With the support of the Japan Foundation for International Exchange, from October 1, 2016 to May 31, 2017, I went to the Tokyo Toyo Bunko in Japan for an eight-month study and research. This is a very fortunate and precious opportunity!
(i)
At about 3:00 p.m. on October 3rd, I was led by Masako Kohama (now a professor at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Nihon University) to the Toyo Bunko Library located at No. 28 Ban 21, Honkoma Tsuen, Bunkyo Ward. The Toyo Bunko is an important center for oriental studies in Japan, and its predecessor was the Morrison Library in Beijing in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. In 1917, The Japanese chaebol Baron Iwasaki Hisami paid £350,000 to buy 24,000 copies of his precious Western books on the Far East, mainly China, and shipped them to Tokyo. After being sorted out, it was opened to the public in 1924 and named the Toyo Bunko. Since 1948, the library has been part of the National Diet Library of Japan, and has a collection of 1 million books.
When I first visited Japan in early 2006, Mr. Kazuhiro Iwama (now a professor at Keio University) led me here to see the flowers. However, the current Toyo Bunko has built a very grand new building, which is 7 stories high. In the office area on the left side of the entrance on the ground floor, I met with Mr. Yoshimitsu Kaitani (Head of the Research Department and Principal Investigator) and Mr. Yoshisho Yamamura, head of the Bunko Research Department. The latter immediately gave me a "library admission permit", with which I would be able to freely enter and exit the libraries in the library for the next 8 months, which of course gave me a preferential treatment as a "foreign researcher". Mr. Yamamura then took me to the 7th floor, where there was a large common research room where I had prepared a desk, and then he led me through the various libraries.
Mr. Yamamura and I are about the same age, and I am very polite, and I bow deeply almost every time I say a word, which makes me have to bow and return the salute from time to time. Later, I asked Mr. Kohama, "He bows so much, it will be very hard at the end of the day." Mr. Kohama replied, "He is a very polite person, and the average Japanese person is not like this." Yamamura studied japan's modern political history and did not Chinese, nor did he seem to speak English. Communication with him can only rely on my poor Japanese, either by gesture or pen, or by asking for help from someone else to translate.
On the morning of October 5th, I officially came to the Toyo Bunko to "go to work". The elevator from the ground floor leads straight up to the large research room on the 7th floor. When you enter the door, you can see a receptionist sitting on the right, and on the left is a notice board with posters of some academic activities. There is a washroom in the nearby corner, as well as a water dispenser and coffee machine. In the middle of the research room are rows of bookshelves, piled high with all kinds of history books, most of which are reference books. There are many desks on the window-facing side of the room for the visiting researchers, with two or three large photocopiers placed next to them. The other side of the room leads to one or two small meeting rooms and reception rooms, where small seminars are often held. The back of the room is also connected to several small research rooms, and the famous scholars Honjo Bisako (modern and modern Chinese history), Oshima Tachiko (Mongolian history), and Toi Yuko (Southern Song Dynasty history) often come and go. There is wifi throughout the 7th floor, which can be used after entering the password. The laboratory opens at 9 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and closes at 5 p.m. If you enter the door on a Saturday, you will need to enter the password. Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays are closed.
The reception staff of the large research office is very diligent, and every day a different person takes turns to fill the staff, and I have met Keisuke Tatara, Akiko Taniya, Yuki Kaneko, Masayuki Yano, Yuki Hara, and others, and among them, I have the most contact with Tadato Ryojun. Tatara was a modest, handsome, humble young man, 34 years old, unmarried, from Oita Prefecture, Kyushu, who had received a ph.D. from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Nippon University, and his dissertation was on forensic issues in Qing Dynasty China. He had been a visiting scholar at Taiwan Normal University for a year, so he was fluent in Chinese, and when I talked to other Japanese scholars, he often acted as an interpreter for me. For 8 months, he took good care of me and we had many drinks and talks. Whenever there is a problem with his life, academics, or language, I consult with him. He once told me about a website called "Japan の古本屋", the Japan Used Books Network: https://www.kosho.or.jp, which was helpful to me in purchasing related books.
Mr. Gu is a round-faced middle-aged woman who had spent some time in Kaifeng, Henan, but she didn't seem to speak Chinese and spoke Japanese very quickly. I once told Tatara that if I could understand Ms. Tani's Japanese, I would definitely pass the Japanese language.
Yuki Kaneko is also a middle-aged woman who is a teacher at Kamigata High School and has spent some time in Germany with her parents. In order to make me understand, she often deliberately slowed down her speech, and even mixed some English into Japanese.
Masato Yano, also a middle-aged woman, is very gentle in appearance and conversation, and I once talked to her about her name. I said that when I was a child, I watched the Japanese TV series "Zi Sanshiro", and the master of the judo master was named Yano Shogoro, and she happened to have the same surname. And the name Makoto makes me think of "Manayumi", because the pronunciation of the two is exactly the same.
Hara is a young woman with a very good voice, but she always wears a mask and gloves, so it is not known, it is said that she is suffering from allergies. Miss Yuan is from the University of Learning and studies the history of the Southern Song Dynasty, but she has not spoken Chinese to me. I once talked to her about the older generation of Actress Hara Setsuko in Japan because she had the same surname.
There are many part-time researchers in the Toyo Bunko, and they sometimes come to this research room on the 7th floor. Among those I have met are Hiroshi Kubo, Seiichiro Yoshizawa, Chihide Kwan, Yoshiya Tomizawa, and Akira Osawa.
Mr. Kubo is a professor at the Faculty of Humanities at Shinshu University, where he is well known for his research on modern and contemporary Chinese economic history. I used to have a relationship with him at a conference at Shanghai University, and when he visited Shanghai in the 1980s, he also had contact with Shen Yixing and Zheng Qingsheng, the elders of the institute's study of the history of the Chinese labor movement. Professor Kubo's daughter, Ms. Jasmine Kubo, is also a researcher on Chinese history, and I met her at the Shanghai Municipal Archives a few years ago, but I didn't talk to her, when she was a doctoral student at the University of Tokyo and was studying in Shanghai to search for historical materials.
Noriko Kubo's doctoral supervisor is Professor Seiichiro Yoshizawa. Professor Yoshizawa is famous for his research on the history of Tianjin and has visited the institute many times. On the afternoon of May 2, 2017, Dr. Kubo gave an academic lecture on the Criminal Police of China during the Republic of China period at the University of Tokyo, and Professor Yoshizawa specially invited me to comment and invited me to dinner after the meeting, and several of his students were present. By the way, Professor Yoshizawa's wife, Ms. Matsumura Shiho, is also a Doctor of The University of Tokyo, and 10 years ago she was a visiting scholar at East China Normal University in Shanghai to study the food problem in China after 1949, and now she is an associate professor at Hokkaido University. Unfortunately, I didn't see it this time.
The handsome dr. Kwan Chi-young is also a student of Professor Yoshizawa, and I saw it in the elevator when I visited the institute many years ago. In recent years, he has devoted himself to the study of the Wang Jingwei regime and published many valuable results. He and some young friends in the academic circles held a "Shuntian Times" reading club, and on the afternoon of December 18, 2016, I was also invited to participate, and a Chinese student named Yin Qing made an academic report on the Qing Dynasty Di Bao. After the meeting, everyone had dinner at a Chinese restaurant near the Toyo Bunko, and the atmosphere was warm. During this time, I became acquainted with some young and middle-aged Japanese scholars, such as Osamu Aoyama, Yumiko Abe, and Sanae Yamaguchi.
The loyal-looking Mr. Tomizawa, a professor at the Faculty of Education at Shimane University who specializes in modern Chinese economic history, has met many times before at Fudan University, the Shanghai Municipal Archives and the Academy, and his wife is a Chinese. He often flew to Tokyo from Matsue in Shimane Prefecture to check information. On November 4, 2016, he invited me to dinner at a family sake house near Otsuka. This family sake house seems to be owned by a Shimane prefecture, and there are many sake with Shimane characteristics, each with a small cup, which is very enjoyable.
The young Mr. Osawa is also an old acquaintance of mine, and when I first visited Japan in 2006, he received me as an assistant to Mr. Takatsugu and Mr. Kohama, and he accompanied me to visit an old bookstore in Jimbocho. Later, I also invited him to a meeting in Shanghai. He is now an associate professor at Nagoya Chubu University and married and had children with an international student from Guangxi, China.
In addition, I often meet Mr. Yoshiyuki Aihara (a researcher at the Toyo Bunko). When Mr. Gao Shihua in Beijing (a researcher at the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the editor-in-chief of the journal "Anti-Japanese War Studies") learned that I was visiting the Oriental Bunko library, he asked me to find a "Catalogue of liberation dailys" compiled by the library, and I followed his instructions to turn to Mr. Aihara, who actually pulled it out of his bookshelf and gave it to him in anger.
In the large research room on the 7th floor, I also saw a German professor named Peter Zieme, who was in his 70s and had a desk opposite me, so we occasionally talked in Japanese. He said he also knew some Chinese, but he could only read and speak. Zieme is a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin and studies the Ancient Vulture script. Once, he showed me a piece of paper printed with the ancient Wu'er script, which to me was like a heavenly book, but it seemed to be mixed with a number of Chinese characters. Professor Zieme visited Japan for a year and was accompanied by his wife, so life was definitely more convenient and better than mine. At the end of 1999, I visited Berlin, Germany, and I also witnessed the architecture of Humboldt University, and I mentioned to him some German scholars I knew, but he didn't seem to know them. I also told him that 20 years ago I had translated the German Orientalist Claproth.) H. Kraproth,1783–1835) was the first Western scholar to study Uyghur issues.
On the 7th floor, I sometimes encounter some "hurried passers-by", such as Professor Wang Guobin of the University of California, Irvine, and Professor Zhang Limin of the Institute of History of the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences. Once, two people with the appearance of Chinese walked in, and when I first learned that they were Mongolian scholars, I invited Professor Tachiko Oshima, an expert in Mongolian history, to come out and receive them.
I have also seen Professor Yoshinobu Spo Yoshinobu (Chief of Bunko) and Professor Takeshi Hamashita (Minister of Research) of the Toyo Bunko Library, but they are busy receiving other guests, so it is not convenient to disturb them. Ms. Takishita (Director of the Book Department and Host Researcher) and Ms. Xu Xiaojie (Young Researcher), the former of whom studied Chinese comics, and the latter, a Japanese scholar of China, are currently studying Ming and Qing dynasty paper.
The author of this article took a photo at the Toyo Bunko
(ii)
In the hall on the ground floor of the Toyo Bunko, there is a place to buy various souvenirs, many of which are albums and books that introduce the history of the library and the collection. On the second floor is a museum area, the precious Western books of the former Morris Library are placed in the center, in a huge concave shape, multi-storey display, for perennial exhibition, and there is a temporary exhibition area on the other side. During my time, the theme of the exhibition was about the historical relationship between the Romanov dynasty of Tsarist Russia and Japan, showing many rare pictures and texts. Visitors enter the museum area to buy tickets, but I am a visiting scholar of the Toyo Bunko, so the ticket is free.
The third floor is the main entrance to the library, there is a box in front of the door, throw in a 100 yen coin to open the box to use, when the bag is picked up, the coin will automatically pop up for retrieval. After entering the glass door, you can see a reception desk, usually with two staff members sitting behind it, and behind the reception desk is connected to a door, which leads directly to the inside of the library. However, the general viewer is not allowed to enter the library, can only fill in the list first, and then ask the staff to enter the library to extract the information, and then take it to the outside reading area to read. The reading area is equipped with tables and chairs, power under the tables, and many reference books on the rows of bookcases on all sides.
Since I have a "library admission permit" given by Mr. Yamamura, I have the "privilege" to enter the library. After entering the door, you can see rows and rows of shelves with Chinese classics, and there are ordinary books and wired books. Go inside to the bottom, where there is another elevator that leads to the ground floor, the fourth floor, and the fifth floor. The ground floor contains old newspapers and periodicals in various languages; the fourth floor hides old books and periodicals, mainly divided into three areas: Japanese, Chinese, and Korean; in addition to general Western books, there are books in rare languages such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkic, as well as testaments and gifts from Japanese academic masters such as Umehara Sueyoshi and Kazuo Kazuo. You can walk around freely in the above areas and flip through books at will. On the sixth floor is a valuable book area, which requires you to get a lot and get the key before you can enter. (In addition, if you need to access the original Morrison collection in the museum area on the second floor, you must also apply to the storeroom in advance) Photography is prohibited in the library, and mobile phones and digital cameras are not allowed to be brought in. If you need to copy, you must take it to the reception desk on the third floor, where there is a photocopier and a microfilm reader.
Although there are many rare books in the library, especially on the shelves against the wall, such as ancient maps, old picture books, old fangzhi, line-bound books, etc. (the binding size varies, and some have boxes or envelopes), but that is not my profession, I just occasionally flip through it with curiosity. My main purpose is still to search for Chinese old periodicals in the library and to serve the compilation of my sinology catalogue. In order to improve efficiency, I often hold a laptop into the library, and then place it on a writing desk next to the wall, and then go directly to the bookshelf to find it, and as soon as I find relevant literature, I take it to the writing desk to enter the information into the computer, and then reset the books. In this way, I stayed in the library for three or four hours. If you need to go to the toilet in the middle, you have to go out of the main entrance on the third floor, and there are toilets and vending machines on the opposite side of the reception desk.
Once, while I was reading a book in the library, Mr. Yamamura suddenly came up to me, first bowed deeply, and then explained it to me in a very slow voice. I listened for half a day to roughly understand what he meant: "You have the right to enter the library, but you can't stay in the library for a long time, if you want to read books, please borrow the books to the reading area outside to read." I immediately told him, "I'm compiling a bibliography, and I don't need to look at the whole book, turn the copyright page, and enter it into the computer." If you lend out every book, go back and forth, and go through the formalities, you will waste a lot of time. Mr. Yamamura said that he understood my feelings very well, but he was sorry that this was the rule of bunko, so he asked me to help. After saying that, he bowed deeply again. In China, encountering such a thing often causes disputes between the staff and readers, but Mr. Yamamura uses the bow as a "weapon", and I have no choice but to obey. After that, the time I spent in the library became significantly shorter, and the usual practice was to come in late and leave early, so as not to give people fouls.
The Toyo Bunko has an open website http://www.toyo-bunko.or.jp, which has an entrance to search books and periodicals, and general literature can be found directly on the shelves in the library by asking for a book number, but some literature reading requires an appointment. I have successively found a large number of books, pamphlets, monographs, and catalog indexes related to the history of the Library, such as the "Fifteen Years of the Oriental Bunko", the "Sixty Years of the Toyo Bunko", and the "Eighty Years of the Oriental Bunko", which are extremely rich in content and have helped me a lot.
Bunku doesn't have its own canteen, and at noon, I'll eat at a nearby restaurant, or Udon, or buckwheat, or set food. Each meal is about 800 yen, but I often don't have enough to eat, so I buy a rice ball at a nearby supermarket to make up for it.
Near the bunko, there is a famous garden called Rokuen, which has a history of more than 300 years and was once the private garden of the chaebol Iwasaki family. I have accompanied my friends to buy tickets to go in at different seasons, observed the beautiful autumn leaves, and admired the brilliant cherry blossoms, which is really beautiful!
During my 8-month study tour, I was invited to give two lectures at the Toyo Bunko. The first time was on the afternoon of April 22, with the help of Professor Fumizawa, I was in a conference room on the 7th floor, facing the research group of modern and contemporary Chinese history under the Bunku, entitled "How did the Chinese cultural circles translate and introduce Japanese sinology before 1949?" The report mainly introduces the compilation of the "Compendium of the Bibliography of Japanese "Chinese Studies" in the Period of the All-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Culture" (Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, September 2015 edition). Among the scholars who attended and gave me guidance were Professors Such as Hiroshi Kubo, Bisako Honjo, Saeko Takishita, Seiichiro Yoshizawa, and Yoshiya Tomizawa. Since they are all Researchers of China, my speech was conducted in Chinese.
The second lecture was given on the afternoon of May 27, and was selected as a special lecture by The Toyo Bunko through the mediation of Professor Masako Kohama. The title of the report is "The Relationship between the Toyo Bunko and Chinese Academia (1924-1945)", which is actually the general report of my visit to Japan. The speech was previewed on the library's website, and as a result, more than twenty people attended the lecture. I made relatively adequate preparations in advance, did ppt, and distributed more than 10 pages of written materials. The lectures are mainly divided into the following sections: research origins; the translation and introduction activities of the Academic Circles of the Republic of China to the Oriental Library; the visits of Chinese scholars to the Oriental Library during the Republic of China period; the exchange of books between the Chinese academic community and the Oriental Library during the Republic of China period; and the relationship between the publications, exhibitions and speech activities of the Oriental Library and the Chinese academic community. Professor Kohama and Ding Shili, a Chinese student at nihon University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, did the interpretation for me.
By the way, during my search for funds in the library, I especially wanted to know where the archives of the early years of the library were stored. At the recommendation of Ms. Takishita, I had a conversation with mr. Makino Motoki, the administrator of the archives ( acting director of the Popularization and Exhibition Department and key researcher ) , and Ms. Yin Qing, a Chinese student, interpreted for me. Mr. Makino said that although the Toyo Bunko is an international-level orientalist institution that has gathered many first-class scholars, in the past, in terms of the history of the bunko itself, it has not been paid much attention to in the past. He said that the pre-war Toyo Bunko belonged to a private institution, while after the war it belonged to the Library of the Diet of Japan, and the archives belonging to the previous period have been preserved, but they are currently piled on some bookshelves and are being sorted out, so they cannot be opened. I asked Mr. Makino, "Have you found any reader's check-in books in the archives?" Because I especially want to know who the 2919 people in the Toyo Bunko from 1925 to 1938 Chinese? He said he hadn't seen it. I asked again, "Have you found any letters from Chinese scholars and Chinese academic institutions in the archives?" He said he hadn't seen it either. I can't help but be a little surprised by this.
At the end of his visit to Japan and his return to China, Mr. Yamamura told me that the Toyo Bunko was preparing to hold the "100th Anniversary Commemoration of the MoliBunku's Eastern Crossing" at the end of this year, and hoped that I would be invited to attend the conference again at the Bunko. I readily agreed. Mr. Yamamura also said that Ms. Xu Xiaojie of the Research Department will negotiate with me to handle the relevant procedures.
In this way, I had a revisit of the Toyo Bunko half a year later.
