Toyo Bunko Museum — Attraction in Tokyo

My review is about the Library in Toyo Bunko as a user. I'm a Special Collection Librarian focusing on the study of maps and went there for work to try to see some cartographic resources. Before my visit, I sent two e-mails one maybe 7 months in advance and the other maybe 2 months in advance, with a list of all the resources I intended to see and some questions regarding their access policy. I never got a reply. When I arrived, they were unprepared for my visit and asked me why I hadn't sent an e-mail, to which I informed that I did more than once but never got a reply. Upon my arrival, I learned that most of the resources I wanted to see were "special materials" and I had to request them 2 days in advance to be able to see them (two other users were there and were informed of the same on the spot). I could only request 25 per person (as I went with a colleague we requested 50) and went to see the resources deemed "normal materials". When they printed our request form they informed us we could see 25 items, but only 5 titles (so for example if you have one work in many volumes you can request 5 titles with 25 physical volumes in total). As we were interested in cartographic resources, in our case it meant 1 item per title. We chose 5 titles from our list, to which they told us we had to fill another form with only those 5 titles (the form has to be filled in Japanese, online, and without any access to Google translate to facilitate the understanding of the form. Gladly my colleague is Chinese so he can understand some of the kanji and was able to fill the form, which took about 1 hour for the 50, and he had to do it again for only the 5). However, you have to fill it out before 3 PM so we could no longer fill it out that day and had to come back the next day and wait another 2 days to see the resources. By this time I was already so pissed that if not for my colleague, which is way calmer than me, I would have given up on seeing them. When I finally got to see some of them (I had to give up on my complete list because every two days meant I would have to stay in Japan for at least a month) I was utterly disappointed. Even though the institution clearly has a lot of money with all the materials properly stored in acid-free paper, everything properly restored when needed, rooms with all the right temperatures and humidity, the essence of the collection is average at least. They have the three-sided, two-store shelves open for visits (you can only admire them from afar) that maybe to a Japanese, or Asian, might seem impressive with all those early printed Western books on wooden shelves, which is just a normal old library to a European (I previously worked in Joanina Library in Portugal with 16th and 17th century early prints). So in my opinion an average collection is hyped by the owner through the storage and facilities surrounding it and also by limiting its access. However, almost all of the materials I saw can be easily accessed in any British, Spanish, French and Portuguese old or national library, so if you can afford to go to these places, or even have the time to request their materials online through e-mail, etc., it's a much easier option. This is just a token library that the owner can boast about with some resources that may not be easily accessible in Japan, but rather unimportant...

This is the location of one of the world’s great libraries and houses a world class collection devoted to Asia, broadly defined. At the heart of the library is the Morrison Collection, amassed by Dr George Ernest Morrison, an Australian journalist and medical doctor, who represented The Times in Peking from 1897 until 1912 when he left the newspaper to become and advisor to the President of the newly created Republic of China. He sold it to the benefactor of the Toyo Bunko in 1917. The current exhibition draws on Morrison’s collection to take an intelligent look at Christianity in Japan and China. Well...

A big museum exhibiting some of the oldest gems from oriental literature. The library room is exquisite. Some of the oldest books from India, and middle east are exhibited with a rich collection of ancient scripts from China and tibet. You can not touch the books but just reading the pages exhibited from far can be enriching. Attached to the museum there is the oriental cafe, which serves delicious gourmet cuisine. But this place is almost always fully booked so it is a good idea to book it beforehand. A perfect place to spend a whole afternoon for book and...