ABOUT US
The Japanese Historical Text Initiative (JHTI) is owned by the East Asian Library of the University of California at Berkeley (UCB). Its mirror site is owned by Osaka International University (OIU) in Japan.
The JHTI
database-building project is administered by the East Asian Library and the Center for Japanese Studies at UCB through the projectfs Principal Investigator: Andrew Barshay, professor of Japanese history at UCB. The JHTI website is maintained by EAL and OIU through the projectfs Director of Technology: Ikuo Oketani, professor of information science at OIU.
The Board of Directors is made up of Barshay (co-chair), Oketani (co-chair), Delmer Brown, former Principal Investigator of JHTI and professor emeritus of Japanese history at UCB (consultant); Peter Zhou, Director of the East Asian Library at UCB; Shoichiro Hara, professor of information science at the National Institute of Japanese Literature in Tokyo (Kokubunken); Allan Grapard, professor of Shinto Studies at UC Santa Barbara; Lewis Lancaster, professor emeritus of Buddhism at UCB; Mary Elizabeth Berry, professor of Japanese history at UCB; Mack Horton, professor of Japanese literature at UCB; John Nelson, associate professor of East Asian religion at the University of San Francisco; and Norman Havens, lecturer in religious history at the
Kokugakuin University in Tokyo.
No Director receives compensation for time spent on JHTI, and neither UCB nor OIU charges fees for the use of equipment or space. But funds are needed to employ qualified, bilingual persons, either in Osaka or Berkeley, to digitize and cross-tag original texts, commentaries, and translations placed on JHTI.
A financial
grant of $13,000 from Tsubaki America (formerly located in Stockton, California) got the project started. Then UCB matched several
$10,000 grants made by two translators of Japanese texts: Dr. Felicia Bock who
translated 10 books of the Engi Shiki, and Brown who co-translated the Gukanshô). In 2001 a five-year grant of one million yen a year was received from the International Shinto Foundation of Tokyo. And for some years, Professor Oketani has
obtained generous grants for JHTI-related research from the Japanese Ministry
of Education. We hope that institutions and individuals, both in Japan and the United States, will continue to provide support that assures constant JHTI expansion and development.
Three graduate students (two in Berkeley and one in Osaka) have been especially productive and innovative in digitizing and cross-tagging textual materials:
(1) Dr. Chizuko Saito, who received her PhD in religion from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, worked closely with Oketani in devising our cross-tagging system. As JHTIfs first Coordinator, she played a key role in negotiating an agreement between UCB and the University of Tokyo Press, an agreement that gives us the right to electronically publish the translation of the Kojiki.
(2) Dr. Yuko Okubo, who received her PhD in Anthropology at UCB, has been extremely helpful in negotiating an agreement between UCB and Kokubunken. This allows us to insert any Japanese historical text included in Kokubunkenfs huge collection of digitized historical texts.
(3) Hirokazu Shintani, a graduate of OIU specializing in information science, has given valuable assistance to Professor Oketani in solving technological problems.
Publishers of textual materials have tended to be uncertain and hesitant about permitting the insertion of their printed or digitized publications. But formal agreements with the University of Tokyo Press and Kokubunken have made it easier for publishers to
provide written approvals. To date the Japan Society, the Sophia University Press, the University of California Press, the Princeton Press, and the Columbia University Press have approved, in writing and free of charge, the insertion of their translations. We appreciate their cooperation and look forward to future collaboration with these and other publishers.
Since the building of this bilingual database is an ambitious and never-ending project, we will always need more money, more ideas for expanding and strengthening the database, and more users of JHTI for research in Japanese history. We therefore invite you to join us, and to help us in whatever way you can. We can be reached at jhti@berkeley.edu
Former Principal Investigator of JHTI
Andrew Barshay
Principal Investigator of JHTI