The Archives for Environmental Studies (Japanese website) was established as part of the Research Center for Sustainability and funded by a large grant from the Ministry of Education, Research and Education Advancement Facilitation Support Project. At the time of its establishment, the main operation of the Archives was collection and sorting of resources related to environmental issues. Since December 2011, a reading room was set up and the sorted materials were made available to students and researchers. Meanwhile, after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 2011, the Archives provided resources for the Nuclear Power Timeline and rescuing official documents of the Rikuzentakata City Legislature (Iwate Prefecture) In March 2013, with ending of the Ministry of Education grant, the Research Center for Sustainability was closed and the Archives for Environmental Studies was integrated into the Ohara Institute for Social Research, a research institute attached to Hosei University. Due to its limited space, it was decided that the Archives can no longer take in new resources. It currently focuses on sorting and making public the 850 boxes formerly collected by the Research Center for Sustainability.

[Literature]

Kim Kyungnam ‘The launch and outlook of the Archives Project’ Research Center for Sustainability Newsletter Iss.2, 2012.

Kim Kyungnam ‘The empirical case of recording earthquake and nuclear in the Great East Japan Earthquake: Focusing on the activities of the Archives for Environmental Studies, Hosei University’, Journal of the Japan Society for Archival Science Iss.17, 2012.

Kim Kyungnam ‘How to save the historical memory and historical record – Archival Document Rescue’, in Toshiharu Hasebe and Harutoshi Funabashi (eds.) The Crisis of Sustainability: Faced with Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster. Ochanomizu Shobo, 2012.

Shimizu Yoshihito ‘The position of the Archives for Environmental Studies in the archives industry in Japan’, Journal of Ohara Institute for Social Research Iss.694, 2016.

Shimizu Yoshihito ‘Activities of the Archives for Environmental Studies at Hosei University’, Koushi: Nihon University Archives & Museum Establishment Preparation Room Bulletin Iss.12, 2017.

Shimizu Yoshihito ‘A record of the past ten years of the Archives for Environmental Studies’, Kiroku to Shiryō Iss.29, 2019.

[Archives-related Special Issues of Journal of Ohara Institute for Social Research]

Iss. 673 (November 2014) ‘Symposium: The current situation and historical issues on the management of the record for civil society activities: Focusing on the Japanese and Korean cases’.

Iss. 694 (August 2016) ‘Sorting and uses of the Archives for Environmental Studies Collection’.

Iss. 709 (November 2017) ‘Archives for Resources on Pollution’.

Iss. 730 (August 2019) ‘Sorting and use of drug-induced Sumon-related resources’.