The , or Oriental Library, is

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

's largest

Asian studies Asian studies is the term used usually in North America and Australia for what in Europe is known as Oriental studies. The field is concerned with the Asian people, their cultures, languages, history and politics. Within the Asian sphere, Asian ...

library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

and one of the world's five largest, located in Tokyo. It also functions as a research institute dedicated to the study of Asian history and culture. It has greatly contributed to the development of Asian Studies through the acquisition of books and other source materials as well as the publication of research by Japanese scholars. Presently, the library contains approximately 950,000 volumes which are cataloged linguistically according to Asian, Western and Japanese language materials.

History

Establishment and the early history

The Oriental Library had its beginnings in 1917 when Hisaya Iwasaki, former third President of the

Mitsubishi The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group traces its origins to the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company that existed from 1870 to 194 ...

Company, purchased the vast private collection of China-related publications of Australian adventurer, journalist, and

Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

government adviser George Morrison. After the purchase, he improved the collection by increasing the number of

classical Chinese Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...

, Japanese, and Western language books by receiving advice from a bibliographer, Tunashiro Wada(和田維四郎). He established Tōyō Bunko in 1924 to promote

oriental studies Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studie ...

. It was the first library institution in Japan that was devoted exclusively to oriental studies. Junnosuke Inoue was invited as the first Director of this Library. Hisaya Iwasaki stopped touching management after establishment, but continued financial support to promote collection and research.

After the War

After the

Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War or the Pacific Theatre, was the Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II fought between the Empire of Japan and the Allies of World War II, Allies in East Asia, East and Southeast As ...

, GHQ dismantled

Zaibatsu is a Japanese language, Japanese term referring to industrial and financial vertical integration, vertically integrated business conglomerate (company), conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed control over signifi ...

, because Zaibatsu were responsible for the War. Hisaya Iwasaki resigned from all of his posts in the

Mitsubishi Group The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group traces its origins to the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company that existed from 1870 to 1946 ...

, and he moved into his cottage. Therefore, the Oriental Library lost its patron and faced a financial crisis. Kijūrō Shidehara, former prime minister, took up this problem to

National Diet , transcription_name = ''Kokkai'' , legislature = 215th Session of the National Diet , coa_pic = Flag of Japan.svg , house_type = Bicameral , houses = , foundation=29 November 1890(), leader1_type ...

, and the library became a branch of the

National Diet Library The is the national library of Japan and among the largest libraries in the world. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the in researching matters of public policy. The library is similar in purpose and scope to ...

in 1948. From 1961, the library was a

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

affiliated organization as the Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies. Also, in 1994 a center was set up within the library to provide research facilities for scholars dispatched from France.

Organization

Major decisions concerning the management of the library are made by its Advisory Council and

Board of Directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

. Daily operations are supervised by the Committee of Department heads. As of 2007, the library was staffed by 20 full-time employees working under the supervision of the Director General Makihara Minoru, and Executive Director Yamakawa Naoyoshi. In addition, there were over 200 research fellows participating in Toyo Bunko-sponsored projects."Organization, Management and Finance"
Official Toyo Bunko website, retrieved 17 November 2009

Directors

# Junnosuke Inoue (1924-) #Shuichi Kirishima (1932-) # Hayashi Gonsuke (1932-) # Shiratori Kurakichi (1939-) #Akira Shimizu (1939-) # Kijūrō Shidehara (1947-) # Moritatsu Hosokawa (1951-) # Naoshirō Tsuji (1974-) # Kazuo Enoki (1985-) # Kitamura Hajime (1990-) # Yoshinobu Shiba (2001-) # Minoru Makihara (2007-) #Nobuo Kuroyanagi (2021-)

References

External links

The Toyo Bunko, or, The Oriental Library, official website

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

{{DEFAULTSORT:Toyo Bunko Libraries in Tokyo Mitsubishi Libraries established in 1924