Ideology and Libraries

Michael K. Buckland

doi:10.5771/9781538143155

Ideology and Libraries

California, Diplomacy, and Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

1. Edition 2020

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doi.org/10.5771/9781538143155
ISBN print: 978-1-5381-4314-8
ISBN online: 978-1-5381-4315-5
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham

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Abstract

In 1950 Robert L. Gitler went to Japan to found the first college-level school of library science in that country. His mission, an improbable success, was documented in an assisted autobiography as Robert Gitler and the Japan Library School (Scarecrow Press, 1999). Subsequent research into initiatives to improve library services during the Allied occupation has revealed surprising discoveries and human interest of the lives of very diverse individuals.

A central role was played by a librarian, Philip Keeney, who later became well-known as an alleged communist spy. A national plan, designed for Japan’s libraries, was based directly on the county library system developed by progressive thinkers in California, itself a dramatic story. The School of Librarianship at the University of California and its founding director, Sydney Mitchell, was found to have deeply influenced key figures. The story also requires an appreciation of the deployment of American libraries abroad as tools of foreign policy, as cultural diplomacy. Meanwhile, library services in Japan were seriously underdeveloped, despite Japan’s extraordinarily high literacy rate, very well-developed publishing and book retail industries, and librarians who were far from backward.

The difference in library development lay in the huge divergence between the ethos of the American public library (dominated by support for individual self-development and Western liberal democracy) and the evolving political ideology of Japanese governments after the Meiji Restoration (1868). After absorbing authoritarian French and German administrative practices Japan became a militarist dictatorship from the 1920s onwards until surrender in 1945.

The literature on the Allied Occupation of Japan is vast, but library services have received very little attention beyond the creation of the National Diet Library in 1948. The story of initiatives to improve library services in occupied Japan, the role of libraries as cultural diplomacy, the dramatic development of free public library services in California have remained unknown or little known – until now.

Chapter Expand | CollapsePage
i–xiv Preface i–xiv
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
1–2 1 Introduction 1–2
3–12 2 Function and Form 3–12
13–22 3 Cultural Contexts and Political Choices 13–22
23–34 4 The California County Library System 23–34
35–40 5 Libraries in Cultural Diplomacy 35–40
41–50 6 Libraries in Japan and the Allied Occupation 41–50
51–60 7 CIE Information Centers 51–60
61–66 8 The Education Mission, 1946 61–66
67–76 9 Keeney and His Plan 67–76
77–88 10 The National Diet Library 77–88
89–96 11 The Library Law of 1950 89–96
97–104 12 Don Brown’s Initiative 97–104
105–116 13 Gitler, Kiyooka, and Keio 105–116
117–132 14 The Japan Library School 117–132
133–140 15 Afterwards 133–140
141–150 16 Summary and Retrospective 141–150
151–156 Appendix 151–156
157–166 Bibliography 157–166
167–170 Index 167–170

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