The Bochumer Altjaponica, or BAJ for short, are a collection of Japanese prints and manuscripts from the 17th to 19th centuries in the Faculty of East Asian Studies’ possession. Formerly known as the “Kraft Collection”, named after the author of the first German-language catalogue Eva Kraft, it comprises 320 titles in 943 volumes (including 32 manuscripts in 99 volumes), with the oldest work dating back to 1622.
This archive, also known as the Sieboldiana collection, contains an extensive corpus of materials from Edo and Meiji period Japan. These documents originate from the estates of the German Japan researcher Philipp Franz v. Siebold (1796–1866) and his son Alexander (1846–1911).