Ukiyo-e Rakkan Retrieval System

Rakkan is a Japanese word for the signature of the artist for a completed painting. In this paper, we propose a system that helps the users to identify and retrieve rakkan images of ukiyo-e paintings. The users can select the rakkan region from a digitalized ukiyo-e image via a graphical user interface. The selected rakkan area is binarized using k-means clustering in L*a*b* color space and normalized for retrieval process as a query image. Histogram of oriented gradients and cross-correlation are used for retrieval. The proposed system can be adapted to ukiyo-e authorship identification and ukiyo-e retrieval system for ukiyo-e study and archiving.