This English edition is a machine translation of the Japanese articles. Names and dates are checked against the Japanese text.
Kuranoa is a site that writes Japanese history from books whose copyright has expired — histories and collections of historical materials published between the Meiji era and the early Shōwa era. The name comes from “the storehouse of sources”.
The source texts
The material for the articles comes only from works made available on the National Diet Library Digital Collections whose copyright has expired. Among them are Tokutomi Sohō’s Kinsei Nihon kokuminshi and the Ishin shiryō kōyō. The source text and identifier (PID) for each article are given in “Sources and verification” at the foot of the article.
This site edits and processes full text provided by the National Diet Library for the purpose of writing articles. Responsibility for that processing rests with this site, not with the National Diet Library or the original authors.
How to read an article
Every sentence in the body has been matched to a passage in the source text before publication. The “Original text” box below a paragraph reproduces a passage from the source text as it stands and links to the corresponding page at the National Diet Library. “Sources and verification” at the foot of each article gives the result of the match against the source text and of the comparison with the Ishin shiryō kōyō.
Days and months are given as the source text gives them, in the Japanese calendar; they are not converted to the Western calendar. Only the year is added in the Western form. Era names follow the source text.
What this site promises, and what it does not
What it promises is that every sentence can be traced to a stated place in a stated source text. What it does not promise is that what is written there is historically correct. The source texts are a century old and carry the outlook and the limits of their authors. An article gives the view of its source text as the view of that source text.
Historical materials sometimes contain expressions that are considered discriminatory today. Where a passage is quoted, it is reproduced as it stands; such expressions are not used in the article’s own prose.
The use of AI
AI is used to write and to check the articles, and a person reviews them before publication. The English edition is a machine translation of the Japanese articles; names and dates are checked against the Japanese text.
The editor
Kuranoa, based in Yokohama. The photographs on the person pages were taken by the editor. Enquiries: info@kuranoa.com