IntroductionThis guide provides information on general Japanese language resources available to UBC students. Most of the resources here are applicable to any field. For subject-specific guides, please choose one of the links below.
Related Guides 2011 Earthquake & Tsunami Resources (Blog page) Japanese Comics - Manga Japanese Easy Reads Japanese Film Studies Japanese Language and Culture Japanese Literature - Modern Japanese Theatre Japan (English language sources)
Japanese and Translation Dictionaries Goo Dictionaries This site provides English/Japanese translations as well as a Japanese 国語 dictionary. JapanKnowledge Plus This subscription database includes translation dictionaries for English, French, Spanish, Italian and German. It also includes the 日本国語大辞典 and 大辞泉 Japanese dictionaries, and current term dictionaries 情報・知識 imidas & 現代用語の基礎知識. Jim Breen's WWWJDIC This site provided by Monash University includes Japanese-English translations for both general and technical terms, as well as translation dictionaries for several Western and Eastern European languages. Sanseido 三省堂 Web Dictionary This site gives brief Japanese-language definitions of terms. Weblio辞書 This site offers translations and definitions from English / Japanese dictionaries (including Kenkyusha's New College English/Japanese and Japanese/English dictionaries), and also features a synonym dictionary.
Pronunciation Guides ひらがなめがね This tool provides hiragana for characters within most web pages. Just paste in the url of the page you want to read. Rikai This site gives the rubi (furigana) pronunciation as well as brief definitions of most kanji compounds by rolling over words with the mouse. Works with websites and you can also paste in text.
Kanji (Chinese Character) Dictionaries Jitsū 字通 This online Kanji dictionary is within the JapanKnowledge database. Click on 個別 to the right of 字通 to access. Daikanwa jiten 大漢和辞典 PL681.C5 M6 1955 This is an authoritative and expansive character dictionary set by Morohashi Tetsuji 諸橋轍次.
iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad Apps Kenkyusha's Eng/Jpn Dictionary - 研究社新英和・和英中辞典 This app provides short definitions as well as example sentences. Kanjigen - 漢字源 A detailed Kanji dictionary providing look-up by stroke number and radical.
Journal Articles and Institutional Repositories CiNii A general, multidisciplinary index for Japanese periodicals and scholarly publications dating back to 1957. Some full-text provided (click on PDF link if available). Includes the National Diet Library's periodical index (雑誌記事索引). Jairo A database for Japan's institutional repositories, this resource links to university papers, conference proceedings and other forms of scholarly output from Japanese academic institutions. Zasshi kiji sakuin shusei 雑誌記事索引集成 This index provides citation information on periodicals and journals from the Meiji period (1868) to the present.
Newspaper Article Databases Asahi Kikuzo II Visual This resource provides access to the digitized full text articles from the Asahi Shinbun newspaper from 1879 to present. Factiva This database includes recent articles from Japanese-language newspapers such as Yomiuri Shinbun and Mainichi Shinbun. Yomiuri Yomidasu Rekishikan This database includes full-text Yomiuri Shinbun articles from 1874 to the present, as well as the English-language "The Daily Yomiuri" from 1989.
e-Books Aozora Bunko 青空文庫 This site provides text files of thousands of out of copyright Japanese novels. Some files include ルビ (rubi) pronunciation guides. Digital Library from the Meiji Era 近代デジタルライブラリー This database from the National Diet Library of Japan provides full-text access to works from the Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-1926) periods. Generally, only the bibliographic information and table of contents are searchable. netLibrary Over 100 Japanese full-text works are included in this resource. Subjects include Japanese language learning and history.
InterLibrary Loan (ILL) from JapanPlease go through the regular InterLibrary Loan (ILL) process for Japanese-language titles. First check Worldcat to see if the work is held by a North American institution or Waseda. If it is, then fill out the ILL form and in the "comments" box mark down the OCLC Accession Number, which is listed towards the bottom of the record. If the material you need does not appear in Worldcat, or if your ILL request has bounced, we can try to provide a Japanese ILL through the GIF project. Please contact Shirin in order to do this.
Library Catalogues National Diet Library of Japan 国立国会図書館 Provides information for all of the Diet Library's holdings. Webcat Plus A union catalogue of Japanese academic libraries. Information from these records can be used for InterLibrary Loan requests from Japan. WorldCat Provides holding information for libraries around the world. Use this to help fill out InterLibrary loan requests from within North America. Waseda University Catalogue (WINE) Includes value-added information for material within their catalogue such as romanization of titles and names, and table of content information of books.
Romanization Library of Congress' Romanization for Japanese This is the standard romanization used for the UBC catalogue.
Input for Mobile Devices Android (YouTube) Blackberry (YouTube, includes East Asian and Thai fonts) BlackBerry Bold 9700 「文字入力」 (YouTube, in Japanese) iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch (Vimeo, also see embedded video to right)
Inputting Japanese on the iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch A tutorial on how to input Japanese (including character writing) on Apple's mobile products.
Online Calculators NengoCalc Calculates equivalent "Western date" from Japanese era date. DDBC Time Authority Database Provides a comparison of the Japanese, Korean and Chinese calendar systems, and also includes a date calculator to convert to the Western calendar.
