About this site
Haga Jinmei Factoid is a database of person events sourced from Nihon Jinmei Jiten (Biographical Dictionary of Japan, ed. Haga Yaichi, 1914). It registers a factoid-style RDF derivation of the Integrated Database of Classical Studies (created by Mitsuru Aida, NIJL repository records/4734) published by the National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL): about 51,000 persons and 61,000 person events (office appointments, court-rank promotions, deaths, and more). For the terms of use of the source data, see the NIJL database usage regulations.
Structure of the data
- One person = one item. Each entry carries the name, reading, birth/death dates and father's name, plus the events extracted from the dictionary text (appointments to offices, promotions in court rank, deaths) as a chronology that is covered by full-text search.
- Entries can be filtered by facets: initial kana of the reading, event type, office, court rank, and century.
- Event dates are converted to the Gregorian calendar (ISO format) where possible, with the original Japanese era notation (e.g. "康平中") kept alongside.
Data model (Factoid)
Careers are recorded as state-change events — "A was appointed to office X at time t" — with each event linked to its documentary source, following the factoid approach. The current data has a single source (Nihon Jinmei Jiten), but the structure allows conflicting accounts from other sources to coexist as independent records in the future.
Limitations
- Event-type classification is keyword-based; many events remain unclassified.
- Family relations (father's name) are plain name strings, not identified against other person entries.
- The data reflects scholarship as of 1914 and may contain information since corrected by modern research.
Credits
- Source: Nihon Jinmei Jiten, ed. Haga Yaichi (1914)
- Source database: NIJL "Integrated Database of Classical Studies" (created by Mitsuru Aida)
- RDF conversion and factoid modelling: nakamura196 (Haga Jinmei Factoid Browser project)