Treasures of the Area Studies Collections: Reconsidering Primary Sources and Collections
Japan
The East Asia Library is one of the major collections of East Asian materials in the United States. Yale University was the first university in the U.S. to collect books in East Asian languages. The first documented acquisition was a shipment of over 90 volumes of Chinese works to the Yale College Library purchased from China in 1849. Yale has been engaged in teaching East Asian Studies and collecting relevant materials for well over a century, as evidenced in Samuel Wells Williams's appointment as Professor of Chinese Language and Literature in 1877. In the following year, the collection of notable gifts of Chinese books was presented to Yale by the Honorable Yung Wing, Yale B.A. 1854, the first Chinese subject to graduate from an American college. Earlier in 1873, the first collection of outstanding Japanese books were donated by O.C. Marsh, Yale Professor of Paleontology and a connoisseur of Asian artifacts. Other gifts followed, and more systematic acquisitions began with the efforts of Kan'ichi Asakawa, who was commissioned to acquire Japanese materials for Yale and the Library of Congress during his eighteen-month stay in Japan in 1906-1907. Asakawa, whose teaching career at Yale spanned 36 years (from 1906 as Instructor in History of Japanese Civilization to retirement in 1942 as Professor of History), served as curator of the Chinese and Japanese Collection from 1906 to 1948 and oversaw acquisition of Western language materials relevant to East Asian Studies at Yale.
In the last several decades the Library has made remarkable, rapid expansion. The Council on East Asian Studies was established at Yale in May 1961 to oversee studies relating to China, Japan and Korea. External funding channeled through the Council has greatly increased the Library's book budgets. The primary goal of the Library in recent years is to support research and teaching in East Asian studies at Yale. In reflection of the programs, its emphasis has been on China and Japan. The Korean Studies collection is currently being developed.
Check out the Research Guide for Japan Studies to learn more.
Asakawa as a young man ca. 1890–1915 Photograph, 16 x 11.5 cm Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University Library
Asakawa, son of a former samurai from Nihonmatsu, left Japan in 1895 to enroll at Dartmouth College and went on to receive a doctorate in history from Yale in 1902. After teaching briefly at Dartmouth, Asakawa spent his career at Yale, becoming known as an eminent scholar of Japanese pre-modern institutional history and curator of Yale’s East Asian collections. In 1905, the year before Asakawa was appointed at Yale, he began contacting prominent American scholars about his idea for a great Japanese library and museum, to contain comprehensive collections for the study of Japan. Unable to generate interest, Asakawa narrowed his focus to the acquisition of Japanese books and materials for American libraries, offering to collect on behalf of several institutions.
Hyakumantō darani 百萬塔陀羅尼 764–770 4 wood stupas containing handscrolls Stupas, each ca. 21.5 x 10.5 cm (diameter) Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
The Hyakumantō darani (“the One Million Dharani Stupas”) are of enormous significance for our under- standing of the history of printing globally. These small wooden stupas are about 21.5 cm in height, and consist of a hollow body and a removable finial. Small printed scrolls containing dharani (Jp. darani), Buddhist spells in Sanskrit recorded phonetically in Chinese characters, were inserted into the central cavities. (Currently, the scrolls are preserved separately from the stupas.) It is not known whether wooden blocks or metal plates were used to print the scrolls, but according to eighth- century chronicles, the Hyakumantō darani were created between 764 and 770 on the orders of Empress Regnant Shōtoku (r. 764–770) and distributed to temples in what are now the cities of Nara, Kyoto, and Osaka. Many examples, including all of Yale’s, bear inscriptions on the stupa bottoms listing names of artisans and dates of completion, corroborating the chronicled dates. The associated dharani scrolls are thus the oldest printed objects that can be reliably dated anywhere in the world. Yale owns five of these remarkable artifacts and their accompanying dharani.
Commodore Perry and his “Black Ship” ca. 1853–1854 1 painting: pen and ink, watercolor, and gofun on paper 55.9 x 90.2 cm, in frame 71.6 x 105.4 cm Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Even before Asakawa Kan’ichi’s arrival at Yale, the University had begun to develop significant connections with Japan. No single item in the collections better illus- trates this than a 160-year-old letter that has survived among the papers of the University’s first professor of Chinese, Samuel Wells Williams (1812–1884), in Sterling Memorial Library’s Manuscripts & Archives collection. A native of Utica, New York, Williams had, from the 1830s, become a core member of the small group of Protestant missionaries then active in China. Because of his linguistic abilities, in 1853, when the Perry expedition arrived in East Asia on its mission to “open” Japan, he was appointed chief interpreter. In April 1854, soon after the signing of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Peace and Amity, he was awakened in the middle of the night to interview two Japanese men who had managed to find their way aboard Perry’s flagship. One of these men was Yoshida Shōin (1830–1859), a young samurai whose vision for Japan’s future was to help inspire the Meiji Restoration.
Following the arrival of Perry’s “Black Ships,” Shōin and his companion, Kaneko Shigenosuke, became convinced that they needed to learn more about the West. To this end, they hoped to convince Perry to grant them secret passage to the United States. Tokugawa laws prohibited Japanese from traveling abroad, and Perry rejected their request for fear of jeopardizing the newly signed treaty. Williams, however, kept careful records of the encounter, including the letter shown here, which accompanied him to Yale in the 1870s, when he took up his appointment here.