2024

In 2023 the Language of Cataloguing Taskforce (LoCT) was set up in the British Library to look at existing rules for the derivation of non-Roman script cataloguing records from other libraries with the aim of finding new sources of records (our main sources hitherto being OCLC including LC records and, for Japanese, NACSIS records). Particular attention was paid to whether it would be possible to use records whose language of cataloguing (as found in MARC 21 field 040$b) was not eng (English) and if so which fields would need to be altered. This would be a major difference from cataloguing practice hitherto.

Although multilingualism or multi-scriptiality is a constitutive factor for research, teaching, learning, and working in all academic institutions, academic infrastructures such as (university) libraries have been developed primarily by and for English and Latin script. This has resulted in a tremendous gap in resource findability between Latin and non-Latin scripts.
This affects not only the accessibility of library holdings in non-Latin scripts like Japanese, but also the rising scholarly field of digital humanities and (digital) social sciences in the area studies disciplines, which are dependent on the use of multilingual (meta)data, multilingual digital tools (platforms, software, ...) and, in particular, the use of non-Latin scripts in digital environments.

日本語教授法で人口知能の使用

The Centre Européen d’études japonaises d’Alsace holds about 135,000, making it one of the biggest Japanese studies libraries in Europe. Its holdings are an aggregate of several components. The oldest comprises books from the former boarding school of Lycée Seijo d'Alsace. These were meant to serve as reference materials for the boarding schools pupils. They constitute a wealth of reference works, of encyclopaedias on a wide range of topics, as well as anthologies and collections of Japanese literature.
Several more donations were added. In 2020, Christiane Séguy donated her books on the Meiji period. The library also received a large collection of several hundred volumes from professor Hayami Akira related to economic and social history, and historical demography, and recently the personal library of Hidemura Senzô (1922-2021).
Although the various above-mentioned components are impressive, they are dwarfed by the personal library of Regine Mathias and Erich Pauer. Regine Mathias is a specialist in economic history of Japan, and Erich Pauer is an expert on the history of technology in in modern Japan. Although their library covers just about all major areas of Japanology, it is especially the studies and resource materials that are related to their respective fields of research that are extensive and rare among Japanese studies libraries in Europe.
I will introduce the richness and especially the specific characteristics of this library, I will give an overview of its constituent components, present its main sources, and highlight its strengths.

In Osaka during the early modern period, there were many academic institutions where townspeople taught, townspeople learned, and townspeople financed and operated. The Tekijuku school of Ogata Koan, the Kaitokudo school of Nakai Kouken and others, and the Gonsuidou school of Hiranogo are representative of such institutions. Osaka University is a national university founded along these lines.
Currently, there are several collections in the Osaka University Library. The above-mentioned three collections of academic institutions are also divided and collected by several faculties, libraries, and research institutes of Osaka University. However, while the collections of the Osaka academies are an intellectual legacy that is vast in both quality and quantity and retains the value of unexplored research, because of the wide variety of fields involved, they have never been comprehensive, and no unified database exists.
In addition, of the bunko that have already been digitized, only the Akagi bunko (Ko-joruri Shohon), Oshinjoji bunko, Ono bunko (Edo period song books, stylish books, etc.), Sasano bunko (approximately 200 joruri books), and Tekijuku-related materials are available from the National Institute of Japanese Literature's Kokusho database.
Therefore, there are many issues to be addressed in the future, such as the longitudinal use of materials that have been made available to the public in the form of images. In this presentation, I would like to report on the current status and future prospects.

Umeda Noriko was one of the pioneering speech scientists who first automated a range of voices – such as male, female, and child – in speech synthesis. She earned a PhD in linguistics from the University of Tokyo and initially worked at the Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL, 電気試験所). Her significant contributions at ETL led to her recruitment by Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL). After moving to the US, Umeda and her team developed groundbreaking technologies in the 1970s, including the origins of female voice and natural speech in computer synthesis, as well as audio interfaces for blind individuals. Her remarkable work marks an early era in the history of AI. Later, Umeda became a professor of linguistics at New York University and later director of the Institute for Speech and Language Sciences.

We are interested in how early Japanese books (wakosho) contributed to the development of Japanese studies in Europe. As part of the "Japonisme" craze, a lot of Japanese sword-guards (tsuba) were collected in the late 19th century as well as ukiyo-e prints, netsukes, etc. and studies on them started in early 20th century in Europe. One of earliest Japanese research works on "tsuba" was Matsumiya Kanzan's book-form manuscript which was titled as "Tōban Shinpin Zukan" (it was also titled as "Tōban Shōkan Kuketsu", "Tōban Zufu", "Tōban Zukan"). Even in Japan, modern authentic studies on "tsuba" started only around the turn of the 20th century using "wakosho" on them.

Although traditional performing arts continue to be a vital part of Japanese culture, as in the rest of Asia, many genres are threatened by extinction due to the lack of successors and interest among the young generation. Specialists and practitioners have engaged in digitalizing textual and visual materials and creating databases, thus facilitating the research on the various forms and contributing to their popularization. There is a significant gap, however, between the systematic digitalization of the major genres, such as kabuki and noh, for example, and the myriad of local performing arts. The purpose of this presentation is two-fold. The first is to overview and compare main electronic resources for the classical theatre, focusing on kabuki. On the other hand Japan boasts a rich culture of regional performing arts minzoku geinō or kyōdo geinō, staged at festivals. The majority of these, however, remain relatively unknown and many are seriously endangered. The second goal of my presentation is to address the dearth of online resources for these kyōdo geinō, by overviewing the few available web sites, and to explore the possibility for creating a comprehensive interactive database of these forms, in Japanese and English. In order to assist their popularization and preservation, its function should be not only to provide detailed information about their history and features, but also to serve as a platform for digital connectivity between performers, local communities, researchers, tourists, and other potential stakeholders.

The Historiographical Institute (HI) and the Institute of Social Science (ISS) at the University of Tokyo are now working on the ‘Program for Strengthening Data Infrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences’ as core institutions from 2023. The predecessor was the ‘Program for Constructing Data Infrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences’, which piloted a comprehensive infrastructure for sharing and utilizing research data in humanities and social sciences in Japan. One notable outcome is the release of the Japan Data Catalog for the Humanities and Social Sciences (JDCat), which, as of April 2024, had 34,293 data and datasets registered.
The current project aims to enhance and strengthen this research infrastructure that has been established. The HI has been releasing data mainly from Japanese historical materials, while the ISS has been compiling and releasing data from social surveys and other sources. In addition to datasets of HI and ISS, they also release research data commissioned by other institutions. Furthermore, they will lead institutions that handle humanities and social science data to sustainably and comprehensively strengthen the research infrastructure of Japan as a whole.

In March 2024, the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) launched the new "Nichibunken Digital Archive," an IIIF-based archive of image materials in our collection. Currently, the archive includes the contents of "Yoshida Hatsusaburō Bird's-eye View Maps," "Picture Scrolls," and "Folklore Illustrations" databases and will be expanded in the future. The presentation will introduce its functions and future development.
The presenter is researching and partially implementing machine learning and generative AI technologies for our text databases to facilitate advanced search and content understanding, as well as knowledge discovery using digital humanities methods.