Meiji Taisho Showa zenki
zasshi kiji sakuin shūsei
―Q&A
By Steve Wills
1. What is the
sakuin shūsei?
The sakuin shūsei is a massive collection
of periodical guides reprinted by the publishing company Kōseisha and
organized
into separate editions by category and subcategory. The 70-volume
social
sciences (shakai kagaku) edition
comprises 186 different periodical guides, and the 50-volume humanities
(
jinbun kagaku) edition features 120 different guides. There are
several
more editions included in the series (specialized catalogues of
material
relating to hygiene, urban problems, working women, child labor,
women’s
magazines during the American occupation, and science/industry), but
these
are not part of the Starr collection. In addition to the collections of
periodical
guides, each edition has its own supplementary multi-volume author
index
(searchable by character) and a collection of all the tables of
contents
(sōmokuji) for the guides included
in the sakuin shūsei. Finally,
the Kōseisha
website provides both an online version of the author index with a
simple search
engine for looking up authors and a digital version of the
sōmokuji (no search engine, however).
2. What years does this
collection
cover?
As
the title implies, the sakuin shūsei contains listings
for periodicals from 1867 up to approximately 1949 (some
guides continue until the early 1960s). While some categories, such as
law
and Japanese history, include information for every year during this
period,
users should be aware that other categories (theater/performing arts,
for
example) are only covered for a few years. The best way to confirm that
the category you are interested in is covered by this collection is to
consult
the chronological charts provided at the beginning of the supplementary
list
of tables of contents. For convenience’s sake, the chronological
information
can also be found below, translated into English.
3. How is the
sakuin shūsei organized?
The
social sciences edition is divided into the following categories:
General
Social Sciences, Modern Asia/South Seas, Politics, Law,
Economics/Commercial
Science, Society/Urban Problems, and Agriculture/Forestry. The
humanities
edition is broken down as follows: General Humanities,
Thought/Philosophy,
Japanese History, East Asian History, Geography, Education,
Customs/Ethnography,
Architecture, Film/Performing Arts, Japanese Literature,
British/American
Studies, Western History, Buddhist Studies, and Western
Literature/Linguistics.
4. How much information is
contained
within the sakuin shūsei?
According
to the Kōseisha website, the social sciences edition contains
references
to approximately 650,000 articles written by approximately 650,000
different
authors. The humanities edition has approximately 350,000 listings for
350,000
authors. While there is no reason to question the figures for the
number
of articles, it seems highly unlikely that the figure for the number of
authors
could be correct, as this figure would only allow for inclusion of one
article
by a given author. A quick search will demonstrate that multiple
articles
are often listed for individual authors, which is what one would hope
for
after all.
5. What kind of periodical
guides
are included in this compendium?
The
guides that Kōseisha has reprinted were published periodically
themselves.
Some were very general catalogues of articles that appeared in other
periodicals
of the time, while some only feature articles belonging to a specific
category
or a particular collection of materials (as in the Takarazuka guide for
theater).
There are some guides that were only published for a few years, while
some
were published regularly throughout the nearly hundred-year period
covered
by the sakuin shūsei. While the
majority of articles listed are in Japanese, citations for articles in
English,
French, and German are not uncommon. Generally, these guides were
broken
down into subcategories which are given in the supplemental volume of
tables
of contents. What makes these periodical guides so useful is that they
provide
author names, titles of articles and the journal they appeared in,
month
and date of publication, and sometimes page numbers as well.
6. What good is the
sakuin shūsei?
Generally
speaking, the sakuin shūsei is the best resource
currently available for pre-1948 academic journals, specialized
magazines, or any other form of periodical literature that falls
outside the purview of popular culture. While the Nichigai
zasshi kiji sakuin (now available through the National Diet Library
as
well) has been indexed in a variety of ways that greatly facilitate
research in postwar periodicals, it doesn’t have any information prior
to 1948. According
to the Kōseisha database, the sakuin shūsei was
created in order to fill this huge gap in the
zasshi kiji sakuin. The Oya Sōichi
bunko catalogue does feature a great deal of prewar periodical
literature,
but it concentrates on popular magazines, excluding many academic and
specialized
journals contained in the Kōseisha collection.
7. Why doesn’t anyone ever seem
to
use the sakuin shūsei?
Perhaps
due to the fact that this is a work in progress, the
sakuin shūsei has only been indexed in the most rudimentary way.
The
print version of the author index and the online author search engine
allow
for productive results when one happens to know the name of the author
one
is looking for. At this point in time,
however, there are no indices that allow for subject, title, or keyword
searching.
Until this collection has been further indexed
(assuming
that it will be), the broad categorical divisions mentioned above and
the
sōmokuji available in print and
online will remain the only means of conducting subject searches.
Needless to say, this is an extremely time-consuming and frustrating
way
to search for periodicals.
8. How can I use the
sakuin shūsei without giving myself a migraine?
·
First, consult the
chronological chart to make sure that the years you are
interested in are covered in the collection. This will help you to
avoid
spending hours searching for information that doesn’t exist.
·
If you are simply
interested to find out what was being written in periodicals
on a certain subject during a given period of time, the chronological
charts
will tell you which volumes to browse through.
·
Consult the sōmokuji to look at
the list of specific periodical guides that compose the
sakuin shūsei. While some of the guides are very general (
Showa 5-nen no kokushi gakkai, for example), others may be devoted
to
your specific area of interest (e.g. articles relating to the
Manchurian railway
or relations with
·
Overall, bear in mind
that the current state of this
sakuin shūsei makes it a bad first stop. If you are interested in
what
was being written about a subject that falls outside of the
collection’s
broad categories, first consult contemporary resources to find out
which
writers addressed that subject at the time. For example, turning to the
sakuin shūsei to find articles written about the
modan bōi or the modan gāru is unlikely to
produce anything but exasperation if you don’t know who wrote
about those figures. However, a quick scan of an article by Miriam
Silverberg
or Barbara Hamill Sato, for example, will provide you with a long list
of
writers who were active during the late Taisho and early Showa periods
who
addressed the subject with some regularity. You can then use the author
index
to look for articles by these authors.
·
Read the introductory
notes to the author index (
hanrei) in order to understand the way the index has been
organized.
“Shakai kagakuhen 5-189,” for example, refers to page
189 in volume 5 of the social sciences edition of the collection.
·
Bear in mind that the
indexes and the actual collection are kept in separate
locations. The indexes are in the reference section, the reprinted
periodical
guides are kept in the 200 level of the stacks (AI19.J3 M45 1994,
AI19.J3
M452 1995).
·
If the online search
engine fails to turn up any results for a given author,
try using complex characters instead of the simplified characters in
modern
usage. While the print index for author names allows one to browse
through
lists of authors, the online search engine is not browsable at all, nor
does
it account for changes in orthography between the prewar and postwar
periods.
In this sense, the print index is much more user-friendly.
9. What should I do when I find
a
reference to an article in the sakuin
shūsei that looks interesting?
First,
check CLIO to see if
periodical you’re interested
in.
Chronology for
the
Social Sciences edition (
社会科学編年表
)
|
General
Social Sciences (
社会科学一般
) |
1867-1894,
1911-1915, 1916-1940, 1945-1949 |
|
7 sources |
|
|
Modern
Asia/South Seas (
近代アジア含南洋
) |
1912-1942, 1945-49 |
|
16 sources |
|
|
Politics
(
政治
) |
1867-1927 |
|
3 sources |
|
|
Law (
法律
) |
1867-1948 |
|
13 sources |
|
|
Economics/Commercial
Science (
経済含商学
) |
1867-1942, 1947-1950 |
|
19 sources |
|
|
Society/Urban
Problems (
社会含都市問題
) |
1867-1950 |
|
16 sources |
|
|
Agriculture/Forestry
(
農業・林業
) |
1867-1941 |
|
3 sources |
Chronology for the Humanities edition (
人文科学編年表
)
|
General
Humanities (
人文一般
) |
1894-1899, 1908-1915,
1921-1924, 1925-1934, 1944-1962 |
|
13 sources |
|
|
Thought/Philosophy
(
思想・哲学
) |
1918-1947 |
|
3 sources |
|
|
Japanese History (
日本史
) |
1867-1943,
1945-1956 |
|
20 sources |
|
|
East Asian
History (
東洋史
) |
1867-1959 |
|
2 sources |
|
|
Geography (
地理
) |
1936-1942 |
|
1 source |
|
|
Education (
教育
) |
1930-1943,
1946-1957 |
|
7 sources |
|
|
Customs/Ethnography (
風俗・民俗学
) |
1927-1934.
1938-1940 |
|
4 sources |
|
|
Architecture (
建築
) |
1867-1944 |
|
1 source |
|
|
Film/Performing
Arts (
映画・演芸
) |
1938-1944 |
|
1 source |
|
|
Literature (
文学
) |
1867-1926,
1931-1951 |
|
26 sources |
|
|
British/American
Studies (
英学
) |
1925-1949 |
|
1 source |
|
|
Western History (
西洋史
) |
1867-1943 |
|
3 sources |
|
|
Buddhist Studies (
仏教学
) |
1867-1935 |
|
1 source |
|
|
Western
Literature/Linguistics (
西洋文学・語学
) |
1945-1964 |
|
2 sources |