This paper addresses the following: First, it summarizes the history of the IT environment of sinology in Japan with a focus on Chinese character processing. Then, it introduces the open-access digital archive projects in Japan as well as ICT-based research activities. An attempt was made to allow multiple Chinese characters/Chinese input from PCs in Japan beginning in the 1980s. At first, Chinese characters were implemented applying special hardware or software to JIS Chinese character encoding. After the 1990s, these approaches disappeared with the spread of Unicode and a multilingual mixed environment became more widely available. The digital archives in Japan are described focusing on databases, digital libraries, etc. Although Japan’s number of independent databases has decreased, the paper examines the current contributions to sinology studies, including a Chinese character DB that interlinks with Unicode.org and digital literature archives in Chinese characters that are held by universities and public institutions. Additionally, there are numerous research studies on humanities and oriental studies as research associations and societies have been in operation for several years.

1. Introduction
2. The History of Entry (Input)/Accessibility
    2.1. The Era of PC-9801 Series (1980s~90s)
    2.2. The Era of Windows
3. Internet Resource for Sinology in Japan
    3. 1. Input Environment
    3.2. Digital Archive Library
    3.3. Digital Database
4. Conclusion
References

• Takahito YAMADA(Ritsumeikan University, Japan)