University of Hawai'i Manoa: Hamilton Library

About the library:

Founded in 1908 at the College of Hawai'i, the first library expressly designed and built for that purpose was opened in 1925 after the college became the University of Hawai'i. This building is the current location of Hamilton Library.

The Hamilton Library is part of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa library system, and contains the Japanese Collection. The Center for Japanese Studies also holds a small collection of dictionaries, reference works on Japanese art, and books on Okinawa.

For more information on the Japanese collection, please contact Tokiko Bazzell at (808) 956-2315 or by email.

Collection size: as of March 2014 the Hamilton collections contained over 3.4 million items over 151,000 of them are in Japanese.  The Hamilton Library's Japanese Collection includes a wide range of topics, including art history, history, language, law and business, literature, performing arts, and the social sciences.

Notable Collections:

• Sakamaki-Hawley Collection: approximately 2,000 items from Ryukyu and Okinawa, dating from the 17th century through the 1960s.
• Kajiyama Colection: approximately 7,000 items, which comprised the late novelist's source materials, including colonial Korea, Japanese migration, China and Manchuria, Hiroshima and the atomic bomb, and more.
• Takazawa Collection: 225 linear feet (approximately 50,000 items) of archival material pertaining to the postwar social movements in Japan.
• Oliver Statler Collection: 177.25 linear feet of archival material from Oliver H. Statler's personal items, which were used as the basis for his writings.
• Japanese Language Schoolbook Collection: 800 school textbooks and readers used to educate Japanese immigrant children in Hawai'i from the late 19th into the late 20th century.
• Hawai'i Karate Museum Collection: 250 rare and hard-to-obtain materials on martial arts in Okinawa, Japan, and Hawai'i.
• Magic Lantern Slides Collection: 1,500 lantern slides dating from the Meiji era through the early Showa era.
• Images of Okinawa after World War II: 248 slides of Okinawa taken 1945-1968.

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For all comments and questions about the Guide, please e-mail us:

mlaguide@nccjapan.net