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With the expansion of the digital humanities, the field of Japanese Studies is progressing on a global scale. Within this environment, researchers wishing to access archival materials from abroad will first and foremost make use of digitized texts that have been transcribed and imaged, followed by historical records housed in museums, archives, and research libraries. However, transcribed texts have been edited and are therefore no longer original. In addition, museums, archives, and research libraries organize materials according to their respective cataloguing requirements. This is because public institutions receiving donations of archival materials have to make these materials available to the public. The materials are thus subjected to a ‘New (Archival) Order’. 
As a result, there is no way of knowing who originally compiled these materials and how they were handed down and held in private homes, thereby obscuring the ‘Old (Archival) Order’ and irretrievably separating it from the ‘New (Archival) Order’. 

Whaling practices of Norway and Japan began to cross at the end of the nineteenth century when Japanese entrepreneurs visited Norway to study the cutting-edge whaling technique called the "Norwegian system whaling technique". Traditional whaling was conducted mainly by nets in Japan until then. Technologies, including the equipment, ships, and skills of gunners, were transferred from Norway to Japan in the early twentieth century, significantly contributing to the development of the modern whaling industry in Japan. Working with Norwegian whalers would influence Japanese workers and local communities, but the cultural aspects of this international collaboration are still understudied. Long-term voyages of pelagic whaling provided whalers extra time to create crafts from whale materials. Norwegian and Japanese whalers painted baleens as decorative objects, and there seem to be similarities in painting styles and motifs.
The presentation will introduce one remarkable baleen painting dedicated as ema, or votive painting, to a local Shinto shrine of Hagi, Yamaguchi, Japan.

Harvard has five of the 75 lavishly produced copies of “Ehon Don Kihote” (1936), featuring stenciled illustrations by Serizawa Keisuke; Harvard also holds the stencils used in its production. The story behind its existence touches on many strands of affiliation and culture.

This presentation will feature a combination of four short lightning talks introducing news from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and our platform CrossAsia (crossasia.org).

The NDL Image Bank is a digital exhibition of beautiful and enjoyable images from the National Diet Library's collection. In this system we can add selected images from the digitized collection of over 3 million items by specific themes. After launching the service in March 2022 with approximately 1,500 images, as of April 2023, over 7,000 images have been introduced in over 120 themes and over 40 columns.

The Japan Digital Research Center of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies was established in 2017 for the purpose of developing new modes of support and collaboration amongst librarians, faculty, and students working in an increasingly digitized and networked environment. Despite its recent beginnings, the JDRC serves as home to a resource representing both the oldest and newest Japan digital project at Harvard: Constitutional Revision in Japan. It was originally launched in 2005 following the LDP’s publication of a new constitution draft and announcement that they would vigorously pursue revision. Much of the debate was taking place on the internet and there was an immediate perception of need to capture and preserve these materials for a future generation of scholars and students.

Through what we call "The Chronicle of Japan" written by the bishop himself during his forced stay in Japan from 1942 till 1943 under the care of the Jesuits in Tokyo on the one hand, and the Spanish diplomatic documentation (1942-1944) on the other, we trace the happenings around the evacuation of the Bishop of Guam, Miguel Angel Olano Urteaga, from his indigent state in Tokyo, caused by the unexpected deportation of him from Guam as, almost, a prisoner, to Japan. The mentioned “Chronicle” is stored in the Provincial Historical Archive of Capuchins of Pamplona (Navarra), in the Personal Funds Section, while the employed Spanish diplomatic documentation was kept, at the time of collecting, in the General Archive of the Spanish Ministry of the Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation. A few articles of a Japanese newspaper also corroborate the footsteps of the bishop.