Databases Open for PublicHow to Register for the databases marked ※
(If you wish to use images for a publication, television broadcast, or other such purpose, please see the “Application for Special Use Privileges” page.)
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
W
Other Search Engines / Databases
Databases Open for PublicHow to Register for the databases marked ※
(If you wish to use images for a publication, television broadcast, or other such purpose, please see the “Application for Special Use Privileges” page.)
Western Books on Japan
Overseas Images of Japan, Early Photographs
Strange Phenomena and Yōkai(Ghosts, Monsters, Spirits)Related Materials
Ukiyo-e, Emakimono, Art
Pictorial and Biographical Works
Maps, GIS
Kojiruien
Records and Accounts
Waka, Renga, Haikai
Bibliographic Databases
Medical History-related Materials
Other Search Engines / Databases
Databases Open for PublicHow to Register for the databases marked ※
(If you wish to use images for a publication, television broadcast, or other such purpose, please see the “Application for Special Use Privileges” page.)
| C |
|---|
| Digitization of a three-volume, indexed catalogue of pre-1900 published works in Western languages in the Nichibunken collection that contain material about Japan. |  |
1,057 items | |
| Catalogue information for the former collection of the Sino-Japanese Historical Research Center, divided into “Western-language works,” “Chinese-language works,” “Japanese-language works,” and “Maps.” |  |
27,805 items | |
| Database of high-resolution images of Chirimen-bon (Japanese folktales written in other languages, printed on Japanese washi paper made for export in the Meiji and Taishō eras), held at Nichibunken. |  |
77 items | |
| Images of all the texts of the court rulings in civil cases from 1868 to 1890 (Meiji 1 to 23). |  |
549,101 items |
| D |
|---|
| Database of the Otake Dainichi Nyorai engi emaki, a series of three emaki scrolls preserved at the Kōtakuji Shōzen’in temple (Yamagata prefecture), the headquarters and training center of the Haguro Shugendō sect, depicting the provenance of the Otake Dainichi Hall at the same temple. Otake is the name of a woman considered to be an incarnation of the Dainichi (Sk. Mahavairocana) Buddha. This database, also including Otake-related resources in the temple’s collection, was created with the full support of Shōzen’in. |  |
150 items |
| E |
|---|
| A database of illustrated encyclopedias published in early modern Japan. Includes Kinmōzui (1666) and other “Kinmōzui”-type encylopedias as well as books with pictorial and diagramed information. Although described as “early modern,” this database covers the period up to and including the early Meiji era. |  |
2,253 items | |
| Hand-colored photographs (with source information) of Japan from the late Edo period and the beginning of the Meiji era in the Nichibunken collection. |  |
5,431 items | |
| Database of high-resolution digital images of emakimono (picture scrolls) held at Nichibunken. |  |
28 items | |
| Database of basic bibliographic data and digitized high resolution images of Edo period enpon (erotic ukiyo-e books) in the Nichibunken collection. |  |
837 items |
| F |
|---|
| High resolution images of all pages of the ezōshi, or illustrated story books from the Edo period, in the Nichibunken collection. |  |
458 items | |
| Bibliographic information on yōkai and mysterious phenomena reported in folklore studies and other fields research. |  |
35,089 items |
| G |
|---|
| Full image data of the Shōō-ban Genji monogatari, a 1654 version of the illustrated Tale of Genji (texts: 54 volumes, commentaries: 6 volumes) in the collection of the Library of Congress in the United States. |  |
60 items |
| H |
|---|
| The major haikai collections, including those of Bashō and Buson. This material, collected over many years by Seta Katsuhiro of the Nara National College of Technology, was donated to Nichibunken in support of Japanese studies. | |
25,652 items | |
| Images, complete text, and index to the Heian jinbutsu shi who’s who (collection of Nichibunken) published between 1768 and 1867. | |
927 pages | |
|
Database in kundoku (“Japanese” or explanatory reading) of the full texts of diaries and other old records from the middle part of the Heian period.
Shōyūki (diary of Fujiwara no Sanesuke); Gonki (diary of Fujiwara no Yukinari); Midō Kanpakuki (diary of Fujiwara no Michinaga); Sakeiki (diary of Minamoto no Tsuneyori); Shunki (diary of Fujiwara no Sukefusa), etc. |
 |
13,010 items |
| I |
|---|
| The illustrations and the text that refers to them in the Bei-Ō kairan jikki (The Iwakura Embassy), compiled by Kume Kunitake and published in 1878. |  |
317 items | |
| Database of digitized high-resolution images of Edo-period and Meiji-era meisho zue illustrated guidebooks of famous places in Kyoto held at Nichibunken. The database has been constructed to help researchers study the lifestyles and customs of old Kyoto through such guidebooks. |  |
24 items | |
| High-resolution digital images of picture scrolls depicting yōkai monsters in the Nichibunken collection. |  |
27 items |
| J |
|---|
| Contains images of and original source information on works of Japanese art (paintings, woodblock prints, netsuke, ceramics, lacquerware, sculpture, metalwork, etc.) in the collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the State Hermitage Museum in Russia, the Ferenc Hopp Museum of East Asian Arts in Hungary, as well as other museums in Hungary and the Czech Republic. |  |
8,673 items |
| K |
|---|
| Digitized full text and illustrations of the Kinsei kijinden (parts 1 and 2, published in the 1790s),a collection of biographies of Edo-period figures(artists,poets,etc.).Chinese and kana characters in the old form have been replaced with present-day equivalents. Characters not in the JIS Code have been replaced with JIS Code characters having the same meaning and pronunciation. |  |
97 items | |
| To make the Kojiruien more easily and widely available to Japan specialists in and outside Japan, this database has an easy-to-use search function, based on the 51-volume edition of the Kojiruien (bound in Western-book format) published in the Taishō era (1912–1926). | |
51 items | |
| Kojiruien is an exhaustive encyclopedia of Japanese culture of over 67,000 pages and more than 40,000 entries, launched as a national project by the Meiji government and published in the Meiji and Taishō eras. In collaboration with the National Institute of Japanese Literature and other organizations, Nichibunken has converted [been converting] the entire text of the Kojiruien into a database and been making it available in stages to the public. | |
16,740 pages | |
| Picture postcards of Korea published 1900-1940 (collection of Yamamoto Shunsuke, Kyoto; former researcher at the Koryo Museum of Art, Kyoto) are presented in digital format together with publication data and other details. |  |
6,516 items | |
| Paintings on silk by Nakajima Sōyō and explanatory texts by Kyoto scholar Ema Tsutomu from Miyako nenjū gyōji gajō (1928; owned by Nichibunken), a picture album depicting annual festivals and customs of Kyoto. |  |
103 items |
| L |
|---|
| Database containing letters addressed to philosopher Inoue Tetsujirō (1856-1944) from prominent figures in academia and other members of intellectual elite over the six decades from 1882 to 1941. |  |
140 items |
| M |
|---|
| This database collects maps drawn by Mori Kōan, a draftsman and map-maker active in the mid-Edo period. It allows viewing of some of the images published in the Zōho kaitei Mori Kōan no egaita chizu (Maps Drawn by Mori Kōan), published in the Nichibunken Japanese Studies Series (No. 54). |  |
383 items | |
| The purpose of this database is to make available to the public complete digitalized text for Zen-related works of the medieval era. Currently it provides the full text of the priest Gidō Shūshin’s (1325–1388) Kūge rōshi nichiyō kufū ryakushū, a work in the Nichibunken collection consisting of excerpts from Gidō’s diary covering the period 64 years from his birth to death. The database will gradually be expanded mainly with quotations and poetry collections that have not been transcribed and published. | |
1,290 items |
| N |
|---|
| Collections of namazu-e (catfish prints) owned by Nichibunken. Namazu-e are color prints depicting the myth of giant catfish living underground as the cause of earthquakes. |  |
87 items | |
| Images of the Nara ehon (“Nara picture books”) in the Library of Congress Collection in the United States, along with commentaries. |  |
4 items | |
| Images of old maps in the Nichibunken collection —mainly urban maps made in early modern Japan— are available in digital form. |  |
979 items | |
| Database of the Noma Collection, including sixteenth-century books on human anatomy, donated to Nichibunken by the Noma Research Archives for Science and Medicine (closed in 2003). |  |
73 items |
| O |
|---|
| Nichibunken’s collection of photographs, illustrations, and other images (with source information) extracted from Japan-related publications from around the world. |  |
56,913 items | |
| Digital data of Japanese newspapers published outside of Japan. Nine newspapers published in San Francisco, Argentina, and Brazil are now available in digital format. |  |
15,342 items |
| P |
|---|
| Database of images of a wide variety of strange phenomena and yōkai depicted in paintings. |  |
4,202 items |
| R |
|---|
| Images of all pages of the rare books in Nichibunken’s collection, primarily books in foreign languages published before the opening of the country in the 1850s. The database also contains the text data of these works including bibliographic information, tables of contents, and the captions of illustrations. |  |
242 items | |
| Contains all renga collections composed before the Eiroku era (up until the death of renga poet Sōyō in 1563) and the major works composed from the Eiroku era until the Bakumatsu period. This material, collected over many years by Professor Seta Katsuhiro of the Nara National College of Technology, has been donated to Nichibunken in support of Japanese studies. | |
197,228 items | |
| Database of renga-associated vocabulary, created by extracting, from the verses recorded in Nichibunken’s renga database, the lexical patterns that appear in the preceding stanza (maeku) and the linking stanza (tsukeku) that is added to it. Users of this database can search these lexical patterns either using the maeku/tsukeku or verse collection title. The database is linked a digitized version of “Rensō goi yōrei jiten” (Dictionary of Usage of Associated Vocabulary) included in Yamada Shōji and Iwai Shigeki, eds., Renga no hassō rensō goi yōrei jiten to sono nettowāku kaiseki,the Nichibunken Japanese Studies Series (No. 38) | |
- |
| S |
|---|
| Mainly illustrations from the Sōda Archives of books and illustrations relating to histories of medicine and pharmacy collected by the late Sōda Hajime (1921-1996), an authority on the history of medicine. |  |
1,104 items |
| T |
|---|
| Images of rectangular poem cards (tanzaku) with verses brushed by the figures who appear in the Heian jinbutsu shi (held at Nichibunken), text versions of the verses and source data. |  |
947 items |
| U |
|---|
| This database of Ukiyo-e geijutsu, the journal of the International Ukiyo-e Society (formerly the Japan Ukiyo-e Society), has been constructed for ukiyo-e specialists and art lovers around the world. It was produced through collaboration between the Society and Nichibunken. In accordance with an agreement between Nichibunken and the International Ukiyo-e Society, the database displays back issues with a three-year moving wall. |
 |
171 items | |
| Images of ukiyo-e prints in the Library of Congress Collection in the United States, along with commentaries on the prints. |  |
2,741 items | |
| A series of ukiyo-e prints depicting Kannon pilgrimage sites around the country were produced about 160 years ago and became popular. This database presents the vivid images from that series while at the same time transcribing the text that accompanies the images. This database also contains commentaries on each of pilgrimage sites, costumes worn by pilgrims, and the like. |  |
100 items |
| W |
|---|
| Contains all twenty-one imperial anthologies, including Man'yōshū, and major private waka collections such as Fuboku wakashū. This material, collected by Seta Katsuhiro over many years, was donated to Nichibunken in support of Japanese studies. | |
190,423 items |
Other Search Engines / Databases
| K |
|---|
| This database, which contains more than 35,000 kigo (seasonal words) entries, has been developed as a search tool for Nichibunken’s waka, renga, and haikai databases. It can be used separately to search for kigo words. | |
35,811 items |
| N |
|---|
| Bibliographic information on books and periodicals from around the world, held at Nichibunken, providing an almost complete picture of written materials and images in the Nichibunken collection. | |
- |
| O |
|---|
| Information on Japanese studies institutions around the world. |  |
1,655 items |
Databases Open for PublicHow to Register for the databases marked ※
(If you wish to use images for a publication, television broadcast, or other such purpose, please see the “Application for Special Use Privileges” page.)
| Western Books on Japan |
|---|
| Digitization of a three-volume, indexed catalogue of pre-1900 published works in Western languages in the Nichibunken collection that contain material about Japan. | |
1,057 items | |
| Database of high-resolution images of Chirimen-bon (Japanese folktales written in other languages, printed on Japanese washi paper made for export in the Meiji and Taishō eras), held at Nichibunken. | |
77 items | |
| Images of all pages of the rare books in Nichibunken’s collection, primarily books in foreign languages published before the opening of the country in the 1850s. The database also contains the text data of these works including bibliographic information, tables of contents, and the captions of illustrations. | |
242 items |
| Overseas Images of Japan, Early Photographs |
|---|
| Hand-colored photographs (with source information) of Japan from the late Edo period and the beginning of the Meiji era in the Nichibunken collection. | |
5,431 items | |
| Nichibunken’s collection of photographs, illustrations, and other images (with source information) extracted from Japan-related publications from around the world. | |
56,913 items |
| Strange Phenomena and Yōkai(Ghosts, Monsters, Spirits)Related Materials |
|---|
| Bibliographic information on yōkai and mysterious phenomena reported in folklore studies and other fields research. | |
35,089 items | |
| High-resolution digital images of picture scrolls depicting yōkai monsters in the Nichibunken collection. | |
27 items | |
| Collections of namazu-e (catfish prints) owned by Nichibunken. Namazu-e are color prints depicting the myth of giant catfish living underground as the cause of earthquakes. | |
87 items | |
| Database of images of a wide variety of strange phenomena and yōkai depicted in paintings. | |
4,202 items |
| Ukiyo-e, Emakimono, Art |
|---|
| Database of the Otake Dainichi Nyorai engi emaki, a series of three emaki scrolls preserved at the Kōtakuji Shōzen’in temple (Yamagata prefecture), the headquarters and training center of the Haguro Shugendō sect, depicting the provenance of the Otake Dainichi Hall at the same temple. Otake is the name of a woman considered to be an incarnation of the Dainichi (Sk. Mahavairocana) Buddha. This database, also including Otake-related resources in the temple’s collection, was created with the full support of Shōzen’in. | |
150 items | |
| Database of high-resolution digital images of emakimono (picture scrolls) held at Nichibunken. | |
28 items | |
| Database of basic bibliographic data and digitized high resolution images of Edo period enpon (erotic ukiyo-e books) in the Nichibunken collection. | |
837 items | |
| Full image data of the Shōō-ban Genji monogatari, a 1654 version of the illustrated Tale of Genji (texts: 54 volumes, commentaries: 6 volumes) in the collection of the Library of Congress in the United States. | |
60 items | |
| Contains images of and original source information on works of Japanese art (paintings, woodblock prints, netsuke, ceramics, lacquerware, sculpture, metalwork, etc.) in the collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the State Hermitage Museum in Russia, the Ferenc Hopp Museum of East Asian Arts in Hungary, as well as other museums in Hungary and the Czech Republic. | |
8,673 items | |
| Images of the Nara ehon (“Nara picture books”) in the Library of Congress Collection in the United States, along with commentaries. | |
4 items | |
| This database of Ukiyo-e geijutsu, the journal of the International Ukiyo-e Society (formerly the Japan Ukiyo-e Society), has been constructed for ukiyo-e specialists and art lovers around the world. It was produced through collaboration between the Society and Nichibunken. In accordance with an agreement between Nichibunken and the International Ukiyo-e Society, the database displays back issues with a three-year moving wall. |
|
171 items | |
| Images of ukiyo-e prints in the Library of Congress Collection in the United States, along with commentaries on the prints. | |
2,741 items |
| Pictorial and Biographical Works |
|---|
| A database of illustrated encyclopedias published in early modern Japan. Includes Kinmōzui (1666) and other “Kinmōzui”-type encylopedias as well as books with pictorial and diagramed information. Although described as “early modern,” this database covers the period up to and including the early Meiji era. | |
2,253 items | |
| High resolution images of all pages of the ezōshi, or illustrated story books from the Edo period, in the Nichibunken collection. | |
458 items | |
| Images, complete text, and index to the Heian jinbutsu shi who’s who (collection of Nichibunken) published between 1768 and 1867. | |
927 pages | |
| Database of digitized high-resolution images of Edo-period and Meiji-era meisho zue illustrated guidebooks of famous places in Kyoto held at Nichibunken. The database has been constructed to help researchers study the lifestyles and customs of old Kyoto through such guidebooks. | |
24 items | |
| Paintings on silk by Nakajima Sōyō and explanatory texts by Kyoto scholar Ema Tsutomu from Miyako nenjū gyōji gajō (1928; owned by Nichibunken), a picture album depicting annual festivals and customs of Kyoto. | |
103 items | |
| Images of rectangular poem cards (tanzaku) with verses brushed by the figures who appear in the Heian jinbutsu shi (held at Nichibunken), text versions of the verses and source data. | |
947 items | |
| A series of ukiyo-e prints depicting Kannon pilgrimage sites around the country were produced about 160 years ago and became popular. This database presents the vivid images from that series while at the same time transcribing the text that accompanies the images. This database also contains commentaries on each of pilgrimage sites, costumes worn by pilgrims, and the like. | |
100 items |
| Maps, GIS |
|---|
| This database collects maps drawn by Mori Kōan, a draftsman and map-maker active in the mid-Edo period. It allows viewing of some of the images published in the Zōho kaitei Mori Kōan no egaita chizu (Maps Drawn by Mori Kōan), published in the Nichibunken Japanese Studies Series (No. 54). | |
383 items | |
| Images of old maps in the Nichibunken collection —mainly urban maps made in early modern Japan— are available in digital form. | |
979 items |
| Kojiruien |
|---|
| To make the Kojiruien more easily and widely available to Japan specialists in and outside Japan, this database has an easy-to-use search function, based on the 51-volume edition of the Kojiruien (bound in Western-book format) published in the Taishō era (1912–1926). | |
51 items | |
| Kojiruien is an exhaustive encyclopedia of Japanese culture of over 67,000 pages and more than 40,000 entries, launched as a national project by the Meiji government and published in the Meiji and Taishō eras. In collaboration with the National Institute of Japanese Literature and other organizations, Nichibunken has converted [been converting] the entire text of the Kojiruien into a database and been making it available in stages to the public. | |
16,740 pages |
| Records and Accounts |
|---|
| Images of all the texts of the court rulings in civil cases from 1868 to 1890 (Meiji 1 to 23). | |
549,101 items | |
| Database in
Database in kundoku (“Japanese” or explanatory reading) of the full texts of diaries and other old records from the middle part of the Heian period.
Shōyūki (diary of Fujiwara no Sanesuke); Gonki (diary of Fujiwara no Yukinari); Midō Kanpakuki (diary of Fujiwara no Michinaga); Sakeiki (diary of Minamoto no Tsuneyori); Shunki (diary of Fujiwara no Sukefusa), etc. |
|
13,010 items | |
| The illustrations and the text that refers to them in the Bei-Ō kairan jikki (The Iwakura Embassy), compiled by Kume Kunitake and published in 1878. | |
317 items | |
| Digitized full text and illustrations of the Kinsei kijinden (parts 1 and 2, published in the 1790s),a collection of biographies of Edo-period figures(artists,poets,etc.).Chinese and kana characters in the old form have been replaced with present-day equivalents. Characters not in the JIS Code have been replaced with JIS Code characters having the same meaning and pronunciation. | |
97 items | |
| Picture postcards of Korea published 1900-1940 (collection of Yamamoto Shunsuke, Kyoto; former researcher at the Koryo Museum of Art, Kyoto) are presented in digital format together with publication data and other details. | |
6,516 items | |
| Database containing letters addressed to philosopher Inoue Tetsujirō (1856-1944) from prominent figures in academia and other members of intellectual elite over the six decades from 1882 to 1941. | |
140 items | |
| The purpose of this database is to make available to the public complete digitalized text for Zen-related works of the medieval era. Currently it provides the full text of the priest Gidō Shūshin’s (1325–1388) Kūge rōshi nichiyō kufū ryakushū, a work in the Nichibunken collection consisting of excerpts from Gidō’s diary covering the period 64 years from his birth to death. The database will gradually be expanded mainly with quotations and poetry collections that have not been transcribed and published. | |
1,290 items | |
| Digital data of Japanese newspapers published outside of Japan. Nine newspapers published in San Francisco, Argentina, and Brazil are now available in digital format. | |
15,342 items |
| Waka, Renga, Haikai |
|---|
| The major haikai collections, including those of Bashō and Buson. This material, collected over many years by Seta Katsuhiro of the Nara National College of Technology, was donated to Nichibunken in support of Japanese studies. | |
25,652 items | |
| Contains all renga collections composed before the Eiroku era (up until the death of renga poet Sōyō in 1563) and the major works composed from the Eiroku era until the Bakumatsu period. This material, collected over many years by Professor Seta Katsuhiro of the Nara National College of Technology, has been donated to Nichibunken in support of Japanese studies. | |
197,228 items | |
| Database of renga-associated vocabulary, created by extracting, from the verses recorded in Nichibunken’s renga database, the lexical patterns that appear in the preceding stanza (maeku) and the linking stanza (tsukeku) that is added to it. Users of this database can search these lexical patterns either using the maeku/tsukeku or verse collection title. The database is linked a digitized version of “Rensō goi yōrei jiten” (Dictionary of Usage of Associated Vocabulary) included in Yamada Shōji and Iwai Shigeki, eds., Renga no hassō rensō goi yōrei jiten to sono nettowāku kaiseki,the Nichibunken Japanese Studies Series (No. 38) | |
- | |
| Contains all twenty-one imperial anthologies, including Man'yōshū, and major private waka collections such as Fuboku wakashū. This material, collected by Seta Katsuhiro over many years, was donated to Nichibunken in support of Japanese studies. | |
190,423 items |
| Bibliographic Databases |
|---|
| Catalogue information for the former collection of the Sino-Japanese Historical Research Center, divided into “Western-language works,” “Chinese-language works,” “Japanese-language works,” and “Maps.” | |
27,805 items |
| Medical History-related Materials |
|---|
| Database of the Noma Collection, including sixteenth-century books on human anatomy, donated to Nichibunken by the Noma Research Archives for Science and Medicine (closed in 2003). | |
73 items | |
| Mainly illustrations from the Sōda Archives of books and illustrations relating to histories of medicine and pharmacy collected by the late Sōda Hajime (1921-1996), an authority on the history of medicine. | |
1,104 items |
Other Search Engines / Databases
| This database, which contains more than 35,000 kigo (seasonal words) entries, has been developed as a search tool for Nichibunken’s waka, renga, and haikai databases. It can be used separately to search for kigo words. | |
35,811 items | |
| Bibliographic information on books and periodicals from around the world, held at Nichibunken, providing an almost complete picture of written materials and images in the Nichibunken collection. | |
- | |
| Information on Japanese studies institutions around the world. | |
1,655 items |