3rd Floor㉕Bust of Victor Hugo

The bust of Victor Marie Hugo, afamous poet and novelist, wasdonated by University of Paris in
1933.

㉖Bust of Louis Pasteur㉓㉒ ㉑⑳㉗㉕㉖㉘㉔⑳HallThe lighting devices were restored
to their original design. The carvingson the ceiling and the posts havethe unique designs on each place.

㉑Reliefs on the ceiling

There are 450 reliefs of 6 kinds offlower motif.
Their models are not identified.

The bust of Louis Pasteur wasdonated by University of Paris in
1933. He was a chemist andmicrobiologist, succeeded in
vaccination.

㉗Relief ofLafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn (Yakumo Koizumi)
taught in Faculty of Letters of theUniversity of Tokyo. This relief wasdonated from Greece in 1935.

㉘Relief ofEdmund Blunden

Edmund Charles Blunden taught
English literature in the Universityof Tokyo for about 3 years from1924. He made a poem about thereconstruction of General Library.

! For UTokyo Members㉒Medallion㉙Calligraphy “Seishu Collection”(1st Basement Floor)㉓"BiblioPlaza" Works㉚General Library Annex

In 1929, the following year thelibrary building was completed, thefour medallions were made byTakezo Shinkai. They express eachof the four seasons in Japan.

Section for the books from theUtokyo BiblioPlaza (website whereUTokyo faculty members explain
about their own works).

㉔Grand reading room
The lighting was restored to theoriginal design. The desks havebeen repaired and used for 90years.

Hirobumi Ito, the first Prime
Minister, wrote the name of thecollection held by theWatanabes wealthy family ofKoshu (Yamanashi prefecture).

Library Plaza (LP) is a roundplace for group learning.
Automated storage under LP
holds a lot of containers withmaterials, which are retrieved tothe Main Building through therobotic system.

㉛Decorative Ceiling(4th Floor )The decorative ceilings has beenpreserved as the original design
to allow natural light to pour inthrough the glass.

GeneralLibraryArchitectural &cultural objects map

Outside①Main Entrance

The shape of the entrance
portrays of books in bookshelf.
The eight relieves on the wall
were carved by the sculptor,
Takezo Shinkai in 1930.

②Remains of the old library
The benches are placed wherethe old library used to be. The
remains of the old library building
are placed as a bench near theentrance of the annex (on the sideof Faculty of Letters Bldg. 3).

③Remains of the Kaga
domain residence

The paved stones are remains ofthe residence where the lord ofKaga Province (Ishikawa andToyama prefectures) lived. They
were discovered during theconstruction of the annex.

④Fountain

The fountain used to be served
as a fire cistern. It wastemporally removed during theconstruction of the annex andrebuilt on the original site.

⑤Porch light

The lights were removed in theWorld War II to supply the metal.
They were restored in 2009, withother lights on the librarybuilding.

How the General Library was built
The current library building was built after theGreat Kanto earthquake in1923.
The earthquake and following fire destroyed theold library building and almost all of the librarymaterials. In 1924, the next year of the earthquake,
John D. Rockefeller Jr. offered to donate 4 million
yen (ca. 10 billion yen in today’s currency) for thereconstruction of the library. The University ofTokyo immediately decided to accept his offer andto reconstruct the library building.

1st Floor

Objects withare restored to the original design.

For UTokyo Members only

⑱⑰⑯
⑦⑥⑧～⑮

①～⑤⑥Grand staircase

Sunlight is poured through therestored atrium. The wall aroundthe stair is made by Italian marble
with a lot of ammonite fossils.

⑦Memorial RoomThis room commemorates thereconstruction of the library after
the Great Kanto earthquake. Thechandeliers were restored to their
original design in 2017.

⑧Deer Taxidermy

George V, who was the King of
the United Kingdom, donated thetaxidermy deer head to theUniversity of Tokyo in 1913. It wasrescued from fire on the Great
Kanto earthquake.

The reconstruction started in 1926 and completed
on December 1st, 1928.
The building was made of steel-reinforced
concrete so that it could be robust over disasterand composed of four-story open-shelf area andseven-story stack area.
The library building was, along with a lot ofbuildings of Hongo Campus, designed by
Yoshikazu Uchida, professor of Faculty ofEngineering. The appearance of the library is
characterized by the walls clad with tan tiles andthe entrance with “Uchida-Gothic” arches anddecoration to be matched with the other buildingsin the campus.

⑨Portrait of Tagore

Jawaharlal Nehru, the firstpresident of India, visited theUniversity of Tokyo in 1957,
and donated the portrait of
Dwarkanath Tagore.

⑩ Letter from J. D. Rockefeller Jr.
The letter was sent from John D.
Rockefeller Jr. to Yoshinao Kozai,
the university president of thattime. It says that he would
donate 400 million yen to theUniversity of Tokyo.

⑪Model of General Library

The University of Tokyo presented
Mr. Rockefeller with a model ofthe General Library in return of his
donation. This model was made ofthe same mold.

⑫ Model of GuhyeśvariTempleThis model was donated by Prince
Birendza Bir Bikra III Shah Dev ofNepal on his visit to the Universityin 1967 as a gift of gratitude for his
study at the University. The temple
is located in the suburbs ofKathmandu, the capital of Nepal,
and dates back to the 1700s.

⑬ Plaster cast of Chopin's handThis plaster cast was donated by
the Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary of theRepublic of Poland to Universityof Tokyo after a visit to Warsaw
by former director Urata.

UTokyo Library System andGeneral Library
The University of Tokyo Library System is composedof General Library, Komaba Library, Kashiwa Library,and 27 libraries attached to departments or related
research institutions. The libraries hold 9.5 million
volumes in total and provide a large variety ofservices as a single, integrated system.
General Library is the central library of Hongo
campus and the biggest library in the University ofTokyo.
The wide range of materials, equipment and service
are provided to all of the university affiliates, while⑭Calligraphy “NankiCollection”
Yoshinobu Tokugawa, the last
shogun of Tokugawa
shogunate, wrote the name of
the collection donated by thefeudal lord of Kii Province(Wakayama prefecture).

⑮Wooden mosaic floor
The floor was polished andcoated to restore to the originaldesign.

⑯Open Area

This area introduces theintellectual assets of theUniversity of Tokyo.

⑰Card catalog box

Before we started using
computers to search for books,
we have used catalog cards.
There used to be about 60
libraries at the University ofTokyo, and the cards could
search the entire collections.

⑱Staircase in the stacks

You can see the steel staircase
in the preservation stacks.

⑲Oil Painting"Women Gathering"

A work by Nakamura Takuji(1897-1988), which was exhibitedat the 4th Ministry of Education
Art Exhibition in 1941 and won aspecial prize. After receiving theaward, it was donated to theUniversity.

libraries of departments or institutions support study
and research specialized in their research area.
The University of Tokyo Library System has
formulated the "New Library Plan" and has renovatedthe main building of the General Library and built a
new annex to form a center for learning, education,and research. All construction work was completed in2020 and the building had its grand opening.
In the annex, there is a library plaza on the basementlevel and automated storage that have capacity of 3
million volumes on the second to fourth floors.