East Asian Studies Research Guide

The East Asian Studies library specialist supports the research, teaching and learning of the Emory community through individual research consultations, class instructional sessions and course/research guides.  Here is the contact info: lawrence.p.hamblin@emory.edu; 404-727-8026

kotobank/Yahoo! Japan dictionaries (in Japanese)

A collection of general and specialized Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias. Typing an entry into the search box will provide results from as many dictionaries as have matches.

 

Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Dictionary (in English)

This resource is useful for learners of the Japanese language.  Kanji Look Up alows you to type in Kanji characters or readings in kana or Roman letters to look at Kanji characters.  Multi-Radical Kanji provides a radical table, from which you can select radicals/elements to look for Kanji characters. 

 

はてなキーワード (in Japanese)

This site lets you search for Japanese slang words that are commonly used in contemporary Japan. These slang words are often related to pop culture. If you encounter unknown, newly created words while watching Japanese dramas/TV shows/anime, reading manga/magazines, or speaking with young Japanese people and you can’t find these words in regular dictionaries, try this site.

Google Translate (in English)

Google provides one of the best online translation services. Google Translate allows you to translate web pages and texts into various languages, including Japanese.  However, Japanese translations by Google's utility or other similar online services still need great improvement to be suitable for practical usage. Translate is good at translating Japanese words and phrases but is not necessarily effective in translating Japanese sentences and interpreting context.

 

 

LOCATING BOOKS

 Library Search provides access to the Emory Libraries catalog, Articles+ and other search tools.

Library Search is the main search interface for locating items at Emory, especially books.  You can search books by title, author and subjects.  Here are some subject headings for locating books on Japanese Studies:

Japanese literature 日本文学

Japanese novels　日本小説

Japanese history　日本歴史/日本史

Japanese culture　日本文化

Japanese language 日本語

Japanese politics　日本政治

Japanese society (social welfare, social science)　日本社会（社会福祉, 社会科学）

Japanese film　日本映画

Japanese classics　日本古典文学

Japanese manuscripts 日本古文書

 WorldCat

You can also find books in WorldCat, a catalog of resources held by libraries worldwide.

GIL Universal Catalog

All the catalogs of the University System of Georgia.

JAPANESE ONLINE DATABASES

JapanKnowledge (in Japanese)

Offers the largest Japanese-language online reference collection.  When you’re directed to the JapanKnowledge site, please click on the Enter button to log in to use the content.

The database allows two users to access it simultaneously and is shared among three institutions, including Emory. Therefore, after you finish, please remember to log out for other users. (Simply closing the window won’t log you out for another 15 minutes.)

JapanKnowledge includes the following resources:

• Encyclopedias (e.g. Nipponica, Encyclopedia of Japan, imidas, 現代用語の基礎知識, etc.),
• Language dictionaries (e.g. Japanese-English, Japanese-Japanese, English-English, Kanji dictionary, etc.),
• Other dictionaries (e.g. 日本人名大辞典, 国史大辞典, etc.)
• Multimedia databases (e.g. 図解アニメーション, サウンドライブラリ、ミュージックライブラリ, 映像記録, etc).
• Some full-text databases (e.g. 週刊エコノミスト, 新編 日本古典文学全集).

MagazinePlus

Provides over 3.3 million bibliographic references to articles from more than 7,600 Japanese scholarly periodicals from 1975 to the present.  It covers subject areas including the humanities, social sciences, medical science and science and technology.

Newspaper databases (in Japanese)

Emory subscribes to the databases of the three main Japanese newspapers, each of which has archives of their newspaper articles dating back to the late 1800s and accompanying resources: 

Kikuzo II Visual (Asahi Shimbun)

Kikuzo is Asahi Shimbun's newspaper database, containing over 13 million full-text articles from the asahi Shimbun, as well as the newspaper's two weekly magazines, AERA and Shukan Asahi.

Yomidas Rekishikan(Yomiuri Shimbun)

Yomidas Rekishikan contains more than 10 million articles from the Yomiuri Shimbun, articles from the English language publication Daily Yomiuri, as well as a biographical database and abstract index.

Maisaku

Maisaku is a database containing articles from the Mainichi Shimbun dating back to 1872.  Also included are the results of the newspaper's opinion polls dating from 1945.

 

NDL-OPAC    

Japan’s National Diet Library (NDL) Online Public Access Catalog. 

 National Institute of Informatics resources (in Japanese and English)

Japan's National Institute of Informatics (NII) offers the following databases: CiNii(Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator, for checking the availability of books and articles at Japanese libraries), KAKEN (Database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research), the Academic Research Database Repository, and JAIRO (Japanese Institutional Repositories Online).

 National Diet Library Digital Archive Portal (PORTA)

PORTA allows users to search various archives owned by national, public, and private organizations in addition to NDL’s archives through an integrated search system.

 青空文庫  (in Japanese)

Digital Library offering several thousands of full-text literary works in the Japanese language. Works include out-of-copyright books and works that the authors wish to make freely available.