Japanese Manuscripts Collection

The East Asian Library holds over 2,800 Japanese manuscripts in some 7,000 volumes, dating from the 16th into the 20th century. The collection includes personal records, literary manuscripts, and handwritten copies of works on a variety of topics, with a concentration on tea ceremony and flower arrangement. Researchers wanting an overview of the collection are referred to Kariforunia Daigaku Bākurē-kō kyū Mitsui Bunko shahon mokuroku kō, in the East Asian Library’s reference collection. A small portion of the collection has been digitized and made available online by Ritsumeikan University, including the links to digital images of 102 titles in the Database of Pre-Modern Japanese Works provided by National Institute of Japanese Literature and those of 146 volumes of Kadenshū which was digitized by UC Berkeley Library with funding provided by the Multi-Volume Sets Project, NCC.