Asian History: Japan

JapanKnowledge
Provides access to various reference sources, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, other Japanese reference works (biographies, maps, chronologies, etc.), full text, and other visual and sound databases. Encyclopedia of Japan is in English, otherwise the materials are in Japanese. Hint: If the content is in Japanese, click on "Eng" at the top right. Click on the "basic search" or "advanced search" tab. Enter a search term in English. Look for items on the results list that contain substantial English content.

Encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, etc.

Cambridge Encyclopedia of Japan
Main Ref DS805 C36 1993

Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan
Main Ref DS805 .K633 1983; 9 vols.

Modern Japan: an encyclopedia of history
Main Ref DS805 M63 1998

Modern Japan : an encyclopedia of history, culture, and nationalism
Main Ref DS805 .M63 1998.

Encyclopedia of Japan : Japanese history and culture, from abacus to zori
Main Ref DS805 .P47 1990.

Cultural Atlas of Japan
Main Ref DS821 C62 1988

Japan Encyclopedia
Main Ref DS821 F73 2002

Historical and geographical dictionary of Japan
Main Ref DS833 .P3 1964.

Biographical dictionary of Japanese history
Main Ref DS834 .B56.

Cambridge History of Japan (print and online)
Main Libr DS835 C36 1988 6 vols. (print)

Historical dictionary of United States-Japan relations
Main Ref E183.8.J3 V36 2007.

Bibliographies and guides

East Asian Studies Research Guides, Princeton University Library
Large collection of links and citations to materials in East Asian Studies.

Area bibliography of Japan
Main Ref DS806 .K86 1997.

Japan and the Japanese : a bibliographic guide to reference
Main Ref DS835 .M33 1996.

Japan and Korea; a critical bibliography (print and online)
Main Ref Z3301 .S55.

Japanese studies from pre-History to 1990 : a bibliographical guide
Main Libr Z3301 .J36 1992.

A guide to reference books for Japanese studies
Main Ref Z3306 .G82 1989.

Japanese history : a guide to survey histories
Main Ref Z3306 .F83 1984.

Japanese history: a guide to Japanese reference and research materials
Main Ref Z3306 .H27 1973.

Japanese history & culture from ancient to modern times : seven basic bibliographies
Main Ref Z3306 .D69 1995.

The Japanese Historical Maps Database at University of California Berkeley consists of about 1,900 maps of early modern Japan and the world collected by the illustrious Mitsui family. Among its many treasures, the database features Tokugawa city maps of Edo (now Tokyo), Kyoto, Osaka, as well as other cities like Kanazawa, Nagoya, Nagasaki, and Yokohama, from as early as the mid-seventeenth century.

Lafayette College's East Asia Image Collection features digitized photographs, negatives, postcards, prints, and slides of imperial and occupied Japan as well as its colonial holdings (1868-1952). The core of the collection comes from the family of Gerald and Rella Warner who collected materials from Taiwan, Japan, China, Korea, Manchuria, and Indonesia during their years of service to the US State Department in Asia. Students interested in the history of tourism, childhood, and cartoons might find this collection of especial use.

Nagasaki University has digitized over seven thousand photographs from Bakumatsu and Meiji Japan (1850-1900), the largest collection of its kind.

Tokyo War Crimes Trial, A Digital Exhibition, formally known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE)
Digitzed by the University of Virginia Law Library Special Collections, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) Digital Exhibit displays the personal papers of Frank Tavenner, Jr., David N. Sutton, Roy L. Morgan, Calhoun W. J. Phelps, and G. Carrington Williams, American attorneys of the prosecution and defense during the Tokyo War Crimes Trial from 1946 to 1948. The IMTFE database maintains thousands of scans of original archival documents in English, searchable via keywords, title, author, and date.

The Japan Center for Asian Historical Records houses digitized materials from the National Archives of Japan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the National Institute for Defense Studies (formerly the Army Ministry) from the late nineteenth century to 1945. While not full-text searchable, the database allows for users to search by key words found in the short abstract describing each document or folio. The Center has scanned nearly all materials from these three archives.

A full-text searchable database, the Kobe University Newspaper Clippings Collection includes articles from a vast array of colonial periodicals put together by professors at the Economics and Management Research Center there. As such, this collection does not reflect a comprehensive coverage of all newspapers, every day, in the Japanese empire. The clippings range from the early twentieth century to 1970 and come from newspapers in not only Japan, but also Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria.

The National Diet Library has digitized their entire collection of books and periodicals before 1945. Nevertheless, the public can access only a small fraction of those materials off-site through their library catalog via keyword, title, and author searches.

The Library at the Institute of Developing Economies of the Japan External Trade Organization contains digitized scans of their colonial-era holdings from both Northeast and Southeast Asia. As with the collection at the National Diet Library, the public can access a portion of this depository off-site through their online catalog via keyword, title, and author searches.

Sources of Japanese Tradition
Main Libr DS821 .S68 2001
Two volume set listing and describing primary sources for Japanese history and culture.

Japan Times Archive, 1897 - 2016.

Japan Times (current)

See also the Newspapers & Periodicals tab (this guide).

When searching, be sure to search on spelling variations or alternatives of geographic and personal names. The variations may depend on audience, publisher, country of publication, time period, socio-linguistic factors, etc. Also be aware of the possibility of typographical errors and of the probability of errors in optical character recognition (OCR). For example:

• Japan, Japon, Nihon, Nippon
• Okinawa, Ryukyu(s), Liuchiu(s), Lewchew(s), Loochoo
• Korea, Corea, Chosen, Choson
• Manchuria, Manchukuo, Manchoukuo, Manchoukou (a common typo), Northeast China, Tartary
• Taiwan, Formosa
• Ainu, Aino(s), Ainoo
• Hakodate, Hakodadi
• Marco Polo Bridge, Rokōkyō, Lugou Bridge, Lukou Bridge, Lugouqiao, Lukouchiao, Lukowkiao
• Saigō Takamori, Saigo Takamori, Saigō Kokichi, Saigō Nanshū

You can browse the shelves in this call number range for Japanese history: DS 801 - DS 897, including these historical periods:

Japan Times Archive, 1897 - 2016.

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Hint: to download, display the page you want to download. Then..

• PC-Firefox: File > Save page as > Web page, complete. Pay attention to where you saved it. Starting from the folder in which you saved the page, the .png image of the newspaper page is in the "The Japan Times Archives" folder.
• Mac-Firefox: File > Save Page As > Web Page, Complete. Pay attention to where you saved it. Starting from the folder in which you saved the page, the image of the newspaper page is in the "The Japan Times Archives" folder.

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