The National Diet Library (NDL) and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB; National Library of the Netherlands) renewed the agreement signed for the first time in August 2005. Having developed a cooperative relationship based on the agreement for these past four years, the two libraries agreed to renew it for the next four years. The new agreement came into effect on August 21, 2009, signed by Dr. Makoto Nagao, Librarian of the NDL, and Drs. J.S.M. Savenije, Director General of the KB. The two parties will be continuously working in cooperation, especially in the area of storage and long-term access to digital documents.

One of the major fruits of the first four years of cooperation of the two national libraries is the online exhibitions on Japan-Netherlands interchange. Sharing the same theme and objective of letting the people of both countries know about the long history of the relationship between Japan and the Netherlands, the NDL and the KB have each created an exhibition of contents selected from its own collections and other materials.

One of the materials to be included in the NDL online exhibition on Japan-Netherlands interchange: Shiiboruto Kangekizu (Siebold viewing a play) copied by Kakutai. This picture depicts Philipp Franz von Siebold (on the left), doctor at the Dutch trading house in Nagasaki, when he went to a theater in Osaka in 1826.

The exhibition including 134 digitized materials held by the KB is available on the KB’s website: Memory of the Netherlands>The Netherlands-Japan
There are a variety of materials such as a painting by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) based on the woodblock print of Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), letters exchanged between Shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi (his advisors wrote for him) and the Dutch King William II, and a photograph of a porcelain bottle manufactured in Japan but with a decoration in Japanese Kakiemon style added in Delft.

Other material to be included in the NDL
online exhibition “Japan-Netherlands
Exchange in the Edo Period”: a page
from Ehon Azuma Asobi,
published in 1802, written by Asakusa-an,
illustrated by Katsushika Hokusai.
This scene shows Japanese people
looking at Dutch people with curiosity.

The exhibition created by the NDL, introducing materials showing the exchanges between two countries in the Edo period (1603-1867), will be released on December 16, 2009.
NDL Online Gallery:
http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/gallery/index.html

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