Okinawa Collection

In the afternoon of Sunday, April 15, 2018, a local, Hawaii radio, KZOO (1210 kHz), Prof. Yuma Totani, one of the Library Treasures Initiative organizers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM), Prof. Masato Ishida, Director of the Center for Okinawan Studies (COS) at UHM, and the Okinawa Studies Librarian as its guests.

The talk and questions surrounded the UHM Library’s April 25 event titled Hawley and Sakamaki: The Founding of UHM Ryukyuan Studies. Prof. Totani explained how the Colloquium Series started, informed the listeners what the Library Treasures Initiative aimed to achieve by hosting colloquia, and whether or not the colloquia have been open to the community.

Some of the past colloquia can be accessed from the UH Mānoa Library’s “News” section.

COS Director, Prof. Ishida, added a special guest speaker for the April 25 event. Prof. Manabu Yokoyama has been working on Frank Hawley, a British journalist who built a personal collection with Ryukyuan materials. His collection included other than Ryukyus, but UHM Library’s Hawley Collection consists of Hawley’s Ryukyuan resources. Dr. Shunzō Sakamaki, who was President of UH Summer School at the time, purchased the Hawley’s Ryukyu collection and brought it to Hawai’i. The readers can learn more about the purchase and the role that Okinawan community in Hawai’i played in great detail here.

The details of the April 25 Colloquium can be found here.

• Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2018
• Time: 3 PM – 5:00 PM
• Location: Hamilton Library, Room 401

Registration is not required. 

Update for April 25, 2018 event. Date & Time remain the same as previously announced. 

Prof. Manabu Yokoyama, the author of Shomotsu ni miserareta Eikoku-jin: Furanku Hōrē to Nihon bunka (『書物に魅せられた英国人: フランク・ホーレーと日本文化』) [= An Englishman’s enchantment with books: Frank Hawley and Japanese culture] (2003), will join us as an expert commentator.

The Library’s Asia Collection is home to world-renowned Sakamaki/Hawley Collection that contains over 5,000 items, the bulk of which being Ryūkyū and Okinawa source materials dating back to the 1400s to the 1960s, written in various European languages, Chinese, Japanese, and “Uchināguchi,” the Ryukyuan language. This collection became an integral part of the UHM library treasures thanks to Frank Hawley (1906-1961), an English journalist and an avid book collector with personal ties with Japan, and Dr. Shunzō Sakamaki (1906-1973), a professor of history at UHM and the “father of Ryukyuan Studies” at UHM.

This colloquium will explore afresh the genesis and the breadth of this collection to promote its use by our students and faculty as well as researchers beyond the UHM community. Sachiko Iwabuchi, Okinawa Studies Librarian, will showcase unique items from the collection. Moreover, Professor Manabu Yokoyama, the author of Shomotsu ni miserareta Eikoku-jin: Furanku Hōrē to Nihon bunka [An Englishman’s enchantment with books: Frank Hawley and Japanese culture] (2003), will join us as an expert commentator, and share with us his professional insights into the significance of this collection.　Professor Yokoyama is a research fellow at the Ryusaku Tsunoda Center for Japanese Culture, Research Institute for Letters and Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.