The Kanseki Database is a union catalog of premodern Chinese prints in Japan. The project was conceived by Tokio Takata (高田時雄) and started in March of 2001 as a joint undertaking of the Documentation and Information Center for Chinese Studies (DICCS) 漢字情報研究センター, 1 at Kyoto University, the National Institute of Informatics (NII) and the Center for Oriental Studies Information at the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, with the aim of providing a uniform interface in accordance with traditional Chinese cataloging principles based on the four divisions of literature (四部分類) with funding provided through grants from the JSPS Database KAKENHI. It is organized through a council, the National Database of Chinese Classical Texts Council (全国漢籍データベース協議会), of which the DICCS, and now the CIIH serve as secretarial institutions, which includes the provision of a Web interface and advice to current or prospective participating institutions.
Since its perception, new participants have been actively acquired. Here is a list of the participating institutions, which covers all major holdings of Kanseki in Japan.
As of March 2025, there are 82 participating institutions and the total number of records is 990899. Four institutions also provide a facsimile of first pages for selected records, of which there are now 14654 pages.
Footnotes
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Since 2023 this has been renamed to Center for Innovative Informatics for Humanities (CIIH) 人文情報学創新センター, housed at the Bunkan ↩