The Japanese Historical Text Initiative (JHTI) is owned by the Center for Japanese Studies of the University of California at Berkeley (UCB). Its mirror site is owned by Osaka International University (OIU) in Japan. The JHTI database-building project is administered by the Center for Japanese Studies at UCB through the project’s Principal Investigator: Andrew Barshay, Professor of History at UCB. The JHTI website is maintained by UCB and OIU through the project’s Director of Technology: Ikuo Oketani, Professor of Information Science at OIU.
JHTI was the brainchild of Delmer Brown, Professor Emeritus of History at UCB, whose interests in the religio-political dimensions of early Japanese history led him to explore the possibility creating a database of key ancient texts and their translations. A financial grant of $13,000 from the Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America got the project started. UCB then matched several $10,000 grants made by two translators of Japanese texts: Dr. Felicia Bock, who translated 10 books of the Engi Shiki, and Prof. Delmer Brown, co-translator of the Gukanshô). In 2001 a five-year grant of one million yen a year was received from the International Shinto Foundation of Tokyo. And for some years, Prof. Oketani has obtained generous grants for JHTI-related research from the Japanese Ministry of Education. The Center for Japanese Studies at UCB has sponsored JHTI since the fall of 2005.
Publishers of textual materials have sometimes been uncertain and hesitant about permitting the insertion of their printed or digitized publications. But formal agreements with the University of Tokyo Press and the National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL) have made it easier for other publishers to provide written approvals. To date, the Japan Society, Sophia University Press, University of California Press, Stanford University Press, University of Queensland Press, University of Hawai'i Press, and Columbia University Press have approved, in writing and free of charge, the insertion of their translations. We appreciate their cooperation and look forward to future collaboration with these and other publishers.
In the years since its creation, JHTI has come to include in its database an ever-broader spectrum of Japanese historical texts. Since the building of this database is an ambitious and never-ending project, we will always need more funds, more ideas for expanding and strengthening the database, and more users of JHTI for research in Japanese history. We therefore invite you to join us, and to help us in whatever way you can.
Andrew Barshay
Principal Investigator of JHTI
abars@berkeley.edu
September 3, 2010