The Japan Center for Asian Historical Records ( JACAR ) www.jacar.go.jp addresses this disadvantageous situation of our country's modern historical records by utilization of the most advanced technology with the aim of providing anyone the means to peruse, print, and download image-data of records at anytime, from anywhere, at no charge. In accordance with the decision by the Japanese Cabinet, the Center is first digitalizing and providing access through the Internet to Asia-related records dating from the early Meiji era to the end of the Pacific War in the possession of important collecting institutions of pre-war official documents, The National Archives of Japan, The Diplomatic Record Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Library of The National Institute for Defense Studies of the National Defense Agency. The number of image data produced from the materials these institutions possess alone is estimated to exceed 27,000,000. As of June 2002, users now have ready access to 2,300,000 pieces of image data and a catalog database of 160,000 items, which will be augmented on an ongoing basis.

The Center can be considered a full-fledged digital archive of digitalized images of historical records and database of cataloged information accessible through the Internet. Image data becomes online information upon processing by the DjVu, the most advanced image compression technology developed for making large quantities of text contents accessible through the Internet. The catalog consists of approximately the first 300 characters of each document, thus not only the title but also a portion of the text becoming subject of search.