Hello, my name is Coralie Castel and I work at the French National Library, or BNF, in the Literature
and Arts department. I am in charge of the Japanese modern and contemporary collections, and in
this presentation, I will focus on the Japanese literature collection.
I started working on this position two years ago, and I have been questioning myself on how to build
a collection that can be coherent and useful, in the context of a national library, which is a different
context than that of a university library since we aim at being at the same time a generalist,
reference and patrimonial library.
When I arrived, my boss told me to keep in mind that we are working for today and for the centuries
to come. That was pretty much intimidating. But it is true that it is a particular context, and that wehave to constantly rethink the collections in order to meet the needs of the researchers of today andtomorrow.
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So today, I will first present the Japanese collections at the French national library in general, toexplain where the modern and contemporary literature collection is situated.
Second, I will share some questions I have had about the collection, its composition and visibility andwhat can be the role of a national library in this specific field.
Lastly, I will present my conclusions as to how to make the most of these resources and how to
maximize the use than can be made of them.
IThe French National Library holds a massive Japanese collection, but it is more well known for its
ancient material, such as scrolls and prints gathered through centuries of French interest for Japan,
from the 17th century to the early 20th century japonists collectors. I will begin with a briefpresentation of the different sections that hold Japanese collections, in order to set the place of themodern and contemporary literature among all the Japanese material.
In fact, some of you may have met my colleague, Véronique Béranger, in previous meetings of the
Association. She used to work at the Manuscripts department as a specialist of ancient resources.
She changed positions last year, but my position is in another department of the library. So, I am notremplacing her, since my section is about modern and contemporary Japan only. By the way, we arestill waiting for a remplacement for her position.
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In fact, Japanese materials can be found in many different sections of the French National Library.
First, of course, the Manuscripts department, where Véronique used to work, holds precious
resources, with hundreds of xylograph books and manuscripts, including illuminated scrolls, and 15
nara e-hon, ancient Buddhist texts, and also some of the first Japanese language handbooks anddictionaries ever made in France. This department also gathers publications about classical literature,book history and classical art.

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The Prints department also holds a remarkable collection with thousands of prints, ranging from
Moronobu to Hokusai, Hiroshige or Sharaku and many more, and some original woodblocks anddrawings. It also holds 1000 illustrated xylograph books, some as old as an 1608 illustrated Ise
monogatari.
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The Performing Arts department, also, has a smaller yet precious collection of kabuki prints andalbums, and also counts a few nô masks, bunraku puppets, and of course books related to thesematters.
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Lastly, the Maps and Plans department holds about 5000 maps of Japan, 600 of which date backfrom the 16th to the 19th century. It also includes a collection of early photographs and plates,
including volumes of photographs made by Felice Beato in Yokohama.
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These are old and specific material, whose common point is to be resources from and about preMeiji Japan. They are all accessible at Richelieu library, which is the older library building in thecenter of Paris. These resources are quite well-known among researchers specialized in classicalJapan, and there have been many high quality research projects conducted about them.
It is a truly unique collection, and very powerful to attract audience. The material is very popular,
and often used on the social networks accounts of the institution, such as twitter or instagram, topromote the national library.
SLIDE 8Many items have been digitized and are now accessible on Gallica, the online library. There is also amore specific website, called “portail France-Japon”, that makes it easy to search through thecollection and understand its history. But, modern and contemporary resources are not included inthese.
SLIDE 920th and 21st century Japan at the BnF is represented through the fields of Literature, Japanese
language (including linguistics and learning material), the humanities and contemporary art.
This means, basically, that the collection is made of books, which is less spectacular than prints or
scrolls. They are all located within the towers of François-Mitterrand, which is the newer librarybuilding that opened in 1996 in the 13th district of Paris. Therefore, they are less visible and less easy
to promote. It is clear that it is not so very well known among researchers and students.

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In addition, Japanese literature material can also be found at other university libraries in Paris, fromwhich the books can be borrowed, which is not the case at the national library where the resources
can only be consulted on site. Thus, it is really important to think about how to make the national
library collection stand out.
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So, what is the collection composed of, more precisely? Among what I personaly purchase for the
library, 60 % of my yearly budget is dedicated to buying literature materials, including literary works
such as novels or poetry, but also dictionaries, biographies, and academic works on literary topics.
The rest is divided between contemporary art, which is 15%, and the humanities, history of the 20th
century being twice as much represented as other humanities subjects.
SLIDE 11This second graph shows that 80% of what I buy is in Japanese: I also buy a little in French, mostlytranslated novels for the free access reading rooms, and English, mostly academic publications.
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To sum it up, here in this last graph, the big circle represents all the Japanese resources that can befound at the library : the middle one is for the fields I am responsible for, in my position : this is toemphasize that modern and contemporary literature, on which I am going to focus now, may be thecore of the collection in my view, but it is just a small bit of all the Japanese resources at the Frenchnational library.
II –SLIDE 13First thing is that I cover post-Meiji literature, whereas Edo and older times material are bought at
the Manuscripts department. The collection I deal with includes literature from the late 19th century,
20th century, and contemporary, up to the latest published works.
As of now, this collection holds around 10000 books, mostly in Japanese. About 10% are on freeaccess in two reading rooms : one for undergraduate students and general public, and the other for
graduate students and researchers. The other 90% can be orderer from the researcher’s reading
room only.
The yearly increase is of about 400 volumes in Japanese, plus over a hundred volumes in French andEnglish. So the main questions, which I rapidly asked myself when I started in this position, are thefollowing : what to purchase, and how to make it attractive to the public?
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One thing that my predecessor used to do as a routine, was to buy complete works series, or zenshû.
This has become a major strength of the collection, as the library now holds 63 zenshû series, ranging
from Abe Kôbô to Mishima Yukio, including also less well-known authors and a few thematic zenshû,such as Okinawa bungaku zenshû or Nihon SF zenshû. Being very expensive, these resources are
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typically the kind of resources that only a major library can afford, so from this point of view, goingon with the systematic purchase of all new zenshû series seems to go without saying.
But speaking with students and professors, I could not help but wonder if these longs series of 20, 30
or even more volumes were frequently used. Zenshû series appear to be useful for research on one
particular author, but recent research topics in literature tend to me more thematic, exploring theexpression of a phenomenon in several authors’ works, for example. The trends of research in theliterature area are also more and more transdisciplinary, combining literature with social or historical
topics, and zenshû series are maybe not best fitted for these kinds of approaches.
I observed that the most used part of zenshu series is the critical material, with introduction,
biography and indexes that accompany the texts. And the reader really has to see, and browse thevolumes, to find what they need in a massive amount of information. Yet, the reading rooms’ shelves
are not big enough to fit all zenshû series on free access : most of them are in the stocks and notordered very often through the catalogue. As reference material, they are of course a basis, but they
are not enough.
In addition, I really have to question whether I should buy all zenshû series, especially consideringthat they are very expensive. If we take the example of Natsume Sôseki, the library already holds the
Iwanami series, which consist of 29 volumes, and was published in the 90’s, but Iwanami recently
started publishing a revised edition : engaging in buying all the volumes would cost around 100 000
yen. There is indeed new material in this edition, but it is worth the cost considering the little usethat will be made of it?
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Another question regarding zenshû, is that there are no such complete works series forcontemporary authors who are still alive. Therefore, I must not spend all the yearly budget on costly
zenshû series but also keep some for contemporary authors’ new books. Indeed, Murakami Haruki or
Ogawa Yôko’s novels must be purchased one by one, and younger authors’ works as well. So every
year, I wonder how to choose from the massive amount of books that are published in Japan. The
national library’s role should be to build a corpus that reflects the present state of literary life inJapan, which is moving and prolific. One possible method is to keep an eye on the literary awards
such as Noma prize, Akutagawa prize and so on, in order to spot the new authors that deserve
attention. But there are really a lot of different awards, so I still have to think about ways of choosing
the right authors and books and how I can build a coherent collection.

More generally speaking, what can be the role of a national library when it comes to building acollection of foreign literature? I think that one thing a national library must do is to be the reflectionof the national interest for this foreign literature. And one way of doing so is to keep track of thetranslated works that are published in the country. This can be done thanks to the legal deposit,
which is the process through which the national library receives a copy of every book published in
France. In fact, Japanese has been the second most translated language among books published in
France for many years, with around 1500 titles every year. Many of them are manga, but still, evenwhen considering novels only, Japanese literature is very successful in French bookshops. So, I keep4

track of all these translations and for each of them, I buy a copy of the original work, in Japanese,when the library doesn’t hold it already. That enables me to build a corpus that is a the same time areference library, with original material available for all Japanese literature published in France, andthat also reflects the latest trends.
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One last question that I ask myself is the one of manga as literature. As I said, most of the translated
works from Japanese to French are manga; here again choices have to be made, because thepublications are plethoric. But where can I draw the line between manga that are purely
entertainment material, and manga that should be considered as literature ? I have begun to put
some classics in Japanese on the shelves of the reading rooms, such as Tezuka’s works. Last year, theprogram of the examination for the Secondary school certificate in Japanese language and literatureincluded a series of manga, Hyôryû kyôshitsu by Umezu Kazuo, published in 1974. Manga has now
been accepted as literary work in its own right and is a subject for research in literature. But still, I
constantly have to question these categories. For example, some rather old manga have been
recently translated and published in French. Since they have been translated into French, should they
be now considered a classic and purchased in Japanese for reference material? Many other criteria
should also be taken into consideration, such as the French editor, or the translators, who may also
work on translating novels and thus be an indication of literary value, and so on.
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As a conclusion, I would like to share ideas as to how to make the most of Japanese literature
resources at the French national library, and how to maximize the use than can be made of them.
These come from observations during only the last two years, so of course they should be considered
as tools that still need to be perfected. I will be glad to discuss them later with those of you who
might have an opinion or ideas about this.
My first suggestion is that the library itself should produce some reference content. For example,
regarding the case of the zenshû series, what I can do to make them more useful to researchers, is togo through the volumes meticulously in order to produce detailed and extensive bibliographies that
explore all the titles of the works published, sort them and associate them with the translated
versions and critical works that the library holds, both in our on-site stocks and also in the online
resources, and finally make a synthesis out of it.
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I have started to make such critical bibliographies about authors that are on the national
examination programs for Japanese teaching certificates: Ishikawa Jun, Sôseki and Mishima. Each areabout 20 to 30 pages long and can serve later as reference material for researchers. They areaccessible online on the national library’s website.
When talking to teachers and students, I also realized that one simple but yet very appreciated way
to promote the collection is just to make a list of the latest additions and e-mail it to researchers. I
still have to implement the regular sending of these lists from the library, and I have to admit that is5

it very time-consuming. But I believe that if these lists are made and sent on a regular basis, they canbe the more direct and powerful way to keep in touch with the researchers’ community.
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Lastly, I would also like to mention some resources that may be unexpected as Japanese resources
and that researchers and student don’t always think of. First, some online resources and databasecan prove really useful. For instance, the national library does not offer an access to any Japanesedatabase, such as Japan Knowledge. In fact, other libraries, especially university libraries, alreadyoffer this access to specific databases whereas the national library offers access to more general
resources. But those general resources portals sometimes hold hidden Japanese sources: forexample, Factiva, which aggregate more than 30000 newspapers, magazines, and journals from allover the world, counts a lot of Japanese periodicals. Therefore, it can be very useful for a student or
researcher to learn how to use this tool: I tried a research using the keyword “Akutagawa shô”, inJapanese characters, and it turned hundreds of citations in Japanese media.
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Such a research can prove very useful for someone who is working on contemporary literature.

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Second, another major strength of the national library is that it holds very diverse materials, and not
only books: audio files, video games and films can also be found and consulted on site, together withthe written material. The researchers’ attention also needs to be driven to these complementarycollections, as they may not always think of the library as a place where they can encountersomething else than just books. So, cooperating with colleagues from other sections of the library,
who work with completely different material, could stimulate transdisciplinary research, granted that
we make presentations, symposiums and so on, and that we communicate enough about them.
Literature is not to be found in books only : the richness of a national library collection can encourage
new approaches and new uses of the collections.
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Thank you for your attention

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Liste des zenshûs :Abe Kôbô ; Akutagawa Ryûnosuke ; Dazai Osamu ; Edogawa Ranpo ; Endô Shûsaku ; Fujisawa Shûhei ;Hayashi Kyôko ; Higuchi Ichiyô ; Hirabayashi Taiko ; Hisao Jûran ; Hori Tatsuo ; Ibuse Masuji ; IidaRyûta ; Inoue Yasushi ; Ishimure Michiko ; Itô Noe (anarchiste féministe) ; Izumi Kyôka ; Izutsu
Toshihiko ; Kaikô Takeshi ; Katsura Beichô sansei ; Kobayashi Hideo ; Kôda Aya ; Kôjô Kô (polars,
obscur) ; Komatsu Sakyô (sf) ; Kurumatani Chôkitsu ; Maruya Saiichi ; Maruyama Kaoru ; Matsumoto
Seichô ; Minakami Tsutomu ; Mishima Yukio; Miyamoto Yuriko; Miyamoto Teru; Miyazawa Kenji ;Mori Ôgai ; Mukôda Kuniko (nouvelliste et scénariste pour la tv) ; Nagai Kafû ; Nakagami Kenji ;Natsume Sôseki ; Nishio Kanji; Ôba Minako; Okamoto Kanoko; Ôoka Shôhei; Ôtsubo Sunao; Ozaki
Midori; Sakaguchi Ango; Santô Kyôden; San’yûtei Enchô; Sasaki Kiichi; Setouchi Jakuchô ; Shiba
Ryôtarô; Shibusawa Tatsuhiko; Shiga Naoya; Tamura Ryûichi; Tanabe Seiko; Tanigawa Ken’ichi;
Taoka Reiun; Terada Torahiko; Uchimura Kanzô; Yamamoto Shûgorô; Yosano Akiko; Yoshimoto
Takaaki + Thématique : Okinawa Bungaku zenshû, Nihon SF zenshû

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