Contents
E-texts, Publishers, Journals, Magazines
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Aozora Bunko (Blue Sky Collection)
An extensive and growing collection of downloadable e-texts for modern Japanese authors (up to about 50 years ago). The texts are offered in plain text, HTML, and Expand Book versions. A page of links gives the locations of other e-text sites, including those with classical works. Try this site first for most prewar modern authors.
This site identifies itself as "a collaborative effort to make texts of classical Japanese literature available on the World Wide Web." The first batch of texts included Kokin wakashū; Ise monogatari; Hōjōki; Ogura hyakunin isshu, Midaregami (well, classical in form anyway), and a selection of Noh plays (the gem of the collection, comprising a total of 37 versions of 13 plays, including multiple English translations). Subsequent additions have raised the total number of works available to over 50, including the eight major imperial collections of classical poetry and a growing number of modern works by novelists and poets.
An eclectic selection of e-texts and links to other e-text sites. The focus is premodern works, especially historical texts and gunki monogatari, but otherwise not easy to characterize. A number of things can be found here that can't be found elsewhere, including texts of Confucian works and Meiji poetry. Compiled by Kikuchi Shin'ichi of Konan Women's University and Fukasawa Akio of Showa Women's University, whose declared intention is to provide reliable, scholarly texts. Japanese only.
Tsubouchi Shōyō's Shōsetsu shinzui (The Essence of the Novel)
A digital version of Nanette Gottlieb's 1983 translation of what is considered the first major example of modern Japanese literary criticism, available from New York University's Faculty Digital Archive.
The Private Public Domain Library
The choice of the oxymoronic name is said to reflect the paucity of e-texts available from institutional sites. Contains downloadable Japanese texts of works by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Kajii Motojirō, Tayama Katai, Natsume Sōseki, Mori Ōgai, and several others.
Although no texts are actually archived on the site, there is an extensive collection of links to works from all periods that can be found on other sites. The most recent links, however, date from August 2000.
The official Kodansha International site. In addition to information on Kodansha International's publications, there is a Photo Gallery and a (not-very-active) forum on books about Japan. Books cannot be ordered directly from the site.
A page devoted to "providing accurate information in English about Kodansha's manga (Japanese comics) works." The contents include a detailed catalog of manga published in Japanese by Kōdansha, with English summaries and page "previews"; there is also a Club Room where more lengthy previews of several comics can be viewed along with rough-and-ready English translations.
Essentially an illustrated catalog of Tuttle's books dealing with various aspects of Asian culture. Readers who wish to place orders are directed to online and local bookstores, although a toll-free (U.S.) phone number is available for ordering from the warehouse. Tuttle no longer has an English Web site based in Japan.
Back issues of Japanese Book News, a quarterly journal of information on publication trends published by the Japan Foundation, are available for download in PDF format. The collection starts with Volume 15 (Fall 1996).
A site that introduces the contents of the latest issue and contains complete indexes for articles, monographs, and translations, along with an index of book reviews beginning with the Winter 1999 issue.