Perry, actually clean-shaven, was depicted as a hairy barbarian in the Black Ship Scroll. Depicting the 1853-1854 mission by Commodore Matthew Perry that led to the opening of Japan to the outside world.

I’m posting this because this scroll is amazing. But MIT’s shockwave presentation (screen shot above) is lacking. The navigation may be fully functional if viewed on a hi-res museum screen. But on my 800 pixel-wide display it starts out slowly auto-scrolling through half of this thirty-foot-long painting before the naviagation box appears. Also it doesn’t let you look at the painting without it moving slowly to the left.

And most absurd of all to get a minimal translation of the Japanese text, you have to go to a separate thumbnails page and download Quicktime clips. Yikes! Why not have mouseover translation on the Shockwave presentation? It’s obviously a classy museum presentation, great to see, but not really designed for the web. Set your browser window to full screen. More blackships and samurai. Via Mefi