Japanese Studies Advanced Guide

An online exhibition of a representative sample of the remarkable items contained in the Japanese collection of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at the Brigham Young University. The physical exhibit, held August 2004-January 2005, was organized around one theme that runs through the collection: Japanese perceptions of themselves and the outside world, and the changes in those perceptions over time.

A Landscape Photo Portal Database by Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University.

This is a Ritsumeikan University Art Research Center (ARC) ARC research resource portal database. It includes collections from ARC and other institutions. It includes books, sculpture, costumes, etc.

Acclaimed photographer Arthur Tress (b. 1940) began collecting Japanese illustrated books in 1965 when he was visiting Kyoto. Tress built the collection “on an artist’s shoestring budget,” as he says, and “pour l’amour de l’art.” Over more than fifty years he amassed an extensive and important collection of over 1200 titles dating from the late 17th century through the 1930s.

The variety and abundance of bakemono 化物, or yōkai 妖怪 (supernatural creatures and phenomena), in Japanese culture is astounding. For more than a millennium creepy creatures and ghastly ghosts have haunted and entertained the imagination of the Japanese, some familiar, widespread, and longstanding, and some new, localized, and mutable. BYU’s Bakemono no e 化物之繪 (Illustrations of Supernatural Creatures), also titled Bakemonozukushie 化物尽繪 (Illustrated Index of Supernatural Creatures), is perhaps the oldest extant version of this type of index handscroll.

Beginning in 2015, the Center for Integrated Area Studies (now the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies) at Kyoto University and Lafayette College embarked on a project to link open-access postcard databases. The following year, Harvard-Yenching Library joined the project. Participants from each institution traversed the Pacific to advance international and inter-institutional collaborative research.

The Customs Museum opened in 1974 as a museum exhibiting actual Japanese customs and costumes from ancient times to modern times.

A website collecting information related to Japanese culture published in museums, libraries, etc. around the world, and providing them with a common and reusable format.

A collection of images from Kasho Museum collection. It features the front and back covers, table of contents and frontispieces of Modern Japanese popular magazines published during late Meiji (1868-1912) to early Showa (1926-1989).

The collection from the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford college libraries include some images of rare books, manuscripts, and other treasures from East Asia.

Modern Japanese Prints and Paintings from the Robert O. Muller Collection. By the Smithsonian's Museums of Asian Art.

A database by ARC Ritsumeikan University. You can search ARC collections and other collections published on the web. Many of the books are ehon (picture books) and can be viewed directly through the website.

A database of images of emakimono (picture scrolls) archived at Nichibunken, developed by International Research Center for Japanese Studies.

Includes lots of calligraphy works.

The University of Oregon Libraries holds the only known collection of Japanese shrine and temple votive slips (nōsatsu) in North America.

法隆寺金堂壁画写真ガラス原板
The glass photographic plates were taken in 1935 by Benridō, a firm from Kyoto specializing in artistic printing. This effort was part of a larger project helmed by the Ministry of Education aimed at preserving the National Treasure of Hōryūji Temple and its cultural properties, large numbers of which are also designated National Treasures.

These drawings and paintings by Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb were created more than a quarter century after the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. They are provided by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

An online exhibition by the Brigham Young University. In this exhibit, you will see aspects of samurai identity in a number of forms — the weapons they once wielded in battle and later fetishized as relics of a glorious history; the books they wrote and scrolls they painted in order to perpetuate their knowledge and memorialize their past; and the images of samurai heroes that were re–appropriated as nationalist icons of imperial Japan in the early twentieth century.

A database of images of primarily classical characters up to the Meiji period from illustrated biographies contained in classical Japanese works.

HOLLIS Images is the Harvard Library's dedicated image catalog. It includes content from archives, museums, libraries, and other collections throughout Harvard University. It focuses on artistic and cultural materials.

The over 150,000 objects that comprise the JANM permanent collection chronicle the Japanese American experience in its entirety from early immigration to the present. Artifacts related to early immigration to the United States at the turn of the 20th century, early life in Japanese American communities, and the World War II incarceration experience and military service are strengths of the collection.

JBAE - Japanese Buddhist Art in European Collections, is a database jointly built by a team of the Research Center of International Japanese Studies of the Hosei University and the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich.

Collection of more than 7000 digitized photographs of 19th century Japan.

Sugoroku refers to a kind of Japanese board game.

Japanese Woodblock Prints held by Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University.

Ukiyo-e Search provides an incredible resource: The ability to both search for Japanese woodblock prints by simply taking a picture of an existing print AND the ability to see similar prints across multiple collections of prints. Below is an example print, click to see it in action.

Includes some art and visual materials

A collection of Nara Ehon and Emakimono.

Lennox Tierney is Professor Emeritus at the University of Utah’s Department of Art and Art History and is one of the most influential figures in Japanese art, architecture, and cultural history. From the 1940's when Tierney served in the U.S. Navy as the Arts and Monuments Commissioner under General Douglas MacArthur until nearly the present day, Lennox Tierney has captured Japanese culture heritage in photographs.

Nara ehon at the French National Library.

More than 1000 slides depicting Japan and other regions.

More than 100,000 digitized photos from the Mainichi newspaper.

A collection of photographs in publications held by the National Diet library.

This collection contains visual sources of Japan in the modern world and early-modern China.

A digital collection by Keio University. Nara ehon are illustrated manuscripts produced from the late Muromachi to early Edo period. The illustrations typically used bright colors, such as a vermillion and green, with gold and silver leaf and distemper. The content consists mainly of short stories written from the Muromachi to early Edo period which belong to the genre of Otogi zoshi, including Urashima Taro.

From his first Asian art purchase—a painted Japanese fan—Charles Lang Freer was inspired by the beauty of Japanese paintings and ceramics and of Buddhist paintings, metalwork, and sculpture. More than two thousand Japanese works were included in his gift to the nation. From this foundation, the Freer Gallery’s collection has grown in size and scope to include calligraphy, lacquer, prints, and printed books. Japanese art in the Sackler Gallery has focused on graphic arts, ceramics, lacquers, and photographs, including modern and contemporary works. In total, the Freer and Sackler’s Japanese art collections comprise more than fifteen thousand objects spanning four millennia.

A database of original text images of Naraehon (19 picture books) held by NIJL.

Originating from the personal collection of Professor Joshua Mostow of the UBC Department of Asian Studies, the digital collection consists at present of 74 books and 20 different card sets relating to the poetry anthology Hyakunin Isshu 百人一首 (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, hereafter HNIS), edited by the famous poet and scholar, Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) in the 1230s. It is unquestionably the most famous poetry anthology in the Japanese tradition.

The Pacific Rim Research Libraries Alliance, also known as PRRLA, focuses on cooperative ventures among academic libraries located around the Pacific Rim to improve access to scholarly research materials. The collections include books, archives, photos, videos, etc. Each collection can be viewed through individual institution website.

An online exhibition by Harvard Art Museum. A virtual tour of this exhibition is also available on Google Arts & Culture.

424 scrolls held by Harvard-Yenching Library are viewable.

A comprehensive web presentation of the Tekagami-jo calligraphy album (手鑑帖) in the Yale Association of Japan Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

This exhibition introduces two gems of UO’s collection of Japanese calligraphy: the album of calligraphy known as tekagami in the collection of the Knight Library Special Collections and UO Archives (SCUA), containing a total of 319 examples; and thirty-six individually mounted calligraphy fragments in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA). Together, the collection showcases some of the most beautiful and representative examples of Japanese calligraphy with a dizzying array of paper decoration, ranging in dates from the eighth to seventeenth centuries, and content from copied sacred scriptures, poetry slips, and narrative stories to personal letters.

As of March 2018, the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library has more than 2.06 million books, over 6,000 titles of magazines and journals, in addition to various audio-visual materials, and rare materials (including Ukiyo-e and architectural drawings of Edo Castle).

An exhibit of the travel-related ephemera collected by the East Asia Library at Stanford spanning the Edo through Taisho periods.

Bell Historical Postcard Collection at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa consists of 344 postcards, bromides, and prints that were created before WWII. Most of the postcards were created in Japan along with some made in Hawai'i, China, and Taiwan (Formosa).

The Kumaichi Hiraoka Postcard Collection at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa was donated by his granddaughter, Nancy R. Hiraoka, in 2017 to the Japan Collection of the UHM Asia Collection Department. It consists of over 1,000 postcards that were created before 1945. This project digitized over 800 postcards and envelopes, which were all produced in Japan.

Illustrated woodblock prints that serve as a pictorial guide to combat measles outbreak and disease. Visual account of Japanese medicine in the late Edo-Period (1603-1868)

This album commemorates the enactment of Japan's constitution in English. It was produced by The Society for the Popularization for the Constitution.

The "Proclamation of Human Rights" (Jinken Sengen, 人権宣言) is a set of "lantern slides" (gentō, 幻灯) produced by the Constitution Popularization Society (Kenpō Fukyūkai, 憲法普及会) in an effort to promote the new Constitution of Japan promulgated on November 3, 1946 and enacted on May 3, 1947 after World War II.

The War Relocation Authority (WRA) records represent the official documentation of the United States agency created to assume jurisdiction over the Japanese and Japanese Americans evacuated from California, Oregon, and Washington by the Western Defense Command, the Fourth Army, and the Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA) during January/February of 1942. During its existence from March 1942 to 1946, the WRA controlled the administration of the relocation centers, administered an extensive resettlement program, and oversaw the details of the registration and segregation programs. Included in their records are administrative files, official publications, reports and surveys, legal papers, correspondence, and photographs and scrapbooks.

Created by UNESCO and the Library of Congress, the World Digital Library provides free online access to world cultural treasures. Includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings from a variety of countries.

The Pulverer Collection, acquired in its entirety by the Freer Gallery of Art in 2007, includes numerous rare and pristine examples of Japanese illustrated books produced in the Edo period and beyond. The holdings of more than 900 titles encompass almost 2,200 volumes that range in date from the early seventeenth century to the 1970s. Today the Pulverer Collection is regarded as one of the most outstanding and comprehensive collections of Japanese illustrated books outside Japan.

This digital exhibition is a collaboration between the University of Oregon Libraries and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, It focuses on tiny slips of paper—senjafuda 千社札—that depict Japanese ghosts and monsters—yōkai 妖怪.

A collection of images of shrines and shrine collections across Nara area.

You can cross-search the libraries holdings of the consortium members. The consortium members include: The National Art Center (国立新美術館), the National Museum of Modern Art (東京国立近代美術館) and Tokyo National Museum (東京国立博物館).

A database of ownership stamp information derived from original copies with a focus on classic books held by NIJL.

The CDDP Video Series offers instructional videos on freely available resources and cutting-edge projects related to Japanese Studies, highlighting useful tools and best practices.

Dictionary of Artists in Japan (DAJ) catalogues information on artists and groups that have contributed to the development of the arts in Japan since the Meiji era (1868-1912). The scope of the database includes artists who were active after 1868 and those who were born in 1995 or earlier. Reference information such as exhibitions, museum holdings, and selected bibliographies are available for some artists.

This dictionary contains approximately 8000 terms related to traditional Japanese architecture and gardens, painting, sculpture and art-historical iconography from approximately the 1st century A.D. to the end of the Edo period (1868). Terms from related fields such as lacquer, ceramics, textiles and metalwork have been included where they are considered to be of general interest and/or impact on the principal fields of architecture, painting and sculpture. These definitions are not translations from any one Japanese monolingual dictionary, but have been collated from a range of specialist sources and scholarly publications, and from direct observation and study. Many have never before been defined in English.

Can be used for searching manga, animations and other media and arts collection.

With the aim of publishing the circumstances in modern Japan, it's a collection of publication and advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines in the early Meiji period.

A database of publication information and images of advertisements collected by Taijiro Masuda.

こちらは立命館大学アート・リサーチセンター(立命館ARC)が運営する「日本の演劇・映画・演芸」を対象とする総合的興行年表データベースです。浄瑠璃、歌舞伎、新派、新劇、映画などの「演目単位」の上演情報を確認することができます。

本学所蔵の近世絵手本・画譜類の書誌、画像、画像検索用キーワードのデータベースです。
書名をクリックすると、書誌情報が表示されます。