2018-04-26
Digitization of Fujikawa Collection completed
Kyoto University Library Network has made the digital images of all the materials of Fujikawa Collection, its rare collection in the field of medicine, open to the public in the digital archive.
Kyoto University's Fujikawa Collection is a collection of about 5,000 books formerly held by Yu Fujikawa (1865-1940), Doctor of medicine and letters, and donated to Kyoto University separately on three occasions in 1917 and later. Doctor Fujikawa collected academic books widely and systematically in order to compile History of Japanese Medicine (Nihon igakushi), and constructed this collection of books consisting of Japanese and Chinese medical books before the Meiji period and translations of Western medical books after the mid Edo period, mainly during the end of the Edo period.
An interesting example among the new release is Oranda zenku naigai bungouzu oyobi kengou, translation of an anatomical book with many charts consisting of layers of paper pieces on which muscles, circulatory organs, bone structures and others are depicted in detail.
Left four shots are front views of a human body and the other two rear views. Body-shaped paper pieces are put one over another, each showing detailed depiction of different organ systems.
The digitization of Fujikawa Collection, first started in 1998, was highly accelerated by large-scale projects in 2016 and 2017 and approximately 2,000 titles were digitized in 2016, followed by 2,700 titles in 2017. The release of digitized data of 1,647 titles this time concludes the whole digitization project of Fujikawa Collection.