Japanese Studies Research Guide: Find Books
Access Books
- CLIO : library web : Columbia University Libraries online catalog. This link opens in a new windowColumbia's online catalog for books, journals, films, music, databases, and archives. CLIO also provides access to holdings of Harvard, Princeton and New York Public Library though shared offsite shelving facility.
Most of Japanese language materials are cataloged both in Japanese as well as in romanization (modified Hepburn System by Library of Congress), however, it is more effective to use Romanized Japanese keyworkds when searching CLIO. Romanization tables are available in appendix section of Japanese Romanization Table (2022) document. - Borrow Direct. This link opens in a new windowBorrow Direct is a rapid delivery service that allows patrons from participating libraries to check the availability of and request books from the combined catalogs of Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, Penn, Brown, University of Chicago, and MIT.
- WorldCat. This link opens in a new windowSearch for books, journals, films, music, databases, and archives at other North American academic and research libraries and some major libraries in Japan.
Find Books
- CiNii ResearchCiNii Research is an academic information search platform for knowledge discovery provided by the National Institute of Informatics.
It includes CiNii Books which enables you to search for about 13.24 million academic resources, including books, journals and classic manuscripts, held by over 1300 university and research libraries in Japan. - NDL SEARCH (国立国会図書館サーチ)About NDL Search
NDL Search allows you to search for physical and digital materials held by the National Diet Library as well as collections of libraries nationwide.
Updated: 1/17/2024 - WINE (Waseda University Library interface)WINE is the Waseda University Library's main search interface for Library collections and academic resources. The new version of WINE was launched in September, 2019. It no longer provides readings of Japanese names in detailed display. CiNii Books and OCLC WorldCat may not cover the entire holdings of Waseda University Library. Search WINE separately.
Updated: 11/21/2019 - Pub DB (出版書誌データベース)Pub DB contains the information about Japanese books both in print and electronic format currently available from commercial publishers and is maintained by the Japan Publishing Organization For Information Infrastructure Development.
Provided by 一般社団法人 日本出版インフラセンター Japan Publishing Organization For Information Infrastructure Development
Updated: 4/14/2025 - e-honE-hon is an online bookstore managed by Tohan, one of the major book jobbers in Japan. Your Japanese Studies Librarian is using this site for her quick and dirty check if a particula title is still in the market.
- Honya ClubHonya Club is an online bookstore managed by another major book jobber, Nippan. Your Japanese Studies Librarian is using the site for her quick and dirty check if a particula title is still in the market.
- Hanmoto Dottokomu 版元ドットコム : 探せる、使える、本の情報Provided by 一般社団法人版元ドットコム
Usage Terms of Ebooks
When you are using commercial e-resources, please follow the download/print limit specified by individual databases.
For example, Japanese eBook databases available for Columbia users have the limit information like below either on the detailed record screen or download/print screen:
出力可能ページ：60
新規ご購入後のDL可否 可(10ページ)
These numbers are the limit of downloadable/printable pages PER ITEM, PER PERSON for ENTIRE DURATION YOU ARE AFFILIATED WITH COLUMBIA. It DOESN'T mean per session or per access.
For example, if the ebook you are reading says 出力可能ページ：60, you can download 20 pages today and additional 40 pages the next year. After that, you may not download/print a single page because you have reached the limit for downloadable/printable pages per item per person.
Please follw each individual database's terms of use. Your action may impact the future use of the database by the entire Columbia users and beyond.
Update: 9/27/2023
E-Books and Digital Collections
- KinoDenOnline digital library of academic Japanese e-books in a wide variety of disciplines from multiple Japanese publishing houses.
- Maruzen eBook Library (MeL) This link opens in a new windowCollection of digitized Japanese books and serial issues.
- Japan Knowledge Lib（ジャパンナレッジLib)The JapanKnowledge basic package includes the following e-book and e-reference sours sets:
・Tōyō bunko (東洋文庫）
・Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zeshū (新編日本古典文学全集)
・Meiji bungaku zenshu (明治文学全集 筑摩書房)
・Bunko Kuseju[Que sais-je] besuto serekushon (文庫クセジュベストセレクション）
・Shinpen Kokka taikan (新編国歌大鑑)
・Shinshaku kanbun taikei (新釈漢文大系 明治書院)
・Nihon rekishi chimei taikei (日本歴史地名体系)
・Kadokawa Nihon chimei daijiten (角川日本地名大辞典)
・Jinbutsu sosho (人物叢書)
・Heian ibun (平安遺文)
・Kamakura ibun (鎌倉遺文)
・Kokushi taikei (国史大系)
・Tenno kozoku jitsuroku (天皇皇族実録)
・Shiryo sanshu (史料纂集)
・Nihon no saijiki (日本の歳時記 小学館)
・Nihon kindai bungaku daijiten (日本近代文学大事典 増補改訂デジタル版)
For more fuller title list, please consult the List of JapanKnowledge Lib Contents.
To see what's available in a set or series, try Book Shelf (書棚) tab. The JK resources list is also available here.
Columbia University Libraries offer Alumni Access to JapanKnowledge Lib Basic Package (do not include add-on contents and JKBooks titles). Please access it from E-Resources for Alumni list.
- Hathi Trust : a shared digital repository. This link opens in a new windowAs a digital repository for the nation's great research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the immense collections of partner institutions. It was initially conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the University of California system, and the University of Virginia to establish a repository for those universities to archive and share their digitized collections, and quickly expanded to include additional partners with fast growing treasure of digitized collections.Shared digital repository.
- National Diet Library Digital Collection (国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション）The NDL Digital Collections enables a user to search and view a variety of resources including books, collected and stored by the National Diet Library of Japan.
- Next Digital Library (次世代デジタルライブラリー) by NDL""Next Digital Library" is an experimental digital library system based on several research results of the R&D Office at the NDL.
You can search about 350,000 materials (as of November 2022) in public domain available in the National Diet Library Digital Collections." - Aozora Bunko (青空文庫）A collection of non-copyright-protected Japanese literary works, available for download in several file formats. In addition to text and XHTML formats, other viewer options are available.
Updated: 12/4/2019 - Japanese Text Initiative (Universities of Virginia/Pittsburgh)This website contains full-text versions of several works of classical Japanese literature, including the Manyoshu, Genji Monogatari, etc.
Its access is now available via Archive-It and Wayback Machine.
Catalogs and Bibliographies in Print
Annual Publication Catalogs
- Shoshi nenkan (書誌年鑑）
- Shuppan Nenkan ( 出版年鑑）Publication ceased after 2018 edition.
- Book page = Hon no nenkan (本の年鑑）
Early Japanese Books (古典籍)
- Kokusho Sōmokuroku. Hoteiban. (国書総目録 補訂版 1989～1991）
Union catalog of books worked by Japanese and published by Keio 3 [1867] - Kokusho kaidai. Zōtei kaihan. (国書解題. 増訂改版）
- Zenshū sōsho saimoku sōran. Koten hen. (全集叢書細目総覧. 古典：)
- Kotenseki sōgō mokuroku. (古典籍総合目錄)
Special Collections and Libraries in Tokyo and Japan
- ディープライブラリープロジェクトThe site offers cross searches of Japanese special libraries' holdings.
- 全国特殊コレクションリスト in レファレンス協同データベースAs of 3/14/2017, 7,382 collections are listed.
- 東京の公立図書館情報Find a PDF file under 東京都公立図書館特別コレクション section.
- 横断検索ナビ by JCross"全国の図書館横断検索サイトをまとめて紹介します。"
<Examples of Directories and guides in print>
- 専門図書館探訪 : あなたの「知りたい」に応えるガイドブック (2019) Includes 61 libraries
- 課題解決のための専門図書館ガイドブック (2020) Includes 171 libraries
- 専門情報機関総覧 = Directory of special libraries, Japan 2018 edition is the latest issue.
- Museum guidebooks in our collection might be of your interest as well.
- 歴史資料保存機関総覧 Rekishi shiryō hozon kikan sōran (1990)
Kotenseki 古典籍
- Union Catalogue Database of Japanese Texts (国書データベース)The Largest Digital Reference on Pre-Modern Japanese Works provided by the National Institute of Japanese Literature.
- Ritsumeikan Daigaku ARC Kotenseki Pōtaru Dētabēsu (立命館大学ARC 古典籍閲覧ポータルデータベース)"Through this portal you can search for pre-modern Japanese books on open access across the Web, as well as the books in the ARC’s collections or on deposit with the ARC. Currently more than 300,000 works are accessible."
- Guide for Japanese Antiquarian Materials : Library CollectionsCreated and provided by co-chairs of the Subcommittee on Japanese Rare Books, Committee on Japanese Materials (CJM) within the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL)