The Historiographical Institute, the University of Tokyo, has built a foundation for research use by surveying, reproducing, and cataloguing Japanese historical materials held by institutions in Japan and abroad. This presentation examines how the Institute publishes historical images and related data for materials whose originals are held by institutions other than the Institute itself.
Since the time of the Man'yōshū, Mount Fuji has been a constant subject of literary works. As Japan’s most iconic mountain, it has come to symbolize the very essence of the country. Poetry, in particular, has played a significant role in this regard. The kana preface to the Kokin Wakashū, the canonical collection of waka poetry, states that one’s feelings of love are likened to the smoke rising from Mount Fuji, and that those who hear the smoke has ceased to rise find solace in waka poetry. The question of whether Mount Fuji’s smoke is rising or not is addressed in a subtle manner. Below, we will examine how people who actually saw Mount Fuji described its smoke.
The data of the “Meiji-Portraits” portal was originally compiled by Bernd Lepach until 2022 based on his own research and presented on the website of the same name (http://meiji-portraits.de/). Mediated by Erich Pauer, who repeatedly supported Bernd Lepach in his work, and Regine Mathias (Vice-President "Études Japonaises", Centre Européen d'Études Japonaises d'Alsace (CEEJA)) the Specialist Information Service Asia (FID Asia) took over this data and stored it. Its transformation into the present website took place in 2025 as part of the work package “SOLR as a Service” during the project phase 2025-2027 of the FID Asia.
This presentation examines the impact that records concerning Hirado’s trade history have had on research into 19th century foreign relations. Hirado was a trading port until the Dutch Factory moved to Deshima in Nagasaki. Research on Hirado can be divided into two areas: studies of trade based on documents from Dutch and English factories, and studies of domain administration based on documents from the Matsura family (the lords of Hirado).
However, local historical documents in Hirado city have not yet been transcribed, meaning they cannot be used to their full potential for research purposes.
This study examines the following three points using both documents from townspeople and documents from the Matsura family.
In 1906, the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo took over a project compiling diplomatic documents from the late Edo period from the Japanese government. The Institute has continued to compile and publish Dai Nihon Komonjo: Bakumatsu Gaikoku Kankei Monjo (Documents relating to Foreign Affairs in the Last Days of the Shogunate, 1853-68).
The project’s primary source material is now the collection known as ‘Gaimu-shō Hikitsugi Shorui’, which was transferred from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Institute alongside the project. The collection consists of approximately 3,000 items, primarily in book form, and includes valuable original documents from the late Edo period, such as those produced by Shogunate officials responsible for diplomacy and letters received from diplomats stationed in Japan.
近世日本における蔵書家は、単に稀少本を愛好する個人という枠を超え、地域における「知の拠点」として極めて重要な役割を担っていた。彼らは京都や江戸の最新刊から古写本までを網羅的に収集し、中央の高度な知識を地方へ還流させる文化的なハブとして機能したのである。蔵書家のもとには自然と学者や文人が集まり、書物を媒体とした読書会や研究会が頻繁に催された。こうした私設図書館や文化サロンの存在が、当時の日本全体の教養水準を底上げしたといえる。
In recent years, the University of Tokyo has been actively promoting the digitization of its institutional materials and making a wide range of resources available through the UTokyo Digital Archive Portal. In 2025, the General Library released the complete set of the “Briefe” from the A. v. Siebold-related materials on this portal.
This “Briefe” consisting of diverse paper fragments in both content and form, has been catalogued and transcribed in Acta Sieboldiana (edited by Ruhr University Bochum). However, it has been revealed that the digital images include items not covered in Acta Sieboldiana.
The first photographic image of Japan emerged from Dutch–Japanese collaboration in pioneering photography on the island of Dejima. In the 1850s, photography was taught within the framework of the earliest 'Dutch studies': education in modern science and technology provided by Dutch physicians at the medical clinic on Dejima to selected groups of Japanese students. Dr Jan Karel van den Broek (1814–1865) installed a photographic darkroom in the clinic. Using chemicals from Dejima’s pharmacy and European photographic manuals, Dutch and Japanese practitioners worked together as pioneers. These experiments marked the emergence of photography in Japan.
During the period of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868), Japan largely followed isolationist policies. Only the Chinese and the Dutch were allowed to trade with the Japanese. In 1609, the VOC opened their first trading post in Hirado. In 1641 they moved to the artificial, fan-shaped island Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. Several officials at Dejima collected Japanese maps and sent them home to the Netherlands. One of the most active map collectors at Dejima was Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866), a German physician, botanist and geographer who lived in Nagasaki between 1823 and 1829.
Von Siebold was a German medical doctor who stayed at Dejima, a Dutch trading post in Japan, from 1823 to 1829. We present our materials relating to von Siebold mainly through Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF).
First of all, we present three French translations of von Siebold’s letters from the 1820s. Two letters are addressed to Baron van der Capellen (1778-1848), former Commissioner-General of the Dutch East Indies, and one letter is addressed to Baron von Derfelden van Hinderstein (1783-1857), chairman of the Central Commission of the Société de Géographie. These three letters on the works of von Siebold in Japan, published in the “Bulletin de la Société de Géographie,” will serve as the introduction to our presentation. After returning to the Netherlands, his research in Japan bore fruit as “Nippon” in the 1830s.