It was not untypical of the period for prominent professors to buy books with their own money in this way. Whether or not Tanaka intended the books to remain with the library after his departure is debatable. The reality was that when the Japanese left Taiwan at gunpoint in 1945, each person was only permitted to take with him what he could carry, normally interpreted as two suitcases. They may have taken the jewels of the collections, but the bulk of necessity remained behind.
Among the material Tanaka purchased from Europe was the entire library of a celebrated Prussian horticulturist, Otto Penzig (1856-1929). Many of the volumes were ancient and rare studies on various botanical topics. These books are still in Taipei, though some of them are now inevitably in poor shape.
At the time, during the 1930s, Europe was experiencing an economic crisis and books, even rare ones, were relatively cheap. Even so, the collection cost Tanaka some US$100,000. The modern equivalent of that sum would be around NT$200 million. He glued a special bookplate in each of the volumes as a memorial to his father.
The vast majority of the books Tanaka purchased are in European languages, and many date from the 15th and 16th centuries. Four of them -- nowadays priceless items -- go back to the earliest days of printing. The collection is well known worldwide among specialists in botanical publications.
Tanaka's tenure also saw the library buy other important collections, including the Huart Collection comprising over 2,000 books, mainly on Arabic subjects.
The earliest Western volume in the library's possession is a copy of Aesop's fables in French dating from 1371, albeit 500 years after the art of printing was first perfected in China.
But the Western books in the university's Special Collections cover many subjects, from zoology to theology, and in languages ranging from Latin to Swedish.
The current library building was opened in November 1998. Before the opening of the new building, departments and faculties had their own collections. These added up to over 50 separate libraries, all housed at different parts of the campus, and in some cases in different areas of the city.
When I commented on the visible ravages of bookworms, librarian Hung Shu-Fen of the Special Collections Department was cautious. "Fumigation against bookworm is a controversial issue," she said. "The chemical that was used previously was poisonous and damaged the ozone. Any fumigating that took place was done before the new library opened. These days we use an herbal preparation instead."
First these volumes have to be entered in the on-line catalogue. This is not as easy as it sounds as under the Japanese several cataloguing systems were used, all different from the Library of Congress system currently in operation. Also, the many books that are in poor condition, or that are so valuable that hands-on access by readers is undesirable, have to be either microfilmed or digitized.
The total number of books left behind by the Japanese in all languages was about half a million.
Keevak commented on one remarkable volume -- a Latin-Japanese dictionary, published by the Papal press in Rome in 1632, that also contains parallel entries in Spanish and Portuguese. It must have been invaluable to missionaries. But eight years later, Japan was closed to all foreigners, partly as a result of missionary activity. It was the end of an era, and this dictionary remains one of its more unusual monuments.
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