Cataloging Tools and Resources

This page provides the National Diet Library's rules for characters and "Yomi", kanji readings, used to create both bibliographic and authority data in JAPAN/MARC MARC21 format.

• Rules for Characters (January 2021) (PDF: 396KB) (in Japanese)
  • List of Characters that Require Special Handling (PDF: 1.09MB) (in Japanese) (Last Updated 2023-8-31)

Earlier rules are available here.

• From Jan. 2012 through Dec. 2020 (PDF: 169KB) (in Japanese)
• From Apr. 2008 through Dec. 2011 (in Japanese)
• From Apr. 2002 through Mar. 2008 (in Japanese)
• From Jan. 1998 through Mar. 2002 (in Japanese)
• In or before Dec. 1997 (in Japanese)

• Rules for "Yomi" (reading kanji) (January 2021) (PDF: 897KB) (in Japanese)

For earlier rules, please see Earlier rules for "Yomi" (in Japanese).