Research Tools

Modern Japanese Literature Research Tools

Many of the tools below are restricted to UW users. Other users may have access through their institutions.

UW Library Japan Studies Page: Various pieces of useful information about Japanese-language materials in the University of Washington library system, including a page dedicated to Japanese Media Studies.

Japan Knowledge: Comprehensive reference includes dictionaries (Japanese, English-Japanese and Japanese-English); the Nihon dai hyakka zensho (Nipponica), a full text 30 vol. encyclopedia; two dictionaries of current words: Imidas and Gendai yôgo no kiso chishiki; a biographical dictionary: Nihon jinmei daijiten; the JK Who’s Who; the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan; Edo-Tokyo kasane chizu(overlay map), full-text of books in the Tôyô bunko series; chronologies (world history, Japan by period, Japan by prefecture, science, culture, society, daily life, social movements, economics and for individuals); a database of video (TV, news) recordings from 1908 to 2004; database of dissertations from the humanities departments of six universities in Japan; URL database; books in print database; and more.

Japan Search links digital archives in the publications, cultural properties, and media arts fields and organizes metadata of varying of contents preserved by Japanese institutions and organizations into a searchable national, integrated and cross-sectoral portal website.

J-STAGE is an online platform for Japanese academic journals. Provides access to articles from such journals as Nihon kindai bungaku, Nihon bungaku, and Shōwa bungaku, among many others.

Yomidasu: Database of Yomiuri shinbun 1874 to the present: image format from 1874 to 1989; full text 1986 to the present, along with the English-language Daily Yomiuri (Sept. 1989- to the present), both searchable by article, keyword, subject category, and issue.

Nikkei Newspapers Digital Archive: The Nikkei Newspapers Digital Archive (NNDA) is a project of the Hokubei Hochi (North American Post) Foundation and the University of Washington Libraries. The newspapers, North American Times (1902-1942) and North American Post (1946-1950), were published primarily in Japanese, with occasional, and then regularly appearing, pages published in English. Translation summaries (English) are provided for some front page stories. You may search by browsing the individual issues. They hope to provide additional search features in the future. This project is a “work-in-progress” as issues continue to be scanned and will continually be added to this public collection.
Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection: The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection is currently the world’s largest online archive of open-access, full image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers in Asia and South America. Image content in this collection is accompanied by OCR-generated text where possible, thus rendering the text searchable.

Cambridge History of Japan: All the available volumes are grouped into topics, making it quick and easy to search and browse through an array of historical subject areas. The extensive bibliographic referencing and other leading functionality, enhances usability and makes this resource ideal for any type of historical research.

Literary Criticism Database: An extensive database of criticism on Japanese literature written between 1912-2004. A service of the National Institute of Japanese Literature.

Japanese Magazine Plus: Japanese Magazine Plus is the largest database of periodicals and academic articles in Japan.

CiNii Research: A single interface that searches critical articles, books, and dissertations (CiNii), research papers (Kaken), discipline-specific journals (Nii-DBR), and the Institutional Repositories Database (IRDB).

Web OYA-bunko: A searchable database of some of the magazine holdings of the Ōya Sōichi Bunko. It covers over 5,000,000 articles from the Meiji period to the present, with a particular focus on “popular” magazines.

Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism: The Online Guide contains more than 240 alphabetically arranged entries on critics and theorists, critical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods.

Modern Digital Library: A vast collection of digitized Japanese-language materials, some of which are freely available for download. A service of the National Diet Library. For more information, see Henry Smith‘s FAQ. Their Next Digital Library initiative allows for full-text search of 350,000 prewar materials.

Bibliography of Asian Studies: A database of scholarly articles, primarily in English, written since 1971.

JSTOR: Fully searchable database of scholarly articles in English, though omitting the most recent issues.

JACAR: Japan Center for Asian Historical Records. “A digital database testifying to Japan’s historical relations in Asia as well as elsewhere. This site provides access to official documents of the Japanese Cabinet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Army and Navy.”

Japanese Literature in Translation: Fully searchable database of translations of Japanese literature into foreign languages, provided by the Japan Foundation and the Japan PEN Club.

Digital Dissertations: A comprehensive index to dissertations and theses from all fields of study. The full text version includes 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations from 1861 to present day with more than 1 million full text dissertations that are available to download in PDF format.

The Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo has a variety of free databases available online. One of the most useful is the Glossary of Premodern Japanese Historical Terms (MS Excel file), which contains major existing translations for historical terms, with approximately 25,000 entries from over 70 works in English, French, and German.

Aozora Bunko: Library of copyright-expired modern Japanese literature in various digital formats.

Jcross Used Book Search: Simultaneously searches more than thirty used book sites in Japan, including Kosho And Booktown. Note that it does not search Super Genji.

Hiramatsu Yôko’s website: When you absolutely, positively need to find an obscure reading of Japanese characters. Not for the faint of heart. Here is her list of links to other sites about reading characters.

For authors using Japanese in their English publications, both Monumenta Nipponica and the Journal of Japanese Studies have great style sheets available.

Image Database of Japanese Clothing Culture in the Modern Age: Ever wonder what the article of clothing you see mentioned in a story actually looked like? Or what the wearing of it meant? This database will not only give you images, but explanations.

For scholars planning on using images from Japan in their publications, the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources hosts a useful guide to what image permissions are necessary and how to obtain them here.

Japan’s National Diet Library’s Historical Recordings Collection. 50,000 sound recordings of music, speeches, recitations, and other historical audio recordings.

Computer translation between Japanese and English is still far from perfect, but MiraiTranslate is far better than Google Translate. It is driven by technology developed by Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). DeepL might be even better still.
Ever wanted to do a Japanese Ngram search? Now you can.