National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 62 | April 2003


Engagement with Japan
The Harold S. Williams Collection

Harold S. and Gertrude (Jean) Williams in their library in Shioya, Japan 1969 and Keiko Tamura

Japan experienced drastic social change and industrial development from the late nineteenth century as it earnestly looked to the West as the model of a modern nation.  After Japan opened the country in the mid-nineteenth century, many Westerners arrived in Japan to play an important role in this change and made significant contributions as missionaries, businessmen and government employees.

An Australian university student, Harold S. Williams, went to Japan for a visit, but by a twist of coincidence and fate, he decided to stay. The son of a pharmacist, Williams was born in 1898 in Hawthorn, Melbourne. His interest in Japan began when he started to take private lessons in Japanese while he studied medicine at Melbourne University. He went to Japan in 1919 for a summer holiday to improve his Japanese.  When he was offered the position of clerk in a Scottish trading firm in Kobe, he decided to remain in the country instead of returning to Australia. Except for four years during World War II, Williams lived continuously in Japan for over 60 years until his death in 1987.

Harold Williams was interested in the Westerners’ roles and contributions to Japan when it was experiencing rapid modernisation through contact with the West. He was also a keen collector of books on the topic and carried out extensive research of historical records for himself, researching and writing throughout his career.  Consequently, the Harold S. Williams Collection at the National Library contains rich material in the area of the history of Westerners and their settlement in Japan. The collection consists of monographs and manuscripts. There are over 3000 monographs mostly in English in the Asian Collection. The manuscripts and photographs are housed in the Manuscript Collection (MS 6681) in 80 boxes and as 60 folio items. In addition, there are some historical maps and art works included in the collection.

Williams started his historical research career in 1953 by writing articles for a series, ‘The Shade of the Past’ in an English language newspaper published in Japan. In total 66 articles appeared in this series, and most of them were included in his four commercially published books. In addition, he contributed numerous articles for various journals and magazines for local foreign residents in the Kobe and Osaka areas over many years. 

In spite of the numerous articles he produced, historical research and writing remained a ‘hobby’ for him, as he already had a successful business career in Kobe. He proudly stated that he had never asked for fees for his articles or lectures.

Reproduced from M. Paske-Smith, Western Barbarians in Japan and Formosa in Tokugawa Days, 1603–1868 (Kobe, Japan: J.L. Thompson and Co. Ltd, [1930]). Harold S. Williams Collection; Asian Collections

Reproduced from M. Paske-Smith, Western Barbarians in Japan and Formosa in Tokugawa Days, 1603–1868 (Kobe, Japan: J.L. Thompson and Co. Ltd, [1930]). Harold S. Williams Collection; Asian Collections

 

For Williams, the most important aspect of his research and writing was to establish various episodes as historical facts against historical records. Although this particular perspective made him more of a chronicler than a historian, the collection benefited from his passion for identifying ‘facts’ in historical records, as he searched old newspapers, old directories, and any other records he could locate in order to identify the specific date and place of a particular incident. The strength of the collection is clear in its quality and quantity. His passionate dedication to the collection was also evident in its cataloguing and indexing, which he meticulously carried out over many years.

As a 2002 Harold White Fellow, I was fortunate to have the chance to undertake research using the collection. My main research interest was on how Westerners related to Japan and the Japanese community in the early half of the twentieth century, including the years of the Pacific War. Not only did I find the collection rich in material on my specific research topic, but also I could see there was considerable scope for utilising the collection in other areas of research as well.

In the last few years, the collection has become fully open, and it is ready for researchers to utilise it to its full potential. The manuscript catalogue of the collection is now available on the Web <www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/6681.html> and in published form (available free of charge from the Manuscript Collection), widening the possibility for further utilisation. With its extensive coverage of topics and its thorough indexation, the Harold S. Williams collection is already one of the most requested collections by overseas readers, according to Graeme Powell, Manuscript Librarian.
— Keiko Tamura

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