The Tokyo Historiographical Institute has added a new resource for using Shōsōin documents to their database. This tool, called the SHOMUS 正倉院文書マルチ支援データベース, provides data from the Shōsōin monjo mokuroku, the key catalog for using Shōsōin documents, in an online and open-access format. The database quite usefully offers links between entries following the connections (setsuzoku) between documents before they were reconfigured by Hoida. It also offers links to images from Dai Nihon komonjo. It is searchable by keyword. The announcement promises that it will expand in the coming months. I noticed that entries include the tantalizing promise of photographic images (satsuei gazō 撮影画像), a field empty in the examples I’ve looked at. Perhaps one day, we will be able to access high quality images of Shōsōin documents online. It doesn’t hurt to dream, right?
Here are some other Japanese language blog posts related to this new resource:
http://shosoin-kenkyukai.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2015/07/shomus-101a.html
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/consigliere/20150708/1436282852
