Lists of the Major Special Collections

About special collections

One of the main features of Tohoku University Library is that special collections ( having private book collections in custody and submitting them for the users ) occupy an important role among our book collections. The beginning of special collections is Kano Collection. The library was founded four years after the establishment of Tohoku Imperial University, and in the following year, 1912, Koukichi Kano's 60,000 copies of book collections were purchased (the first supplies). On that occasion, Kano imposed the condition that all his books should be kept collectively, which created a precedent for the book collections. At a point of 1913, the number of book collections except for Kano Collection was about 13,000, so it will be easy to imagine the influence it gave to the book collection as a whole.

Soon afterwards, when the Faculty of Law and Literature was established in 1922, many foreign books were imported all at once. A Deutsche Mark had declined sharply after World War I, and during that period of confusion, we succeeded in purchasing old book collections of some prominent scholars. For about ten years, we had obtained Wundt's, Stein's and Seckel's private collections, and also some Tibetan Tripitaka in addition to them. In this way, our book collection came to have a feature of forming the special collections.

It was owing to this feature of our valuing the form of special collections that we could obtain Natsume Soseki's old book collections. Moreover, it must have been a result of this tradition that we could later receive more and more old book collections of professors at Tohoku University.

Lists of the Major Special Collections

Main Library

No. Collections Previous owners No. of volumes Fields of study
1 Abe Collection Jiro Abe 5,190 Overall Japanese culture
2 Ishizu Collection Teruji Ishizu 4,773 Religious philosophy
3 Ito Collection Nobuo Ito 4,526 Archaeology / History
4 Umehara Collection Sueji Umehara 1,143 Archaeology
5 Orui Collection Noburu Orui 946 Western History
6 Kano Collection Koukichi Kano 108,000 Overall classics mainly in Japanese and Chinese
7 Kinoshita Collection Akira Kinoshita 5,067 Agricultural
8 Kushida Collection Tamizou Kushida 3,130 Social sciences
9 Kouno Collection Yoichi Kouno 1,108 Classics
10 Kojima Collection Kikuo Kojima 1,494 Western art history
11 Sunaga Collection Shigemitsu Sunaga 6,316 Economics / Agriculture, forestry and fisheries
12 Soseki Collection Soseki Natsume 3,068 English literature. With notes
13 Shinzo Takayanagi Shinzo Takayanagi 3,818 Japanese legal history
14 Nakano Collection Tadashi Nakano 5,873 Economics
15 Nakamura Collection Kichiji Nakamura 4,297 Japanese economic history / Social history
16 Bansui Collection Bansui Doi 2,624 Western poetry, etc. With notes
17 Matsumoto Collection Kinju Matsumoto 3,174 Pedagogy / psychology
18 Miyata Collection Mitsuo Miyata 14,637 History of western political ideas
19 Yajima Collection Genryo Yajima 2,030 Chinese philosophy / Bibliography
20 Yanase Collection Yoshimoto Yanase 1,877 Law / Politics
21 Native Mathematics of Japan Collection Tsuruichi Hayashi, Matsusaburou Fujiwara, et al. 18,335 Native mathematics of Japan / Astronomy / Almanac studies /
22 Wada Collection Saichirou Wada 2,670 Economics
23 Koeber Collection Raphael von Koeber 1,999 Western philosophy
24 Seckel Collection Emil Seckel 7,380 Roman law / Ecclesiastical law
25 Stein Collection Friedrich Stein 6,810 Proceedings Law
26 Wundt Collection Wilhelm Wundt 15,840 Psychology in most part
27 Wurfel Collection Georg Wurfel 1,160 German data
28 Zitelmann Collection Ernst Zitelmann 8,280 Law
29 Tibetan Tripitaka(some Tibetan sutras) Toukan Tada 6,652 copies Tibetan studies
30 古斁E 174件 ※貴重書を含む古斁EのリスチE/td>
· The Akita archive The Akita, the old lord of the Miharu domain 4,337 items Japanese history
31 Documents of the Haruyama family 6,530 items Japanese local history / Economic history
32 Hirayama Collection Akira Hirayama 1,255 Native mathematics of Japan / Astronomy
33 Kanaya Collection Osamu Kanaya 5,252 Chinese ideas/ philosophy
34 Serizawa Collection Chosuke Serizawa 5,500 Archaeology
35 Saito Collection Yonosuke Saito Hundreds of thousands Modern Japanese history

Medical Library

No. Collections Previous owners No. of volumes Fields of study
1 Trendelenburg & Krayer's Collection of Scientific Papers P.Trendelenburg, O.Krayer 308books
15,300treatises		 Pharmocology / Physiology
2 Dr. Daisuke Aoki's Collection Daisuke Aoki 700items Medical history / Plague history

Collections