MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC RESOURCES IN JAPAN:

YASUHIRO TOKUHARAProject Assistant Professor,Uehiro Project for the Asian Research Library (U-PARL), the University of Tokyo

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40th MELCom International ConferenceLibrary and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Budapest, 19-21 June 2018

An Overview and Problems in Cataloging and Utilization

THE AIM OF THIS PRESENTATION

To outline and visualize:

what kinds of resources are in Japan, and their availability

efforts in cataloging and activities for effective utilization

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MIDDLE EAST / ISLAMIC STUDIES BEFORE WWII

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1876 Translation of Humphrey Prideaux’s Life of Mahomet

1910’s Researches and translations in Japanese were published

1930’s Major institutions for Middle East Studies were established. The first mosque was built in 1935 in Kobe, followed by Tokyo Camii in 1938

1945 The end of WWII. The above institutions were dismissed.

Tokyo Camii (rebuilt in 2000)

JOINT RESEARCHES FROM “ISLAMIZATION” TO “ISLAMIC AREA STUDIES”

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1950’s-1960’s

Restart of Middle East / Islamic Studies by major universities, institutions and academic societies

1967 Joint research project on “Islamization”1988-1991 JRP on “Urbanism in Islam”1997-2002 JRP on “Understanding the Dynamism of

Muslim Societies” aka “Islamic Area Studies”2006-2016 JRP named “Islamic Area Studies” promoted by

National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU)

TYPES OF MIDDLE EAST / ISLAMIC STUDIES INFORMATION RESOURCES IN JAPAN

1. Resources in Middle Eastern languages

• Manuscripts, documents and rare books• Printed materials (books, periodicals, etc.)• Digital resources

2. Resources in Western languages

• Research books and papers• Translations, revised texts of 1.• Dictionaries and reference books, etc.

3. Resources in Japanese

• Research books and papers• Translations of 1. and 2.• Dictionaries and reference books, etc.• Official documents, manga (comic books),

grey literature ,etc.5

MANUSCRIPTS:THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO (SINCE 1877)

Hans Daiber Collection (The University of Tokyo, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia)

URL: http://ricasdb.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/daiber/db_index_eng.html

Collection of Arabic manuscripts previously owned by Dr. Hans Daiber. 367 volumes with color images and 153 with monochrome images are open to the public on the website.The Insititute also holds Müteferrika collection (17 titles). For its catalog search for “Turkish incunabula collection” in the University’s OPAC. https://opac.dl.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/opac/opac_search/

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MANUSCRIPTS:KYOTO UNIVERSITY (SINCE 1897)

Islamic Rare Materials, Kyoto UniversityURL: https://edb.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/exhibit/index.html(description in Japanese)

Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish manuscripts, lithographs and old books including 2 titles of Ottoman Turkish commentaries on Rumi’s Mathnawi (19c).

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MANUSCRIPTS: TOYO BUNKO (THE ORIENTAL LIBRARY, SINCE 1924)

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Toyo Bunko

Toyo Bunko is one of the largest Asian research libraries in Japan which continuously collects Asian materials.

Two Qur’an manuscripts: one from the 14c Mamluk Syria (photo). Another one from South Asia has Persian translation.

RARE DOCUMENTS AND BOOKS:TOYO BUNKO (THE ORIENTAL LIBRARY, SINCE 1924)

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Toyo Bunko

A Collection of vellum paper documents from the 16th to 19th

century Morocco. Toyo Bunko purchased 8 leaves in 1989 and added 11 leaves and 29 wood piece documents in 2014.

Toyo Bunko also has good collections of rare books, including 60 lithographed books from Iran.

MANUSCRIPTS:KYOTO UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES (SINCE 1959)

Sultan Hamid Collection

purchased in 1975. It includes 123 Arabic, 69 Persian and 39 Ottoman Turkish manuscripts. The oldest one is dated 787A.H./1385C.E.

Catalogs are available in book form.

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PRINTED MATERIALS: THE NUMBER OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORDS IN NACSIS-CAT

Books Periodicals

Arabic 72,374 651

Persian 17,842 250

Turkish 17,563 643

Ottoman Turkish 4,264 174

Urdu 22,445 113

Hebrew 5,492 65

11Searched by text language, as of June 15, 2018.

OTHER RESOURCES IN JAPANESE

Official documents

Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan (JACAR) ( https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/ ) provides digitalized documents from the National Archives of Japan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the Ministry of Defense of Japan.Example: diplomatic document on Persia changing its name to Iran.

Manga (comic books), grey literature, etc.

can be found in CiNii and NDL Search but usually libraries do not positively collect them. An example of manga teaching Qur’an: https://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4781612695/

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NACSIS-CAT BY NII (NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INFORMATICS)

Launched in 1984, adopted Arabic scripts in 2003

Provides Japan’s largest union catalog DBs to which 1,334 libraries are connected (as of March 3, 2018)

Searchable through CiNii Books https://ci.nii.ac.jp/

About 12 million catalogs of books, 349 thousand catalogs of magazines (as of Jun 3)

Normalization system for accurate retrieval

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EXAMPLE OF NORMALIZATION IN NACSIS-CAT

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PROBLEMS IN CATALOGING

Lack of human resources

Process for cataloging Middle Eastern materials in Japan:

1. Find an excellent part-timer

2. Secure working hours of a librarian

3. Let them work together for a certain amount of time

Repeat each time the cataloger quits15

PROBLEMS IN CATALOGING

MARC cataloging became harder than card cataloging. As the results, catalogers sometimes--

can not get at classification, subject headings, making authority files

create misspelled names such as “مھمد”

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70% OF THE RECORDS DO NOT HAVE ANY CLASSIFICATION NUMBER

2,227,305

20,624 5,872 921

7,745 35,162

1,669,062

51,942 11,770 3,452

9,865 77,029

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

eng ara per ota tur avarage ofaraperotatur

With CLS Without CLS

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The ratio of bibliographic records with at least one classification number of NDC, NDLC, LCC, DC(DDC) to records without any number (as of Jan 2017).

DETAILS OF CLASSIFICATION

NDC8

NDC9NDC9

NDC9NDC9

NDC9

NDC9

NDLC

LCCLCC

LCCLCC

LCC

LCC

DC19

DC20

DC21DC22DC23

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

ara per ota tur urd eng jpn

DC23

DC22

DC21

DC20

DC19

DC18

LCC

NDLC

NDC10

NDC9

NDC8

NDC7

18Based on search result in CiNii (as of April 14, 2017).

DOCUMENTATION CENTER FOR ISLAMIC AREA STUDIES AT TOYO BUNKO (TBIAS, SINCE 2006)

Jointly established by National Institutes for the Humanities and Toyo Bunko in 2006, as one of five centers of “Islamic Area Studies” program

Gatherings of librarians concerned with Arabic script materials

Islamic Area Studies information retrieval seminar for students

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TBIAS’ website: http://tbias.jp/

DOCUMENTATION CENTER FOR ISLAMIC AREA STUDIES AT TOYO BUNKO (TBIAS, SINCE 2006)

Bibliographical Database of Islamic and Middle East Studies in Japan

Cataloging guides and tools on the website http://tbias.jp/

Researches on the Ottoman civil code (mecelle), the Persian bookkeeping system, seminars on Central Asian legal documents, seminars on Ottoman documents, etc.

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UEHIRO PROJECT FOR THE ASIAN RESEARCH LIBRARY (U-PARL), THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO (SINCE 2014)

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http://u-parl.lib.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en

collects Asian research resources for the Asian Research Library (to be opened in 2020)

Seminars on retrieval method, workshops on cataloging Asian materials, talk sessions on Asian Studies, etc.

Pursues the possibility of subject librarianship in Japan

Photo: General Library of the University of Tokyo. The 4th floor will be the Asian Research Library.

FUTURE ISSUES

Resource sharing beyond the bounds of organizations

Securing quality human resources

Visualization and transfer of the cataloging know-how to …

International cooperation and sharing22

Thank you for your attention ヽ(^o^)丿

Photo: Tatar Muslim cemetery in Tama Cemetery, Tokyo23

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Horikawa, Toru and Taniguchi, Junichi, eds. Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts, The Library of Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. Kyoto: The University Library, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, 1998. (In Japanese)

Miura, Toru and Sato, Kentaro, eds. The Vellum Contract Documents in Morocco in the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries: Part I. (Toyo Bunko Research Library (TBRL) ; 15), Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 2015. PDF available at its repository: http://www.i-repository.net/il/meta_pub/G0000171kenkyu (In English)

Okawara, Tomoki, Horii, Satoe and Isogai, Ken’ichi, eds. Osuman minpoten(mejerre) kenkyu josetsu. Tokyo: TBIAS, 2011. (In Japanese, contains researches on Mecelle and translation of Mecelle’s introduction)

Okawara, Tomoki and Horii, Satoe, eds. Osuman minpoten (mejerre) no kenkyu, baibaihen. Tokyo: TBIAS, 2016. (Japanese translation of the 1st chapter “buyūʿ” of mecelle.)

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Okawara, Tomoki and Horii, Satoe, eds. Osuman minpoten (mejerre) no kenkyu, chinyakuhen. Tokyo: TBIAS, 2016. (Japanese translation of 2nd chapter “ijārāt” of mecelle.)

Rajabzadeh, Hashem, ed. Religious and Judicial Documents from Qajar Iran. Tokyo: The Research and Information Center for Asian Studies, The Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo, 2016. (In Persian)

Rajabzadeh, Hashem, ed. Legal Deeds, Judicial Documents and Religious Documents from Qajar Iran. Tokyo: The Research and Information Center for Asian Studies, The Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo, 2017. (In Persian)

Takamatsu, Yoichi, ed. Japanese Translation and Commentary of Rislala-yiFalakīya dar ʿIlm-i Siyāqat, ʿAbd Allāh al-Māzandarānī. Tokyo: TBIAS, 2013. (In Japanese)

Yanagiya, Ayumi, ed. Nihon ni okeru Arabia moji shiryo no shozo oyobi seiri jokyono chousa. Tokyo: TBIAS, 2009. (In Japanese, contains a directory of libraries holding Islamic and Middle Eastern materials and an Arabic cataloging guide)

MUST DATABASES

CiNii: cross-search for books and periodicals, articles, dissertations in (mostly university and academic) libraries. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/

NDL Search: searches bibliographic data of major public libraries and National Diet Library. http://iss.ndl.go.jp/

NDL Online: OPAC of NDL. Searchable by original text language code. https://ndlonline.ndl.go.jp/

Bibliographical Database of Islamic and Middle East Studies in Japan 1868-2015 by TBIAS, Toyo Bunko: finds books and articles in the field of Middle East and Islamic studies created in Japan or written by Japanese. http://search.tbias.jp/en/books

Toyo Bunko’s Online Search: http://124.33.215.236/index_books-e.html26