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Graduate Guide for Japanese Studies: Home

This guide focuses on supporting reserach on Japanese Studies at the graduate level. Users are expected to somewhat familiar with scholarly publishign formats and synthesizing reserach.

Search for Japanese Materials Effectively

Start with the Libraries Search Engine, OneSearch. You can type in any language, romanized or in the vernacular script.

Japanese Sources Included in OneSearch Results:

JAIRO (Japanese Institutional Repositories Online)

English Sources Included in OneSearch Results:

Other Search Engines You Should Use:

WorldCat.org

Brings the holdings of libraries around the world together in one search engine, though only a few from Japan are represented. Use the "Request through ILLiad" feature to streamline your interlibrary loan requests:

Only a few Libraries in Japan are represented. Use the search engines below to fully explore scholarly materials held in Japan.

CiNii Articles

Comprehensive index of articles published in Japanese scholarly journals. Open access and public domain materials have full-text access. Submit an ILL request for other materials.

NDL Search

The Library Catalog for the National Diet Library of Japan. With comprehensive holdings, it is a good place to start to see the scope of what exists on a topic you are researching.

Not getting the results needed? Try these other Search Engines:

Web NDL Authorities

Confirm the names of people, places, corporate entities, etc. Gives pronunciation of all kanji, and katakana transliterations iof non-Japanese names. Also provides alternate names such as pen-names/self chosen names (称号 / shōgō, or just 号 / gō), nick-names (字 / azana) often bestowed by a teacher/master. See the entry for the artist Hokusai as an example.

WorldCat Identities

See an author's personal timeline: what they have written and what has been written about them. Like the NDL Authorities search tool above, it will also present alternative names that people go by. Relationships with others will be listed, though the nature of that relationship may not be explained. Subject Associations will also be included.

Example: See the record for Aizawa Seishisai. One of the related individuals is Fujita Tōko, but you'll have to do some investigating to learn that he was a mentor of Aizawa. The Associated Subjects section at the bottom reveals more about the author, and the links there will search WorldCat.org for materials that are described with the same subject. Generic subjects like Politics and government and Diplomatic relations won't yield much, but more specific terms like Mitogaku (水戸学) and Shinron (Aizawa, Yasushi) connect to meaningful materials that will help advance your research.

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Japanese & Korean Studies Librarian

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303-492-8822