Takashi Okamoto (Professor, Waseda University; Research Fellow, Toyo Bunko)
The Morrison Collection, which forms the core of the Toyo Bunko celebrating its 100th anniversary, is itself a treasure in its entirety. Yet within it, there exists a collection that stands out uniquely—one that exists nowhere else and is said to be irreplaceable. This is the collection of approximately 6,000 so-called "pamphlets."
Morrison, who built the Morrison Collection, wielded considerable influence in international politics as a journalist for The Times from the late 19th century onward. This was due not only to his personal abilities but also to the era in which media reporting and propaganda had come to hold significant presence in both domestic and foreign politics.
Centered on Britain, then the most advanced nation, pamphlets were being vigorously published and circulated both domestically and internationally—as means of political propaganda, criticism, attack, and slander, or as instruments of pressure politics.
In his book-collecting activities, Morrison diligently gathered these modest booklets. For example, in the internationally controversial opium trade with China at the time, both proponents and opponents were distributing pamphlets across borders, engaging in heated debate. His pamphlet collection vividly illustrates this situation.
The collection is not limited to single-issue pamphlets in the literal sense. Through his personal connections and friendships, Morrison also obtained vast quantities of journal article reprints and diplomatic documents. For instance, the writings of Kan'ichi Asakawa, one of Japan's foremost international intellectuals, belong to this category and represent a distinctive aspect of the collection.
Additionally, the collection includes what might be called self-made "pamphlets." Morrison clipped countless articles and essays related to East Asia from books, journals, and newspapers, either making scrapbooks or rebinding them with cotton thread, adding covers made from typewriter paper on which he inscribed titles, original publication names, and volume numbers, meticulously organizing and preserving them. Furthermore, the collection includes items such as bookstore catalogs and railway opening ceremony invitations sent to him.
These "pamphlets" thus express the Far Eastern issues of Morrison's era in real-time and on-the-spot, even more so than the vast books he collected. Their topics span not only the political situations of East Asian countries and domestic and foreign wars, but also internationally complex trade issues, the opium question, loans to China and their developments—extremely significant historical problems. For today's historians and researchers, they represent a treasury of invaluable historical sources, truly the crowning glory of the Morrison Collection. Morrison himself, of course, appears throughout.
However, it is difficult to say that the "Morrison Pamphlets" have been adequately utilized until now. Full-scale research making use of them has been rare, because the conditions and environment for research were slow to develop.
The importance of the Morrison Pamphlets as historical materials has long been recognized. However, it was not easy to conduct research that accurately analyzed the contents of each item and compared them to leverage their characteristics.
This is because individual pamphlets are simply too fragmentary. Reading a single document alone is hardly sufficient. Yet to simultaneously consult multiple items without a detailed catalog was far too inconvenient. Considerable time was required for the classification and cataloging of these pamphlets. It was not until 1972—more than half a century after the Morrison Collection came to Japan—that a basic catalog, A Classified Catalogue of Pamphlets in Foreign Languages in the Toyo Bunko acquired during the years 1917-1971, was completed.
Moreover, the publication of contemporary documents from related countries corresponding to the pamphlets had not sufficiently progressed until recent years, making it difficult to assemble materials for comparison. Furthermore, systems for conducting comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and international research had not been established until recently.
However, with advances in printing and information technology, materials from various countries have increasingly become available. Riding the wave of globalization, interdisciplinary and international research systems are becoming commonplace. The conditions for comprehensively and systematically analyzing the Morrison Pamphlets have finally been met.
We have therefore worked to bibliographically position individual fragmentary pamphlets while also mobilizing contemporary materials available for cross-reference, and alongside our ongoing analysis, we have been building a database that adds not only a catalog but also concise annotations, aimed at making the materials publicly available using today's information technology. We have finally achieved this public release.
The Morrison Pamphlets, which were previously inconvenient to access as rare books and obscure in their fragmentary content, can now be understood through keyword searches in the database, and combined with image viewing, have become much more accessible. We welcome wide use of this resource.
There are undoubtedly many shortcomings. We earnestly hope that users will provide feedback to help us improve in the future.