F e d e r a l D e p o s i t o r y L i b r a r y P r o g r a m ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program October 15, 2001 Vol. 22, no. 15 -------------------------------------------------------------------- SPANNING THE BRIDGE OF TIME, BY EVERETT K. BROWN PACIFIC FRIEND, JULY 2001 (V. 29, N. 3) [The following article on the National Archives of Japan was recommended for inclusion in Administrative Notes by Michael DiMario, Public Printer. Reprinted by permission.] Looking at old maps is a hobby for me. Like any lover of history, I prefer to consult old maps before beginning a journey. For it is often on dusty and out-of-date maps that history waits to be re-discovered. In Tokyo, just north of the Imperial Palace, there is a place I sometimes visit to consult old maps. It is called the National Archives of Japan. Other places in Tokyo have good map collections too, such as the National Diet Library, found on the far side of the Palace. What leads me to the National Archives, however, is that it is the official repository of the Japanese government. Here I can find a variety of official maps of Japan, some dating back nearly four hundred years. A feature of the National Archives is that many of the maps, books and other documents in the archives are part of original collections that have fascinating historical value. Take for example the library of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). Historians have long known of the brilliant Japanese leader's interest in Chinese studies. By looking at the variety of Chinese texts that he assembled during his lifetime on subjects such as history, politics and measurements, one can understand the breadth of his extensive learning. On a recent visit to the National Archives I ran into Robert Campbell, an American who is an Associate Professor of Edo and Early Meiji Literature at Tokyo University. Campbell describes himself as a "heavy user" of the archive facilities. In the second floor reading room he showed me several old Japanese travel diaries and an interesting assortment of 19th century books from America that he was consulting. These books, he explained to me, were originally the contents of a large steamer chest brought back to Japan by the first Japanese emissary mission to visit the United States and Europe in the early Meiji period (1868-1912). The books covered a whole range of topics, such as industry, politics and economics--all books that the delegation assembled during their 18-month voyage. I was surprised to see there was even a small travel guide to hot springs in upstate New York. "What I find fascinating about this collection," Campbell told me, "is that it represents a time capsule. From these books we can see the access Japan had to Western thought during the early Meiji period." Campbell added that many of these books were published just days before the delegation's return to Japan and represented the most advanced Western ideas of the day. Until the National Archives was established in 1971, the various Japanese government ministries and agencies archived their own official documents, a practice that had continued since the formation of the present-day Japanese government system in the Meiji period. Older documents, such as ancient Japanese and Chinese classical books and materials, were originally stored in the Cabinet Library (Naikaku Bunko). After the creation of the National Archives they were added to the present collection, and are now an important division of the archives. Examples of some of these ancient texts are on display in the first floor exhibition area. On the third floor, I met Masaya Shiomitsu, a legal documents expert and one of the team of archivists who organize the National Archives collection. It is the job of archivists like Shiomitsu to determine what documents are of historical value and then coordinate their transfer from each of the government ministries to the archives. Compared with national archives in Europe, where the history of modern archiving systems dates back to the 18th century, there are surprisingly few staff at the National Archives of Japan. This is due in part to the relatively young history of modern archiving in Japan, dating back only 30 years. With a team of roughly ten members, archivists such as Shiomitsu oversee a collection of over 990,000 volumes of historical official documents. "What is distinctive about the National Archives of Japan," Shiomitsu pointed out, "is the diversity of government documents available to the public, and the span of history represented here. In the collection you can find manuscripts dating as far as the year 908 A.D." It is the responsibility of professional restorers to protect and restore such rare and unreplaceable treasures. While all of the documents are kept in the underground storage room at a constant temperature of 22° C and humidity of 55%, they still tend to deteriorate over time and with use. Upstairs on the fourth floor is the restoration room, where a team of professional restorers is busy at work restoring damaged documents. I met Itaru Aritomo, who had just returned from Europe where he attended a European Commission on Preservation and Access meeting to discuss the latest strategies in restoration practices. "Many restorers around the world prefer Japanese washi paper for their restoration work," Aritomo told me, especially in the leaf casting technique. This is a method whereby the affected parts of the original document are filled in with fibers of washi paper." Aritomo gets many inquiries from professional restorers around the interested in Japanese restoration techniques. Over the internet, he and other experts around the world exchange information on the most advanced European restoration techniques, as well as traditional Japanese methods, in order to preserve valuable documents in the best possible way. Before leaving the National Archives, I dropped back down to the second floor reading room, where I found Huang Rong-guang, a Chinese researcher working in the microfilm room. Huang, who is completing her Ph.D. thesis at Tokyo University, is an expert on Sino-Japanese trade during the Meiji period. For Huang, being a researcher is often detective work that leads her on distant journeys. As the National Archives is the repository of government documents, she sometimes comes across official references to trading companies. If the subject is important enough, she will visit the local archives in the city where the company was located, whether it be Nagasaki, Shanghai or even Paris. When I asked Huang about her experience using the National Archives of Japan she contrasted it with a visit she recently made to Beijing. Though China has a history of archiving official documents that dates back nearly two thousand years, due to the sheer volume of backlogged materials she had to wait some time for documents important to her research. "I really value the computer search system at the National Archives of Japan. It allows me to complete fast and easy document searches even over the internet," Huang added. She did hope, however, that Japan would someday develop an archive search system like the one now available at the National Archives in Paris. There she was not only able to make searches for book titles, but also for word references within the text. Disclosure of government documents to the general public has been enshrined in law under the Administrative Information Disclosure Act, which was passed by the government in May, 1999, and came into effect in April of this year. More and more government data is being made available to the public, and there is increasing interest in official documents as records of the workings of the government. Remarkable strides have already been made in the short history of the National Archives of Japan, and its work will surely become increasingly important in the future. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 30 Years of the National Archives of Japan The National Archives of Japan celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. It was founded in July, 1971, to store as historical materials the official documents transferred by government ministries and agencies. It also provides a database of official documents online on the internet. Under the Public Archives Law, which was enacted in 1988, the National Archives of Japan gained the role of passing official documents on to future generations as a historical legacy. The National Archives of Japan houses over 990,000 documents, and some 80,000 documents are used for reference by the public every year. The main building is in Chiyoda Ward, central Tokyo, and in 1998 a new branch was founded in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture. The National Archives of Japan celebrated a new start on April 1, 2001, when it became in Independent Administrative Institution. (For more information on the National Archives of Japan, see .) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [picture of underground storage rooms stacks] [picture of Goshomei Genpon, the original manuscript ofthe Constitution of Japan] In order to protect against the ravages of ultraviolet rays or natural disasters, Goshomei Genpon, the original manuscript of the Constitution of Japan, with the signature documents are kept in two underground storage and seal of Emperor Showa. rooms. The stacks area comprises about 35 linear kilometers of space that is kept at an ideal constant temperature of 22 degrees C and 55% humidity. [picture of leaf-casting machine] [picture of diary of the first Japanese emissary mission to the United States and Europe] Similar to traditional Japanese paper making Among the many interesting books in the archives is this diary of the techniques, this leaf-casting machine is first Japanese emissary mission to the United States and Europe. The highly valued in restoration work. With this book's illustrations reveal some of the first images of American life to process the fibers of washi paper fill in the be seen in Japan. damaged parts of documents.