Facilitation, Exploration and Exchange: The Asiatic Society of Japan in Late Nineteenth-Century British Scientific Networks

Founded in 1872, the Asiatic Society of Japan (ASJ) formed part of a vast international network of knowledge production and exchange through practices of membership, publications, and references. Papers published in the society’s Transactions heavily focused on cutting edge scientific research and through the participation of Japanese authors, society members and connections with groups such as the Meirokusha (Meiji Six Society), they integrated British scientific discourse with their Japanese counterparts. The society’s journal was distributed across an international network, with extracts from papers cited and reduplicated across a variety of other British texts. Through reconstruction of a complete digital archive, which unifies previously disparate volumes of the society’s journal from across a range of different physical archives, this paper reveals the critically important role the ASJ played in facilitating the exploration and exchange of scientific knowledge and ideas across the late nineteenth century.