This paper provides an empirical description of the process of document transfer as prescribed by the rules for records management that were to be followed by national universities before the Information Disclosure Law was passed. In 1988, the University of Tokyo, the first national university, specified that the documents should be transferred to the History Office in the rules that were laid down for records management.

However, this system of document transfer did not function properly because of two main reasons. The first is that the universityʼs secretariat kept avoiding the task of specifying appraisal procedures in detail. Second, the university archives in-charge did not appraise the transferred documents. As a result of this, the transfer of documents at the national university did not function efficiently before the Information Disclosure Law was passed.

During World War Ⅱ, Ernst Posner who escaped Nazism to settle in the United States, worked eagerly to list archival repositories in areas affected by the war. Dr. Takahiro Sakaguchi has provided detailed descriptions of these lists, which include the “Archival Repositories in Japan, Korea, and Japanese-occupied China”in his recent book．“Tentative List of Archival Repositories and Accumulations of Records in Japan” was found among the Posner papers that were held in NARA Ⅱ. This paper introduces the tentative list comparing it with published lists and reports; it presents the status of these records in addition to their interactions with Warnerʼs list that designate cultural properties that were to be protected.