Overview

Kani’chi Asakawa (1873-1948) was the first professor of Japanese history and the head of the East Asia Library at Yale. Asakawa was an influential scholar in the field of comparative feudalism and the close contact with many of Japan’s most prominent public figures. The Japanese collection at Yale University Library also benefited from Asakawa’s lifelong devotion to building the phenomenal collection, which documents the history, society, and culture of the Japanese archipelago. By visually delineating the relationships of Asakawa and many intellectuals and public figures over the globe, the project will be beneficial to researchers who are interested in not only Asakawa, but other important figures in Japan and the world during the first half of the 19th century.