[POSTPONED] The Japanese Diaspora Initiative, with Kaoru Ueda (Stanford Univ)

Weaving the Past for the Digital Age:

The Japanese Diaspora Initiative

Dr. Kaoru (Kay) Ueda
Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University

Wednesday, March 18 2020 from 5-6:15 pm in CAS 224,
College of Arts and Sciences, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston University

Please note that with deep regret, this program has been cancelled.
We hope to reschedule at a later date.

 

Sponsored by the BU Center for the Study of Asia’s Asian Cultural Heritage Forum,
with support from the BU Center for the Humanities

 

The Japanese Diaspora Initiative (JDI) aims to make the Hoover Institution Library & Archives a leading center for archive-based research and analysis on historical issues regarding Japan in core areas of interest to the institution: war, revolution, and peace. Funded by an anonymous $9 million gift—one of the largest in Library & Archives’ history—the initiative has begun by focusing on Japan’s modern diaspora, with particular attention to both Japanese Americans and other overseas Japanese communities, especially during the rise and fall of the Empire of Japan.

The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection is currently the world’s largest online archive of open-access, full image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers in Asia and South America. Image content in this collection is accompanied by OCR-generated text where possible, thus rendering the text searchable. The holdings of each title are browsable by date, title, and publication place, with each title cross searchable with other titles on the platform. The nature of the newspapers varies significantly from community-focused to political or military propaganda depending on the political conditions and target readership.

The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection is open to the public and does not require registration for viewing most of the titles. Some content is currently restricted to Stanford University users due to copyright agreement with the publishers. In addition, the collection is constantly evolving, adding more titles and missing issues and improving OCR texts. We encourage users to participate actively in OCR text correction. To contribute text corrections, please navigate to the newspaper title and issue and click on the ‘Correct this text’ in the left pane.

To date 124 titles and photo archives, comprising 779,412 images, have been made available in the online collection.

[from https://hojishinbun.hoover.org/]

Photo: Kanda Store, Moiliili, June 18, 1938. Image from the Nippu Jiji Photo Archives, Scenery-Hawaii collection (SH1125.002)

About the speaker: 

Kaoru “Kay” Ueda (B.A. Kawansei Gakuin University, MBA, University of Chicago, Ph.D., Boston University) has unique experience both in business and academic worlds.  Having worked as an analyst in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom and more recently in the specialized library of the International Center for East Asian Archaeology and Cultural History, Boston University, she hopes to bring an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Japanese diaspora and modern Japan and unpack the complex interactive processes between Japan and host countries. She has published in a number of international journals and shed light on overseas Dutch in early modern Indonesia and Japan. She also has extensive experience in organizing scholarly engagement and museum exhibitions. Her bilingual and inter-cultural capacities have helped create the Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection, the world’s largest open-access full-image digital collection of Japanese newspapers published in North America. [from https://www.hoover.org/profiles/kaoru-ueda]