Skip to Main Content

Japanese Studies, a guide for undergraduate research: Premodern sources

Duke's Japanese Studies collection supports scholarly activities across a broad range of disciplines and topics. This provides an introduction to key databases, journals and print sources or specific sources for data, film, images and primary sources.

Images

Visual resources for Japan
80+ freely accessible websites; limit by period, subject or format. Includes sites devoted to architecture, calligraphy, ceramics, folk arts, maps, painting, photography, posters, prints, scrolls, sculpture.

Indexes to Translations

Premodern Japanese Texts and Translations (up to 1600) [database]
Bibliography of translations from classical Japanese up to about 1600, including also works written in kanbun and Chinese, and items describing and Chinese, and items describing as "late Muromachi or early Kinsei."  Created and maintained by Michael Watson at Meiji Gakuin University. In both English and Japanese.

Japanese literature: Translations
Compiled by the Japan Foundation, the database covers Japanese literary works translated into other languages mainly from the end of World War II to the present and is searchable by author, title of work, translator, or other keywords (terms may be input in either Japanese or roman letters). The basic unit of the database is the work rather than the publication, so short stories are listed individually by their own titles rather than in the anthology in which they were originally included.

Translations of Japanese Noh plays  [database]
Check-list of translations of Noh plays in alphabetical order. Includes all 253 plays in the current repertoire, together with bangai plays that have been translated.  List maintained by Michael Watson at Meiji Gakuin University.

Eléments de Bibliographie. Ouvrages Traduits du Japonais d'Études en Langues Occidentales sur le Japon.
Herail, Francine.
Library Service Center: 016.952 H546 E38 1979 LSC
Over half of the volume focuses on translations of original Japanese materials in history, law, religion and philosophy, and literature, divided into three periods: Nara through Kamakura, Muromachi through Edo, and Meiji to present. The second half presents a selective list of secondary works. 

Index Translationum: International Bibliography of Translations[database]
Indexes translations of books from 1979 to present published in UNESCO member countries. Covers all disciplines. Does not include periodicals, articles, patents and brochures. Search by author, title, original language, target language, country published in, publisher, translator, subject, and date. Includes resources for translators.