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A Guide to Premodern Japanese Literature Resources

Your companion to navigate from HEIAN to EDO literature.

Kokusho sōmokuroku

Kokusho sōmokuroku [union catalog of early Japanese books] compiled scripts worked by Japanese and published by Keio 3 [1867]. This catalog contains approximately 500,000 bibliographies belong to academic/public/private libraries and temples/shrines all around Japan.

Kokusho kaidai

Kokusho kaidai [annotated bibliography of early Japanese books] provides annotations and biographies of authors for approximately 25,000 books produced by Japanese before 1867. Those annotated books belonged to the National Archives, National Diet Library, and National WashU Libraries. 

Nihon bungaku kenkyū bunken yōran. Koten bungaku

Nihon bungaku kenkyū bunken yōran. Koten bungaku [catalog for researches on Japanese literature. Premodern] covers articles published in Japan from 1975 to 1994 including academic research papers and dissertations. Each text is accessible through tabs, such as themes, authors, and titles, volumes, publishers, issuing date of periodicals. (Print ONLY) (No holds at WashU Libraries after 1995.) 

Shinpen Kokka taikan

Shinpen kokka taikan [comprehensive national poetry] collects and provides indexes to all Waka poems in the total numbers of around 450,000 from 1,162 different texts, including governmental and private selections and others, in the history of Japan. Japan Knowledge version also enables one to retrieve poems based on words on a certain place in a 31-syllable, in combination with preceding and/or following specific terms. (Print ONLY)

Zenshū sōsho saimoku sōran

Zensh sōsho saimoku sran [detailed complete catalog for collections & series] covers reprints of early works published before 1868. "Zenshu/sosho" means collections & series collected according to a specific topic and this catalog enables researchers to retrieve bibliographies of each title under about 1,200 collections & series. (No Holds at WashU Libraries)

(Print ONLY)

Gunsho Ruiju

Gunsho Ruiju [classified documents of early Japan] are collections of rare and unpublished books produced up to the 19th century, compiled by Hokiichi Hanawa from all through Japan. Those documents accumulated 1,276 texts, whose scopes were as diversified as history, literature, religion, language, customs, art, music, games, education, morality, law, politics, economics, and society. Several continued editions were added after his departure. (Now Available Online)

Link to JapanKnowledge