What this is, and how to play with it
Local governments in Japan publish newsletters (kōhōshi). Reading their back issues is genuinely interesting.
What makes them interesting depends on the person. In my case, something like the following gives me a strange rush of feeling.
Kagoshima City, Kagoshima — Kagoshima Shimin no Hiroba, May 20, 1950
If this is your sort of thing, your time will dissolve easily.
Now and then someone says the provinces have no culture. Every time I look at an archive of newsletters, I think: surely this is culture.
I had wanted for a long time to gather up the sites that publish old newsletters, but each time I found one I got absorbed in reading it and never managed to collect the URLs. These days there is AI, so I had it gather them with me.
Ōita City (from no. 1, 1949), Kagoshima City (from 1949), Adachi Ward (from the first issue, September 1948), Shinagawa Ward (from 1947), Osaka City (from the first issue of July 15, 1949) — all of them publish a continuous run starting from a first issue in the postwar occupation period. A good deal else turned up as well, so I am publishing that too.
To make it more interesting
Learning something about public halls (kōminkan) and the New Life Movement makes the back issues far more enjoyable.
I have not read them yet, but the following books look promising.
Municipal newsletter back issues are also a way to study peace
The traces of the war, and of the recovery from it, are still there in the old newsletters of local governments. Reading these is, I think, one form of peace study.
Meiwa, Gunma — Meiwa-mura Kōhō, 1956 (Shōwa 31), no. 13
Goshogawara, Aomori (former Kanagi) — Kanagi Dayori, June 5, 1952
Set a newsletter from 1949 beside one from 1955 and — never mind the contents — the quality of the printing and the kind of advertising have changed completely, and you feel in your body that the recovery is underway. Watching something the war smashed to pieces return to what it was is a good experience. You can also read out of them what a country that has declined ought to do.
The weak point is that it eats an absurd amount of time, so running this kind of peace study in a school may be difficult.
By region102 entries
Hokkaidō9 entries
| Municipality | Title | Years covered | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Koshimizu, Hokkaidō | Koshimizu Archives | December 1953–present | e-book | An installation of the Japan ebooks "municipal archives" service (published May 2018). The oldest issue is Kōhō Koshimizu for December 1953 |
| Rumoi, Hokkaidō | Kōhō Rumoi | November 1956–1988 (digest) | The Shōwa-era issues are a digest of extracts rather than full pages. Full-page editions begin in 2005 | |
| Suttsu, Hokkaidō | Kōhō Suttsu | May 1957 (first issue) to no. 5 | Only five issues, nos. 1–5, released specially to mark the 700th. Not a continuous run | |
| Rishiri, Hokkaidō | Kōhō Rishiri | 1958 (first issue, no. 0)–present | A continuous run from the first issue to the present, about 551 files | |
| Kuromatsunai, Hokkaidō | Kōhō Kuromatsunai | May 1959 (no. 1) to no. 169 (1988) | 172 files; the whole Shōwa period is there. Run on a blog service (sblo.jp) rather than the official town site | |
| Okushiri, Hokkaidō | Kōhō Okushiri | 1964 (no. 2)–present | PDFs arranged on pages by ranges of issue numbers. No. 1 is missing | |
| Shikabe, Hokkaidō | Kōhō Shikabe | October 1965 (no. 1) to no. 624 | Divided across pages of fifty issues each | |
| Makubetsu, Hokkaidō | Kōhō Makubetsu | 1967–present | Published year by year | |
| Shibetsu, Hokkaidō | Kōhō Shibetsu | 1981–present | Published year by year |
Tōhoku6 entries
| Municipality | Title | Years covered | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goshogawara, Aomori (former Kanagi) | Kanagi Dayori / Kōhō Kanagi | 1952–2005 | images/PDF | The city library publishes the whole run of the former town of Kanagi. A model case for a municipality erased by merger. Also notes the 1955 merger of Kanagi, Kase and Kiraichi |
| Asahi, Yamagata | Kōhō Asahimachi | mid-1960s–present | Sorted by period (1965–74 and so on) | |
| Shirakawa, Fukushima | Shirakawa-area serials digital archive | Shōwa-era newspapers and newsletters | images | Built by the city library. Publishes what it has cleared for copyright |
| Iwate (prefecture) | Iwate Graph | 1950–2009 (selected articles and covers) | images | Inside the prefecture's 150th-anniversary site. Selected articles rather than full PDFs |
| Shiroishi, Miyagi | Kōhō Shiroishi | September 15, 1959 (first issue)–present | States plainly that "we have digitized and present every newsletter from the first issue to the present." Organized on pages in five-year blocks | |
| Kitaakita, Akita (former Takanosu, Moriyoshi, Ani and Aikawa) | Kōhō Takanosu / Moriyoshi / Ani / Aikawa | 1955– | Presents the newsletters of the four pre-merger towns side by side as "the newsletters of the four former towns." Kōhō Takanosu begins in 1955 |
Kantō13 entries
| Municipality | Title | Years covered | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo | Ward newsletter back issues | 1947–2014 | images/text | "Shinagawa Digital Archive" on ADEAC (published 2023). Keyword search |
| Adachi Ward, Tokyo | Adachi Kōhō (formerly Adachi Kusei News) | first issue September 1948–present (about 2,000 issues) | PDF/e-book/TEXT | Every issue digitized, published March 2024, full-text search. A model case for publishing the complete run from the first issue |
| Jōsō, Ibaraki (former Mitsukaidō and Ishige) | Mitsukaidō Shihō / Ishige Chōhō / Kōhō Jōsō | first issue 1954–present | e-book | Runs continuously from the first issues of the two former municipalities through the merger |
| Kitaibaraki, Ibaraki | Kitaibaraki Shisei Dayori | first issue May 1956– | images | The "newsletter" group of the Kitaibaraki digital archive (ADEAC). Starts with issue 1 (May 20, 1956), just after the city was founded |
| Meiwa, Gunma (former Meiwa village) | Meiwa-mura Kōhō | 1956 (no. 13) and others | Publishes newsletters from the village era | |
| Abiko, Chiba | Abiko digital local materials (newsletter back issues) | 1955– | images/text | Built by the municipal library. ADEAC. Runs from "Abiko Chōhō, merger issue 1" (May 1955), right after the towns and villages merged |
| Funabashi, Chiba | Funabashi Shihō / Kōhō Funabashi (memorial-issue feature) | first issue May 10, 1938, and others | Its predecessor, Funabashi Shihō, came out on the 10th of each month from May 1938 to February 10, 1944. A selection — the first issue and memorial issues — is published as PDFs. Not a continuous run, but a rare chance to read a prewar and wartime municipal newsletter | |
| Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo | Kōhō Chiyoda | 1953–present | Back issues on the ward's own site. Year-by-year pages run from 1953 to 2026 with no year missing. Notably it uses no external archive platform — everything is on the ward's own site | |
| Nakano Ward, Tokyo | Nakano Kuhō reduced-size edition (Dejinaka) | 1982–2001 (reduced-size editions nos. 1–12) | images | Nakano Ward Library's "Dejinaka — an archive of local photographs and books." In December 2024 it merged the old digital archive with the "local photo gallery." The ward's own site has back issues only from FY2018. It also holds more than 1,800 photographs published in the ward newsletter |
| Toshima Ward, Tokyo | Kōhō Toshima (Kōhō Toshima Library) | FY1948–present | PDF/digital book | Arranged by fiscal year, starting from FY1948. Text search is unavailable for FY1948–FY2010. Run on a domain outside the ward's official site, so WARP does not collect it |
| Hiratsuka, Kanagawa | Kōhō Hiratsuka (Kōhō Hiratsuka Digital Archive) | fiscal 1949–present | A pull-down of five-year blocks covers everything from the first issue to the latest, with no missing years. It warns that "these are the articles as published, so names and contact details may differ from the present," and puts them out unaltered | |
| Odawara, Kanagawa | Kōhō Odawara (Odawara Digital Archive) | first issue 1950–about issue 1,000 | images/PDF | One of the few runs in Kanagawa that goes back to the first issue (along with Hiratsuka) |
| Ichikawa, Chiba (for reference) | Suzugamo Tsūshin (Ekinan Library Digital Archive) | December 26, 1979 (no. 0)– (54 of the 77 issues are from the Shōwa era) | Not a municipal newsletter: it is put out by the NPO Gyōtoku Shizen Hogo Club. Included for reference as a case of a citizens' group's local paper kept over the long term |
Chūbu12 entries
| Municipality | Title | Years covered | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fuji, Shizuoka (former Fujikawa) | Kōhō Fujikawa | 1958–2008 (complete record) | The city preserves and publishes the whole run of the former town of Fujikawa, erased by merger | |
| Asahi, Toyama | Kōhō Asahi (2006 and earlier) | first issue (1950s)–present | A separate page gathers everything from the first issue to no. 616 (2006) by decade — the 1950s, the 1960s and so on. From 2007 the issues sit year by year on the main page | |
| Nagaoka, Niigata | Nagaoka Seen Through Its Newsletters (Shisei Dayori) | 1954–present | The city's e Library. The newsletters of the ten municipalities absorbed in the Heisei mergers (Nakanoshima, Koshiji, Mishima, Yamakoshi, Oguni, Washima, Teradomari, Tochio, Yoita, Kawaguchi) are published separately | |
| Karuizawa, Nagano | Karuizawa Chōhō (Karuizawa Town Library digital archive) | 1925–1930 (nos. 1–57, including extras) | images | ADEAC. The only prewar (Taishō-era) newsletter run found in this survey. CC BY-ND |
| Kōta, Aichi | Kōhō Kōta | 1950–present | The town's own site has a "Kōhō Kōta archive" page for each year. It states plainly that the pages are scans of surviving physical copies and are hard to read, and lists the issues that no longer exist (September 15, 1964, for instance) | |
| Nonoichi, Ishikawa | Nonoichi Kōmin / Kōhō Nonoichi | fiscal 1955–2012 | images | Continuous across a change of title, from Nonoichi Kōmin (fiscal 1955–76) to Kōhō Nonoichi (fiscal 1977 on). Hosted by a regional-material digitization project, not on a municipal domain |
| Ōno, Fukui | Kōhō Ōno, and its earlier titles | fiscal 1954–present | Fiscal year by fiscal year with no gaps. The title changed four times — Ōno Shihō, Shisei Ōno (in two spellings), then Kōhō Ōno — and each year carries the title it had then | |
| Katsuyama, Fukui | Kōhō Katsuyama | fiscal 1954–present | Organized in blocks: 1954–64, 1965–74, 1975–88 | |
| Sabae, Fukui | Kōhō Sabae | 1955–present | In ten-year blocks: 1955–64, 1965–74, 1975–84, 1985–94 | |
| Wanouchi, Gifu | Kōhō Wanouchi | July 1954–present | Pages in ten-year blocks, with a separate page for each issue | |
| Higashishirakawa, Gifu | Kōhō (Higashishirakawa) | March 1956 (no. 1)–present | Continuously numbered from no. 1. Each year states its range of issue numbers, e.g. "March–December 1956 (from no. 1)" | |
| Kawabe, Gifu | Kōhō Kawabe | fiscal 1958–present | Lists the missing issues down to the number and asks residents for physical copies (nos. 1–7, 10, 11, 13, 20–23, 26, 32, 39 and others, roughly 1955–71). With Hikari, one of the two cases here that state their gaps openly |
Kinki10 entries
| Municipality | Title | Years covered | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Osaka City, Osaka | Osaka Shisei Dayori | first issue July 15, 1949–December 1965 | The "Shisei Dayori Archive." Started twice monthly as a single sheet for posting; delivered to each household from September 1952 | |
| Yao, Osaka (formerly Yao Shihō) | Yao Shisei Dayori | 1949– | Yao City Library "regional materials digital archive." Issues 2–335 appeared under the title Yao Shihō. Scanned at 240 dpi | |
| Takasago, Hyōgo | Takasago Shisei Dayori | first issue December 1954– | images/text | City library's "Digital Hometown Takasago." ADEAC. 259 items from issue 1 (December 1, 1954); each issue's headline list links to the page itself |
| Izumisano, Osaka | Kōhō Izumisano / Shihō Izumisano | 1951–1998 | images | The "administrative material" group of the Izumisano digital archive (ADEAC). Starts with Kōhō Izumisano for May 30, 1951; from 1954 the title is Shihō Izumisano |
| Chihayaakasaka, Osaka | Kōhō Chihayaakasaka | 1966–present | Pages for each year run from 1966 to 2026 with no gaps. Rather than bundling a year together, each year's page holds one PDF per issue | |
| Kawanishi, Hyōgo | Kōhō Kawanishi | 1975–1994 editions | images | The "administrative history, source volume" group of the Kawanishi digital archive (ADEAC). Twenty volumes, each collecting one year |
| Uji, Kyoto | Uji Shisei Dayori | December 1, 1951 (first issue)–present | Fiscal years from 1951 to 2026 with no gaps, and a table of contents for each page of the paper | |
| Ayabe, Kyoto | Kōhō Ayabe | April 1976 (no. 247)–fiscal 2009 | Deleted from the current municipal site; readable only in the NDL's WARP crawl of 2018. A case of what a municipality removed surviving elsewhere | |
| Nara, Nara | Nara Shimin Dayori | September 1, 1950 (no. 1, first issue)–present | Continuous from the first issue. Noted as "presented as the original," so tears and repairs are visible as they are | |
| Wakayama (prefecture) | Kenmin no Tomo | September 1947 (no. 1)–present (no. 1056) | About 800 files for the Shōwa era alone. One of the few cases where a prefectural newsletter from the occupation period (1947) can be read straight through, issue by issue |
Chūgoku and Shikoku10 entries
| Municipality | Title | Years covered | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Takehara, Hiroshima | Kōhō Takehara | first issue July 1953– | images | Takehara Shoin Municipal Library digital archive (ADEAC). 49 items, from the first issue put out by the "Takehara town newsletter committee" before the town became a city |
| Hiroshima City, Hiroshima | Newsletters from 1950 to 1964 (digital gallery) | first issue August 1, 1950–1964 | Hiroshima City Archives, published June 2024. Founded five years after the bombing as Shisei Kōhō; the title changed several times on the way to the present Hiroshima Shimin to Shisei | |
| Hikari, Yamaguchi | Hikari newsletter digital archive | first issue 1951–present | Publishes the newsletters of the former city of Hikari and the former village and town of Yamato side by side — a preservation case for municipalities erased by merger. Unusually, it lists the missing issues (old Hikari nos. 6, 10–18, 19–50, 450; old Yamato nos. 4, 10–15) and asks residents who hold copies to come forward | |
| Fukuyama, Hiroshima | Fukuyama City Library digital archive | first issue October 15, 1951–March 2017 | images | An early case, published April 2012. It began with issues up to no. 657 (1988) and expanded in stages. Some newspapers and magazines can only be read on terminals in the library |
| Hiroshima City (predecessor) | Hiroshima Shihō | 1932 (no. 1)–1943, then a revived no. 1 in 1946–1955 | Hiroshima City Archives digital gallery. Before the war it was the shihō that did the work of a newsletter. It is the predecessor of Shisei Kōhō (1950–), listed above | |
| Kōfu, Tottori | Chōhō Kōfu | 1981–2002 | 240 files | |
| Katsuura, Tokushima | Kōhō Katsuura | July 1970–December 1988 | 222 issues. A tag, "Shōwa no kōhō," lists the Shōwa-era issues on their own | |
| Ōzu, Ehime (former Nagahama, Hijikawa and Kawabe) | Kōhō Ōzu / Nagahama / Hijikawa / Kawabe-mura Kōminkanhō | 1954 (Machi no Tayori of the former Nagahama)–present | Presents the newsletters of all four municipalities that vanished in the Heisei mergers, side by side | |
| Aki, Kōchi | Kōhō Aki (Aki City Archives) | April 10, 1959 (no. 1)–present | e-book | On kochi-ebooks. 774 newsletter files, filterable by range of years, by month and by keyword |
| Susaki, Kōchi | Kōhō Susaki | August 1955 (first issue)–present | 1955, 1960 and 1963 are extracts only; 1986–89 are complete month by month. The URL takes a year as a filter |
Kyūshū and Okinawa17 entries
| Municipality | Title | Years covered | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ōita City, Ōita | Shihō Ōita | 1949 (no. 1)–present | The "Shihō Ōita Digital Archive." Every issue from the first, with searchable table-of-contents data. Damaged and illegible parts of the originals are published as they are | |
| Kagoshima City, Kagoshima | Kagoshima Shimin no Hiroba | 1949–present | images/e-book/PDF | A newsletter digital archive on its own domain. Has a "Hiroba from 1945" category and carries articles from 1949 |
| Nakatane, Kagoshima | Kōhō Nakatane reduced-size edition | 1953–March 1993 | A reduced-size edition for each year, digitized as one PDF per year. Official town site | |
| Aira, Kagoshima (former Aira town) | Kōhō Aira (Aira City Digital Museum) | 1962–1988 | images | The newsletter of the pre-merger town of Aira, published as a collection in the city's digital museum |
| Mizumaki, Fukuoka | Kōhō Mizumaki | 1951–present | On the site of the town's museum of history. 1951–1955 are grouped together; from 1961 the issues are arranged year by year | |
| Kitakyūshū, Fukuoka | Shisei Dayori | first issue 1963–present | HTML/PDF | Carried from the first issue (September 1, 1963) |
| Kikuchi, Kumamoto (former Shisui, Shichijō and Kyokushi) | Kikuchi Kōhō and others | 1957– | images | The "administrative material" group of the Kikuchi digital archive (ADEAC). Kikuchi Kōhō from its first issue in August 1957, Kyokushi Sonpō from 1957, Shisui Chōhō from 1961 — the newsletters of the pre-merger municipalities side by side |
| Beppu, Ōita | Shihō Beppu | first issue 1947–present (complete run) | e-book | The "Beppu City Newsletter Digital Archive." Every issue was digitized as a project for the city's 100th anniversary. On its own domain |
| Takanabe, Miyazaki | Takanabe-chō Kōhō / Chōhō Takanabe / Kōhō Takanabe | July 15, 1959 (no. 1)–present | e-book | Takanabe Archives. Full-text search, plus filters for year range and month of issue. The title has changed three times |
| Shiiba, Miyazaki | Sonpō Shiiba / Kōhō Shiiba | December 1955 (Sonpō Shiiba no. 21)–present | e-book | Shiiba Archives (published March 2015) |
| Gokase, Miyazaki | Kōhō Gokase | first issue May 1966–present | e-book | Gokase Archives (published March 2017). Students at Gokase Secondary School have used it as a source for population, birth and budget figures in their statistics work |
| Takachiho, Miyazaki | Kōhō Takachiho | first issue April 1962–present | e-book | Takachiho Archives (published October 2020) |
| Hinokage, Miyazaki | Kōhō Hinokage | June 1966 (no. 18)–present | e-book | Hinokage Archives (published June 2021) |
| Imari, Saga | Kōhō Imari / Shiyakusho Dayori | 1954–present | Year by year with no gaps | |
| Tosu, Saga | Shihō Tosu | 1954 (no. 1)–present (no. 1319) | Organized in blocks of issue numbers: nos. 1–60 (to 1960), nos. 61–508 (to 1983), and so on | |
| Onna, Okinawa | Kōhō Onna | July 1971 (first issue)–1975, then 1991–present | The first issue comes before the reversion to Japan (1971) and can be read. Twenty-one issues from 1971 to 1975; 1976–88 are missing | |
| Nakijin, Okinawa | Kōhō Nakijin | December 1973–1988 | 157 issues. A page for each year holds the PDFs |
Nationwide platforms and related archives25 entries
| Name | Contents | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ADEAC (TRC-ADEAC) | 190 institutions / 1,120,280 catalogue records / 311,769 items / 132,947 text records (as of August 2026) | Full-text search across municipal histories, old documents and newsletters. Going through the 191 institutions on the list of participating bodies (/organization/all) turns up the newsletters of Shinagawa, Abiko, Takasago, Kitaibaraki, Izumisano, Takehara, Kikuchi, Karuizawa, Ibaraki (Osaka) and Hiratsuka. The quick check is whether an institution's "resource groups" include one for newsletters |
| National Diet Library Digital Collections | material from across the country | Has a transmission service for digitized material to libraries |
| National Archives of Japan Digital Archive | cross-search of public records | Cross-searches with prefectural archive systems |
| Shōwa-kan Digital Archive | material on everyday life in the Shōwa era | An alternative source for prewar and wartime material |
| Prefecture-wide e-book portals | municipal newsletters within a prefecture | Ibaraki, Shizuoka, Nagano, Yamagata and so on. The Jōsō archive has the first issue from 1954 |
| WARP (NDL Web Archiving Project) | systematic periodic collection of municipal websites | A crawler collects every municipal site and its PDFs quarterly. It catches back issues that municipalities have deleted to save space. Fifteen of Tokyo's 23 wards have removed newsletters they once published. Some of it, however, is viewable only inside the NDL, and many municipalities do not realize they are the ones imposing that restriction |
| Japan ebooks municipal archives | a network of region-specific e-book portals | Run by the Japan ebooks association. Twenty-nine portals: Hokkaidō, Akita, Yamagata, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Tama, Nagano, Shizuoka, Toyama, Fukui, Ishikawa, Gifu, Kyoto, Hyōgo, Nara, Ehime, Kagawa, Tokushima, Kōchi, Okayama, Yamaguchi, Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Ōita, Kumamoto, Miyazaki. The URLs follow the regular form https://<municipality>.<prefecture>-ebooks.jp/, so they can be enumerated mechanically. Koshimizu, Jōsō, Hikari, Takanabe, Shiiba, Gokase, Takachiho and Hinokage all belong to it |
| rlibrary.jp | digital-book delivery platform | Used by Toshima Ward and Tokorozawa. Takes the form https://<municipality>.rlibrary.jp/archive/. Because it sits outside the official municipal domain, WARP does not collect it, so some issues can be read nowhere else |
| Municipal newsletters by prefecture (list of adopting municipalities) | a list of official newsletter pages nationwide | An exhaustive link collection ordered by prefecture. A good starting point for working through them all |
| Current Awareness Portal | library-world news | More than a decade of short notices of the form "such-and-such city library digitizes and publishes its newsletter." Hiroshima, Beppu, Fukuyama, Nakano and Odawara all turn up here. The most efficient way to find sites with old newsletters |
| Kanagawa administrative materials archive | the prefecture's electronic administrative materials | A partnership of three bodies: the prefectural library, the government information centre and the archives. An advanced case of writing down who does what |
| Osaka e-Collection (Osaka Prefectural Library) | the prefecture's electronic administrative materials | An early case of collecting online material issued by local government |
| List of municipal newsletters in Osaka Prefecture (Osaka Prefectural Library) | holdings list of newsletters for every municipality and ward | Covers all 24 wards of Osaka City. The prefectural newsletter has reduced-size editions for 1979–1999 |
| Okinawa City postwar materials digital archive, Web Historeet | postwar material on Okinawa City | Opened February 2017. Article indexes for Uruma Shinpō (from July 26, 1945), Okinawa Times (from June 29, 1948), Chūbu Jōhō and Chūbu Nippō. The guiding idea is to fill in with newspaper articles, because administrative records under US military rule were discarded in bulk. Not newsletters, but adjacent material for peace study. Web search reaches headlines and dates only; the pages themselves can be read and printed only on four terminals on site |
| Link list for municipal newsletters in Hokkaidō (prefecture) | the newsletter pages of every municipality in Hokkaidō | Run by the prefecture. A link collection pointing at each municipality's official newsletter page |
| Link list of digital archives in Chiba (Chiba Prefectural Library) | digital archives within the prefecture | Introduces Abiko's newsletter back issues among others |
| Newsletters of the cities and towns of Ishikawa | newsletters of municipalities within the prefecture | A link collection run by the prefecture |
| Shinshū Regional Historical Materials Archive | regional historical material for Nagano | The NPO Nagano Prefecture Library Collaboration Organization, on ADEAC. Mostly regional material; few newsletters as such |
| Digital administrative materials (Aichi Prefectural Library) | administrative material of the prefecture and its municipalities | Published as images. Newsletters are limited |
| Harima Furusato Archive | out-of-copyright material from the Harima region | A partnership of Himeji, Akō, Shisō, Ichikawa and Taishi. No newsletters as such have been confirmed |
| Ibaraki City Digital Archive (Osaka) | the city newsletter, 1950–1989 | On ADEAC. What is published on the web is mainly the catalogue; the items themselves are read on site. Useful for finding out which issues survive |
| Digital Okayama Encyclopedia | the prefectural newsletter of Okayama, among other things | Built by Okayama Prefectural Library on ADEAC, with full-text search. For newsletters it is mainly the catalogue |
| Municipal newsletter material for Tokushima (Tokushima Prefectural Library) | the newsletter pages of the prefecture's 23 municipalities | The prefectural library's link collection of current newsletter pages |
| Okayama City Library Digital Archive | administrative material, including Meiji-era village gazetteers | Published 2025. No newsletters as such have been confirmed |
| Newsletters of the 12 northern municipalities of Okinawa | current newsletters of the 12 municipalities in northern Okinawa | The Northern Okinawa Wide-Area Municipal Association. Current issues only |
Caveats
- Within the range of this survey, a prewar municipal newsletter published as a continuous digital run could be confirmed in two cases: Karuizawa Chōhō (1925–1930) and Hiroshima Shihō (1932–1943, with a revived no. 1 in 1946). If a selection will do, Funabashi Shihō (1938–1944) can be read. All of them are called chōhō or shihō: before the war it was the town or city gazette, carrying notices and public announcements, that did the work of a newsletter. Most newsletters in today's sense began after the defeat, around 1947–49.
- Note that the "back issues" on official municipal sites are mostly from the 1990s on, and that publication of Shōwa-era issues is the exception.
- URLs are as of August 2026. Municipal sites change their URLs easily when they are redesigned, so links may break. There are more than 1,700 municipalities in Japan and a complete survey is impossible, so this list gathers, by preference, the "hits" that go back to the older years.