The , or "Oriental Library", is

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

'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, Asia ...

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

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

The library had its beginnings in 1917 when

Hisaya Iwasaki Hisaya is a masculine Japanese given name, a feminine Japanese given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese actor and comedian *, Japanese manga artist born in Osaka *, Japanese weightlifter *, Japanese screenwriter ...

, 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 historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 ...

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, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeas ...

government adviser George Morrison. After the purchase, Iwasaki improved on the collection by increasing the number of classical Chinese, Japanese and western language books. This gave way to the development of the first library institution in Japan that was devoted exclusively to Asian Studies. It initially opened in 1924, and in 1948 the Library was made 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 ...

as result of the financial fallout from

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, and in 1961 was made a

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...

affiliated organisation 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 (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit orga ...

. 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

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

History

Organization

See also

References

External links