E-Resources
*Harvard ID required
**Fee based
Databases and Digital Archives
Japan Search is a national platform for aggregating metadata of digital resources across various fields and operated by the National Diet Library, in cooperation with numerous organizations. It currently connects 111 databases through one portal.
Over 80 titles to the most essential reference sources and multi-volume sets are available through this database.
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR)
This online archive is focused on historical documents concerning modern Japanese relations with other countries, particularly within Asia. It contains historical records provided by the National Archives of Japan, the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the National Institute for Defense Studies of the Ministry of Defense.
National Diet Library Digital Collections
Gateways of digitized books, periodicals, and audio-visual materials by the National Diet Library and by other institutes.
Institutional Repositories DataBase
Formerly known as Jairo, this open access database aggregates Japanese academic materials, such as journal articles, dissertations, and departmental bulletins
A Japanese digital library that contains over 15,000 works of Japanese-language fiction and non-fiction.
Newspapers
Asahi Shimbun: Kikuzo II Visual* 1879-present
Mainichi Shimbun: Maisaku* 1872-present
Nihon Keizai Shimbun: Nikkei Telecom* 1876-present
Yomiuri Shimbun: Yomidas Rekishikan* 1874-present
Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection
The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection at Hoover Institution Library and Archives is currently the world’s largest online archive of open-access, full image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers in Asia and South America. To date 140 titles and photo archives, comprising 835,967 images, have been made available in the online collection that is open to the public and does not require registration for viewing most titles.
Journals and Articles
A bibliographic database service for material in Japanese academic libraries, especially focusing on Japanese works and English works published in Japan.
The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus is a peer-reviewed on-line publication providing critical analysis of the forces shaping the Asia-Pacific and the world. The Journal explores the geopolitics, economics, history, society, culture, international relations and environment of the modern and contemporary Asia-Pacific region.
A freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.
Data (not included in other sections)
Data sets by governmental, public, and NPO institutions.
Microdata from e-Stat Statistics of Japan, the portal site for Japanese government statistics
Social Science Japan Data Archives (SSJDA)
Provided by the Institute of Social Science at The University of Tokyo
NHK Opinion Polls 1998 - present
Public Opinion Polls - Yoron Chosa Provided by the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan
Dictionaries/ Language Resources
One of the most popular English Japanese dictionaries on the Internet.
A portable instant voice translator that is able to handle 63 languages. It offers AI-powered translation and comes with its own data SIM.
A free integrated bilingual dictionary for Japanese-speaking sites that can perform a bulk search on a variety of dictionaries, encyclopedias and glossaries.
This is the best resource for difficult historical translations, and includes Dai-ji-sen, Ji-tsu, Kadokawa Kogo Daijiten, Zenbunzenyaku Kogojiten, Nihon Hogen Daijiten, and many others.
Maintained by the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group at Monash University. This website is one of the oldest and most reliable online dictionaries for native English speakers of Japanese. Its dictionary files are the basis for nearly every free Japanese-English dictionary online, and it is surprisingly useful for searching difficult kanji and historical Japanese.
Dictionaries for use with Web-Segmenters
E-books
A Japanese digital library that contains over 15,000 works of Japanese-language fiction and non-fiction.
It searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text, and stored in its digital database.
Over 80 titles of essential reference books and multi-volume sets are available online.
One of the most popular comic websites that contains many free cartoons.
More than 1000 popular cartoons for free.
National Diet Library Digital Collections
Gateways of digitized books, periodicals, and audio-visual materials by the National Diet Library and by other institutes.