Characteristics of Special Materials of Successive Prime Ministers Transferred from the Cabinet Secretariat

Abstract

This report aims to systematically interpret and clarify all aspects of the special materials of successive prime ministers transferred from the Cabinet Secretariat to National Archives of Japan, to overcome the problems related to these materials and to help promote its use. The method of this report is a survey on rules for classifying materials,a survey on relationship between photo metadata and electronic files, and a survey on contents, targeting archival descriptions, photo metadata, and electronic files. We consider the characteristics of these materials from two aspects: the materials digitized by Cabinet Public Relations Office and the materials photographed by the photography department at Office of the Prime Minister's Official Residence. This report revealed that (1)these materials consist of 6,056 photographs taken continuously by Cabinet Public Relations Office during the 32 years from 1968 to 2000, (2)These materials include photographs of important policies such as the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the Olympic Games.