Dear Reader

Dear Reader,

In the fall of 2019 it was my pleasure to accept the role of Editor-in-Chief of theJJADH. The position was handed over to me by the editorial staff and the advisory board of the journal upon the retirement of A. Charles Muller from the University of Tokyo. Charles has done splendid work in his role in establishing this journal and seeing it through 4 volumes. He has graciously helped guide me during the transition and thankfully continues to advise the journal as we move forward.

It has also been my pleasure to work with our editors and advisory board. This volume could not have been produced without the vigilant efforts of Christian Wittern of the University of Kyoto, who is our Managing Editor, and Kiyonori Nagasaki, of the Japanese International Institute for Digital Humanities, who is our Technical Editor. These gentlemen have patiently helped me to learn the ropes, and I look forward to collaborating with such capable scholars in our continuing efforts to advance research and technical development in the field of digital humanities.

In the fall of 2019, when we issued the call for papers for this volume, we of course had no idea what challenges were lurking ahead. In the rush for us and those around us to make the transition to online teaching and communications, there was some question about whether our team could marshal the time or even the concentration to produce a volume for 2020. Fortunately we were able to maintain our course and have issued this volume on schedule.

We are indeed very pleased with the sum result of peer review and with the quality and diversity of the research presented here in Volume 5. This volume includes research on a new module to enhance the accuracy of search and retrieval information in humanities databases. It also includes research methods for evaluating and piecing together imperfect databases in order to give researchers a more comprehensive overview of the history of Japanese videogames. Finally, this volume presents an intriguing digital genre analysis of the structure of detective fiction in Japanese comics.

Forthcoming in early 2021, we will also issue a supplemental special edition that will include groundbreaking digital work in the field of Buddhist studies. We are fortunate that Marcus Bingenheimer of Temple University has joined us as guest editor to prepare this volume.

It should be added that the JJADH is not limited to Japanese or East Asian studies. As we move forward, we wish to continue reviewing research in any area of the digital humanities and will seek to advance the international and cross-disciplinary mission of this journal.

The year 2020 will stand out in history, and chief among our memories will be the capacity of a pandemic to visit a range of unsettling outcomes upon us. It would be disrespectful to speak of positive developments during this period without first acknowledging the pain this pandemic has brought with it. To quote the Prince in Shakespeare’sRomeo and Juliet, “all are punished.” This play comes to mind because it was part of a wave of post-plague productions that were performed in Elizabethan London when, after the bubonic plague had come and gone, the theatres were re-opened. Though tragic in its message, though in places highly referential to recent pestilence and death, the historical record of the early performances ofRomeo and Juliet also reminds us that the theatre did return, along with the normal routines of day-to-day life.

So on a more positive note, this has also been a year in which digital platforms have become foregrounded as essential to sustaining education, research, and, on a wider scale, our economies. The times have also greatly expanded the user base of digital technologies in education and in scholarly research and communications. We have all had to learn, often on the fly, how to use new digital tools—for those of us in education perhaps more immediately for teaching. But in meeting the needs of students and in having to maintain communications with our colleagues, we can see more clearly how ever-advancing online digital technologies are transferable to our specialized areas of research, whether we are developing digital platforms and tools or seeking to share our findings with researchers and developers across the globe.

Importantly, within our educational institutions our administrators and colleagues in many cases have been awakened to the importance of digital tools in education and the need to provide support for virtual learning and, by logical extension, research and development and training. We may one day, perhaps in the not-so-distant future, look back and see that a general awakening occurred among our peers outside of the DH community, one that ushered in a greater appreciation for the research and development we have been doing and continue to press forward on. Such an awakening, one that promotes wider and more comprehensive support for digital humanities, would be a fine outcome indeed.

Thomas Dabbs

Aoyama Gakuin University

Shibuya, Tokyo