Asian Studies: Useful Web Sources

The cultural heritage of Japan operated by the Agency for Cultural Heritage.

Early Photography of Japan is a virtual collection of more than 40 souvenir photograph albums and illustrated publications with over 2,000 images from Widener Library, the Fine Arts Library, and Harvard-Yenching Library.

from New York Public Library Digital Collections

Records and reports of earthquake disasters from the National Diet Library

Japanese Institutional Repositories Online.

Newspaper available online

National Library of Japan

Comprehensive Japanese language guides to improve reading, writing, and comprehension skills for beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.

(South Korea) e-Research environment for Korean Studies

Korean Contemporary Arts Archive

Culture information site from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism

from the Ministry of Government Legislation (South Korea)

from the Truman Library. Documents, images, recordings

Newspaper available online

Includes some digital collections - books and magazines

125 feature films free online. (To activate English subtitles, make sure to hit the "CC" button on the lower right of the player)

An educational organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among peoples, leaders and institutions of Asia and the United States in a global context. Includes the fields of arts, business, culture, education, and policy.

by Charles Muller. The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism [DDB] is a compilation of Chinese ideograph-based terms, texts, temple, schools, persons, etc. found in Buddhist canonical sources. The Chinese-Japanese-Korean-Vietnamese/English Dictionary [CJKV-E] is a compilation of Chinese ideographs, as well as ideograph-comprised compound words, text names, person names, etc., found primarily in the Confucian and Daoist classics.

An ongoing public education project using the "Silk Road" theme to explore cultural interaction across Eurasia from the beginning of the Common Era (A. D.) to the Seventeenth Century

Multimedia (videos, interactive sites etc) on many aspects of Chinese, Japanese and Korean politics, history etc.

International History declassified. Primary source documents. Explore by collection or themes.

from Library of Congress

An instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries and territories, and background on key institutions. They also include audio and video clips from BBC archives. Click into FULL PROFILE for more information.

from Library of Congress

From the CIA (US). Provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues. Includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, a World Oceans map, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map

Introduction to Mandarin Chinese in 10 short parts with video clips from the Real Chinese TV series. Requires Flash player

from Freer Sackler Smothsonian Museums of Asian Art

Information portal for China

promoting Chinese literature both inside and outside China through book fairs, media, the Internet as well as magazines and journals

Paper available online with 5 years searchable archive

Online encyclopaedia on traditional China

This project was started by a doctoral student in Hong Kong and provides online access to James Legge's translations of Confucius classics.

from Enterprise Ireland. Includes Country report, publications and useful links

includes those published in mainland China and Hong Kong)

Comprehensive Mandarin language guides to improve reading, writing, and comprehension skills for beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.

Asia Art Archive has one of the most valuable collections of material on art freely available from its website and onsite library in Hong Kong.

from the University of Chicago

An open-access archive of digitized photographs, negatives, postcards, rare books and slides from Lafayette College.

The Yale Silk Road Database presents over 11,000 images of major sites in the Silk Road region taken during faculty site seminars led by Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan (Professor, History of Art) under the auspices of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University in the summers of 2006-2010.