Collecting material on contemporary Asia, says Amelia McKenzie, helps us to understand our place in the region
The National Library of Australia began collecting material relating to Asia in the early 1950s, when the importance of Asia to Australia was first realised. Today, the Library’s Asian Collections hold over half-a-million volumes, making it the largest collection in Australia. The focus
of collecting has been on contemporary Asia and the social sciences. From
the start the Library collected both Asian-language and English-language
material, acquiring books and journals from East Asia (China, Taiwan and
Future
Memory highlights recent acquisitions from China, Indonesia, Japan,
East Timor, the For example,
with the assistance of the Embassy of the Democratic Peoples’ As
Indonesia still lacks an established export book trade, the Library continues
to maintain its Acquisitions Office in
Other ‘Indonesia watchers’ often assist the Library by passing on items picked up while in the country. For example, the political posters relating to East Timor’s first presidential election, which was held on 14 April 2002 and which resulted in East Timor becoming an independent nation on 20 May 2002, were collected in the field by a number of Australian observers who travelled to Timor to observe the election process. The election was organised by UNTAET (the United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor) with assistance from the Australian Electoral Commission which included the production of educational posters explaining the voting process, a number of which are on display. While many recent acquisitions relate to contemporary events, the Library also acquires classic literary and historical works published in the countries of the region. Featured in the exhibition is a classic of Chinese literature, Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong. Published 300 years before the birth of the English novel, it illustrates both how far in advance of the West China was in its literary forms, but also how enduringly similar some literary archetypes are in every culture of the world. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is an adventure epic in novel form, published in China in the late fourteenth century. Based on the history of the Three Kingdom period in Han dynasty China in the third century, the tales have been continuously transmitted to Chinese readers ever since the fourteenth century, offering a combination of Arthurian-style heroic battles and Machiavellian intrigue. In recent times Romance of the Three Kingdoms was lavishly adapted for television, ensuring a resurgence in its popularity worldwide. Its latest manifestation as a video game has sparked further popular interest, resulting in renewed interest in the book form of the tale. The edition
featured in the exhibition is a handwritten copy of the original text
by a master of calligraphy from
Other materials besides books, journals and newspapers document Asian culture. Comics, too, are part of the Library’s Collection. Future Memory displays the ‘Astro Boy’ comics (manga) from Japan. Manga represent about one-third of total book sales in Japan, and are read by adults and children alike. Heavily influenced by the style of twentieth-century American cartooning and comic books, Japanese manga nevertheless uniquely demonstrate the link for East Asian cultures between pictures and language. These traditions of illustrated popular story-telling using both text and image were shared with the West until the coming of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, when the use of images in texts was circumscribed. However image as text has endured in the East and taken on a new life and vigour in the manga form. The ‘Astro Boy’ (or ‘Atom Boy’) comics, first created by Tezuka Osamu in the 1950s, are a good example of the manga genre. Astro Boy is a friendly boy-robot, capable of human emotions, who battles to save the world from disaster. Some point to the Astro Boy manga as a major influence on Japan’s interest in and development of robotic technology. The Library’s Asian Collections are a rich resource serving the needs of academia, government and the general public. The sustained collection building of the last half century will be continued into the twenty-first century, ensuring that Australians have the best possible resource for understanding their region and Australia’s place in it. AMELIA McKENZIE is Director of the National Library’s Asian Collections |
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