How to search for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean materials

Quicksearch allows you to search for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) materials by the original scripts and romanized forms. The Yale University Library follows the ALA-LC Romanization Tables [1] to romanize CJK scripts. For more information about searching by romanized form, go to this page [2]. 

Searching in CJK scripts is as easy as searching in other scripts. You can also search in a combination of CJK scripts and English. Follow the Quicksearch Search Tips [3] and search away.

To maximize the discovery of Japanese materials, Hiragana characters and Katakana characters are normalized and inter-searchable in Catalog. The same number of results will return no matter which character is used.

Search for “Japan” in Hiragana: 292 results

Search for “Japan” in Katakana: 292 results

To maximize the discovery of CJK materials, Han character variants (simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese Kanji, and Korean Hanja) are normalized and inter-searchable in Catalog.

Search for “Mao Zedong” in simplified Chinese: 3,304 results

Search for “Mao Zedong” in traditional Chinese: 3,304 results

Search for “Mao Zedong” in Japanese kanji: 3,304 results

When the search returns a mix of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean language records, you can narrow down to specific language materials using the language facet.