U-PARL installed the large database Zhongguo jiben guji ku 中国基本古籍庫 (Database of Chinese Classic Ancient Books) (accessible from the university network), as the first large collection for the Asian Research Library.
U-PARL acquired 180 maps of the Korean Peninsula dating to the colonial period (1910-1945) from the holdings of an antiquarian bookshop in Tokyo.
Yumio SAKURAI (桜井由躬雄1945-2012) was a prominent scholar of history and area studies and a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Letters. His collection consists of an estimated 1000 Vietnamese books and 50 books in Western languages.
Akira SUEHIRO (1951- ) was a prominent scholar of Asian economics and a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Social Science. The collection contains an estimated 2200 Thai books and 300 books in Western languages focusing on the economy, management and commerce of Thailand. The most remarkable part of the collection are its holdings of rare economic journals dating to the period from the 1980s to the 2000s.
The collection has been developed by the Asia-Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) since the 1970s. It contains about 2,300 items of “non-formal” literacy education materials for adults, which have been prepared by local governments and NGOs in the Asia-Pacific region. The texts are in 28 languages and have been published in 25 countries.
