The following encyclopedias and dictionaries provide overviews of critical ideas, authors' lives and workds, and events and movements in Japan.  When using an article in an encyclopedia or handbook, always check the bibliography for further reading at the end of the article.  It will provide a selective list of the books, articles, and, sometimes, Web resources considered to be the most up-to-date and reliable. This is a good start for finding further reading on a topic.

Features 54 essay-length entries on Japanese literature including genres (Shishosetsu (Personal Novel), authors ("Miyamoto Yuriko and Socialist Writers"), and time periods ("Occupation-Period Fiction").   Each essay is written by a specialist who includes a bibliography that is sometimes as long as a full page.

Covers Japanese culture from 1945 to the present.  In addition to entries on prominent authors, there are related literary articles on movements and genres.  This volume is also valuable for its treatment of cultural history in general.

The author compiled this dictionary to encourage English-speakers to get to know Japanese literature.  The entries are interesting to read and are full of references to the biographee's literary writings.

This reference encyclopedia has very long essays with Tanizaki treated in 18 pages and Kawabata in 20 pages.  Note in addition to the essays on individual authors, there is also one on atomic bomb writers.

Use the Tripod Catalog to look for relevant books owned by Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore.

The following subject searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Catalog to find relevant materials and then using the subject headings assigned to those materials to find more material.

         authors japanese 20th century  [Subject Search]
         japanese literature 20th century  [Subject Search]

         modernis* and japan*  [keyword search]

Tripod - For locating books, journals, and other materials held in the Tri-College libraries. Delivery within the trico usually arrive in one or two days. Use "Request" or "Get" option. You can mark and then email or print records for multiple items.

WorldCat - An important place to look for many materials not owned by the Tri-College Libraries. This combined library catalog contains more than 49 million records describing items owned by libraries around the world. Many of these items are available to you though interlibrary loan.

Interlibrary Loan and E-ZBorrow - Request items that are not available in Tripod on this page. Most journal articles will come in electronic form.  Note that  E-Z Borrow provides books in 3 to 5 days.  You place the requests yourself in the E-Z Borrow catalog.  Use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) for materials not in E-Z Borrow.  ILL may take up to 10 days to arrive..

Journal articles and similar periodical publications usually provide studies of focused topics. They can be more up-to-date than book-length critical studies of authors and themes.  The following indexes are the best ways to find journal articles and essays.

Good Starting Point

Proquest Research Library (access via Tripod)

ProQuest indexes over 2600 journals, many in thehumanities, starting with 1971. About two-thirds of the journals include the full-text of the article.

Discipline-specific Indexes

These indexes are particularly good for accessing the scholarly literature of specific disciplines, i.e., articles written by historians, and other medieval scholars.

For Asian studies, use the Bibliography of Asian Studies (access via Tripod).

For literature, use MLA (access via Tripod)

Once you have found citations to journal articles, do a journal title search in Tripod to see if the Tri-College libraries own the title. If the journal is not held by the Tri-Colleges, use the Interlibrary Loan Request Form on Tripod to request a copy of the article from another library.

Browsing Journal Articles

Journal article usually take at least a year to appear in the discipline indexes listed above. Browsing selectively in recent issues, whether electronic or in paper, may turn up some new useful material. The titles below include journals devoted to Japanese studies as well as those that address Asian studies more generally in terms of the humanities.

Critical Asian Studies  (print location via Tripod).  Prior to 2001 published under the title Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (print location via Tripod).

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Recent issues are in paper (print location via Tripod). Older issues are available online through JSTOR  (access via Tripod)

Japanese Language and Literature  Older issues are available online through JSTOR (access via Tripod).

Journal of Asian Studies Recent issues online through Proquest (access via Tripod).  Older issues are available online through JSTOR (access via Tripod)

Monumenta Nipponica  Recent issues online through Project Muse (access via Tripod) Older issues are available online through JSTOR (access via Tripod).

Orientations  Issues in paper (access via Tripod). Search article titles on the publisher's web site 

Positions Recent issues are available online from Duke (access via Tripod) and Project Muse (access via Tripod).  Older issues are available in paper issues (print location via Tripod)