□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□JACAR

Newsletter Number.1□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□** INDEX **************************************************************************◇Greetings from the Director-General on Releasing the Inaugural Issue:thCelebrating our 10 anniversary◇From Editors**************************************************************************************━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◇New Year Greetings from the Director General: Celebrating our 10th anniversary
Dear subscribers,

We hope you enjoyed the winter holidays. Coinciding with the new year, we at Japan Center for AsianHistorical Records (JACAR) decided to start an email magazine to periodically inform those with a deep
interest in history of our endeavors and undertakings. We intend to share factual information, which we hope
you will enjoy reading. Moreover, it would be delightful if after perusing the newsletter, you might share yourimpressions and suggestions. Of course, if you are wary of receiving too much email, please notify us and wewill withdraw you from our list.

Many thanks and warmest wishes,Kenichiro Hirano
Director-General of Japan Center for Asian Historical Records«« JACAR’s 10th Anniversary »»As you may know, JACAR was established in November 2001. This November marks the tenth anniversary ofour organization, which was started as an international promise in August 1994 by the then Prime Minister
Tomiichi Murayama. JACAR took seven years to open and over the course of ten years of operation, we haveencountered many difficulties. Yet, by the end of winter, nearly twenty-two million document images will havebeen released to the public thanks to the almost steady data provided by the National Archives of Japan, theDiplomatic Record Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Military Archival Library of the National
Institute for Defense Studies. In our first year of operation we started by making 2,250,000 images public. By
the end of this year we expected have put online approximately 24,400,000 images. Access to the JACAR
website and database fluctuate, yet statistics show an overall increase. In particular, we have foundinternational access to stabilize. As the serving Director-General, after assuming office April last year, I havegone publically and privately four times to attend international conferences and other functions in Italy (Genoa),Indonesia (Jakarta), Germany (Heidelberg), and Taiwan (Taipei). At these destinations, more than I hadexpected, I met researchers and experts who unanimously praised and showed gratitude for JACAR. Likewise,
I have found that among Japanese experts, use of JACAR has become quotidian. Moreover, initial doubts fromvarious Asian nations regarding JACAR’s facilitation have been extinguished. I believe JACAR ought to beconsidered something of “an international public good,” which has been made possible with ten years of fruitfulefforts.

We have been preparing to commemorate our tenth anniversary since the end of last year. Our main
preparations are for hosting a commemorative symposium and a commemorative publication. The symposium
will follow a National Archives of Japan sponsored East Asian Regional International Council on Archives(EASTICA) conference, after which, on Friday November 18th, we will take the opportunity to hold ourcommemorative symposium at Waseda University. I believe that holding this international symposium will bringawareness to JACAR’s international evaluation. Moreover, the commemorative publication, which will be arecord primarily of the symposium, will serve to make salient the history of JACAR’s data usage over the pastten years.

«« This Year's Undertakings »»In addition to the tenth anniversary, JACAR’s chief plans for 2011 notably include, system updates, officerelocation, participation with a panel at the annual Association for Asian Studies Conference (AAS) held in
Honolulu, and to increase links with more domestic and international websites.

< System Update Preparations>
JACAR’s contemporary data archive’s lifeline is our hardware system, including our server that we uniquely
possess. The system is supposed to be updated every five years, and 2011 falls on a year set for updates. We
have already started the necessary update procedures, which can be found written in an announcement on theNational Archives of Japan website. Serving as an international institution, it is essential for JACAR to maintainapt functionality, so it is my hope to introduce a new, improved system, optimized in accordance withgovernment policy.

< Relocation Plans>
In response to public institutional demands for cost reduction, this autumn, coinciding with our system update,
we will move out of our current location in Tokyo’s Hirakawacho. Another reason for our move is that ourresearchers, the core of JACAR’s efforts, have increased slightly in number over the years, making JACAR’sworkspace cramped. We should thus acquire an office site that takes into consideration the convenience of ourresearchers as well as visitors from abroad, while also being located for easy transport to the three sites wegain data from—the National Archives of Japan, the Diplomatic Record Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and the Military Archival Library of the National Institute for Defense Studies.

<Participation in the AAS Conference>
JACAR members will participate in the annual Association of Asian Studies Conference from late March toearly April this year. While every year JACAR partakes in relevant international archival conferences tointroduce our services as an overseas public relations activity, I have been advised to further and widely makeknown the utility value of JACAR’s services so that it reaches more experts. Thus, at this year’s AAS
Conference to which leading researchers from around the world gathers, delightfully, our panel discussion thatI organized and applied for as the Director-General of JACAR has been accepted. The theme of the panel is"Digital Archives and the Study of Japanese Foreign Relations," which will include presentations by four expert
discussants who will demonstrate how to utilize JACAR’s data offerings within their research disciplines. The
four expert discussants include JACAR advisory panel members Prof. Kanji Akagi and Prof. Takeshi
Hamashita, National Institute for Defense Studies Research Fellow, Dr. Ken Kotani, and Oberlin UniversityAssociate Professor Robert Eskildsen (who was selected by means of an international appeal to the public).

<Idea for Supporters of JACAR; Friends of JACAR>
We have the idea for a group called “Friends of JACAR.” Essentially this means that we hope individuals, likeyou, who are familiar with JACAR, will help promote the organization. We would be delighted if this serves as achannel for users to proffer advice.

««Getting JACAR on the Global Standard of Digital Archives»
Not only in Japan but also abroad, a great deal of attention was paid last year to archives and released archival
data. Foreign archives and libraries, one after another, have embarked on digitizing holdings. In suchprocesses, JACAR’s name comes up again and again as a model for digital archives. It is thus no exaggeration
to say that JACAR leads the international movement of digital archiving. Nevertheless, there are not enoughlinks on related internet sites. We hope to contribute to the promotion and fulfillment of historical researchthough expanding the linking of archives, so that in the near future, there will be an international digital archive
network. Today JACAR seemingly is at the vanguard. We were recently deemed by Mr. Todaka Kazushige, inthe book Kaisen kara mita nichirosensō, as “one of the finest cultural activities conducted by the Japanesegovernment” (2010, page 177, Kadokawa Group Publishing). We take pride in how we are regarded. I would
just like to add that we are committed to further enhancing our services. We thank you for your continued
support and appreciate your guidance.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◇From editors:
Next issue will be delivered in the middle of April, 2011.
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Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR),
National Archives of Japan
4th fl., Sumitomo Hanzomon Bldg., Annex,2-1-2, Hirakawacho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 102-0093□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□*You are receiving this email because you had given your mail address to JACAR staff. If you wish tounsubscribe yourself from our email notification list, you may do so here: news@jacar.go.jp*The Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) provides home access to digitalized documents
dating from the Meiji era through 1945. You can access our material search system through the link below:
http://www.jacar.go.jp/*JACAR is striving to promote the use of digital resources and to enhance our public service. If you have anysuggestions or comments on our exhibition and the material search system, please let us know.