The Tōyō Bunko (東洋文庫), or Oriental Library, is Japan's largest Asian studies library and one of the world's five largest, located in Tokyo. It also functions as a research institute dedicated to the study of Asian history and culture. It has greatly contributed to the development of Asian Studies through the acquisition of books and other source materials as well as the publication of research by Japanese scholars. Presently, the library contains approximately 950,000 volumes which are cataloged linguistically according to Asian, Western and Japanese language materials.[1]
History
Establishment and the early history
The Oriental Library had its beginnings in 1917 when Hisaya Iwasaki, former third President of the Mitsubishi Company, purchased the vast private collection of China-related publications of Australian adventurer, journalist, and Republic of China government adviser George Morrison. After the purchase, he improved the collection by increasing the number of classical Chinese, Japanese, and Western language books by receiving advice from a bibliographer, Tunashiro Wada