One way to get a sense of a country’s cultural touchstones is to visit its libraries — both the famous and lesser-known ones. BY MARK DAPIN Some years ago I was at a conference of international thriller writers (no, I hadn’t known they were a thing either) when a fellow Australian author suggested we visit…
Category: Japanese Libraries
All the Will in the world: Four centuries of the First Folio (State Library of New South Wales)
The 1623 volume, Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, aka the ‘First Folio’, was 400 years old in 2023. Why is it so special? I should begin by putting all my cards on the table. I’m fascinated by Shakespeare and his books, including the First Folio. In the immediate pre-Covid years, I took my…
Friday essay: the library – humanist ideal, social glue and now, tourism hotspot
Stuart Kells, La Trobe University Last year two Danish librarians – Christian Lauersen and Marie Eiriksson – founded Library Planet: a worldwide, crowdsourced, online library travel guide. According to them, Library Planet is meant to inspire travellers “to open the awesome book that is our world of libraries, cities and countries”. The name of the…
The Kyoto International Manga Museum, Kyoto, Japan
A Library Planet post by Annie Wu. Kyoto International Manga Museum was established to gather, preserve and exhibit manga materials and to be a centre for research into manga culture. The space simultaneously serves as a library and a museum, with around 300,000 manga products in its collection, including books, periodicals and woodblock caricature prints….
Shakespeare Hall and the Shakespeare Collection, Meisei University – A pilgrimage for fans
Written by Professor Stuart Kells For how to contribute to Library Planet look here: https://libraryplanet.net/contribute/ A private university on the hilly, green outskirts of Tokyo, Meisei is home to the world’s second largest collection of Shakespeare First Folios. It also has many other early editions of Shakespeare, and much else of Shakespearean interest. There is…
Tokyo Main Library of the National Diet Library – the national library of Japan
Written by Professor Stuart Kells For how to contribute to Library Planet look here: https://libraryplanet.net/contribute/ The Diet is Japan’s national parliament, and the National Diet Library is Japan’s national library. The Tokyo Main Library is the Diet Library’s principal site. Located in Chiyoda, a civic and parliamentary precinct whose buildings and streetscapes recall the centre…
Library Planet 