2024

This presentation will introduce and discuss the challenges of preserving and utilizing Japanese local mingu materials and the efforts to open up and share information on them. Everyday objects, such as tableware, utensils, tools and equipment for livelihood, clothes, adornments, and furniture made and used through people's daily lives, are called "mingu" in Japanese folklore and museums. They are significant materials through which we can interpret the culture and changes of people's living in a certain time span or space. Therefore, mingu, especially those made and used before the drastic changes in people's lifestyle during the high economic growth after WW2, were collected throughout the country and preserved in each region to protect them from disappearance.

The latest trends and future prospects of NACSIS-CAT/ILL and the E-resources Data Sharing Services

The National Diet Library (NDL) has several services that provide patrons with digital data, including access via the Internet to materials whose copyright protection has expired and a Digitized Contents Transmission Service available both to Libraries and to Individuals. In addition, we are planning on allowing users to download digital materials in PDF format as part of our Remote Photoduplication Service.
The Digitized Contents Transmission Service for Libraries/Individuals is a service that allows digitized materials that are within the copyright protection period but are difficult to obtain due to being out of print or other reasons to be viewed or printed out at a library that has been approved by the NDL or at a personal terminal. In April 2024, it became possible for overseas libraries to apply for a usage category that allows printing out.
The Remote Photoduplication Service (PDF download) is a service that provides users with digital data (PDF files) of a portion of a copyrighted work created by scanning or other means. Although there are some exceptions, many of the materials in our collection are available for use. With the revised Copyright Act that came into effect in 2023, it became possible to provide patrons with digital copies via the internet, including by email.
This time, we will mainly introduce recent developments in the Digitized Contents Transmission Service for Libraries/Individuals and the features of the Remote Photoduplication Service (PDF download) service.

For historical paper-based materials, we are conducting research to analyse their components using natural scientific methods, predominantly optical techniques, to provide fundamental data for restoration. Recently, we analysed the components and constituents of historical paper-based materials through archaeology and cultural heritage science, material structure analysis, botany and genome analysis, and data science methods. In addition, efforts are underway to standardise scientific information such as numerical data and integrate it into our database. This presentation introduces HI’s restoration and conservation techniques for historical paper-based materials. In collaboration with the EAJRS Conservation/Preservation Working Group, it establishes a consultation service aimed at assisting European institutions facing challenges in conserving and restoring historical paper-based materials, while also contemplating the global dissemination of conservation techniques in this age of digital connectivity.

In recent years, the National Diet Library (NDL) has been engaged in the large-scale digitization of Japanese publications and the creation of their text data. The current goal is to complete the digitization of books published in Japan in 2000 or earlier as soon as possible. 3.9 million materials including books, journals and doctoral theses have been digitized already, some of which are available on the internet. Detailed searches of these materials require text data.
The 2018 amendment to the Copyright Act allows text data on digitized materials to be created and used for searching without the permission of the copyright holder. In response, the National Diet Library has created text data for 2.57 million digitized materials and is using it for full-text search services of digitized materials in the National Diet Library Digital Collections. In addition, the National Diet Library Material Search for Persons with Disabilities (Mina Search) allows those who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic, or otherwise print disabled to download text data themselves or through libraries. The text data of newly digitized materials will continue to be produced.

As a new service to researchers in the field of Asian studies the Specialised Information Service Asia (Fachinformationsdienst (FID) Asien) which is managed by the East Asia Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin offers the CrossAsia Open Access Repository since summer 2022. Recommended by the German Research Foundation its goal is to provide open, free-of-charge and long-term access to quality scholarly materials from all fields of social sciences, cultural studies and humanities related to Asia. Nevertheless the views and expectations of information specialists, users and researchers concerning the Repository differ to some extent. In this talk the framework of its implementation, the reactions from the research community and the obstacles as well as the merits of promoting this new service will be shared.

The mission of our journal is two-fold: to make scholarship on Japanese Studies written in English available to scholars all over the world, and to make Japanese scholarship accessible to Anglophone readership through translation of original Japanese scholarship. As a result, Japanese Studies will not be limited only to Japan and will be able to reach the world.
This presentation will discuss 1) How we modernize Monumenta Nipponica by utilizing digital connectivity to make Japanese Studies in the humanities widely available and accessible to the world; 2) How we continue to explore the possibilities, limitations, and hazards in the rapid development of AI; 3) How we upheld editorial and publication traditions to maintain the highest standard of publication. This presentation will include a Q&A about the journal for potential contributors and interested researchers.

In contemporary higher education, key skills include being able to apply knowledge and use a variety of resources, which are also needed in the world of work. This paper presents the case of an applied project course for master's level students at the University of Helsinki in spring 2024. This course aimed to support students in improving competences in using Japanese resources. In the course, students majoring in Japanese language or Japanese studies were tasked with planning and organizing the "Japanese Stories about Food Seminar", which was open to the public. They were also responsible for managing related events, such as online exhibition of Japanese materials brought from Japan by the seminar lecturers and materials held by the Finnish National Library. Finally, the students translated lectures from the seminar to be published later on various channels.

The name of Ariga Nagao (有賀長雄, 1860-1921), a Japanese jurist and sociologist, rarely appears in books on the history of Japanese intellectual thought. My attention to him was attracted due to the translation of his work "On Bungaku" (『文學論』, August 1885) as "Theory of Literature" (Bugaeva, Dagmara. Japanese Publicists of the late 19th Century. Moscow, "Nauka", 1978). For a long time, I truly believed that "On Bungaku" was the only main paper on Confucianism and its role in the development of modern Japan. However, I changed my point of view after discovering Ariga's "The Correct Vision of China. Complete works" (『支那正觀全』, 1918), where "On Bungaku" was published together with "On Philosophy of Confucius" (『聖門哲學論』, December 1885) as appendixes to the final work "The Correct Vision of China". Consequently, "On Bungaku" became an introduction to his study of the foundations European and Chinese-Japanese civilizations and their interaction, in which Ariga presents the "ideal model of culture" (by Seki Ryōichi).

EAJRS panel discussions have been held several times until last year, but this year we would like to think together about topics that we could not fully discuss due to time constraints.
The term "open science" has been used for some time now, but when libraries consider supporting open science, what kind of skills are required? This panel discussion aims to consider, with a view to preceding studies such as "Time to Adopt: Librarians’ New Skills and Competency Profiles" (Schmidt et al. 2016), what skills librarians will need in the future in the following areas:
Citizen science
Data/AI literacy
Digital humanities