Collections

These books were collected by Maema Kyosaku (1868-1941), a scholar of Korean language/linguistics. Maema gave his collection the name “Zaisanro” (在山楼). The collection includes 822 titles, with a total of 2,310 volumes, plus some old maps and rubbings. Maema himself compiled lists of his books with notes which included selected quotations. These lists and notes were published by Toyo Bunko is three volumes, in 1944, 1956, and 1957.

Maema first donated part of his collection to Toyo Bunko in 1924 at the time of the founding of the Toyo Bunko library, and in 1942, following his death, members of his family donated other books.

This collection includes books that were formerly in the collection of the scholar of Asian history, Fujita Toyohachi (1869-1929). The collection includes 1,765 titles and a total of 21,669 volumes, including many rare editions. Among the rare books are a Ming reprint of a Song edition of the History of the Wei (魏書in 64 volumes); a 4-volume Yuan-dynasty edition of the Zhenguan Zhengyao (元刊本貞観政要), a Tang dynasty guide to good government; and a Ming edition of Dongyi Kaolue (明刊本東夷考略), an account of non-Han ethnic groups and their relations with the Han. Fujita was a leading researcher on China’s relations with Central Asia and the southern seas. He spent some time as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Taihoku Imperial University (Taiwan). The books were collected during his fifteen-year residence in China beginning in 1897. Fujita’s books were donated to Toyo Bunko following a stipulation in his will.

A Catalogue of the Fujita collection was compiled in 1930.

The Tōa Dōbun Kai, a private Japanese organization promoting exchange with China, published the Japanese language newspaper, Junten Jihō in Beijing. The newspaper took its name “Junten” from Shuntian Prefecture, where Beijing was located. The paper began to publish in 1901, with Nakajima Masao (1859-1943) as chief editor. Later responsibility for publication of the newspaper was taken over by the Japanese consulate, receiving economic support from the Japanese foreign ministry, and serving as a kind of official publication.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry in Beijing also published an English language newspaper, The North China Standard (華北正報)

At the end of March 1930, the Junten Jihō office in Beijing was closed. On that occasion, the head of the Junten Jihō, Watanabe Tesshin (1874-1957), donated collections of the two newspapers to the Foreign Ministry and Toyo Bunko. The Toyo Bunko received copies of the Junten Jihō from issues 743 to 9285 (August 17, 1905 to March 27, 1930) (a total of 250 issues) and a complete set of The North China Standard dating from December 1, 1919 to March 26, 1930 (a total of 124 issues).

This collection includes the books that were collected by the Japanese diplomat Nakada Yasukichi (1888-?). The collection includes 103 titles, and a total of 695 volumes, of “AnNam prints”, books published in central Vietnam. Most of the books are in Chinese, and this is one of the largest collections of books of this genre. Nakada had served as Japanese Consul General in Hanoi, Vietnam and was well-known for his deep knowledge of the history of French Indochina. The collection was donated to Toyo Bunko in 1934.

This collection of 258 volumes is related to Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold, a German doctor who visited Japan during the Edo period as a doctor with the Dutch trading post in Nagasaki.

In 1934 Irisawa Tatsukichi (1865-1938), a specialist in internal medicine and professor at Tokyo Imperial University, who was also serving on the board of the Japanese-German Cultural Association, saw these materials during a visit to Berlin. Irisawa borrowed the above collection and arranged for an exhibition in 1935 at the Imperial Museum in Ueno (now the Tokyo National Museum). During the exhibition, over the space of two years, copies were made of more than 300 titles (a total of 10,000 pages) and these copies were donated to Toyo Bunko.

This collection was donated by the family of Inoue Junnosuke (1869-1932), who served as Governor of the Bank of Japan and later Japanese Finance Minister. Inoue was the also the first Chairman of the Board of Toyo Bunko. The collection includes 1,610 titles (4,862 volumes) in Japanese, Chinese and western languages.

This collection includes the books of Odagiri Masunosuke (1868-1934), a diplomat and banker, who was also served as the first auditor for Toyo Bunko. Following Odagiri’s death in 1934, in 1936 his son Odagiri Takeshige (1897-1965) donated Odagiri’s library to Toyo Bunko. The Odagiri collection includes 1,254 Chinese titles (17,643 volumes), 454 titles of traditional Japanese books (1,830 volumes), and 4 titles in western languages, for a total of 20,000 volumes. There is a catalogue for the Odagiri collection (Odagiri Bunko Mokuroku).

This collection includes 191 handwritten letters exchanged between Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) and Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935). Hearn (known in Japanese as Koizumi Yakumo) came to Japan as a journalist, also working as an English teacher. He married and acquired Japanese citizenship. Through his writings he introduced Japanese culture to the western world. Chamberlain was a writer and translator.

These letters came into the Toyo Bunko collection with financial assistance from the Harada Sekizenkai Foundation and through the efforts of Ueda Kazutoshi (1866-1937) who was an advisor to that foundation, along with efforts by Sasaki Nobutsuna (1872-1963). In addition to these letters, Toyo Bunko has 36 titles (41 volumes) which were originally in the collection of Chamberlain and were purchased in 1944 and added to the Iwasaki Collection.

This collection includes 26 titles (159 volumes) in Chinese, Japanese and western languages that were donated to Toyo Bunko from the collection of Ueda Kazutoshi (1866-1937), a specialist in Japanese linguistics and national learning. Among the items in this collection is a series of Edo era maps of Karafuto, and an original copy of B. H. Chamberlain’s translation of the Kojiki.
Ueda researched and taught Japanese literature in what is now the Faculty of Humanities at Tokyo Imperial University. He was also an advisor to the Harada Sekizenkai Foundation, and one of the members of the Board of Toyo Bunko when it was founded. He studied with B.H. Chamberlain, the well-known translator and scholar who played a major role in introducing Japanese culture to the western world. Ueda acted as an intermediary in arranging the purchase of the letters between Lafcadio Hearn and Chamberlain. In 1938 Ueda’s widow Tsuruko and his son Hisashi donated the items mentioned above to Toyo Bunko.

The items in this collection belonged to the Buddhist Priest and explorer, Kawaguchi Eikai (1866-1945)
Kawaguchi, seeking to visit the one of the sources of Buddhist learning, made two trips to Tibet in 1901 and 1914, and brought back copies of the Tibetan Tripitaka. In 1940 he donated most of this collection to Toyo Bunko, including texts in Sanskrit and some printing blocks for the Tibetan scriptures. In addition to these copies, the Toyo Bunko collection of Tibetan scriptures includes copies of Derge imprints purchased in 1931, and Narthang imprints purchased in 1936. Toyo Bunko is one of the few libraries in the world to have such a rich collection of Tibetan scriptures.

The 370 books in Mongol, Japanese, Chinese and western languages in this collection belonged to the Suzue Mantarō (1886? - 1929?), an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army.
Suzue was a member of the expeditionary force to Siberia, where he collected information on Siberia and Mongolia. He was particularly interested in the movement for Mongol independence. Suzue developed relationships with many of the leading Mongol intellectuals. He also edited two dictionaries of the Mongol language. Some of his books were donated to Toyo Bunko following his death.

This collection of old Korean books belonged to Shidehara Taira (1870-1953), a specialist in Asian history and educational administrator.
In 1928, Shidehara was appointed as the first President of Taihoku Imperial University (Taiwan). In 1946 he was appointed as a Privy Counselor. Shidehara Taira was the younger brother of Shidehara Kijuro (1873-1951) who was a diplomat and politician. Shidehara Taira was the sixth Chairman of the Board of Toyo Bunko. His broad academic interests extended to the study of the history of Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan and Korea, and he was one of the founders of the study of Korean history in Japan. The Korean books which he donated to Toyo Bunko were acquired in 1941 while he was serving as an Academic Counselor to the Korean government.

This collection of several thousand volumes of books and journals in Chinese and Japanese belonged to the journalist Matsumura Tarō (?-1944). Matsumura spent several decades in China as a journalist for Junten Jihō and Kokumin Shinbun. The books in his collection were purchased from Beijing bookstores during his residence in China. From the time of the founding of Toyo Bunko, he assisted in the acquisition of books in China including traditional Chinese books, local gazetteers, genealogies, and a copy of the Ming Shilu. Matsumura returned to Japan in 1940 and donated his own collection of books to Toyo Bunko in 1943.

This collection of materials on modern China, includes books and journals from the time of the Opium War on which were acquired by the Modern China Research Group (formerly the Committee on Modern China).
Beginning in the early 1950s, Ichiko Chūzō and others, with the financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, began to collect materials to serve as the basis for the study of modern China. The Modern China Research Group has undertaken to digitize much of this collection, particularly Japanese language materials, and they are available for reading online. The materials that have been digitized can be searched through the Toyo Bunko OPAC as well as from the website of the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records of the National Archives of Japan.

This collection includes some 1800 titles in Japanese, Chinese and western languages collected by Fujii Naohisa (1894-1967), an expert on medical history. The collection includes a first edition of the Kaitai Shinsho, a Japanese translation of a German book on anatomy published in 1774 as well as a copy of another early Germany anatomy book Anatomische Tabellen. The books were donated to Toyo Bunko in 1957. Fujii was a professor at the Tokyo Medical University who devoted great effort to the study of history of the medical culture in Japan. He was the author of several books including a history of internal medicine before the Meiji period. The books in this collection can be searched from the Toyo Bunko website under Fujii Bunko (medical books).

This collection of materials was put together as part of a major research project to celebrate the centennial of the Meiji Restoration. The collection includes 4000 titles, 7000 vlumes of Japanese books. Most of the books are about Meiji, and special attention was given to collecting biographies. The books were donated to Toyo Bunko in 1959. Haneda Toru, a specialist in Asian history, and Ōkubo Toshiaki, a specialist in Japanese history, were members of the project.
There is a catalogue of the collection which is available on microfilm.

This important collection of materials on Thailand was a gift from Matsuda Yoshihisa, a Japanese entrepreneur resident in Thailand. In 1960 Toyo Bunko received a gift worth 100,000 Thai Bhats which was used to purchase this collection. The collection includes 973 bound volumes (1,465 titles). The collection includes Thai government publications which had been in the collection of Charas Pikul, a former Thai government official; a collection of materials on Thai law; a guide to cremation processes; and a series published by the Thai Ministry of Education. The series cover a wide range of fields including literature, history, religion, politics, biograpy, travel and linguistics, with a special stress on literature and history.

The 2,500 volumes in this collection were collected by the archaeologist Umehara Sueji (1893-1983). They were donated to Toyo Bunko in 1964.Umehara was born in Furuichi village in the Minakawachi District of Osaka, and was a professor at Kyoto University. He was one of the founders of the study of Asian archaeology in Japan, with a special interest in Chinese bronze vessels, and was the author of a number of books including A Study of Bronze Bells (銅鐸の研究). Other parts of Umehara’s library, including 35 volumes in Japanese and 1,669 volumes in western languages on western archaeology were donated to the library of Tohoku University.

This collection of 73 titles of Qing dynasty poetry was donated to Toyo Bunko by the family of the sake brewer Fujita Toyosaburō (1883-1956). Fujita, who was from Hirosaki in Aomori Prefecture, was very fond of Chinese poetry. He studied poetry on his own, while working in his family’s sake brewery. He was also a bibliophile, with a particular interest in Qing dynasty poetry. He used the courtesy name Gan Rei (巖嶺). Fujita was a relative of the well-known novelist Dazai Osamu, and his family home is preserved as Old Home of the Fujita family (Dazai Osamu’s Study House).

This collection of 133 titles were formerly owned by Kawaguchi Nobutada (1736-1811), a doctor practicing Dutch medicine and a specialist in anatomy. In 1965 his descendants donated the volumes to Toyo Bunko.
Kawaguchi was a native of Hizen Karatsu (now Karatsu in Saga Prefecture). From his grandfather’s generation members of the family had served as doctors for the Doi daimyo family of the Karatsu domain. Following a mandate from Doi Toshisato (1722-1777), he moved to Shimosu Koga (contemporary Ibaraki Prefecture). When Toshisato was transferred to serve as the Kyoto Soshidai (Personal representative of the Shogun in Kyoto), Kawaguchi moved to Kyoto where he began to study with Ogino Gengai (1737-1806), and together with his teacher conducted dissections on the corpses of executed criminals. In 1772 he published the second study of dissection by a Japanese author.

This collection of 12,000 volumes comes from the collection of the Sanskrit scholar Tsuji Naoshirō (1899-1979). The collection includes volumes on Indian languages and literature. Toyo Bunko purchased the collection following Tsuji’s death.
Tsuji made major contributions to the study of ancient India, and served as the eighth Chairman of the Toyo Bunko Board. He was the author of a number of books, including Studies of Vedas (ヴェーダ学論集), Sanskrit grammar, and Sanskrit literature.
The collection can be searched on the Toyo Bunko website –Tsuji Bunko/ Sanskrit)

This collection was the library of Iwami Takashi (1940-2017) a leading scholar of Islam. The collection includes 1300 volumes in Persian, 700 volumes in Arabic, and 450 volumes in European languages. Most of the books were published in the nineteenth century, including 60 rare lithographic editions. The library was donated to Toyo Bunko in 1989.
Iwami was a student of Izutsu Toshihiko (1914-1993) at Keio University.

This collection of sources related to Southeast Asia in general and the Philippines in particular originally formed the library of the Velarde family of Spanish missionaries active in Manila for over three generations. The collection contains sources covering a wide range of subjects spanning the 16th through 20th century, including social history, religion, economy, literature and ethnography of the region.
Negotiations to bring the collection to Japan began in 1938, resulting in its acquisition by the South Asia Cultural Research Institute (Meguro Ward, Tokyo) in April 1941. After the closing of the Institute in December 1945, it was taken into the custody of the family of Shiratori Kurakichi, the first head of the Toyo Bunko Research Department.
In 1998, his grandson, Shiratori Yoshiro, donated the 476-volume collection to the Toyo Bunko.

The 3,329 volumes on Southeast Asia in western languages were collected by G.E. Morrison’s second son, Alastair Morrison (1915-2009) and his wife. One third of the volumes concern Borneo, making this an important resource for the study of that region. In terms of subjects, the collection includes a broad selection of books on geography, history, and ethnology. Toyo Bunko purchased the collection in 1989, and prepared a catalogue for the books in this collection which was published in 2000.

This collection includes the books of the Asian historian Ogiwara Hiroaki (1921-1987) who was a scholar of Burmese (Myamar) history and linguistics. There are 612 titles in Burmese and 400 titles in European languages. Most of the materials in Burmese were published between 1940 and 1960. Ogiwara, who taught for many years at Kagoshima University, was a pioneer in the study of Burmese history. There is a catalogue of the collection prepared in 1993.

This collection of 30,000 volumes including Japanese, Chinese and Western language volumes, was compiled by Enoki Kazuo (1913-1989). Enoki was a specialist in the history of Central Asia. The library was donated to Toyo Bunko in 1990. While he was a student at Tokyo Imperial University Enoki studied with Shiratori Kurakichi. He later served as chief librarian of the Toyo Bunko Library and was the ninth Chairman of the Toyo Bunko Board. In both positions he played an important role in expanding the Toyo Bunko collections.
There is a catalogue of the Enoki collection prepared in 1999, and the collection can be searched on the Toyo Bunko website.

This collection includes 700 titles in western languages and Turkish that were in the library of Mori Masao (1921-1996), an expert on Turkish history. His family donated the collection to Toyo Bunko in 1997. Mori was a specialist in Turkish and Inner Asian history and served as a member of the Board of Toyo Bunko.

This collection includes 18,000 volumes in western languages, Annam-prints, and Chinese and Japanese books collected by the Asian historian Yamamoto Tatsurō (1910-2001). The collection focuses on Southeast Asia but includes a wide range of books on Asia. The books were donated to Toyo Bunko following the wishes of Professor Yamamoto. Yamamoto was a well-known expert on Southeast Asian history and served as a councilor of Toyo Bunko and as a member of the Board.
There is a catalogue of the collection, and the books can be searched under the category of “books donated by Yamamoto Tatsurō.

This 5000-volume collection was the library of the renowned French Sinologist Henri Cordier (1849-1925). The collection includes several “Inculaba”, that is books that were printed before the year 1500. The Cordier collection covers a wide range of subjects including geography, astronomy, history and literature. In 2019 the Cordier collection was transferred from the Eisei Bunko to Toyo Bunko. The Eisei Bunko was established by Hosokawa Moritatsu (1883-1970) who was the direct heir of the Hosokawa Domain in Kumamoto, and the seventh chairman of the board of Toyo Bunko. Moritatsu’s grandson, Hosokawa Morihiro (1938- )acted as an intermediary in arranging for the transfer of the Cordier collection, which had been managed by the Shidō Bunko at Keio University, to Toyo Bunko.