status is indicated by color-coded markers:

Green: reviewed and complete. Green annotations may be manually entered or edited from OCR-assisted drafts.
Yellow: work in progress; verify against the image before use.
Red: unverified OCR; verify against the image before use.

The markers distinguish levels of editorial verification, not different categories of content.

Red annotations are machine-generated drafts; yellow annotations remain provisional; green annotations have been reviewed by editors or contributors. In all cases, annotation text should be interpreted together with the source image and the corresponding object record.

The OCR-assisted workflow uses tools adapted from NDL古典籍OCR-Lite, published by the National Diet Library under CC BY 4.0, and NDLOCR-Lite Web, developed by Yuta Hashimoto under CC BY 4.0. Adaptations were made for annotation preparation and review within Nihon-Arts.org.

Rights and Permitted Use

The API, IIIF, and W3C endpoints are provided for scholarly reference, citation, interoperability, and non-commercial research use. All images, texts, annotations, data, and catalogue structures remain subject to the site’s Terms of Use.

For permissions, publication requests, high-resolution imaging, or other inquiries, please contact: [email protected].