In today's multipolar system, the roles of China and Japan are pivotal. The rich holdings of the East Asian Collection stand as a challenge to traditional historiography. In East Asia as elsewhere, war, revolution, and peace are the ultimate parameters of human experience. The collections include approximately 127,500 titles in 247,620 volumes. About 40 percent of these can be said to deal with politics, law, economics, public finance, sociology, statistics, education, and defense.
Serial holdings are unusually comprehensive.
Outstanding among the 6,000 titles in the Chinese Collection are the ones that date from before 1949. They include government documents, statistical reports on commerce, and numerous periodicals. The Japanese Collection has 1,800 serial titles. A more detailed description of the Collection's holdings necessarily must include some account of the historical background. In the Chinese Revolution of 1911 groups of army officers, intellectuals, and overseas students combined to overthrow the Ch'ing government.