Japanese Studies: Digital Archives and Collections
Guidance on finding e-resources for doing research on Japanese history, literature and society
Getting started -- finding digitized collections
- National Diet Library digital collectionsThe NDL Digital Collections enables a user to search and view a variety of resources, collected and stored by the National Diet Library of Japan.
- Japan SearchJapan Search is a national platform for aggregating metadata of digital resources of various fields and operated by the National Diet Library, Japan, in cooperation with a variety of organizations in Japan under policies established by the Working Group Steering Committee of the Digital Archives Japan Promotion Committee.
- Cultural JapanDiscovery digital resources from all over the world. More than a million items are collected on this platform.
- Database of pre-modern Japanese worksProduced by the National Institute for Japanese Literature, it claims to be the largest database of pre-modern Japanese works.
- ROIS-DS Center for Open Data in the Humanities (CODH)The ROIS-DS Center for Open Data in the Humanities (CODH) focuses on 'data-driven humanities' to analyze humanities resources, using state-of-the-art technology from computer science and statistics, and 'big data in the humanities' utilizing datasets created from humanities research in a trans-disciplinary context.
- Minna de honkokuThe crowd sourcing platform, Minna de Honkoku, allows users to support each other’s study of Japanese calligraphy (kuzushiji) in old texts and take advantage of AI-based kuzushiji recognition. Nearly 2000 transcribed documents are available on the platform.
*A great resource for learning how to use the above resources is the CDDP Video Series produced by the Comprehensive Digitization and Discoverability Program Task Force of the North American Coordinating Council for Japanese Library Resources (NCC). Check out the short instructional videos here.
Select digital archives
- National Archives of Japan (JACAR) 国立公文書館アジア歴史資料センターJapan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) is a digital archive of Asian historical records. Documents are provided by the National Archives of Japan, the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the National Institute for Defense Studies of the Ministry of Defense of Japan.
- Tokyo University General Library digital collectionUniversity of Tokyo Library has some of their digitized collections, including the Image Database of Annotated Books in the Mori Ōgai Collection, Genji Monogatari (an early manuscript of the Tale of Genji), and the Kamei Collection - Opere di Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
- Ajia keizai kenkyujo. Degitaru akaibusu kin-gendai Ajia no naka no Nihon アジア経済研究所デジタルアーカイブス、近現代アジアの中の日本This site introduces materials related to "Japan in Modern Asia" held by the Institute of Developing Economies Library. Some of the materials, including images of materials related to the South Manchuria Railway Company, can be viewed on the web.
- Snapshot of Japan, 2016-2018Snapshot of Japan, 2016-2018, is a web archive focused broadly on critical themes during the years 2016-2018.
