Bibliography and Digital Libraries

The Digital Collection features high-resolution images of our special collections.

The World Digital Library is a collaborative project aiming to provide primary materials from all countries and cultures.

The Digital Silk Road Project, a joint project of Toyo Bunko and the National Institute of Informatics, is a project aiming to digitise materials connected to the Silk Road.

The Union Catalogue of Early Japanese Books is a catalogue of manuscripts and printed materials produced by Japanese people prior to the Meiji period. It catalogues materials that belong to public archives and libraries in Japan.

The Daiber Collection Database is a collection of Arabic manuscripts on Islam collected by Professor Hans Daiber. This database offers a description of each manuscript and image. Images of each manuscript can be seen by clicking ‘画像’ next to the number of the manuscript in question.

The National Diet Library (NDL) Digital Collections is the gateway for digitised images and their bibliographical information of items stored in the NDL.

The Digital Library of Classical Chinese Materials, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, provides descriptions and digitised images of 4630 rare Classical Chinese works of the institute holdings (as of March 2009). Only the first page of materials is offered in colour

The Kyoto University Digital Library provides thematic exhibitions from the library’s rare book collection. Additional materials are available on its Japanese website.

The Tohoku University Library Digital Collection is a cross search gateway for the library’s digitised collections, all of which include either rare books or historical documents collections. A description of each database is provided on the ‘Database list’ page

Kobe University Library Digital Archive is a gateway for its online databases. Whilst some databases are not available in English, the ‘Digital Archive Cross Searching’ database offers information in English.

Kotenseki Sogo Database, or the Japanese and Chinese Classics Database, is a digital library from the collection of Waseda University Library; it contains one of the largest collections of Japanese and Chinese Classics in the country.