Asian Studies Subject Guide

Authors will sometimes gather important documents on a topic and publish them as a sourcebook.  For instance:

Sources of Chinese tradition  
Zen Sourcebook:  Traditional documents from China, Korea and Japan
Chinese human rights reader : documents and commentary, 1900-2000 

More of these collections may be found by searching Catalyst:

By Subject:  "Subject Heading" Sources 
[e.g.  China -- History -- Sources]

By title keyword:  Document* or reading* or source*
[e.g.  Korea* and document*]

People write of their experiences -- and they are often later published as memoirs, journals, letters, autobiographies, or collected papers

To find personal writings, you have to be very creative.  Try the following searches:

By subject:  [Subject Heading] and (Correspondence or "personal narratives" or reminiscences or interviews)

By keyword:  [topic keyword] and (memoir* or autobiograph* or diary or diaries or letters or correspondence or speech* or sermon* or papers)

By author (if the name is known)

For example,

China journal 1889-1900 : an American missionary family during the Boxer Rebellion : with the letters and diaries of Eva Jane Price and her family
Deng Xiaoping shakes the world : an eyewitness account of China's Party Work Conference and the Third Plenum (November-December 1978) [with many speeches]

To find government documents, it is best to search with the name of a governmental body and appropriate topic words in a keyword search.  Or, in a general search for topics, watch for clues to documents. 

A soldier speaks; public papers and speeches of General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur. Prepared for the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y., by the Dept. of Military Art and Engineering.
Korea, 1951-1953 / [Washington, D.C.] : United States Office of Military History ; [1956]

Please note:  These are only strategies for finding magazines and books of the times in Catalyst.  Check also the tabs "Primary Sources in Databases" and "Primary Sources on the Web."

Find interesting contemporary materials by doing subject and keyword searches and limiting by date to the appropriate time period.  This strategy, however, will not bring up things reprinted later than the original.

For instance,

Do a keyword search for Japan

Limit to published before 1900

Japan; described and illustrated by the Japanese; written by eminent Japanese authorities and scholars; ed. by Captain F. Brinkley ... with an essay on Japanese art by Kakuzo Okakura .. Boston, J.B. Millet Company [c1897-98]