Learning about Prewar Diplomatic Telegrams and Official Notes

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released many documents through Japan Center for Asian Historical Records. A lot of the records contain communications between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with overseas missions and offices. Since the antiquated style of the records can be difficult for even Japanese to read, I will explain how to make sense of official telegrams and official notes from the prewar period.

As a primary means of international communications for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, telegrams once allowed for electric signals to be exchanged rapidly, sending urgent information across the world. Official notes were also an option for diplomats and others to send documents that bore seals as well as physical attachments.

In this case, the bureaus responsible for the content are the Asian Bureau and the Trade Bureau. The addressee (Minister of Foreign Affairs) and the time of reception (night of November 19th, 1938) are found in the second line. In the upper part of third line, information is included on who sent the telegram. And in the lower part of this line, you can find who received the telegram.

In general, telegrams were sent and received in the name of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the chiefs of overseas establishments. In this specific case, the telegram was received by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and sent by the Consul in Zhangjiakou. The serial number of the Consulate in Zhangjiakou that sent the document can be found on the fourth line. The title of the telegram is written in the fifth line: "On Taxation for Foreign Cigarettes by the Autonomous Government of Inner Mongolia." With telegrams like this, when they were sent other organizations would receive copies of the content, similar to how emails are carbon copied today, and in this case telegram copies were sent to Beijing's Embassy to the Republic of China and to the Consulate in Tianjin.

Most of individuals working overseas in offices for the Government of Japan, including chiefs, were under the supervision of the Foreign Affairs minister. However, military attaché of the Army and the Navy, who also worked overseas, were under the supervision of their General Staff Office, instead of a Foreign Affairs minister. Consequently, a military attaché would have sent telegrams as opposed to a Foreign Affairs minister (For an example, see "Military attaché of the Embassy of Japan in USSR to the Deputy Chief, General Staff" (Reference Code: B02030780300). Moreover, you can find an example of a telegram between an overseas office and the East Asia Development Board (Reference Code: B08060393500, 1st image), and a telegram between overseas offices and the Ministry of Greater East Asia (Reference Code : B08061208000, 1st image).

First, the origin is not the chief of an overseas office nor is the addressee a Foreign Affairs minister. The letter "Hankoshin" was the informal means of communication, and is therefore the communication between the persons directly in charge of the content. The other difference is in the style of the official note. It was similar to private letters, so the phrase "Dear Sir" or "拝啓陳者" could be written at the start, and the phrases "I would like to reply, Sincerely yours" or "此段得貴意候　敬具" could be written towards the end. The official note and the private letter were used in order to communicate between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other ministries or local governments overseas.

[References]

Koike, Seiichi. Modern Japan Document Studies Introduction. Tokyo: Gendai Shiryo Shuppan, 2008, pp. 125-128. (In Japanese)

Koike, Seiichi. "Generating Process of Documents and Records by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Trial in the Archival Study on documents by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs". Hihon Rekishi 584 (1997): pp. 1-15. (In Japanese)

Sakano, Masataka. Analysis of Diplomacy in the Modern Period. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1979. (In Japanese)

Yagishita, Hiroko. "History of the Style of Official Telegram at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Pre-war Period". Journal of the Diplomatic Archives 15 (2001): 106-122. (In Japanese)

Yagishita, Hiroko. "Research on the History of the Style of Official Letters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Pre-war Period". Journal of the Diplomatic Archives 6 (1993): 40-50. (In Japanese)

[Publicity Work]

-Overseas

-Domestic

The Condition of Japan Related Materials in the United States of America

This past March JACAR staff members Hiroko Matsuo and Muneaki Hirano visited two American organizations that house Japan related materials. The pair from JACAR conducted interviews about archival digitization and investigated the conditions of materials related to Japan. The conditions of the three visited organizations are outlined below.

- Suzzallo and Allen Library and East Asia Library, University of Washington ( >> Website)

The University of Washington (UW) is a public university located in Seattle, Washington. There are fifteen research libraries in addition to the university's central library, the Suzzallo and Allen Library. Some of the university holdings, especially in the East Asia Library, include materials pertaining to Japan.

The East Asia Library opened in 1937, after the university purchased a small collection of Chinese literary works. During the 1940s, this unnamed collection had increased to 20,800 volumes, including a gift of 2,000 volumes from Columbia University. It was shelved in Suzzallo Library's Oriental Seminar Room. When the Far Eastern Institute was established in 1946, the collection became an independent library, the Far Eastern Library. After that, the Japanese and Korean library collections began to increase with the George Kerr Collection and a small number of Korean titles were assembled during World War II for U.S. Army teaching purposes. Towards the beginning of the 1950s, the library acquired Japanese materials on China, as well as the Joseph Rock and Herbert H. Gowen collections to further enhance the Library's holdings on China and Inner Asia. In 1976, the Library moved in Gowen Hall, where it remains today, and it was renamed the East Asia Library. In this library, collections have continued to grow rapidly and automation was introduced during 1980s. This complemented the addition of electronic materials about East Asia that were acquired in the 1990s. The library was the first institution outside China to acquire the Twenty-Five Dynastic Histories database and the first academic library in North America to establish a direct connection to the NACSIS-IR service in Japan. As of June 2015, the library has over 683,000 volumes of publications on East Asia in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Manchurian, Mongolian, and other languages.

In the university libraries, there are a total of 320 employees and librarians, including 50 special subject librarians who construct and manage the collections, apply subsidies to purchase materials, control the budget, and provide reference services for departments. The East Asia Library has one subject librarian, one cataloguer, and one acquisition assistant assigned for each of Japan, China and Taiwan, and Korea subject.

In the East Asia Library, which is classified as a departmental library, subject librarians select and purchase materials through discussions with the university's professors, students, and researchers. The librarians collect materials based on the Collection Development Policy which they develop and approve. Many U.S. university libraries have similar collection policies, because they are often built in reference to others.

The East Asia Library receives many donations of materials. The criteria for receiving donations are specified in the Collection Development Policy. Thedonations must satisfy the library's research purpose and not duplicate. As a recent case, within a batch of Japanese comics donated by a researcher, the library excluded items for which duplicate. The library declines in principle also non-academic materials like photo collections or strongly religious and political texts from organizations. However, materials are accepted when researchers at the university need them, because the library has a clear policy to collect the materials for research support.

Of the collection acquired by the East Asia Library, some parts are shelved in other university libraries like the Suzzallo and Allen Library, which includes Japanese subject materials. The majority of the materials consist of books supporting the study of Japanese history, language, literature, society, and economics. There are also magazines and electronic materials as well as old maps of the Edo period and classical documents in the rare books room.

In the rare book room of Suzzallo and Allen Library, there are many materials about the history of Japanese immigrants in Seattle. From the end of the 19th century, many Japanese people immigrated in Seattle, and a Japantown formed in this city. The library collection consists of newspapers published in the Japanese community as well as documents left by the Japanese associations and Japanese Christian Churches. Some of them are listed below. These materials are retained under the Archives and Manuscripts Division.

- Japanese Association of North America (Seattle, Washington), Records (1918-1939) : Minutebooks, scrapbooks on microfilm; correspondence, and financial records; most records in Japanese.

- Japanese Christian Church Federation, Records (1911-1941) : Correspondence, minutes, financial records, reports and other records relative to the Federation, to Saint Peters' Japanese Mission, and to the Diocese of Olympia; much of the material is in Japanese.

These materials were donated by their corresponding organizations. We found that the well-organized "Japanese Christian Church Federation, Records" have been left systematically and that these records will be useful to trace this organization's activity and member in detail. This condition seems to show the character of the Japanese immigrants' community. Even today, troves of records left by people of two or three generations ago are being discovered among Japanese immigrants in Seattle. The East Asia Library aims to preserve such records and make the quality ones quickly available, as researchers are greatly interested in them. While cost does prevent the handing of some documents, this library is extremely important in better understanding the history of Japanese immigration in the U.S.

The Suzzallo and Allen Library map collection room systematically holds the Gaiho-zu as well as maps of non-mainland Japan by the Japanese Imperial Army's Land Survey Department in the General Staff Office. There is also the Naikoku-zu, a series of maps of the Japanese mainland from before and after World War II. The details of the maps are still being examined, because they were discovered recently in the library. Particularly with the Gaiho-zu, the library is exchanging information with other American libraries that hold similar kinds of maps as well as with a Japanese research team.

To digitize these materials, researchers and subject librarians in the university submit their plans to the Information Technology Services and Digital Strategies department of Suzzallo and Allen Library. This section manages many ofdigitization projects ofthe university, but doesn't perform digitization by itself. It performs digitization for the university's repository services and offers scanners as well as a photograph device built with open source technologies by Senior Computer Specialist Anne Graham, an engineer at this section.

[References]

Comprehensive Guide to the Manuscripts Collection and to the Personal Papers in the University Archives
(The guide was made in 1980 by the Archives and Manuscripts Division of the Library)

- The National Archives at Seattle ( >> Website)

The National Archives at Seattle is one of twelve regional facilities operated by the U.S. National Archives. It currently keeps 54,000 cubic feet of permanent records created by Federal government agency offices in the states of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Records directly connected to Japan can be found in the Department of State holdings, various military record groups as well as in Center for Legislative Records. These records are located at the main buildings in Washington, D.C. and College Park, Maryland.

The National Archives at Seattle holds records primarily relating to Pacific Northwest history including those from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service and National Park Service as well as naval installations and has a variety of record groups relating to natural resources. Moreover, the National Archives at Seattle has many materials pertaining to the movement of immigrants from areas including Asia. The Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files often include photographs and interviews with Chinese immigrants, family members and other witnesses. Some files may contain maps. These documents can be used by the descendants of Chinese immigrants to trace ancestors who lived in the United States. Because the law that resulted in the creation of these records only applied to those with Chinese ancestry, the records do not contain information about Japanese immigrants. However, there are also U.S. census records, which have been taken every decade since 1790 and available through 1940, as well as passenger arrival lists available on-line and on microfilm. Among these records, there is a lot of information on Japanese immigrants in the Pacific Northwest.

The records held in Seattle were transferred and retained according to the Record Control Schedule. Consequently, transferred records are to be open to the public immediately, with the exceptions of records containing national security classified information; personnel and medical files which would cause unwarranted invasions of personal privacy; and information which would interfere with fair enforcement proceedings, for example. Moreover, the National Archives at Seattle does not open records to the public of interviews with veterans that were carried out after 1970. We do not hold any records related to veterans.

Materials have been digitized with National Archives and Records Administration guidelines as outlined in the document Digitization at the National Archives. The National Archives at Seattle is digitizing records relating created in Alaska (see http://www.archives.gov/seattle/anchorage-project). Digitized documents from the years, for example, of between 1900 and 1921 pertain to natural resources in Alaska, and genealogy. Digital copies of these documents can be found in the National Archives Catalog located at https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog. The Archives offers document identifier numbers for searches, which operate like JACAR's reference code system.

- Boeing Archives

Since most documents in Boeing's archives pertain to security issue, they are not open to the public. However, after gaining the Douglas Aircraft Company, Boeing has been releasing photos and videos from its archives, primarily in its public relations magazines, which are available online ( >> GO), Boeing brochures and television (you can view videos on the Boeing 100th anniversary page >> GO). Some of documents and their copies are exhibited in the Museum of Flight.

Digitization enhances long-term retention of documents, but given the process's cost. Boeing only digitizes documents when it'd be helpful to do so. Currently only about 5 per cent of the total holdings has been digitally archived.