Research Guides: East Asian Studies: HIST-UA 569

Japan's Empire in Asia, 1895-1945, HIST-UA 569 (Prof. Linkhoeva)

This library guide is for use with course #HIST-UA 569 and is based on the syllabus, "Japan's Empire in Asia, 1895-1945" provided by Dr. Tatiana Linkhoeva

sample search terms:
imperialism, colonialism, "colonial modernity," colonial identities, colony-metropole, "regional migration," "Pan-Asianism," empire, "total war," "Asia-Pacific War," "Pacific War," "World War II," "Sino-Japanese War," and many others.

Library Catalogs

To find out what we have at NYU, search the NYU LIBRARY CATALOG : https://search.library.nyu.edu

To find out what is available elsewhere (and then you can request through Interlibrary Loan or EZBorrow), search these

WorldCat - FirstSearch (OCLC)
Search for books and more in libraries in the U.S. and around the world. Indicates when NYU libraries holds a copy of a book and shows you nearby libraries with holdings. Great for searching books in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean scripts and for getting information to request through Interlibrary Loan.
WorldCat.org
Free version of WorldCat. Search for books and more in libraries in the U.S. and around the world.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a central search for scholarly literature. It covers disciplines and sources, peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

Reference

JapanKnowledge (contains the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan)
JapanKnowledge (ジャパンナレッジ) provides access to electronic versions of major dictionaries and encyclopedias - essential Japanese reference sources, as well as databases for some weekly journals and maps published in Japan. These include Nihon daihyakka zensho (日本大百科全書), Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (講談社), Nihon kokugo daijiten (日本国語大辞典), Gendai yōgo no kiso chishiki (現代用語の基礎知識), and others. It contains full text of the journal, Ekonomisuto (Weekly Economist, 週刊エコノミスト), from 2015-present. It also contains the Tōyō bunko (東洋文庫). And, it contains the Dai Kanwa Jiten (大漢和辞典修訂第二版)
Oxford Bibliographies
Oxford Bibliographies presents constantly updated articles that contain citations (with annotations) and commentaries for sources across the disciplines. Users can search topics and gather relevant journal article and book citations, online resources, data sources, and more.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias
The Oxford Research Encyclopedias (OREs) offer long-form overview articles written, peer-reviewed, and edited by leading scholars. Each of the twenty-five distinct encyclopedias cover both foundational and cutting-edge topics in order to develop, over time, an anchoring knowledge base for major areas of research across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Try the Asian History section.
Includes Japanese Empire and Pan-Asianism
Pan-Asianism and War
and other useful topics
Please use CTRL/CMD + P to download PDFs until issues with the PDF button are resolved for this resource.

Cambridge Histories Online: https://persistent.library.nyu.edu/arch/NYU02236
For Japan: Vol. 6 The Twentieth Century: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-japan/4D00F02EF55AC774AD0F5BD8D1887BD4

Hunter, Janet. Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History. Berkeley: University of California Press 1984.
This is a concise, reliable guide to the people, places, events, and ideas of significance from the Meiji Restoration to the present.
call number: NYU Bobst 1st Floor Reference (DS881.9 .H86 1984 Non-circulating )

WWWJDIC: Japanese-English language online dictionary, created by Jim Breen
http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?1C

Useful Databases for Finding Journal Articles about Japan

Bibliography of Asian Studies
The online version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) contains records on all subjects (especially in the humanities and the social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide and in Western languages.
EBSCO Discovery Service
EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) encompasses articles in databases across many disciplines. Users can locate peer reviewed articles, videos, audio files, images, and more from a range of subjects. Try searching multiple terms like "Japan" "Asia" "imperialism" "Total War" and others. Limit to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals. EBSCO is leaving NYU Library in June 2025.
Note: NYU Libraries is retiring EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) in June 2025. The Catalog Search replaces EDS as the tool for searching across multiple publishers’ databases and platforms. You can also use EBSCOhost to search across the full set of EBSCO-only databases.
Historical Abstracts with Full Text (EBSCO)
Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. Indexes more than 1,700 academic historical journals in over 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1955 to present.
JSTOR
JSTOR provides access to scholarly journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. In addition to journal articles, users can access book chapters, ebooks, and primary source documents.
MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB)
The MLA International Bibliography provides bibliographic records for books, book chapters, journal articles, and dissertations published in the fields of modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Full text is available for some articles. The MLAIB covers items published from around 1920 to the present.
Project Muse
Provides full-text access to high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from scholarly publishers.
GenderWatch
GenderWatch indexes scholarly, radical, community, and independent publications from 1970 to present relevant to gender, women's, and LGBTQ studies. It provides information from both academic and grassroots perspectives on a wide range of gender-related topics, such as sexuality, family, religion, societal roles, race and ethnicity, feminism, masculinity, eating disorders, healthcare, and the workplace. Notable titles include Off Our Backs, Transgender Tapestry, Sister Namibia, and Out and About, among others.
Dissertations & Theses Global
Dissertations and Theses Global contains indexes, dissertations and some theses. Full-text is available for many dissertations and theses, including those from NYU.

Japanese Articles via Databases--In Japanese

MagazinePlus
This indexes the contents of both scholarly and popular journals published in Japan after 1946. Not full text, but an essential resource for finding journal articles in the humanities, social sciences, and the sciences. It consolidates five separate databases (the Zasshi Kiji Sakuin (an index to academic journals), the Jānaru Indekkusu (an index to general journals), Joint (an index to periodicals on economics), KSK (an index to 60 foreign journals on industries), and the Gakkai Nenpō and Gakujutsu Ronbunshū (an index to yearbooks of academic societies). This is a two-seat resource. Once you are done with your session, please close your browser.

CiNii
Journal article citation index to 12 million articles from Japanese academic sources, with some full text. If you find an article here that you need and it is not available in full text, request through ILL.
More information less...
Integration of CiNii Articles into CiNii Research from April 1, 2022
https://support.nii.ac.jp/en/news/cir/20210706
Japanese Institutional Repositories (JAIRO)
Contains citations to and (in many cases) full text of articles, papers, dissertations, etc. from Japanese universities.
National Diet Library Newspaper Index
You can't read the articles here, but you can find the citations for newspapers articles and information about which libraries hold them for interlibrary loan purposes.
Zassaku Plus (Koseisha)
An online index to Japanese articles and periodicals that starts from the Meiji period and goes to the present. Not full text, but you can request articles through ILL if the library does not have the periodicals in our collection

Online History - Primary Resources

Foreign Office Files for Japan, 1919-1952
Published in three parts, this collection makes available extensive coverage of British Foreign Office files dealing with Japan between 1919 and 1952:

- Japan and Great Power Status, 1919-1930
- Japanese Imperialism and the War in the Pacific, 1931-1945
- Occupation of Japan, 1946-1952

Japan Times Archives
Japan Times Archives provides full-text searching and page images of the English-language newspaper Japan Times from 1897-2022 (Dec.). Japan Times is the oldest English language newspaper in Japan.
*Includes content for The Japan Advertiser. Founded by an American, the Japan Advertiser served as an essential Western perspective during Japan's aggressive advancement into Asia until the title was absorbed into the Japan Times in November 1940. It is a full image/full text searchable digital archive (1913-1940) and is available alongside the Japan Times Digital Archive.*

Japanese Newspapers (with English access) at NYU

Access World News
Access World News provides the html full text articles and transcripts from a variety of national and international news sources, including newspapers, digital-native news websites, television and radio transcripts, blogs, college and university newspapers, journals, magazines, and some audio and video. Most international titles are English language. Dates of coverage vary from title to title, but primarily span the late 20th century to present.
Click Asia, and then use Japan for a keyword to select Japanese newspapers. There are 7 newspapers listed for Japan:
Economy, Culture & History Japan Spotlight
Japan Economic Foundation
Japan News, The
Japan Times, The
Japan Times: Web Edition Articles
JCN Network
Kyodo News International, Inc.
Asahi Shimbun Cross Search
Kikuzo II Visual (Asahi Shinbun, 聞蔵Ⅱビジュアル, 朝日新聞記事データベース) is a newspaper database for Asahi shinbun containing articles published from 1879 to the present. Also includes articles from the weekly magazines Aera as well as Shūkan Asahi, from the annual new-word dictionary Chiezō, Asahi shinbun jinbutsu dētabēsu, and Asahi shinbun rekishi shashin ākaibu.
This is a Japanese newspaper, but if you click on Tab “English News” you can search for articles in English. It includes the International Herald Tribune, The Asahi shinbun, and AJW (Asia & Japan Watch), an online English news portal that goes back to 2001. For a subtitled guide to searching Kikuzo II (listen in Japanese, read in English): http://www.asahi.com/information/db/movie/english.html
Try this for info on English searching: http://database.asahi.com/help/eng/englishdb_sousa01_e.html
Japan Chronicle
The English-language Japan Chronicle Weekly (1900–1940) is a British-oriented newspaper that covers Japan’s engagement with modernity, war, political and social upheaval and seismic social change in East Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. This collection includes the Kobe Weekly Chronicle (1900-1901) the predecessor of the Japan Chronicle Weekly. It offers a perspective of expatriate communities in Japan and East Asia from 1900-1941.
Japan Times Archives
Japan Times Archives provides full-text searching and page images of the English-language newspaper Japan Times from 1897-2022 (Dec.). Japan Times is the oldest English language newspaper in Japan.
*Includes content for The Japan Advertiser. Founded by an American, the Japan Advertiser served as an essential Western perspective during Japan's aggressive advancement into Asia until the title was absorbed into the Japan Times in November 1940. It is a full image/full text searchable digital archive (1913-1940) and is available alongside the Japan Times Digital Archive.*
ProQuest Historical Newspapers Text-as-Data Collection
Search the PDF full text and image archives of more than 100 major U.S. newspapers.
An overview of newspaper, time coverage, and access points can be found on the NYU Libraries guide to the collection.

Japanese Newspapers (in Japanese) at NYU

Asahi Shimbun Cross Search
Kikuzo II Visual (Asahi Shinbun, 聞蔵Ⅱビジュアル, 朝日新聞記事データベース) is a newspaper database for Asahi shinbun containing articles published from 1879 to the present. Also includes articles from the weekly magazines Aera as well as Shūkan Asahi, from the annual new-word dictionary Chiezō, Asahi shinbun jinbutsu dētabēsu, and Asahi shinbun rekishi shashin ākaibu.
This database also has an extensive archive of historical photographs, a Who's Who dictionary, Asahi gurafu, magazine, full text of the contents of Aera magazine from 1985 to the present.
For a subtitled guide to searching Kikuzo II (listen in Japanese, read in English): http://www.asahi.com/information/db/movie/english.html
Yomidas (Yomiuri Database Service)
Yomidas Rekishikan (ヨミダス歴史館) allows a user to search or browse through articles carried by the newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun (読売新聞). Includes the full text of the Yomiuri from its initial publication in 1874 to the present, as well as its English language equivalent, the Daily Yomiuri, and a biographical dictionary of modern Japanese figures. Articles are indexed by keyword to 8/31/1986 and can be searched full-text and by keyword from 9/1/1986 to the present. See the NEW ENGLISH USER GUIDE on the Home page.

Articles in foreign languages from the Meiji and Taisho eras are available as well. Read original articles in English, French, German and Russian in the Yomiuri shinbun in four different columns between 1904 and 1918.
In Diverse Tongues (1908~1909) in English, French and German
The Yomiuri Shimbun (1910~1918) in English
Le Yomiuri Shimbun (1914~1918) in French
「欧文小品」 Short pieces in Western languages (1904~1906) in English, French, German and Russian
You can access stories from the 「すぐ読むお勧め連載」 list on the main page of the Yomidas Rekishikan site. Scroll down to The Japan News section, and the stories are at the very bottom.

NYU now has access to the Regional Sections (Showa Era) feature, which allows searching of stories that appeared in various regional editions of the newspaper.
Yomidas (Yomiuri Database Service) supports the latest versions of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox.

Digital and Image Collections

National Diet Library of Japan Digital Collections
https://dl.ndl.go.jp/?__lang=en

Finding Images, guide created by the North American Coordinating Council of Japanese Library Resources (NCC)
https://guides.nccjapan.org/c.php?g=355419&p=2399810

Citing Sources

How to cite your sources
https://guides.nyu.edu/citations

Organizing your sources and creating bibliographies
https://guides.nyu.edu/citations/tools
Using Refworks, Endnote, Zotero, or Mendeley…
Getting Started with Refworks: https://guides.nyu.edu/refworks

Quick Guide on Citation Style for Chinese, Japanese and Korean Sources (Yale University Library)
https://guides.library.yale.edu/c.php?g=296262&p=1974226

For more assistance with citation management tools, contact librarian Margaret Smith, Physical Sciences Librarian: email ms4108 @nyu.edu

Not at Bobst Library?

Need a resource that we don't appear to have, request the material via Interlibrary Loan or EZBorrow. Or, if you are in NYC and are an NYU doctoral student or full-time faculty member, try MaRLI, the Manhattan Research Library Initiative. MaRLI enables cardholders from NYU, Columbia, and NY Public Library to borrow materials from all three institutions. Registration is required.