Reference tools include sources for answering questions that arise once research is underway.
- Atlases, Gazetteers and Maps –
- Information about places in Japan over time as well as maps, both historical and current, online and in print.
- Book Reviews –
- More useful for English language books than Japanese; citation indexes are also useful for evaluating books.
- Chronologies –
- Arranged by date, Japanese versions often compare political, social and cultural events by era.
- Concordances –
- A concordance is a list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, with their immediate contexts. Developed for classical Japanese poetry.
- Dictionaries –
- Includes both Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionaries, kokugo, kanwa, old and current words, specialized and online dictionaries. There are many forms of dictionaries; this site presents one or two examples of each type; more can be found by clicking on the subject headings.
- Directories –
- Includes institutional and organizational directories for education, non-profits, business and politics.
- Names and People –
- How to read a name, find information on living and dead people.
- Statistics –
- demographic and economic statistics; for political data, see political science