Culture & Media

Helpful Information

Library Resources

Language Resources

Contact

Steve Witt

Head
International & Area Studies Library
Associate Professor
University Library
Director
Center for Global Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Office
311 Main Library
Email
swwitt@illinois.edu

General

Image Database of Texts and Pictures on East Asian Publishing Culture 東アジア出版文化研究資料画像データベース
This is a database of images, texts, pictures, that are published throughout history, made available by the Center for Northeast Asian Studies at Tohoku University.

Scandinavian Society of Japanse Philately
This resource includes many images of Japanese stamps of various types, including revenue stamps, from the Meiji and Taisho periods.

Shiryō Hensanjo 東京大学史料編纂所
Shiryō Hensanjo provides a federated search of a large number of databases, covering information about texts, literature, history, historiographical terms, kuzushiji, images, people, events, and more.

Bibliography of Oriental Studies on the Web 東洋学文献類目検索
The online version of 東洋学文献類目, formerly published in print. This contains citations for Asian studies broadly, in multiple languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English.

Early Modern

Wahon Literacy News 和本リテラシーニュース
This is a free, open-access journal dealing with how to “read” wahon, or Japanese-style books, through the Edo period

Inkan Search
This is a fun search engine for inkan, indexed by personal name of artists, scholars, and calligraphers from the Edo period

NIJL Collectors’ seal Database 蔵書印データベース
This is a database of seals stamped in books by collectors. The advanced search function is detailed and allows users to search by size, color, title, author, etc. It also provides high-quality digital images of the seals and notes.

Modern

Meiji-ki Shuppan Kokoku
This is a database of a variety of advertisements published in newspapers, magazines, from the early Meiji Era

Meiji at 150 Project
This project celebrating 150 years since the beginning of the Meiji period in 2017-2018 includes lectures and workshops at UBC, as well as online teaching materials and exhibits as well as a podcast found here.

Imaging Kanto
This is an archive of the images of the Great Kanto Earthquake occurred in 1923 and Tokyo urban context and its reconstruction process.

ReEnvisioning Japan
This is a project from the University of Rochester about “Japan as a destination in 20th century visual and material culture.” Includes many images of various kinds of materials from the 20th century.

Mada aru Showa Navi まだある。昭和ナビ
This is a portal site for all things Showa, including videos, products, special sections, food, and history. It also has reviews of current Showa-related products and restaurants, and Showa-related news.

MIT Visualizing Cultures
Visualizing Cultures was launched at MIT in 2002 to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be). Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China. The thrust of these explorations extends beyond Asia per se, however, to address “culture” in much broader ways—cultures of modernization, war and peace, consumerism, images of “Self” and “Others,” and so on.