National Diet Library

library, Tokyo, Japan
Alternative Title: Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan

National Diet Library, Japanese Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan, the national library of Japan, formed at Tokyo in 1948 and combining the libraries of the upper and lower houses of the Diet (national legislature) with the collections of the former Imperial Library (established 1872). The library’s building opened in 1961, adjacent to the National Diet Building. It is organized on the system of the U.S. Library of Congress, serving legislators and the nation at large through various major divisions and 35 branch libraries.

  • National Diet Library, Tokyo.
    National Diet Library, Tokyo.
    663highland

The main collection contains more than six million volumes. The library serves as the headquarters of both the Japan Special Libraries Association and the Centre of International Book Exchange. Law provides that all Japanese publications be deposited at the library, and this forms the basis for the computer-generated Japanese national bibliography, which is published by the library.

Learn More in these related articles:

Reading Room of the British Museum, London. Illustration from the Illustrated London News, 1857.
...1127). It also contains inscribed tortoise shells and bones, ancient manuscripts, and block-printed volumes, as well as books from the Qing dynasty, imperial colleges, and private collectors. The National Diet Library (1948) in Tokyo counts among its holdings some four million volumes. Based on the collections of the former Imperial Library (1872), it is organized like the U.S. Library of...
Photograph
City and capital of Tokyo to (metropolis) and of Japan. It is located at the head of Tokyo Bay on the Pacific coast of central Honshu. It is the focus of the vast metropolitan...
Flag
Island country lying off the east coast of Asia. It consists of a great string of islands in a northeast-southwest arc that stretches for approximately 1,500 miles (2,400 km) through...

Keep Exploring Britannica

John McCain.
John McCain
U.S. senator who was the Republican Party ’s nominee for president in 2008 but was defeated by Barack Obama. McCain represented Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives (1983–87) before being elected...
Read this Article
First session of the United Nations General Assembly, January 10, 1946, at the Central Hall in London.
United Nations (UN)
UN international organization established on October 24, 1945. The United Nations (UN) was the second multipurpose international organization established in the 20th century that was worldwide in scope...
Read this Article
The Peace Palace (Vredespaleis) in The Hague, Netherlands. International Court of Justice (judicial body of the United Nations), the Hague Academy of International Law, Peace Palace Library, Andrew Carnegie help pay for
World Organizations: Fact or Fiction?
Take this History True or False Quiz at Encyclopedia Britannica to test your knowledge of the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and other world organizations.
Take this Quiz
Mahatma Gandhi.
Mahatma Gandhi
Indian lawyer, politician, social activist, and writer who became the leader of the nationalist movement against the British rule of India. As such, he came to be considered the father of his country....
Read this Article
Mt. Fuji from the west, near the boundary between Yamanashi and Shizuoka Prefectures, Japan.
Exploring Japan: Fact or Fiction?
Take this Geography True or False Quiz at Encyclopedia Britannica to test your knowledge of Japan.
Take this Quiz
Alexis de Tocqueville, detail of an oil painting by T. Chassériau; in the Versailles Museum.
Alexis de Tocqueville
political scientist, historian, and politician, best known for Democracy in America, 4 vol. (1835–40), a perceptive analysis of the political and social system of the United States in the early 19th century....
Read this Article
Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1866.
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Italian patriot and soldier of the Risorgimento, a republican who, through his conquest of Sicily and Naples with his guerrilla Redshirts, contributed to the achievement of Italian unification under the...
Read this Article
Terraced rice paddies in Vietnam.
Destination Asia: Fact or Fiction?
Take this Geography True or False Quiz at Encyclopedia Britannica to test your knowledge of Indonesia, Singapore, and other Asian countries.
Take this Quiz
American Valentine card, c. 1908.
greeting card
an illustrated message that expresses, either seriously or humorously, affection, good will, gratitude, sympathy, or other sentiments. Greeting cards are usually sent by mail in observance of a special...
Read this Article
Donald J. Trump, 2010.
Donald Trump
45th president of the United States (2017–). Trump was also a real-estate developer who amassed vast hotel, casino, golf, and other properties in the New York City area and around the world. Business...
Read this Article
Theodosius I, detail from an embossed and engraved silver disk, late 4th century; in the Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid.
Theodosius I
Roman emperor of the East (379–392) and then sole emperor of both East and West (392–395), who, in vigorous suppression of paganism and Arianism, established the creed of the Council of Nicaea (325) as...
Read this Article
Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind (2001).
Jennifer Connelly
American actress who won an Academy Award for her moving and complex portrayal of Alicia Nash, the wife of John Nash (played by Russell Crowe), a brilliant mathematician who won the 1994 Nobel Prize for...
Read this Article
MEDIA FOR:
National Diet Library
Previous
Next
Citation
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Harvard
  • Chicago
Email
You have successfully emailed this.
Error when sending the email. Try again later.
Edit Mode
National Diet Library
Library, Tokyo, Japan
Tips For Editing

We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind.

  1. Encyclopædia Britannica articles are written in a neutral objective tone for a general audience.
  2. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered.
  3. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources.
  4. At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context. (Internet URLs are the best.)

Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions.

Thank You for Your Contribution!

Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article.

Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed.

Uh Oh

There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later.

Email this page
×
https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Diet-Library
www.britannica.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-30
113541
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:C5SXCNOR2J3MDWQUPMJME4PZGSNPAXOS
<urn:uuid:b7671511-19e1-4c5a-aced-0000c0cb736d>
2017-07-26T23:39:46Z
38.69.47.81
text/html
sha1:4WVK2SXIC2MG4GAWEWQ3KNALCRUB7KVP
<urn:uuid:d58e8eb8-8fc1-410d-9e9c-0c2f7c897c3e>
https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Diet-Library
response
<urn:uuid:a13816cb-acfc-440c-9839-8f1a5d7a3cd6>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-115-65-210.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-30
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for July 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf