Old medical book collection (Eastern medicine old book collection)

About this collection

This collection mainly consists of Japanese and Chinese medical books, as well as books on herbal medicine and Western medicine, published and transcripted in the period from the Edo period (1603–1868) to the early Meiji era (1868–1912). The collection contains valuable documents such as “Revised Kaitai Shinsho（重訂解体新書）” written by Gentaku Otsuki and “Zoshi（蔵志）, ” Japan's first anatomical book. You can see the catalog at https://opac.LL.chiba-u.jp/da/koisho/.

This collection consists of old medical documents collected by Yaeji Ito (1891–1955), Professor Emeritus of Chiba University, for medical research. It also includes old documents collected by three families: the Chiba family, who have served for generations as ophthalmologists in Mobara City, Chiba; the Sato family, which established Sakura Juntendo as a private school and clinic of Dutch medicine; and the Miyake family, whose old books include works by Shunrei Miyake, a famous doctor in the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate.

The materials国文研電子化digitized by the National Institute of Japanese Literature in 2022 were made available as part of the institute’s project to establish an international collaborative research network on historical Japanese texts.