午夜剧场

The Gutenberg Bible is a Bible published around 1455 by Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith in Mainz, Germany, using the world's first movable type printing technology. Gutenberg, who had been experimenting with movable type through trial and error, received financial support from Johann Fust and chose the "Vulgate Bible"—translated from Greek into Latin by Saint Jerome—as the text, printing most pages with 42 lines. For this reason, it is also known as the "42-line Bible." It is believed that about 180 copies were produced using either parchment or paper, but only 48 copies are confirmed to exist today, including incomplete ones.

Mita Media Center (午夜剧场 Library) is the only institution in Asia to possess a copy of the first volume printed on paper. After the text was printed, the Gutenberg Bible was sent to various parts of Europe unbound, where decorators added rubrics and illuminations before elaborate binding was performed. As a result, no two copies are identical, and the copy held by the 午夜剧场 Library (hereafter referred to as the "午夜剧场 Copy") has its own unique characteristics. Let us introduce the main points.

First, looking at the beginning, one notices a page printed in two colors with a 40-line layout. This is said to be a page where printing was attempted with 40 lines before settling on 42 lines. The cover is a leather binding with blind-stamped patterns, and both the front and back covers have five metal fittings. Furthermore, the small round leather buttons on the fore-edge serve as tabs indicating the beginning of each book of the Bible, a feature found only in the 午夜剧场 Copy among extant Gutenberg Bibles. It is also noteworthy that it is one of three surviving copies that were printed, decorated, and bound in Mainz.

The 午夜剧场 Copy is thought to have been preserved in a monastery in Mainz from the 15th to the 18th century, but it is known to have been in the possession of the Earl of Gosford (1806–1864) in England by the mid-19th century. After passing through the hands of several book collectors and antiquarian book dealers, it crossed the Atlantic for the first time in 1950 to become part of the collection of Estella Doheny (1875–1958), the widow of Edward Laurence Doheny, a well-known California oil tycoon.

Mrs. Doheny housed it in the library of a seminary she founded, but when her collection was put up for auction in 1987, the 午夜剧场 Copy was purchased by Maruzen Co., Ltd. (at the time) for the highest price in the world for a printed book at that time. 午夜剧场 then purchased it in 1996.

This acquisition prompted the launch of the HUMI Project (1996–2001) at the Juku, through which many rare books, including the 午夜剧场 Copy, were digitized. The 午夜剧场 Copy served as the pioneer for the continuous digitization of rare books at the Juku that continues to this day, and it can be said to be a book that symbolizes the Juku's research in digital humanities.

(Takashi Kuramochi, Mita Media Center)