Written by Professor Tom Gally, University of Tokyo, and Katie Barrett, Internet Archive & JET Program Alum Translations by Tomoki Sakakibara, University of Tokyo
(日本語はページ下部にあります。 Scroll down for Japanese version.)
As our global society grows ever more connected, it can be easy to assume that all of human history is just one click away. Yet language barriers and physical access still present major obstacles to deeper knowledge and understanding of other cultures, even on the world wide web. That is why the Internet Archive is thrilled to announce a new partnership with the University of Tokyo General Library. Spearheaded by Masaya Nakatake as a member of the UTokyo Academic Archives Project Office, the Internet Archive partnership provides expanded access and a digital backup for some of the library’s most precious artifacts.
Since June 2020, our Collections team has worked in tandem with library staff to ingest thousands of digital files from the General Library’s servers, mapping the metadata for over 4,000 priceless scrolls, texts, and papers. The collection, representing meticulous digitization efforts by Japanese historians and scholars, showcases hundreds of years of rich Japanese history expressed through prose, poetry, and artwork.
Most of the works are written in Japanese, but some of them include illustrations that can be appreciated by anyone now. A search through the collection for 地震 (jishin, “earthquake”), for example, yields a fascinating set of depictions of earthquakes and their impact in past centuries.
In one satirical illustration, thought to date from shortly after the 1855 Edo earthquake, courtesans and others from the demimonde, who suffered greatly in the disaster, are shown beating the giant catfish that was believed to cause earthquakes. The men in the upper left-hand corner represent the construction trades; they are trying to stop the attack on the fish, as rebuilding from earthquakes was a profitable business for them.
Other highlights are high-resolution images from the Kamei Collection of original etchings from Opere di Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Francesco Piranesi e d’altri, originally published by Firmin Didot Freres in Paris between 1835 and 1839.
We hope this partnership and collection will expand access to history and culture from Japan and spur a new generation of usage and scholarship.
About the University of Tokyo General Library
The University of Tokyo was established in 1877 as the first national university in Japan. As a leading research university, UTokyo offers courses in essentially all academic disciplines at both undergraduate and graduate levels and conducts research across the full spectrum of academic activity. The University of Tokyo Library System is composed of 30 libraries, with the General Library being the largest among them. While providing services to the researchers and students of UTokyo, the General Library also plays a central role in the operation and management of the Library System. The General Library’s history can be traced back nearly 130 years to the university’s founding and it now houses approximately 1.3 million books, including rare collections inherited from academies in the Edo period.
About the Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is one of the largest libraries in the world and home of the Wayback Machine, a repository of 475 billion webpages. Founded in 1996 by Internet Hall of Fame member Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive now serves more than 1.5 million patrons each day, providing access to 70 petabytes of data—books, web pages, music, television, and software—and working with more than 800 library and university partners to create a digital library, accessible to all. To make a donation to the Internet Archive, please visit https://archive.org/donate/
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