I wrote an article about the White Lapis Lazuli Bowl at the Tokyo National Museum Editathon.

I’m Lin (User: Lin Xiangru) from the Waseda Wikipedia Circle. I participated in the Tokyo National Museum Editathon held on August 19, 2025, and wrote an article about a white lapis lazuli bowl (said to have been excavated from the Ankanryo Tomb). This article is a record of the writing process and the Tokyo National Museum Editathon.

As this was my first time participating in Edita-thon, I wanted to write an article that would be memorable. While browsing the collection of the Tokyo National Museum using Colbase, I came across a white lapis lazuli bowl. Having previously written articles related to the Sassanid dynasty, I thought this white lapis lazuli bowl, produced during the Sassanid dynasty, would be a suitable subject.

I searched for reference materials in our university library. Searching for “white lapis lazuli bowl” did not yield many hits, so I looked for reference materials in blog articles that dealt with “white lapis lazuli bowl.” As a result, I was able to gather about 10 books from the university library alone. Depending on how many documents I gathered, I was considering making an expedition to the Kansai branch of the National Diet Library, but I managed to do it.

By the day before the Editathon, I had completed the draft, created a Wikidata entry (Q135826434), and posted photos to Wikimedia Commons. It was actually my first time creating a Wikidata entry. As an aside, the day before the Editathon, I also visited the National Diet Library for the first time. I felt very envious of the people of Tokyo, who have such a facility nearby.

On the day of the Edita-thon, I decided to visit the museum in the morning, so I first headed to the Heiseikan. I was very pleased to see the actual silver inlaid sword, which was also selected for an excellent article. I also had the opportunity to come face to face with the white lapis lazuli bowl that I had chosen as my subject for this article. Next, I headed to the Oriental Gallery to view the exhibits there.

In the afternoon, I edited at the museum. The Tokyo National Museum’s library search was extremely useful in finding exhibition catalogs that mentioned the white lapis lazuli bowl. After adding to the contents using those exhibition catalogs, I was able to complete the entry on the same day.

If the event were to be held next year, I would like to choose a subject from the rubbings on display at the Toyokan Gallery. For example, although “Yanta Shengjiao Xu” is a well-known work by Chu Suiryo, it does not have an article on it. Calligraphy is still one of the most underexplored fields on the Japanese Wikipedia. Personally, I would like to hold a museum editathon in the Kansai region as well.