Japanese Studies: Historical Texts & Images

Includes 15 texts ranging from the Kojiki to Meiji laws in a searchable database. Also provides a dictionary of basic Shinto terms, a bibliography, and linked electronic texts concerning matsuri, folk religion in Japan, and new religions.

Includes materials ranging from Nara e-hon to WWII newspapers to modern educational wallcharts.

Includes documents, maps, scrolls, drawings, photographs and posters. Browsable by category and by keyword.

Contains Edo era literature, rangaku, the Okuma Shigenobu collection, an exhibition of Edo and Meiji photographs, portraits, newspapers and nishikie from Bakumatsu and Meiji.

Includes many databases on premodern Japan for historical terms, photographs and documentary sources.

Includes: Archaeologically Excavated Japanese Gardens Database, a Chronology of Asuka & Nara Periods, images of The Asuka & Fujiwara Capitals and of the Heijō palace.

Compiled by a Japanese scholar, Tateishi Kazuhiro; includes images and an extensive bibliography of reworkings of the Genji tale including 20 different comic book adaptations, along with listings of plays, movies, tv dramas, books.

The thirteenth century scrolls of the Heiji disturbance (1159) provide a rare and valuable depiction of Japanese armor as it was worn during the early Kamakura era (1185-1333).

This site features Takezaki Suenaga's Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan (Moko Shurai ekotoba). The original scrolls were written during Suenaga's lifetime in the 13th century, but lost for centuries. They reappeared in the 18th century and were copied repeatedly, before being pasted into two scrolls in 1823. This website presents the original scrolls, along with the 18th & 19th-century copies and a 21st-century reconstruction, using technology that allows users to view the scrolls as they were originally intended. Other features: side-by-side comparison of different versions of the scrolls; a guided view with commentary by Professor Tom Conlan of Bowdoin College; and a glossary of terminology.

In English and Japanese. JACAR was established to provide through the Internet indexes to and digital images of historical records about modern Japan-Asia relations held (and available to the public) by Japanese national institutions. At present, these include records held by the National Archives of Japan, The Diplomatic Record Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and The National Institute for Defense Studies of the National Defense Agency. Materials included cover from early Meiji times through World War II.

Created by the National Diet Library of Japan, it presently includes the full-text of 90,000 titles from the Meiji era, 7,200 from Taishō, and 222 Meiji era photographs. Can be searched by author, title or subject.

Various databases on research on Korea and Koreans residing in Japan, on ethnology and on Southeast Asia.

Created by John Dower at MIT, visualizing Culture uses Japan since the mid-19th century as a case study for gaining new perspectives on "cultures" in the broadest since - the "cultures," for example, of Westernization, modernization, changing modes of technology and mass communication, imperialism, nationalism, militarism, racism, commercialization and consumerism, etc. It begins with the black ships of Commodore Perry and ends with pictures by A-bomb survivors.

Pre and postwar photographs related to social and labor movements.

Provided by the National Diet Library in English and Japanese. Includes a photograph and a brief biographical sketch of 350 statesmen, government officials, military officers, businessmen, scholars and artists. Can be browsed or searched by category. Entries cross-linked and author's works are linked to the Kindai Digital Library.

Searchable database of the records of the Imperial Diet from 1938 to 1947 (74th to 97th).

Included are images that document early 20th century China including the Sino-Japanese Conflict (1937-1945).