The Australian National University
Tuesday 23 October 2018, 5:30 – 7:30pm
Auditorium, China in the World Building (188), Fellows Lane, ANU
In October 1917, the collection of the Asiatic Library in Beijing, founded by G. E. Morrison, arrived in Tokyo. In the collection, there were books, manuscripts, various pamphlets, and other materials covering the whole of Asia, with China as its main focus. In total, there were more than 20,000 volumes.
In 1924, Iwasaki Hisaya founded the Tōyō Bunko (Oriental Library) with Morrison’s collection and the Iwasaki collection.
In the 1990s, the collection of Alastair Morrison, the second son of G. E. Morrison, arrived at the Tōyō Bunko. This collection is mainly made up of books and pamphlets on Southeast Asia.
In December 2017, the Tōyō Bunko commemorated the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the Morrison Collection with an insightful keynote address by Professor Claire Roberts from the University of Melbourne on “The Morrisons of Peking: Living History”.
Currently, the Tōyō Bunko holds more than one million books and other materials on Asia, with around 250 research fellows. The whole collection is open to the public.
This lecture will introduce the Morrison collection in the Tōyō Bunko, using examples from its research projects, exhibitions, and digitisation program to further understanding of G. E. Morrison and his family’s history.
About the speaker
Professor Takeshi HAMASHITA is a distinguished economic historian of Asia. Since 2011, he has been the head of the Research Department at the Tōyō Bunko (Oriental Library) in Tokyo.