EAST ASIA

Examples of Contemporary Japanese Publications. (Japan
Documentation Center, Asian Division)
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The Japan
Documentation Center: Nothing better illustrates
the Library's emphasis on obtaining current publications from
Asia than the work of the Japan Documentation Center (JDC) in
the Asian Division. Established in 1992 to ensure that Congress
would receive timely information on Japan, JDC obtains unpublished
and other material that is often difficult to find, such as draft
legislation, government policy studies, public opinion polling
data, reports from think tanks, and conference proceedings. Topics
of interest include Japanese politics, national defense, the
environment, economics, business, and social conditions. [Web
edition note: The JDC closed its doors on March
31, 2000. The JDC database can still be accessed via the
Asian Division Web site: http://www.loc.gov/rr/asian/jdc.html]
Obtaining this material and forwarding it to the Library once
a week is the job of the JDC's Tokyo Acquisitions Facility. When
documents are received by the Library, the JDC staff records
bibliographic data in Japanese and English for each item and
produces an English summary. The records are then added to the
JDC database.
The documents are digitally scanned so that copies can be made
quickly when requested by members of Congress, academics, the
business community, or the general public. JDC also receives
several Japanese journals covering current developments. To ensure
that readers have timely access, vendors in Tokyo air mail the
journals directly to JDC.
In addition to acquiring a wide range of documents and providing
reference assistance, JDC sponsors conferences and workshops.
Its third annual symposium, "CyberJapan: Technology, Policy,
and Society" was held at the Library of Congress in 1996. And
in 1997, JDC and the U.S. Department of Commerce cosponsored
the "Fifth International Conference on Japanese Information in
Science, Technology, and Commerce," featuring some thirty speakers
from Europe, Japan, and the United States. The very model of
a modern electronic library, JDC is a joint project sponsored
by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership (CGP) and
the Library of Congress. Clearly, JDC has been such a great success
that the initial contract between the Library and CGP was renewed
in 1997, ensuring financial support for another three years.
While separate and distinct from the Asian Division's Japanese
Section, JDC's work is in the broadest sense part of the Asian
Division's coverage of modern Japan.
Japanese: The traditional Japanese world entered a
period of rapid modernization beginning with the Meiji Restoration
in 1868. Although Japan's role in East Asia continued to become
more important, it was not until the 1930s that serious academic
study of Japan began in the United States. This decade marked
the growing tensions in relations between the United States and
Japan. Dr. Sakanishi Shiho at the Library of Congress played
an active role not only in building the Library's Japanese collections
but also in promoting Japanese studies in the United States.
Born in Tokyo, Sakanishi held a
Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and had been an assistant
professor at Hollins College in Virginia before starting at the
Library in 1930. Her personal story is intertwined with the tragic
story of World War II in the Pacific. Dr. Sakanishi's tireless
efforts to encourage Japanese studies and her close relations
with the Japanese Embassy in Washington apparently put her high
on the FBI's list of "enemy aliens." Federal officers arrested
Sakanishi on December 7, 1941, holding her in a detention camp
until June 1942 when she was sent to Japan as part of an exchange
of prisoners.
With the end of World War II, the Library's holdings of Japanese
material increased rapidly and are today the most extensive collection
outside Japan. Valuable Japanese government records that throw
light on Japanese decision making before the war were transferred
to the Library from the Washington Documents Center. Among them
are records from the former Japanese Imperial Army and Navy,
the South Manchuria Railway Company, and the East Asian Research
Institute (Toa Kenkyujo). The Library has a microfilm copy
of the archives of the Japanese Foreign Ministry from 1868 to
1945 that was used, for example, in John Toland's history of
the fall of the Japanese Empire, The Rising Sun. Japanese
scholars have also used the Library's pre-1945 records of the
Police Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Home Affairs. Complementing
this rich resource are maps in the Geography and Map Division
that provide insight into the early period of Japanese expansion
in northeast Asia. These include a collection of Japanese Army
manuscript route maps of Korea and China prepared from 1878 to
the 1880s and manuscript maps concerning the Russo-Japanese War
(1904-1905) from Theodore Roosevelt's papers.
At present, the Japanese collection has nearly one million books
and serials. Its holdings include major Japanese newspapers such
as Asahi shinbun, Yomiuri shinbun, and Nikkei
Weekly. Japanese material in other divisions of the Library
includes pre-1946 newsreels and movies in the Motion Picture,
Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division; posters, ukiyo- e,
other prints, and photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division;
technical reports in the Science and Technology Division; and
recorded music and scores in the Music Division.
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Calligraphy
of Mao Tse-tung. The People's
Republic of China printed only 500 copies of this large
book of
Mao
Tse-tung's
poetry
and calligraphy, using them as presentation books during
official visits. This copy was donated to the Library by
Dr. Chi Wang, who received it in 1989 from Prof. Hu Qiao
Mu, Mao's personal secretary for over nineteen years. Here
Mao has copied a poem by a famous Sung Dynasty general,
Yüeh Fei. (Chinese Rare Book Collection, Asian
Division) |
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Chinese: War and revolution in China during much of
the first half of the twentieth century provided both unique
collection opportunities and serious problems for the Library's
Chinese collections. On the positive side, the Library was able
to obtain the only copies of some four thousand unique and valuable
publications issued by both the Nationalist and the Communist
sides during the war years from 1939 to 1945. These publications
cover subjects ranging from the social sciences and government
to military strategy and wartime propaganda. The material includes
valuable Chinese Communist Party publications concerning party
policies in the areas of northwest China under its control during
World War II. Literary works are another particularly rich part
of this collection, especially a number of modern Chinese plays
written in the wartime capital of Chungking. Included are works
by the well-known writers Lao She (author of Rickshaw Boy) and
Ts'aoYü (Sunrise and Thunderstorm).
After the Communist victory in 1949 and the resulting rupture
of contacts between the United States and the People's Republic
of China (PRC), acquiring current Chinese mainland publications
became very difficult. Chinese publications from Taiwan continued
to flow, but from 1950 to 1975 the Library had to purchase all
its mainland Chinese publications through either Hong Kong or
Japan. Despite these difficulties, the Library acquired probably
the best holdings on the PRC available in the West during the
1950s and 1960s. Through the Department of State's publications
procurement program, the Consulate General in Hong Kong was able
to buy large amounts of material published in China that it shared
with the Library. Of special interest from that period is the
Library's holdings of some six hundred to seven hundred provincial
newspapers. Because of its excellent collection of PRC publications,
the Library became a center for China-watchers during the 1950s
and 1960s, with many American graduate students using the material
for M.A. theses or Ph.D. dissertations.
Following the 1972 visit to China of Richard Nixon, who was
president then, the Library reopened its contact with the National
Library of Peking through a visit by Dr. Chi Wang, who is currently
head of the Chinese Section of the Asian Division. The first
formal exchange agreement was signed in 1979. Since then, the
Chinese collection has continued to grow through purchases by
dealers in Peking, Hong Kong, and Taipei, as well as from exchanges
and gifts. From 1980 until 1987, the Library received a massive
influx of Chinese publications, averaging some twenty-four thousand
titles each year, through its exchange agreement with the National
Library in Peking. Since 1988, the Library has tightened and
narrowed its focus on China but continues to strengthen its collection
of modern Chinese publications and will remain an important center
for scholarship.
Of the collection's nearly one million books, manuscripts, and
other publications, some 40 percent are in the humanities; 40
percent are in the social sciences; and 20 percent are general
works, science, technology, and bibliographies. Besides books,
the Library has more than twelve thousand Chinese periodical
titles and regularly receives about forty-five Chinese-language
newspapers. The large Chinese microfilm collection of more than
fifteen thousand reels is very impressive. The Chiang Ching-kuo
Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange has given the
Library a grant to prepare a research guide for the collection
that will be put on the Internet.
Additionally, there are significant holdings of photographs
of China in the Prints and Photographs Division and unique material
in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.

Choson Yujok Yumul Togam (Illustrated
Book of Ruins and Relics of Korea). Because of the closed
nature of North Korean society, the outside world has little
information on Korean artifacts held in the north. This
seventeen-volume set, published in Pyongyang in 1994, was,
therefore, welcomed by art collectors and other specialists.
Ceramics are among the most important of Korea's artistic
achievements, and volume 12 is devoted to the unique
ceramics of the Koryo period (918-1392), widely admired for their
beautiful colors and design. (Korean Collection, Asian Division)
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Korean: The Library began systematic acquisition of
Korean-language publications in 1950 and now has the largest
and most comprehensive collection outside Korea, including books,
periodicals, and some two hundred fifty newspapers that go back
to the 1920s. Through a 1966 exchange agreement between the United
States and the Republic of Korea, the Library has built up an
especially strong collection of Korean government publications.
Another strength of the contemporary collection is Korean trade
publications, systematically built up through the use of a Korean
dealer since 1955.
North Korea, or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is
probably the most secretive society in the modern world. The
Asian Division's 10,000 items from North Korea are therefore
vital to scholars and government officials trying to understand
developments in the north. The Library receives the two major
North Korean newspapers--one a government paper and the other
the party paper--as well as several dozen periodicals.
The rapid development of the Korean collections during this
decade is in large part due to the generous support of the International
Cultural Society of Korea, which presented the Library with a
gift of one million dollars in December 1989, on the 200th anniversary
of the U.S. Congress. Besides buying Korean books, the Library
used these funds to establish a Korean Section in the Asian Division
in 1990, to sponsor a Korean Studies Conference in 1992, and
to set up a program for Korean interns to spend a month working
in the Library. In 1996, the Library began a Korean Studies Fellowship
Program that will support researchers working on Korean-related
subjects for six months. These and other projects using the Korean
Gift Fund are managed by an Advisory Committee consisting of
six members from the Library and three members from the academic
community.
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