Japanese Historical Maps from the East Asian Library, UC Berkeley

When the University of California at Berkeley purchased the Mitsui Library from the Mitsui family in1949, included among the 100,000 items was a collection of 2,298 maps which had been assembled by Mitsui Takakata (penname: Soken) (1882-1950), the 9th head of the Shinmachi branch of the family. The most unusual part of the collection is the 697 woodblock-print maps (and a few dozen manuscript maps) dating from the Tokugawa period (1600-1867).

Especially rare is the collection of Tokugawa city maps: 252 maps of the city of Edo (modern Tokyo), 79 maps of Kyoto, 40 of Osaka, and 30 maps of other cities such as Kanazawa, Nagoya, Nagasaki, and Yokohama, all from the Tokugawa period. Among the earliest maps are those of Osaka (1656), Kyoto (1654-68), and Edo (1676). The earliest Japanese world maps also date from this period.

In collecting maps from the Meiji period (1868-1912), Mitsui Soken also displayed his antiquarian interest by concentrating on the earlier decades. Most of the Meiji maps date from the period before 1890 and many are printed on handmade paper; a considerable number are printed from woodblocks. Meiji period city maps include 240 of Tokyo, 112 of Kyoto, 89 of Osaka, and 312 of other cities. A significant number of the maps in the collection, and many of the world maps, are in color.

The East Asian Library at Berkeley contains one of the most comprehensive collections of materials in East Asian Languages in the United States. The library traces its origins to the deposit in 1896 of John Fryer's Chinese Library, which was later bequeathed to the university. Other early gifts and acquisitions obtained in the early 20th century sustained the quality and distinction of the library at a time when Berkeley was almost alone among American campuses in offering a broad program of East Asian studies. The East Asian Library was founded in 1947 as a unit of the University Library at Berkeley; it has grown from 75,000 volumes to more than ten times this number today. Currently it receives about 4,000 serial titles. Its combined holdings in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other East Asian languages form one of the top two academic collections in the United States outside of the Library of Congress.

In the late 1950s the Center for Chinese Studies Library was established. This branch of the East Asian Library has since grown to become the world's largest academic repository of materials on contemporary China outside China.

Japanese holdings at Berkeley rank first among American university collections and include the approximately 100,000 volume Mitsui Library, which contains 2,500 early Japanese woodblock-printed maps, 7,000 Japanese manuscripts, fine Chinese rubbings, and the Doi Gakken, Soshin, and Motoori collections. The library also owns the 8,850 volume Murakami Library, almost without rival even in Japan, containing writings of the Meiji period (1868-1912), many of them first editions. Since the early 1950s the East Asian Library, together with the Library of Congress, has been one of the two depositories in the United States for Japanese government publications.

Cartography Associates, founded in 1996, promotes the distribution of digital facsimiles both in print and electronic media. Specializing in both primary source documents and cutting-edge technology, Cartography Associates is committed to developing tools that integrate cataloging with visual images on the Internet. CA's vision is to offer users the best of both worlds: the powerful searching, access, and user functionality made possible by technology, combined with the visual beauty, technical mastery and intellectual richness of original source materials. Cartography Associates is committed to helping the UC East Asian Library create the online Japanese Historical Map Collection.

The collection on the Internet brings together the finest optical equipment and digital scanners, cutting edge viewing technology, the latest image processing software, powerful wavelet compression, and reliable long-term storage of digital images. The digitized maps are very high resolution images scanned at at least 300 pixels per inch, as measured against the original map's dimensions. The larger maps generate files frequently approaching two gigabytes in size; the average file size of images in the collection is 200 megabytes.

The following hardware and software is used in the process of creating and distributing the images over the Internet:

* Insight® client/server and browser software by Luna Imaging, Inc.
* PhaseOne Powerphase 4x5 digital scanning camera back (150 megabyte capture)
* PhaseOne PowerphaseFX 4x5 digital scanning camera back (380 megabyte capture)
* PhaseOne image-capture software
* Sinar X 4x5 view camera
* Rodenstock lenses
* Kaiser RePro copy stand with Videssence Icelites
* Adobe PhotoShop CS6.0
* MrSid image compression software by LizardTech

Computer network:
* Apple G4 Dual 1 GHz, 1.5 gigabytes RAM
* Apple G4 450 MHz, 1.5 gigabytes RAM
* Apple G3 400 MHz, 1 gigabyte RAM
* Windows NT Dual Pentium 550 MHz Xeon, 1 gigabyte RAM Storage:
* DVD Ram 5.2 gigabyte storage discs

The East Asian Library supports research, teaching, and scholarship, and encourages open and unrestricted use of the digital files from the Japanese Historical Maps collection. The Library does not claim to hold copyright in these Japanese Historical Maps, and does not require users to seek permission to publish or distribute materials deemed to be in the public domain. These maps were scanned by David Rumsey and Cartography Associates. EAL suggests that citations to these maps include the following information: [Identification of the item], C. V. Starr East Asian Library, University of California, Berkeley. Contact the East Asian Library at eal@library.berkeley.edu.