The Kikuzo II Visual from the Asahi Shimbun Company is an online article database that permits easy investigation of past events, and is available in many universities and libraries both in and outside Japan. It is the largest newspaper article database in Japan, permitting searches of 15 million articles and advertisements from more than 135 years of the newspaper, from its first edition in 1879 (Meiji 12) to today. Most of the articles that can be searched using keywords in the Asahi Shimbun Reduced-size Facsimile Edition are from the newspaper editions published in Tokyo, but pages from the editions published in Osaka are also stored, so it is possible to compare the two editions with different content by searching on publication date. Articles since 1985 are available for full-text searching, and can be read with the full-text displayed. The database also contains articles from the magazines 'AERA' and 'Shukan Asahi'. Furthermore, the Historical Photo Archive, a database of approximately 10 thousand photographic records mostly taken in Asia during the World War II period, is available as well. English-language News Database, Asahi Graph, Who's Who database, and contemporary Dictionary Chiezo are also available. "History keyword" system is a distinctive feature of Kikuzo II Visual, which is designed to efficiently search for the articles of the Meiji, the Taisho and the Showa periods. History keywords consist of selected major events of those days and names of historical figures as opposed to regular keywords given in the articles. By searching the database by history keywords, all relevant articles, even those which do not contain the very keywords, can be searched interrelatedly. In addition, a variety of history keyword lists (e.g. its chronological table and one organized by field of activity) further helps one's search. A click on a keyword on the lists is enough to retrieve all relevant information all at once. Kikuzo II Visual is a repository of materials of modern Japanese history.

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