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Japanese Books in the British Library printed before 1700

Order		Background		Specifications

History of the British Library Collection
The complete microfiche edition will contain all 637 works in the British Library printed before 1700, including 73 jiin-ban (Kasuga-ban, Koya-ban, Jodokyo-ban, Gozan-ban and other examples of medieval printing at Buddhist monasteries), as well as four imperial chokuhan editions, some 120 movable-type editions, and seven kirishitan-ban.

Kaempfer collection
The majority of rare books were acquired from four sources. The first of these was the small collection of books and maps formed by the German physician Engelbert Kaempfer, who stayed at Deshima from 1690 to 1692 as a medical officer with the Dutch East India Company. The books which he brought back to Europe were acquired from his nephew between 1723 and 1725, along with his autographed manuscripts and natural specimens, by the founder of the British Museum, Sir Hans Sloane. The Kaempfer collection (all 43 items surviving from his collection are included in this publication) consists mostly of practical books in small format, such as dochuki, iroha primers, calenders, ko-joruri-bon and utaihon texts; it also comprises 10 maps. Because of their utilitarian and ephemeral nature, all such items are extremely rare in Japan today. The scholarly importance of this Kaempfer collection is enhanced by the way it relates to his celebrated History of Japan, which was to shape European views of Japan for nearly 200 years.

The von Siebold collection
The second major acquisition was the library of 1,008 works in 3,441 volumes amassed by Philipp Franz von Siebold during his stay in Japan from 1823 to 1829 - also as a medical officer at Deshima - and again from 1859 to 1862. The books were purchased from his son Alexander in 1868. The von Siebold collection is characterised by its encyclopedic subject range and a varied assortment of some 125 manuscripts. In this collection, 66 works are printed before 1700 and these are therefore included in this publication.

The Satow collection
The third and most important single source of old Japanese books was the collection acquired from the British diplomat Sir Ernest Satow, which was formed during his two terms of service in Japan from 1862 to 1883 and from 1895 to 1900. His distinctive ex-libris seal "Eikoku Sado zosho" has long been familiar to Japanese bibliographers. He was one of the very few Westerners then actively interested in Japanese antiquarian books - indeed, he was the only one who actually utilized the books he had collected to write what was a pioneering account of the history of Japanese printing, including Jesuit printing activities in Japan.

Exceedingly early and rare editions
Thus, the Satow collection contains many exceedingly early and rare editions, some of which are the only surviving copies in the world. There are 47 works printed before 1600 and no fewer than 72 movable-type editions, including all four chokuhan. Among the unique copies in this collection are a Jodokyo-ban of 1280, the 12th Shinjo edition of the Lotus Sutra, and a 1504 illustrated edition of the Kannongyo commissioned by a swordsmith from Mino. Likewise, Tsukihi no soshi, an early work of fiction catering for the emerging reading public, is the only copy with this title so far traced inside or outside Japan.

Anderson collection
The last pre-1900 collector to be introduced here is Dr. William Anderson, who is perhaps the least known collector of Japanese books but who was the British Library's greatest benefactor in so far as artistic works are concerned. Anderson collected some 2,000 volumes of ehon and e-irihon as an oyatoi foreigner employed by the Meiji government to head the new naval medical college in Tokyo from 1873 to 1880. The works are at present divided between the holdings of the British Museum and the British Library. It is in the British Library collection that we find some of the earliest Ukiyo-zoshi ehon, such as Koshoku Yamato-e no kongen and Koi no utakagami illustrated by masters of the Hishikawa school, as well as the Saga-bon Ise monogatari and the Sanju rokkasen.

The British Library collection is also famous for having a unique copy of the kirishitan-ban Feique (Heike) no monogatari, printed in 1592-93 by the Jesuit Mission Press at Amakusa.

[Extract from a commemorative lecture given in Japan in March 1996 by Yu-ying Brown, Head of Japanese Collections, the British Library, to launch Hon-no-TomoshaÕs microfiche publication.]

The microfiche collection
Many of the Japanese books in the British Library have been rebound in Western-style binding, which sometimes made text near the gutter difficult to reproduce. Where a fiche contains such folios, a special book-copying process has been used in order to make these parts legible: such copies were then refilmed and have been added as supplementary fiches (marked [S]) at the back of each Unit.

The arrangement of the microfilm edition follows the subject categories of Kenneth Gardner's Descriptive Catalogue (hereafter abbreviated as KGDC, followed by the item numbers in the catalogue). Within each of the four Parts, several of these subjects have been grouped together in Units and can be ordered separately.