The library of Taiwan National University today contains a total of some 2.3 million volumes. Most of the books are conventionally shelved, accessible to browsing students and staff, and easily traceable via the library's on-line catalogue. Others, however, are stored away in off-limits Special Collections on the library's 5th floor. The history of some of these books is, to say the least, unusual.
Especially interesting are some 50,000 books in Western languages acquired during the Japanese occupation. These were at the time some of the institution's most prized possessions. But when the KMT took over Taiwan after the Japanese departure in 1945, their interest was in Taiwan's Chinese inheritance, not items originating in the West.
The result was the dispersal of the books in languages other than Chinese among different departmental libraries, and a long period of neglect. Only now, four years after the opening of the university's fine new library building, are these collections at last being catalogued, cleaned, and put in good order.
I saw them -- some riddled with bookworm, others almost falling apart, and those not yet sorted still thick with the dust deposited over a period of 100 years and in some cases more. The acrid taste of this historic residue stayed in my mouth for hours after I had left the building.
What is now Taiwan National University was founded by the Japanese in 1928. It was one of seven highly prestigious "Imperial" universities. Five others were in Japan, and the seventh in Korea. Because of their high status, these institutions were massively funded by Tokyo, and a wide-ranging book acquisition policy was pursued, augmented by private purchases by many of the professors. These together resulted in the extensive purchase of Western books, both about Asia and on other topics.
"The library's aim is to provide an accurate catalogue," the director, Wu Ming-der, told Taipei Times, "and eventually to make these Special Collections available for use by both local and international scholars."
Until recently, Michael Keevak, a professor of literature at the university and a Shakespeare scholar, spent one day a week sorting and cataloguing these Western books. He has completed work on one set of some 900 volumes, the Otori Collection.
This collection consists of Western books purchased around 1929, many dealing with the first arrival of Europeans in Asia. But there are numerous other volumes awaiting his, or someone else's, attention.
"I see the Japanese administrators as having had a remarkably international perspective," Keevak says. "After all, theirs was an empire, whatever we might think of it, and their attitude to cultures other than their own was generally open-minded. Certainly the many Western books they acquired were not a top priority for their successors. It's this situation we are now trying to remedy."
This international outlook is well illustrated by the library's most famous set of historic volumes, the Tanaka Collection.
The Japanese scholar Tyozaburo Tanaka was in Taipei (then called Taihoku) as a professor in tropical horticulture. He was also, until 1934, the library's first director. He had inherited a substantial amount of money from his father, and with this he personally accumulated 3,326 books, many of them concerned with citrus fruit cultivation, his own area of specialization.
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