Special & Archival Collections

East Asian Special Collection

Archives of Buddhist in LA consists of three major archives

1. Zen Center of Los Angeles records, 1937-2012, bulk 1969-2006.

• Call no.: Collection 2299, 150 boxes
• Please find the find aid here.

2. Ruth Strout McCandless collection on Nyogen Senzaki, 1895-2007, bulk 1940-1960

• Call no. Collection 2296, 17 boxes
• Please find the find aid here.

3. Buddhist Church of American Archives

• Find aid

4. The Many Branches, One Root series

• UCLA Oral History Research Center, creator
• The Many Branches, One Root series traces the histories and practices of a range of Buddhist traditions and communities in the greater Los Angeles.
• Browse the collection

Catholic Missionaries in China: oral histories: 1904-1949

• Interviewed by David Obst in 1968

Chinese American Oral History Project, 1978-1991.

• Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, creator

• 7 boxes (3.5 linear feet), 44 oversize shoeboxes

• Call no.: collection 1688, A cumulative index and audio recordings (duplicates) are available to access in the UCLA LSC

• The collection consists of materials related to the Southern California Chinese American Oral History Project. The collection includes 400 hours of taped interviews, over 1700 pages of summaries and indices, an appendix with the user's guide sample sheets, and descriptions of the cumulative index. Also includes interview transcripts. The transcripts are in Chinese, mainly Cantonese dialects, with English translations. Tape recordings available in duplicate form in Boxes 33-51.

Chinese Community Newspaper Archive 《南華時報》1980-1988

• May Chen 陳十美, Editor-in-chief of the Newspaper, creator

• 5.6 linear ft. (14 flat boxes)

• Call no.: collection 2127

• The Chinese Community newspaper, started publication in the early 1980s and was the first Chinese newspaper to have literary section to be published in Southern California. Famous authors like Ha Jin published his novels in series on the newspaper. The collection consists of a weekly Chinese language newspaper that chronicles Southern California's suburban Chinese Community.

• Finding aid

Chinese rare books

• Search crbm as a keyword, 313 rare books will be pulled.

• Currently we are working on compiling a catalog of Chinese rare books for publication.

East Asian Maps in the Bruman Collection

• The East Asian Maps Collection consists of 1079 maps of China, Japan, Korea, Manchuria, and other areas in East Asia. The maps were produced between 1800 and 1960s. A majority of them produced by the Office of Strategic Service, the American Map Society, the National Geographic Magazine, and government agents or commercial publishers in China, Great Britain, and Japan. Some of the maps were once highly classified and produced in limited quantities.

• 492 items

• Accessible here

Eiko Ishioka Papers

• Material in the Eiko Ishioka papers relates to nearly every aspect of the designer's multi-faceted career. Her work in the performing arts is documented through costume drawings and sketches, set design drawings, research material, production records and photographs, fabric samples, and audiovisual material for numerous stage projects, especially the Broadway productions M. Butterfly (1988) and David Copperfield: Dreams & Nightmares (1996), the operas Chushingura (1997) and The Ring of the Nibelung (1997-1998), and Cirque du Soleil's Varekai (2002). 

• Linear feet (275 boxes, 63 record cartons, 116 flat boxes, 49 oversize flat boxes, 11 shoe boxes, 36 telescope boxes, 129 map folders, and 39 film and video canisters); 173 GB (289 digital files).

• Accessible at YRL Special Collections Stacks Collection 2288.

• Please find the finding aid at here.

Han Yu-Shan Collection, 1646-1910

• Professor Yu-Shan Han, 1899-1983, collector

• 7.5 linear ft. (15 boxes and 21 oversize boxes)

• Call no.: collection 1327

• Yu-shan Han (1899-1983) taught at the History Department, UCLA (1941 to 1966). The collection consists of 24 histories of academies in China published between 1684 and1910, a printed text of the Diamond Sutra (1798), a set of original woodblocks for the Diamond Sutra, imperial examination papers (1646-1904), imperial edicts, and manuscript scrolls

• Finding aid

Hashikura collection on cinema

• Hashikura collection on cinema consists 214 monographs and 27 serial publications, the rarer items are periodicals from the pre-war period such as “Kinema Junpo,” “Eiga Hyoron,” “Nihon Eiga,” and “Eiga no Tomo,” and press sheets used to promote more than 9,000 films including about 2,100 Japanese, 6,600 foreign, and 430 animation films from the mid-1980s to 2007 that were originally circulated among Japanese film companies.  This extensive acquisition will serve as a solid foundation for the library’s focus on popular culture studies and augment the library's existing film collection. Contact Tomoko for more questions.

Hei Sop Chin Archival Collection, 1906-1970

• Hei Sop Chin (1905- ) was the editor of the World Literary Dictionary (1955), wrote the textbooks Korean reader (1958) and Fundamental Korean for English speaking people (1959), founded, edited, and published the news weekly Hanmi t'ongsin, or The Korean American news bulletin (1961-1965), was the head of the lithograph department at the University of Southern California Press, founded Johnny International men's clothing importing company (1970), and founded two corporations (1983), Harry and Sons, and Asia International to promote joint ventures and business development in China. The collection consists of materials related to the Korean independence movement in Hawaii and the mainland United States prior to 1945, organizational papers pertaining to Tongjihae, and documents pertaining to the United Korean Committee, Korean Interim Government and Assembly and the Korean Community Center in Los Angeles.

• Finding aid

Ho Young Ham Papers, 1873-1984

• Ho Young Ham was born in Seoul, Korea on May 5, 1868 and immigrated to Hawaii in 1905 with his wife, Hannah Chur Ham (1882-1979). The Ho Young Ham papers consist of artifacts, audio recordings, books, clothing, correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and printed material that document Mr. Ham and his family, his professional life as a sugar plantation employee and Korean Methodist Church minister, and his involvement in Korean nationalist activities.

• Finding aid

Hyung-ju Ahn Collection of Korean Materials, 1902-1959 

Japanese American Research Project (JARP)

• University of California, Los Angeles, creator

• 760 boxes (380.0 linear feet); 21 cartons (21.0 linear feet)

• 85 oversize boxes; 1 oversize folder box.

• Call no.: collection 2010

• Collection consists of materials collected by the Japanese American Research Project (JARP) related to the history of Japanese and Japanese Americans in the United States. Contains more than 100 groups of personal papers related to individuals and/or families, and these groups contain correspondence, diaries, photographs, and a variety of printed materials. Also contains several thousand returned questionnaires and records related to surveys of the Issei, Nisei, and Sansei conducted during the 1960s. Also includes over 400 tape recordings and oral histories, original art work done by internees during WWII, yearbooks, directories, newspapers, pamphlets, and records related to Japanese consulates on the West Coast. The collection also contains administrative records of the Japanese American Research Project.

• Finding aid

Japanese Rare Books

• Kariforunia Daigaku Rosanzerusu-kō shozō Nihon kotenseki mokuroku = Catalog of Japanese rare materials at University of California, Los Angeles. Tōkyō : Tōsui Shobō, 2000.

Julian C. Wright Collection

• Julian Chapman Wright, 1904-1978, collector

• Stored in the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF), UCLA Library

• Access in the EAL's Reading Room

• Julian Chapman Wright (1904-1978) who was an art teacher, painter & lithographer. Wright bequeathed 649 titles of Japanese, Chinese and Korean illustrated books in 1608 volumes in various subjects to the East Asian Library in 1978, which significantly enhanced the Japanese and Chinese unique holdings.

Kamigata Kabuki Banzuke 上方歌舞伎番付: Woodblock Print Playbills from Western Japan

• Kabuki banzuke refers to programs and posters of kabuki performances, which reached a peak of excellence and became one of the most popular theatrical entertainments in Japan from the seventeenth through the late nineteenth centuries. Developed in cities of Edo (Tokyo) and Kamigata, the western and historical heart of Japan (Osaka and Kyoto), they were played in several other cities in Japan during that time. All of the kabuki banzuke held by the UCLA Library came from the theaters of Kamigata and cover a period of nearly 100 years from the Kansei era (1789-1801) to Meiji 10 (1877). The collection contains two types of banzuke: yakuwari banzuke, lists of cast, and ezukushi, illustrated acts scenes from plays, which were distributed or sold separately for kabuki performances at the theaters. (The latter type was also called as ehon banzuke in Edo.) The collection consists of total 101 bound sets of yakuwari banzuke and ezukushi, which had been bound together per performance either by the former owner or book sellers before the UCLA Library acquired them. Among these sets, eighteen are bound with two to four different performances, and some of which contain a few fragmentary banzuke. Total 125 performances are in the collection including the fragmentary ones. Most of them have retained a colored cover from its original wrapping paper or seal dyed using kappazuri, stencil printing, a technique unique to Kamigata. It is believed to have been acquired for the UCLA Library between the 1950s and the 1960s by Richard C. Rudolph, late UCLA professor of Chinese literature and archaeology.

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Korean Americans in Los Angeles after 1965

• UCLA Oral History Research Center, creator

• This series includes full-life histories of a number of prominent Korean Americans who represent their community’s tremendous expansion during the period after federal anti-Asian immigration laws were repealed in 1965. The series focuses on the remarkable growth of the Korean American community in Los Angeles; that community’s impact on the history, economy, and culture of the city; and the development and evolution of Koreatown, the only such officially designated community in any city in the world. While concentrating largely on Korean immigrants who are part of the so-called 1.5 generation, or immigrants who relocated to the United States from South Korea while still relatively young, the series also includes influential members of the L.A. area’s Korean community who are first- and second-generation Korean Americans.

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 Manfred Heiting Collection of Chinese Photobooks

• A trove of 249 Chinese photobooks dating from the 1900s to the 21st century. Among the titles in the collection are 64 from 1900–1949, 33 from the 1950s, 20 from the 1960s, 25 from the 1970s, 21 from the 1980s, 12 from the 1990s, 36 from the 2000s, 25 from the 2010s, and 1 from the 2020s; two titles are undated.

• The collection, purchased for and donated to UCLA by renowned photobooks collector and author Manfred Heiting, addresses a significant area of Chinese studies, providing scholars with access to cultural and historical resources to further advance teaching and research at UCLA.

• All the titles have been added to UCLA' library's collection. You may seearch them through the library's retrieval suystem.

• More information can be found here.

Princess Der Ling's collection of photographs of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi of China, 1903-1905

• 1 oversize box

• Call no.: collection 529

• The collection consists of eight pristine black-and-white original prints that might have been donated by Princess Der Ling in the late 1930s to the UCLA Library Special Collections. The photography was taken by Yu Xunling, Der Ling’s brother, in 1903-4. Ying-Chen Peng, a Ph.D. student at Art History then and now a faculty member at the Department of Art, American University, researched Cixi and these photographs, completed in 2014, her dissertation Staging Sovereignty : Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) and Late Qing Court Art Production examines concentrically Cixi's avid participation in portraiture, attire and daily accessories, painting and calligraphy, as well as imperial garden palaces, to illuminate her self-expressions in visual and material cultures. The late Qing court art organizations were at her service to stage her performance as a female ruler, while adopting the visual language of imperial portraiture to represent her authority, the strategic choices of subjects and motifs in the portrait maintained the sitter's womanly identity.

• Finding aid

Richard C. Rudolph Collection of Japanese Maps, 1614-1896

• 7.0 linear feet (14 boxes and 1 oversize box)

• Call no.: collection 1013

• Collection consists of early Japanese woodblock maps and a small group of manuscript maps. A register by Takako Karplus consists of a chart/index, followed by a descriptive catalog which annotates each map with excerpts from major authorities. Copies of these annotations are attached to the folders of the individual maps to which they apply. Also includes Japanese early maps of other areas.

• Finding aid

Suburban Chinatown: Chinese American Business and Political Leaders in the San Gabriel Valley, 2012-

• UCLA Oral History Research Center, creator

• The Suburban Chinatown series focuses on political and business leaders in the San Gabriel Valley who came to the U.S. in the post-1965 wave of Asian immigration after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system based on national origins. The series was undertaken as a collaborative effort between the UCLA Library’s Center for Oral History Research and the American East Asian Cultural and Educational Foundation (AEACEF). AEACEF recommended the majority of the individuals interviewed and introduced the interviewer to the narrators. Many of the narrators are also featured in the AEACEF’s book Thirty Years of Chinese American Immigration in Southern California, including Lily Chen Lee, Tei-Fu Chen, May Hsu, Grace Hu, Karen Kuo-Limb, Evans Y Lam, Thomas G. Lee, San-pao Li, and Matthew Lin.

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Toganoo collection

• Shoun Toganoo 栂尾祥雲 (1881-1953), a Japanese priest, collected manuscripts and early publications form the 14^th century to 19^th century on Tantric Buddhism. 

• Search “Toganoon collection” as keyword, 249 titles will be pulled, contains the oldest item 東大寺緣起繪詞 (1337)  to the latest title published in 1948.

UCLA East Asian Archaeology Corona Satellite Images Collection: 1960s-1970s

• A collection of declassified satellite images of major cultural regions in China. These images are from the United States Corona Satellite program, which was a reconnaissance imaging program that focused on photographing the Soviet Union and China Flight missions span from the early 1960s to the middle 1970s. These images were obtained from USGS by Dr. Li Min with the support of a UCLA Office of Instructional Development teaching enhancement grant for designing and teaching the class "Archaeological Landscapes of China" in Anthropology and Asian Languages and Cultures.

• 204 items

• Accessible here