abstract

In this presentation, I would like to introduce the Japanese Canadian Researchers Directory & Bibliography – one of the key outcomes of the Ours to Tell Project whose primary goal is to ensure adequate representation of Japanese Canadians in the process of telling Japanese Canadian communities’ stories. The directory and bibliography can be used by anyone who expresses an interest in Japanese Canadian history (and other relevant disciplines), but it aspires to be a reference tool for outsiders, and individuals who are responsible for making decisions about policy and funding.

We will describe the trends of digital archives in Japan from 2019 to 2022 and report on the new research data of the National Museum of Japanese History (Rekihaku) and its future.

The collection of early modern Japanese books and manuscripts in the East Asia Department of Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin also contains about fifty handscrolls dating from the Edo-period. They were digitized during a project running from 2010 until 2014 and are freely available online to the public in the Digitized Collections of the library.

In 2004, the Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation began work on the digitization of the Denki shiryo. The 57 main volumes were made available online in 2016 as part of the Shibusawa Eiichi Denki Shiryo Digital Version and in 2018 work began on making the 10 supplementary volumes available online as well.
Photographs of Shibusawa Eiichi from the 10th supplementary volume were made available online in March 2022 as a result of a research project (“Building a Crowdsourcing Platform for the Annotation and Utilization of Archival Photographs”) by the Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation and the National Museum of Japanese History in collaboration with scholars in digital humanities.

Under the catchphrase "Make Digital Archives Blend into Everyday Life", Japan Search is a national platform that aggregates metadata from digital resources in various fields and provides an integrated search service, as well as APIs, and has a variety of functions in order to promote digital content usage.

During the Second World War, thousands of Jewish refugees could escape the Holocaust in Europe through Japan. The visas issued by Chiune Sugihara, Japanese vice-consul in Kaunas (Lithuania), are known as Visas for Life.

This presentation will be dedicated to share the insights of the implementation of the RITOJA.LT project, to discuss its importance and to present the usage of Japanese resources for wider audience.
One of the main features of RITOJA.LT is that it contains scholar research presented popularly. There were no designated sites for this matter and while the bilateral relations keep developing, the need for such a tool kept on growing as well.

With the growing number of Japanese tourists coming to Lithuania there was a growing need for the Japanese speaking guides. While there are courses for people who want to obtain a guiding license, there are no specialized courses nor material in Lithuanian language to get the specific knowledge for guiding in the Japanese language. The responsibilities of a tourist guide go beyond mere introduction of touristic places, and include communication with the tour attendants, interpretation, handling troubles, etc. Given the specifics of the Japanese language and culture and the complexity of tourism-related vocabulary the need for a textbook for guides in Lithuania was felt.

In 1808, Mamiya Rinzo (1775-1844), cartographer, was dispatched by the Tokugawa shogunate to survey northern Sakhalin; he confirmed that Sakhalin was an island in 1809. In a second mission, Mamiya left Soya (northernmost point of Hokkaido) and sailed into the mouth of the Amur River; he reached the Qing Chinese trading post at Deren, and returned to Soya in November 1809. At the time, Sakhalin was receiving increasing geopolitical and imperial attentions from both Western and regional states. Mamiya himself had experienced a Russian attack when stationed in Iturup island in 1807.

As objects assembled from diverse ephemeral materials, scrapbooks are bibliographical items wealthy in information that can be considered a material metaphor for the archive. In fact, scrapbooks' compelling materiality rise similar challenges regarding the discoverability of their often ignored unique contents.