The Library of Economics
The main library can be found in the first building to your right when you enter the University of Tokyo campus through the Akamon gate. It is a 7-story building, and the library is on the east end of the 3rd floor. This Library originated from the collection owned by the Economic Statistics Seminar, which was separated from the College of Law in 1919.
Through its history which spans for more than 100 years, the library has faced many challenges – the Great Kanto Earthquake, war-time censorship and the evacuation of books during WWII, to name a few. As of April 2022, with approximately 850,000 volumes, this library has evolved into one of the preeminent economics libraries in Japan.
The collection has three components – books, periodicals and economic documents. We systematically collect and manage: research papers and commentaries from Japan and around the world, academic periodicals, almanacs, white papers and statistics, etc., all regarding economics and its peripheral subjects.
One of our key missions is to compile histories of corporations and organizations; ours is one of the largest collections of corporate and labor union histories in the country. Further, the library has collections which were previously owned by economists and organizations pertaining to the study of economics. There are volumes originally owned by Professor Emerituses of our Graduate School such as Maide Chogoro, Arisawa Hiromi, Wakimura Yoshitaro, as well as many books that are rare in Japan such as those in the Tezuka Collection (Russian books on sociology) and the Tohara Collection (volumes on Swedish and Scandinavian economics). Similarly, the Bank of Tokyo Collection and the Mitsubishi Economic Research Institute Collection are just two notable collections which previously belonged to economics organizations.
[ update : 2022.6.6 ]
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033