Foreign Materials Division,
Acquisitions and Bibliography Department

This is based on an article of the same title
in NDL Monthly Bulletin No. 571 (October 2008).

Examples of books on Japan in the NDL collection

The fundamental task of a national library is to acquire, preserve and make accessible the publications of the country. The National Diet Library (NDL), the sole national library in Japan, in this role, has been extensively collecting domestic publications through the legal deposit system

At the same time, national libraries do not collect only domestic publications. It is an important mission for a national library to build the "national collection" including "foreign publications on the country, including translations of books by native authors and books published abroad by national authors"*1. The Imperial Library, one of the NDL’s predecessors, collected books on Japan by foreign authors and translations of works written by Japanese authors. The NDL selects books about Japan and books written by Japanese people (including those of Japanese descent) among foreign publications, and takes an active approach to add them to our collection on Japan.

An overview of the materials on Japan that the NDL has collected so far offers a glimpse into a transition of foreignerspoints of view on our country. While to date, historical studies, literary works and researches on traditional arts accounted for the most part, publications about pop culture including manga have been increasing recently.

There is a wide variety of materials in our collection on Japan: in the stacks, you can find on a shelf Treize siecles de lettres japonaises by R. Sieffert*2, a book on the history of Japanese literature from the 7th to the 20th century, and Koi by S. de Kock and R. Watt*3, a manual on how to breed colored carp, on another shelf.

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We collect books on Japan by purchase through bookstores inside and outside the country, international exchange of publications with overseas libraries and institutions, and gifts from individuals and organizations in Japan and in other countries.

(1) Purchase
There are three methods for purchasing materials:
-to choose what to purchase from the catalogs of domestic and foreign bookstores
-Approval plan: to order books selected by bookstores
-Blanket order: to directly order all the books on subjects published in specified areas We adopt the most suitable method according to the areas and countries, and price of the publication we need.

(2) Exchange
The NDL has been exchanging publications with ten national libraries. Most of them are in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe whose publications are difficult to purchase. We receive materials on Japan published in each country and sending out materials on each partner country. This is an acquisition method unique to national libraries.

We have been collecting materials on Japan in these ways, but, some publications are difficult to acquire. For example, publications issued by research institutions are often commercially unavailable, so we are obliged to depend on exchange and gifts.

What proportion of books on Japan issued in foreign countries does the NDL hold? To figure out the amount of books not yet included in the library’s collection, the NDL first conducted a survey in 2005. We used the "Bibliography of Asian Studies" database offered by the Association for Asian Studies, to see if the NDL holds the books on Japan published from 1995 to June 2005 included in the database. The result shows that 275 books are in the NDL collection, that is, 79% of 348 books in the database. Then, in 2006, we conducted another survey on the books on Japan particularly published in Germany, France and Spain. Here is a brief introduction of the result of the survey.

(1) Surveyed countries
The reason why we chose Germany, France and Spain was as follows: -The NDL has never made analysis on the number of publications and the publication trends of these three countries.-The NDL’s approach regarding acquisition had been totally different for each of the three countries, so the result could be used to compare the effectiveness of each collection method.
-Publication trends could be compared between Germany and France where Japanese studies were active, and Spain where they were not.

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(2)Procedures
We searched catalogs of the national library and other major institutions of each country for books which have "Japan" in the subject heading among publications in each country between 2000 and 2005 issued. We excluded the following: books on Japan without subject heading "Japan"; books which the NDL does not usually collect, for example, books for entertainment, and sale catalogs; slightly different versions of and very similar book to a material already counted. (Data are as of September 2006.)

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(1) Publication trends in Germany, France and Spain
Publication trends in each country are as follows (see Chart 1).

Chart 1: Proportion of the NDL holdings to the number of books on Japan
(published between 2000 and 2005)

<Germany>
The number of books on Japan held by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek was the largest of the three countries: 666 titles. About 130 books were published each year although there was slight difference from year to year. Scholarly books, 408 titles, accounted for over half of the total number. Among them, there were 373 books in the humanities field (56.0%) with high proportions of literature and arts. Especially noticeable was the large number of scholarly books on Japanese literature and linguistics. In addition, the larger portion of books in the field of social science, with 267 items (40.1%), than in the two other countries, might show German people’s high interest in Japanese politics, economies and society.

<France>
Similar to Germany, among books on Japan held by the French libraries, the largest part was occupied by scholarly books, 218 out of 519 titles. One of the characteristics of France was that illustrated catalogs of exhibitions were published in three to four times larger numbers than the other two countries, with 86 titles. 373 books (71.9%) were in the humanities field, among which about 30% were about the arts. Especially, as Japanese antique arts were attracting a high level of interest, books on ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock prints), pottery, netsuke (carved decorative toggle), etc. were especially noticeable. There were also a lot of books about Japanese cinema and "anime." The results indicated that interest in Japanese culture in France covered a wide range.

<Spain>
Libraries in Spain held 176 books on Japan, that is, about half of the holdings of the other two countries. The largest group was composed of general books, 45 titles, while there were only 36 scholarly books. The major portion comprised the humanities field, 81.1%, with 144 titles. What was different from the other countries was that collections of the works of Japanese architects were published in large numbers. Among 31 social science books (17.6%), most had the subject "society," "labor " or "education. "

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(2) Bias in geographic coverage
Chart 1 shows the number of books on Japan published in the three countries and held by the NDL.

<Germany>
For the fields of social science and humanities, about 80%, rather large proportion, was held by the NDL. For books published in Germany, we have been mainly adopting the method of blanket order, which the result showed works well for these fields. However, only 50.0% of books in science and technology field were held by the NDL.

<France>
In social science, NDL’s holdings were only 39.8% of the holdings of French libraries, which means that the NDL had acquired less than half of the books. Even the highest rate, for "politics" and "administration," was only 47.4%. With the low rate of 55.0% for humanities and 30.8% for science and technology, it became clear that we had to strengthen our acquisition. We suppose that one of the reasons for the large number of books not yet acquired was due to the insufficiency of the blanket order we were placing until 2004.

<Spain>
The proportion for humanities was the highest: 48.6%, and the holding rate of books on "language" and "literature" was especially high. For the Spanish books, we mainly purchase "on approval." It was clear that many books had not been covered, so we have to try to improve the acquisition method to find and acquire books which cannot be purchased "on approval."

Although it was rather a small-scale survey with only three countries surveyed, it became clear that publication trends differ from country to country, and that it is necessary to review the acquisition method according to the trends of each country.

(3) Problems of collecting materials not for sale
It was also made clear that the three countries shared the same problem in acquiring books on Japan: the NDL has only about 30% of the books published which are not for sale. This proportion is less than half the books commercially available (see Chart 2). Books not for sale include academic research books that the NDL is highly interested in obtaining. We will make constant efforts to find channels such as international exchange or gifts through which we will be able to acquire those books.

Chart 2: Proportion of the NDL holdings to the number of not-for-sale books on Japan
(publications between 2000 and 2005)

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Benefitting from the experience of this survey, the NDL started survey and acquisition of materials not yet held by the library using library catalogs of other countries in 2006. In the last fiscal year (FY2008), we tried hard to obtain books published in Germany, France and Spain, and purchased 884 books on Japan from the three countries. At present, we are focusing on the North America and European countries, and planning to enlarge the scope step by step.

For books not for sale, while most of the publications of Japanese studies institutions in the United States have been added to our collection through exchange and donations, publications in European and Asian countries have not been sufficiently covered. So we made a proposal for exchange of publications to Japanese studies institutions in Europe and in Asia. As a result, we reached new partnerships for exchange of publications with 16 Japanese studies institutions including L’École française d’Extrême-Orient. We plan to strengthen our further relationship with each institution to develop our collection.
▸ฺRelated article in the NDL Newsletter No. 157, October 2007

The NDL’s collection on Japan covers a broad range of materials. A list of books on Japan in Western languages acquired by the NDL since 2002 is available on our website, from 釘ooks on Japan(bibliographic information of books on Japan in Western languages) (URL: http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/publication/books_on_japan/boj_top_E.html).

*1 Sylvestre, Guy. Guidelines for national libraries. Unesco, 1987.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0007/000761/076173eb.pdf (last accessed2009/06/02)
*2 Sieffert, Rene. Treize siècles de lettres japonaises. Publications orientalistes de France, 2001. [NDL call number: KG12-B12]
*3 Kock, Servaas de and Watt, Ronnie. Koi: a handbook on keeping nishikigoi. Firefly Books, 2006. [NDL call number: RB767-B3]

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