Thanks to the kind invitation of Shigeo Sugimoto we had the pleasure of participating in the Second Kyoto Informal Gathering on Researching the Archiving of Media Art (hosted this time by the Art Research Center at Ritsumeikan University). This is where we had the wonderful opportunity to talk to Koichi Hosoi, the director of the History of Content Industry Archives Research Center (HARC) at ZEN University and learn about their on-going projects. One of these projects at HARC is their Oral History Collection focusing on key figures from various business, development and creator roles in the Japanese content industries (ranging from anime and manga to IT development and internet culture). With new videos constantly being added to the collection this is an amazing resource even for researchers outside of Japan as all the interviews have publicly available versions online. Furthermore, all interviews come with added Japanese transcripts (in text form separate from the videos) making working with the materials even more researcher friendly.
Project Website