Ivy Plus Libraries' Digital Projects on East Asia

Documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang is widely considered a pioneer of modern Chinese independent film. In 2010 he launched the Memory Project to collect oral histories from survivors of the Great Famine that devastated rural China between 1958 and 1961. Officially known in China as the “Three Years of Natural Disasters” or “The Difficult Three-Year Period,” the Great Famine caused the death of between 20 and 43 million people. More recently the project has also covered the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1960, the Land Reform and the Collectivization of 1949-1953, the Four Cleanups Movement in 1964, and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976. The interviews naturally show regional variations in famine experiences and rural culture. They add intimate detail and humanity to the story of the deaths and starvation of millions of Chinese, providing a unique perspective on the unofficial history of the Great Famine. The accompanying website (http://chinesememoryproject.org/) has some featured interviews (http://chinesememoryproject.org/interviews/), a timeline offering more historical context (http://chinesememoryproject.org/timeline/) and an interactive map providing a visualized access to the interviews (http://chinesememoryproject.org/map/)

Sidney D. Gamble (1890-1968), an avid amateur photographer, began taking pictures in China during his first trip to the country with his family in 1908. He returned three more times between 1917 to 1932 and continued photographing the daily life of Chinese citizens. A sociologist and renowned China scholar, he traveled throughout the country to collect data for social-economic surveys and to photograph urban and rural life, public events, architecture, religious statuary, and the countryside. Gamble used a few of the photographs from his extensive collection in his scholarly publications (https://guides.library.duke.edu/Gamblephotos/research) and in slide lectures, the majority of images were never published or exhibited during his lifetime.

Bound photograph album containing 48 photographs taken by Sir Percy Moleworth Sykes during his travels in a mountainous region of Central Asia, now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, with his sister, Ella Sykes.

The album probably belonged to Friedrich Carl Peetz, most likely an officer in the German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) and crew member of the S.M.S. Hertha during the Boxer Rebellion. The images were mostly taken in Tsingtao (Qingdao), Chefoo (Yantai), Hong Kong, Peking (Beijing), and Shanhaiguan during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.

The Duke Chinese Dance Troupe (DCD) was established at Duke University in the 1990s as an organization of students presenting Chinese dance and Chinese/Chinese-American culture to the Duke, Durham, and surrounding North Carolinian communities. DCD records contain the website, and materials used for planning, performing and documenting annual performances including the Duke Chinese Dance Showcase also known as the LNY (Lunar New Year), and the Fallcase.

William Hillman Shockley (1855-1925) was an American mining engineer, amateur photographer, and botanist. He trained as a mining engineer, and his early career took him to Florida and California. Between 1896 to 1909 he traveled to China, Russia, Korea, and Australia in search of mining opportunities, chiefly in gold, silver, iron ore, coal, copper, and petroleum. Shockley documented his travels through both photography, especially of the various mining sites he visited and worked at, as well as writing official reports of those mines. His photographs capture local people and their communities, including street scenes, religious structures and art, village life, forms of transportation and the natural sceneries of mountains and rivers.
The collection contains over 2,200 black-and-white photographs with many containing the original captions. More than half of these photographs were taken in China between the years of 1897-1899, when he travelled to Beijing, Shanghai, Shanxi, Neimenggu, Henan, Hebei, Hubei, and the Northeastern area.

Henry Coullaud (1872-1954) was a French military physician. The two albums contain 120 black-and-white photographs taken by Coullaud during the Boxer Rebellion in China, 1900-1901. Album 1 starts with images of the French naval personnel with whom he travelled, French ships, and the allied fleets, along with scenes taken in the ports of Djibouti, Port Said, Singapore, and Taku (Dagu). The rest of the images offer views of the cities of Tianjin, Baodingfu, Dingzhou, and Zhengdingfu. There are images of many types of buildings, markets and merchants, river life, modes of transportation, entertainments, a public execution, and images of rural life and work. There are a number of group portraits of Chinese and French officials and wealthy Chinese men, as well as a group portrait in a French medical clinic, and officers putting on a theatrical play and celebrating July 14th. There are also some photographs of urban and rural Chinese women. The albums seem to have been a gift from a Chinese family to Coullaud, whose last name, spelled phonetically in Chinese characters, appears on the album covers.

Collection comprises an accordion-bound photograph album containing 158 black-and-white and a few color photographs, belonging to African American soldier Henry Heyliger, named numerous times in the album. Most of the photographs document the 610th Port Company based in Yokohama, Japan, 1947, and many are labeled with soldier's names and some locations.

Maynard Miller was an African American Staff Sergeant with the 3540th and 3524th Quartermaster Truck Company, an African American company stationed in occupied Japan in 1946. Collection consists of a large photograph album, marked "property of Staff Sergeant Maynard Miller," containing approximately 200 photographs of African American soldiers in Tokyo and other locales in occupied Japan during 1946.

Materials from the aftermath of the earthquake that struck the Japanese region of Kantō on September 1, 1923. Includes a map of Tokyo and the disaster area; another map of the fire in Tokyo, with text in English and Japanese; a copy of the special issue International Graphic Magazine from September/October 1923; a photo-illustrated pamphlet; 18 postcards with color-tinted photographs; and a scrapbook of photographs and newsprint about the event. An additional 120 postcards, largely black-and-white photographs (some with captions), were added in 2016.

Isaacy Leroy Shaver (1893-1984) was a Methodist clergyman and missionary to Japan from the 1920s to the 1960s. The collection includes sermons, correspondence, photographs, printed material and published works related to Shaver's missionary work in Japan and Idaho. The material ranges in date from 1893-1982.

The diaries in this digital collection were written by British and American women who documented their travels to places around the globe, including China (17 diaries) and Japan (62 diaries).

The sixty-three manuscript volumes in this collection range from 10 to 154 pages and were created in Japan from about 1810 to 1849, chiefly by medical students. The notebooks usually take one of two forms: transcriptions of lectures and demonstrations, and bodies of knowledge written up as manuals by well-known Japanese physicians of the time, especially Hanaoka Seishū and Takenaka Bunpō. Some notebooks contain black-and-white and color hand-drawn illustrations - many full-page - of surgeries, close-ups of suturing, bandages and wrappings, osteopathic manipulations, and medicinal plants. In most cases, the author or copyist recorded details such the place and time of the lecture and the name of the medical school. There are references in the notes to at least a dozen other contemporary or earlier physicians, and to earlier dates for the work being copied - these range from 1677 to 1796. Acquired as part of the History of Medicine Collections at Duke University.

Colonial Korean Postcard Photo Collection includes about 9000 digitized postcards of Korea from 1900 to 1945, portraying ancient historical sites, natural landmarks, people in traditional or modern settings, rural Korean villages and modern urban spaces, and Korean customs. During the colonial period (1910-1945), postcards of Korea were printed by various Japanese organizations. More images will be added.

The Nodong Sinmun (로동신문 or 노동신문) Collection, the official newspaper of North Korea, includes the news articles from 1945 through 1999 published by the Central Committee of the Worker’s Party in North Korea.

Monthly journal published by the pro-Pyeongyang federation of Korean residents in Japan. The contents of this journal include politics, economics, culture, custom, and history of North Korea as well as the life of Korean residents in Japan.

Album contains 106 black-and-white and color photographs carefully arranged and mounted in a black-leaf photograph album, bound in Japanese-style lacquered covers inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Photographer may be an African American soldier named Tommy, who served in the U.S. Army's 511th Operation and Maintenance Service (OM SVC) Company during the Korean War. It is unclear whether the photographs are from Japan or Korea, as the latter was strongly influenced by Japanese culture until the end of World War II. The images depict soldiers in and out of uniform and often engaged in recreational pursuits. Many photographs depict both white and African American soldiers together. Other subjects include local women and children; women with servicemen; the countryside and Japanese-style buildings; and family members and others back home.