Articles on East Asian collections in National Library of
Australia News, April 2005
The April 2005 issue of the monthly National Library of
Australia News, which is available in print and at
www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2005/apr05/apr05news.html
contains two articles relating to the Library's extensive collections about
Asia.
"Tibetan texts and travels" by Andrew Gosling introduces the
National Library's rich holdings about Tibet, including Tibetan, Chinese and
Western language works, and ranging from major sets of the Tibetan Buddhist
scriptures to writings by early European visitors.
"Mary Kawatani Kirby : a woman of two worlds" by Dr Keiko
Tamura traces the life of an interesting resident of Kobe who lived from 1882
to 1955, and who was discovered by Dr Tamura while carrying out research at the
National Library on the Harold S. Williams Collection about Western
interactions with Japan.
Progress report on Harold S. Williams (HSW) Project
The National Library of Australia is undertaking an exciting
project to strengthen its already extensive Western language holdings about
Asia. It is being funded by a trust established by Harold S. Williams
(1898-1987), distinguished Australian businessman, writer and collector who
lived most of his adult life in Japan. Williams donated his large library of
books, manuscripts, photographs and other items about Japan and the West to the
National Library. He set up the trust for the maintenance and further
development of this collection.
The HSW project began in September 2004. It is being
undertaken by Andrew Gosling, former Chief Librarian, Asian Collections in
collaboration with staff in Asian Collections and Technical Services. To date
over 600 titles published between the mid-nineteenth and early twenty-first
centuries have been selected.
Selections have been broadly based on the priorities of the
HSW Collection. These include the role of foreigners in Japan; the history of
interaction between Japan and the West; and writings by Western authors on
Japanese topics. The HSW Collection also reflects Williams' broader interest in
East Asia including China. To date the project has concentrated on English
language monographs and serials, with a small number of major titles in French
and German also selected. There has also been flexibility to allow the
selection of important publications about Asia which fall outside these topics.
Approximately one-third of selections have been on non-Japanese subjects,
particularly books about China and Southeast Asia. Japanese language sources on
Japan and the West are being acquired separately.
Recent printed and online catalogues of leading Asian
specialist booksellers in Australia, Japan, the UK and the USA have been
checked against the Library's catalogue for suitable titles. Professor Peter
Kornicki's online Bibliography of Japanese history up to 1912
(www.oriental.cam.ac.uk/jbib/)
has also been a useful source for selections, including older and more obscure
books on Western interaction with Japan. Some titles listed by booksellers were
found to have been sold already, but in many cases it has been possible to
acquire a copy through online services such as BiblioQuest, Abebooks or Amazon.
Harold Williams' greatest interest was the role of
foreigners in Japanese history. For the project many titles have been selected
by or about famous figures including the early Dutch Japanologist Isaac
Titsingh (1745-1812); Matthew Perry, the American naval commander who "opened
up" Japan in 1853-54; and the British 19th century scholar-diplomat in Japan
and China, Sir Ernest Satow, as well as biographies of the less well known such
as Henry Cook, first shipbuilder in Yokohama; Edward House, pioneering American
journalist in Meiji Japan, and Ranald MacDonald, the first native speaker to
teach English in Japan.
Commercial directories are a particular strength of the HSW
Collection. Williams was of course a businessman in Japan for most of his life.
For the project several valuable trade directories and catalogues published in
Japan between the 1890s and 1940s have been acquired.
Many 19th and 20th century works by and about Catholic and
Protestant missionaries in Japan and China have been selected. Australian and
overseas scholarly interest in the role of missionaries as important agents in
Asia’s modernization has increased in recent years. Titles selected
include several on the role of the Jesuits in East Asia, as well as a number on
Protestants in Japan, China and elsewhere in the region.
A number of selections have been made on the activities of
women in the region. Titles include: Fister’s Japanese women artists,
1600-1900 ; Sered’s Women of the sacred groves : divine priestesses
of Okinawa; Stevenson and Ho’s Crossing the bridge, comparing
medieval European and Japanese women writers; Tonomura’s Women and
class in Japanese history; as well as several studies of women missionaries
in East and Southeast Asian countries.
Several interesting titles relating to remoter parts of
northern Japan have been selected. They include books from 1884 and 1899 by
Edward Greey about Yezo (Hokkaido) and Karafuto (Sakhalin), the latter wholly
under Russian control since 1945; Landor’s A journey around Yezo and up
its largest rivers (1893); and Charles Hawes’ In the uttermost
east (1903), about northern Japan, Manchuria and Siberia.
Williams collected a number of guidebooks about Japan. Two
Allied Occupation period titles from the Japan Travel Bureau which have been
selected during the project are : Japan : the pocket guide (1946) and
How to see Kansai area : Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Nara (1949).
Many of the titles selected relate in some way to
Japan’s relations with other countries. They range from Hesselink’s
Prisoners of Nambu : reality and make-believe in seventeenth century
Japanese diplomacy to Hidaka’s Manchoukuo Soviet border issues,
published in Japanese-controlled Manchuria in 1938 and Laferber’s The
clash : the history of U.S. – Japan relations.
Several books published during and just after the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 have been selected. They include Craig’s
Russia and Japan (1906); Munroe’s For the Mikado (1905) and
Unger’s Russia and Japan, and a complete history of the war in the Far
East (1904). Aspects of Japan’s war in China in the 1930s and the
subsequent Pacific War (1941-1945) are seen in Five months of war : the
hostilities between Japan and China in narrative and picture published in
Shanghai in 1938; works about prisoners-of-war by Arnold Jordan and James
McEwan and Kiyota’s Beyond loyalty about America’s wartime
treatment of residents of Japanese descent.
Arts and crafts; architecture; ceramics; photography and
gardens are among the various aspects of Japanese culture included in the
selections. Titles on the cultural interaction between Japan and the West
include: Ayers’ Porcelain for palaces : the fashion for Japan in
Europe, 1650-1750; French’s Through closed doors : Western
influence on Japanese art, 1636-1853; and Wichmann’s Japonisme :
the Japanese influence on Western art since 1858.
Books on many other topics have been selected. Numerous
aspects of ancient and modern Japan are covered. Titles on other parts of the
region include biographies of major figures in early colonial Southeast Asia;
continuity and change during China's last dynasties, the Ming (1368-1644) and
the Manchu Qing (1644-1911); cultural finds from historical shipwrecks off
Indonesia and Vietnam; the role of the Mongols in Asian history; the Silk Road
from China through Central Asia to the West and studies of religious and ethnic
minorities in China and Southeast Asia.
The project has confirmed that the National Library's
English-language holdings on Japan and the West and more generally on East and
Southeast Asia are strong, while showing the value of checking and acquiring
important retrospective titles not in the collection.
The Theosophical Movement Connecting Asia and Australia
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the
theosophical movement influenced and connected Asia and Australia in ways now
largely forgotten. An article about some of these influences will appear in the
January 2006 National Library of Australia News and its online version at
www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/.
The article, by Andrew Gosling, is based on the National Library's extensive
holdings about theosophy, which were greatly strengthened in 2003 by the
donation of the Dr John Cooper Theosophy Collection. Cooper was a leading
historian and collector of books, periodicals, pamphlets, papers and
photographs about theosophy in Australia and internationally.
The Theosophical Society, founded in 1875 by Madame
Blavatsky and others, but drawing on much older Eastern and Western ideas about
direct knowledge of God, teaches that all religions and philosophies are
reflections of a greater and secret truth. Theosophy has placed a strong
emphasis on Asian beliefs, in particular Buddhism and Hinduism. Dr Cooper's
collection includes many titles about East Asia, particularly Tibetan, Japanese
and Chinese Buddhism. |